Conan the Barbarian (Titan Books)

#16A

Colleen Doran Regular

Release: Oct 23, 2024

Titan Comics

Heroic Signatures

Creators

Writer	Jim Zub
Artist	Doug Braithwaite
Cover Artist	Colleen Doran

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I’m doing this as a Short Box just because I’m too lazy to do any scanning or to search for scans online, but rest assured, the art from Doug Braithwaite looks as good as you would expect it to if you’re familiar with his excellent work.

The main reason I wanted to talk about this issue is that it’s further evidence of something I’ve long maintained, which is that because Conan is an archetype you can slot him into pretty much any kind of story. While you’re always going to be within the genre of sword and sorcery by the nature of the character, within the confines of that genre you can tell a story that is, in essence, a Western, or a Mystery, or even a Romance.

Whatever kind of story you want to tell you can tell it with Conan in it.

You can even, if you’re as brave as Jim Zub, tell a story about a man having a crisis of faith.

This is, of course, a challenge, given that Conan’s god is Crom, who gives his people life and the will to fight, then never bothers with them again until they die, neither asking for worship nor answering prayers.

But even that, it seems, is too much for young Conan, who has never seen a god and knows only the power of muscle and steel, to believe in. Or rather, it had been.

This one-and-done issue follows right on the heels of Zub’s take on the oft-adapted Robert E. Howard Conan story “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” a tale in which Conan, the only survivor of a pitched battle, is led further and further into the frozen wastes of the north by an impossibly beautiful woman who has mesmerized him with her beauty.

In the course of his pursuit, Conan discovers that the woman is a goddess named Atali, the daughter of Ymir, who is leading him to his death at the hands of her brothers, a game she has played with others like Conan many times throughout the years.

Of course, she finds that the others were nothing like Conan, and he prevails against her brothers, catches her, and means to take the prize that she has been dangling in front of him for many frozen leagues. She’s whisked away by her father before Conan can get what he’s after, and Conan is soon found by the companions he’d been fighting alongside. He dismisses the whole thing as some kind of dream, until he notices that he’s still holding the translucent scarf that had been the only thing Atali wore…

At the camp, Conan broods, thinking back on his life, recalling how in his childhood his assertion that he didn’t believe in Crom nearly earned him a beating from his father, trying to reconcile what he has believed – or not believed – for so long with what he has just experienced.

Of course, when you drop Conan into any kind of story it’s still going to be a Conan story, so naturally there’s a brutal fight to the death before Conan takes his leave of his companions and considers the words that his father delivered to him in lieu of a beating, words that could be boiled down to, “Fake it ’til you make it.”

Eventually, he comes to accept that what he has seen is real, and that a world with Atali and Ymir is also a world with Crom, and more things besides. It’s all a mystery that may never be fully revealed, but it’s one he will spend the rest of his life exploring in his own way.

As I said, I wanted to take a look at this one because of my thesis, but also because I’ve really been enjoying this run of the adventures of everyone’s favorite sullen-eyed Cimmerian and I haven’t talked about it since before it officially began.

If you’re a fan of Conan and haven’t been checking out this series, I highly recommend it. Especially now, as there is a kind of crossover event happening featuring several other Robert E. Howard creations.

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