The Savage Sword of Conan (Titan Books)

#8A

Cvr A Jusko

Release: Apr 30, 2025

Titan Comics

Heroic Signatures

Creators

Writer	Dennis Culver, Fred Kennedy, Zack Davisson, John C. Hocking, Liam Sharp
Artist	Chris Burnham, Marco Rudy, Max von Fafner, Liam Sharp
Cover Artist	Joe Jusko

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I’ve mentioned in the past that back during the original Marvel years when it came to Conan, I tended to favor his other books over the main title. In particular, I enjoyed the black and white magazine-sized Savage Sword of Conan, because it wasn’t held back by the constraints of the Comics Code Authority and that its size made it a better value proposition than a standard comic.

However, for some reason, those issues held up even less well to the careless and punishing treatment my comics often received, so almost invariably they would quickly lose their covers or suffer some other damage, so most of the issues I had – and honestly, it probably wasn’t that many, even if I had a couple years’ worth, given that it wasn’t a monthly title – were lost to the ages long ago.

Back when Dark Horse had the Conan license, they released a series of volumes collecting the original run of SSoC, and I picked up all 22 of them.

Of course, there were a couple of problems with those volumes. For one, they’re not magazine-sized, and for another, they’re not complete, collecting only the Conan stories that were original to SSoC, but the magazine was home to more than just stories featuring the Cimmerian with gigantic melancholies and mirth. There were letter pages, pin-ups, and stories featuring other Robert E. Howard creations.

When Marvel briefly held the Conan license again, they relaunched Savage Sword of Conan, but in name only, as it was regular-sized full-color comic.

This is why I was so pleased when Titan Comics, whose main Conan the Barbarian series has been excellent, properly relaunched Savage Sword in the original format, with the same mix of features.

Like the original, this version is a showcase for artists via the pin-ups and the stories themselves, and the starkness of the black and white – with some shades of gray – really allows the art to shine. Also as with the original, we’ve gotten stories featuring other Howard characters such as Solomon Kane, and in this issue, Cormac Fitzgeoffrey.

We also got a poem and a short prose story.

While it was all good, the highlight for me was the story written and illustrated by Liam Sharp, a man who was born to draw Conan. His Conan is a mix of the burly Buscema take on Conan with the added details and, er, sharpness of the early Windsor-Smith Conan.

Sharp’s story is something of an inversion of “The Frost Giant’s Daughter,” as Conan gets to see the aftermath of a lone warrior’s encounter with a supernatural beauty from the same perspective as the warriors who found him after his experience of chasing an impossible dream.

I’ve been meaning to write something about the new Savage Sword since its launch, and while any given issue would be a good one to write about, this one seemed like an even better choice than most if only for the sake of praising Sharp’s work.

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