Conan The Barbarian Vol. 1: Into The Crucible

USER REVIEWS – 3

• 5.5
  

  byrononeal

  Apr 20, 2021

  In a nutshell, if you are a fan of Conan you are likely to enjoy this book. That said it's firmly mediocre in general. I was excited to see the relaunch of the Conan the Barbarian series in 2019 and more so when I noticed Jason Aaron was handling the writing duties so I anticipated the release of Volumes 1 & 2. At my local comic book shop the other day, Volume 3 caught my eye and it was a no brainer picking it up having been a fan for a long time. Sadly, Aaron isn't writing the arcs anymore and the book has suffered for it. Zub handles the material well enough as it reads like any other Conan story over the last how many decades but one can't help but feel a little duped as the entire creative team from the first twelve issues was repla ced. Kind of like, here's a new take on an old character (yet again) and now that you are hooked we will change basically everything and rotate talent until this thing reaches issue 200 or it's not selling anymore and then we'll shelf it for seven years until eventually doing the same thing all over again in the hopes that you will again buy it. Maybe I'm just jaded. For continuity sake having three artists over six issues isn't the best to carry a storyline. Antonio's work on issues 13-16 comes off very classically Conan but I preferred the later two issues and Pizzari and Silva's work more. As I only read trades these days, I cannot speak to if any of the three are still working on the book or not. Tonally the color work is a bit too dark for me. I don't mind deep shadows if it helps narrate the line work and storyline but here it seems to just fill space at times. I feel like I'm painting a bad picture of this volume. That's not my intent. As I said at the beginning, if you like Conan you will like this and for the time being I will continue to pick it up. If you are however on the fence about starting or restarting something new, there are better options out there in the fantasy niche of the comic book world. more

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• 8.0
  

  Sidowski

  Oct 20, 2023
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• 7.5
  

  Adsun22

  Jun 28, 2022
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