BLADES Inspirations: Conan #1 (Marvel, 2019)

Just released this January is issue #1 of Marvel's new run of Conan.  For the last 15 years, Dark Horse Comics told the tales of our favorite Cimmerian and (IMHO) published some of the best Conan work outside of REH's original works. They lost the license and it transferred to Marvel this year. So the house that Spidey built is charting a new course.

During the original Marvel run of Conan, I devoured every issue of the Savage Sword of Conan Magazine I could get my hands on--but the regular comic run of Conan? meh.

So here is issue #1 of the new Marvel regular series and its story crosses 3 different time lines in our favorite barbarian's life: Birth + Young barbarian + King Conan all in the same story.  Is it successful? Kind of.

Granted it is one issue and the story line clearly is going to continue to build, so it is hard to judge in one issue. The set-up creates the opportunity for Marvel to use any time in the Barbarian's wanderings for stories long term. The Young Barbarian section was great and good inspiration for an adventure but the other sections of the story--I guess we will wait and see.  So at $5 for an issue can I say rush out and buy it? Nope.

I'd suggest you wait for the inevitable collection of the first 4 or 6 issues and buy that because as an intro to Crom's finest its a bit of a miss, especially when compared to the Dark Horse issue #0 prelude and issue #1.

I give it 3 cleaved foes out of 5, promising but not yet savage.