Broken Frontier

With Conan the Cimmerian #19, Timothy Truman and Tomas Giorello bring us the tale the infamous barbarian as he leads the band of mercenaries once led by Amalric.

Told in flashback, the first part of "Kozaki" stands out as a perfect representation of the lure of Conan. “Sword and Sorcery” as a sub-genre of fantasy is a struggle to define completely, but like Potter Stewart's famous observation on hard-core pornography, “I know it when I see it.” Exotic cities, gaudily garbed sorcerers, beautiful women treated harshly by evil men, old enemies with grudges, and of course, a broad chested warrior who prefers the sword to the bow, Truman presents all of this and more in the continuing adventures of the intrepid Cimmerian.

It's amazing, and increasingly rare to find the rich narrative technique that Truman employs. While many comics are little more than storyboards, Truman adds color and flavor, in one case the flavor of raw rats, with his descriptive narration. Though the schools of thought differ on the proper quantity of words and captions in comics storytelling, there is no doubt that they should be of quality and add to the story rather than reiterate the imagery. In this case, Truman uses the captions to tell a much larger story, at various points pulling us back in for battle and character development.

The perfect complement to the bold writing is the art of Tomas Giorello. I have sung his praises before. A master illustrator, the Hyborian Age he portrays is the one my mind envisioned as a child reading the Robert E. Howard Conan stories. His characters are creatively dressed, powerfully rendered, and his storytelling is perfect, not relying on tricks or extreme closeups to “tease” emotion. Just beautiful, classic illustration. And all in pencil.

In general, I find the printed pencil to be unfinished, believing that as good as it might look with the stray pencil lines and not quite black finish, the art would be improved with ink. Giorello is the exception that proves the world. Combined with Villarubia's expert hand and dusty palette, the pencil finish works perfectly in bringing to life the world of Conan. The effect creates a world with a fine layer of dirt kicked up by mercenary armies.

For a character with some 80 years of history in literature, and over 40 in comics, Conan has never been handled better. This is raw escapism and burly fantasy at its finest. I cannot say enough about the quality of the book Dark Horse produces under the Robert E. Howard license. If you aren't reading them, you're really missing out. Buy it, by Crom, and live the fantasy.