You’ve been waiting. 

Issue thirteen of The Savage Sword of Conan has hit a delay, and nobody feels that more than us – or more than you. 

So our editor Chris Butera decided jump on camera to pull back the curtain on what’s coming down the line for the next several issues. 

Consider it a blood oath that the wait will be worth it.

Roberto De La Torre Unleashed: “Blue Orchid”

Chris kicked things off by dropping two bombshells one after the other. 

The first? The legendary duo of Roy Thomas and Robert De La Torre are teaming up. 

The second Rob is finally getting to write his own Conan story! 

If you know Rob’s work, you know what that means: gorgeous, savage artwork paired with a deeply personal take on the Cimmerian. 

Rob’s new story, “Blue Orchid”, promises beautiful women, brutal action, and a brooding Conan that feels ripped straight from Howard’s pages. 

Rob’s been dreaming about this since he was a kid, and trust us: that kind of hunger shows up on the page.

On Savage Sword of Conan #14, Jim Zub and Ivan Gil Ride Into the Desert

Jim Zub returns to the writing table for issue fourteen, teaming up with artist Ivan Gil to take Conan into his desert nomad years and set right after the events of “A Witch Shall Be Born.” 

Chris showed us a montage and one of the chapter pages, complete with gorgeous scrollwork borders where Comicraft’s lettering will sit and, if Zub’s previous Savage Sword work is any indication, this one’s going to hit – hard.

Savage Sword of Conan #15 is A Murderer’s Row of Talent

Issue fifteen might be the most stacked lineup yet. 

Esad Ribic is handling the cover.

Paired alongside that is an Alex Horley variant and, as Chris put it, Hawley never misses. 

The A-story comes from the powerhouse duo of Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, with art from Andy Belanger. 

That’s a creative team built to deliver something special.

Liam Sharp Returns to “The Wuthering”

Here’s the one a lot of you have been waiting for. 

Liam Sharp, the artist behind “The Wuthering” and “Tattered Wings”, is coming back with a direct sequel to the world he built in that first story. 

It’s called “The Lost Soul,” and it is a sixty-four page extended issue. 

Chris teased a taste of the art but made it clear: the rest stays under wraps until later this year. 

For a story of that scope from an artist of that caliber, patience is a small price.

Bran Mak Morn Rides Again in “The Road to Isca”

Last but far from least: Bran Mak Morn is back. 

Chris confirmed that Jim Zub has major plans for Bran as a key piece of the final mini-series event that will wrap up his sprawling fifty-issue Blackstone saga. 

More on that soon.

In the meantime, we’re getting Bran Mak Morn: The Road to Isca from writer John Arcudi and artist Lino Carvalho. 

This one doesn’t star Bran directly. 

Instead, it follows a Pict who’s just been captured by the Romans. On the long road to Isca, this prisoner starts telling the story of Bran Mak Morn. And as Chris hinted, things get strange along the way. 

If you’ve read any of Arcudi’s work, you know “strange” is where he thrives.

The Road Ahead

Chris wrapped up with a promise: there’s even more he couldn’t share yet. 

But what he did show paints a picture of a book that’s firing on all cylinders and that’s stacked with heavyweight creators, stories that sprawl Howard’s world, and a clear editorial vision that pushes the comics into new territory.

We’ll have more to share soon. 

In the meantime: thank you for your patience, and thank you for showing up for these stories, these artists, and these writers. 

The Savage Sword stays sharp.

Our editor Shawn Curley had swords on the wall. Simmons had a misprinted Conan comic he’s kept for years. 

The conversation ran long, went deep, and landed somewhere neither of them planned. 

By the end of it, we were looking at one show’s relationship to the Cimmerian, yes, but also realizing that creative properties like Wayne, that owe their lifeblood to the legendary barbarian are everywhere. 

And so, what you’re about to read is our recounting of the interview’s contents, yes, but also the first installment of a new content series that that we can only describe as Conan – Minus Conan. 

A New Way of Looking at the Wide World of the Legendary Barbarian’s Influence 

On the pages of Weird Tales, Robert E. Howard created a frequency of storytelling so primal that it keeps showing up in places where nobody’s looking for it. You feel it in stories about people forged by hard places, driven by codes the civilized world doesn’t understand, burning through life with their fists and their grief and whatever scraps of love they can hold onto.

That frequency takes many forms: a great axe; a broadsword; and, sometimes, a plastic yolk and a beer can swung like a medieval flail.

Wayne – created by Shawn Simmons, now streaming on Tubi – follows Mark McKenna as Wayne, a teenager from Brockton, Massachusetts who sets out on a quest to recover his dead father’s stolen 1979 Trans-Am. He brings along Del, played by Ciara Bravo, is the girl he’s falling for. The premise sounds like a coming-of-age road trip. What you actually get is something far stranger and more savage: a story about a kid who reads Conan comics in his bedroom, sees himself in the Cimmerian, and charges into a violent world armed with nothing but an iron sense of justice and a total inability to walk away from a fight.

Understanding this premise, it’s not hard to see how Conan’s DNA is woven into every notch of the show’s skeleton. When Conan finally appears on screen in the season finale (did we mention that?), delivering lines pulled directly from Howard’s original prose, it lands because the whole series has been building that moment without you noticing.

Conan Minus Conan exists to chase down stories like this. The Hyborian Age casts a long shadow, and some of the most compelling work living inside it doesn’t carry the name on the cover. We want to find those stories, crack them open, and show you the connective tissue — for the Conan faithful who might discover something new to love, and for fans of these other worlds who might not yet realize where the blood comes from.

We’re starting with Wayne because our editor Shawn Curley sat down with Simmons for a conversation that made the case better than any pitch document could. What followed was an hour of two guys nerding out over Bêlit and beer can fights, Brockton parking lots and Cimmerian survival codes, the poetry of violence, and the specific way a father’s favorite movie can end up shaping his son’s entire creative life.

What became clear, almost immediately, is that Simmons didn’t borrow from Conan. He grew up inside a Conan story. He just didn’t have the language for it until he started writing one of his own.

Brockton from Wayne IS Cimmera

Brockton, Massachusetts gave the world two famous people, and both of them punched other men in the head for a living. Rocky Marciano trained at the Petronelli gym. Marvin Hagler came up through the same town, the same concrete. Shawn Simmons grew up in that gravity, with a father named Wayne (yes, the show is named after him) who was a fighter and a mechanic, a young dad who’d been raising his younger sisters since his own father left the family for the babysitter.

That father’s favorite movie was Conan the Barbarian.

“He was so into the violence of that thing,” Simmons told us, laughing. “He was like, ‘Yeah, and then the guy smashes his head with the hammer and then cuts his head off.’ And I’m a little kid at this point.”

It tracks. Howard, a boxer himself, modeled Conan’s physicality after the bruisers of the late ’20s and early ’30s. The character was born from the same place Wayne Simmonslived every day: a world where your hands were the first and last thing you owned. Brockton itself could pass for Cimmeria if you squinted. It’s gloomy, it’s depressing, and it’s live or die. You fight to survive, and that’s what shapes the person you become. There was a spot called The Rock (even the name feels lifted from a Howard manuscript) where the same guys would fight each other in recurring bouts.

Howard knew this kind of town. He grew up during the Texas oil boom in Cross Plains, a place where good men turned to booze, where violence was ambient, where a kid with a wild imagination could look around at the ugliness of mankind and start dreaming up barbarian kings. He never left that town. He wrote his way through it, story after story, pounding a typewriter in rural Texas the way Simmons’ dad pounded an engine block in Brockton.

The legendary Cimmerian comes from a place like this, too: a place hard enough to forge iron out of a boy. Howard’s version was Depression-era Texas. Simmons’ was working-class Massachusetts. The zip code changed. The forge didn’t.

During the conversation, Simmons shared a detail that made this whole thing feel like destiny: Simmons’ father once rode up on a horse to pick up his future wife. “Now that feels Conan,” Simmons said. He wasn’t wrong.

A Barbarian by Any Other Name

Wayne reads Conan comics. He keeps them in his room, studies them the way some kids study scripture. When the world gets ugly, he reaches for the Cimmerian the way another kid might reach for a hoodie or a baseball bat. Conan is his mythology, his operating system.

But here’s where Simmons does something sharper than fan service. Wayne thinks he’s Conan. He’s wrong.

The real Conan would rob a store without blinking. He’s a thief, a mercenary, a man who kills first and philosophizes about it later over a drink. Wayne, on the other hand, can’t do that. Wayne needs a victim before his fists start moving. Simply offensive attacking is beneath him while retaliation is not. There’s a code at work, but it’s not the barbarian’s code. It’s something closer to a kid who’s been hurt so badly that he can’t stand watching it happen to anyone else.

Simmons understood this tension from the jump. The show’s opening scene –  where Wayne is getting beaten down by a group of kids and then throws a rock through their window – came from something Simmons witnessed as a child. A kid who got the crap kicked out of him, waited for the attackers to walk away, then stood up and threw a rock at them. Got beaten again for it. The last thing a kid like that will let you take is his pride. That’s not Conan’s pride, though. Conan’s pride comes from strength. Wayne’s comes from refusal.

The show knows this distinction matters. In the finale, a cop named Sergeant Geller, played by Stephen Kearin, sits Wayne down and tells him the truth: everything Wayne has done, every broken jaw and flipped car and bloodied knuckle, was for love. He reaches out through violence because nobody taught him another way to reach.

That’s a more interesting reading of Conan than most actual Conan adaptations have managed. Wayne uses Conan as a myth to survive, and the show gently peels the myth back to reveal something the kid doesn’t want to see: that the barbarian’s real quest was never violence. It was learning to be soft enough to let someone in.

I Live, I Burn, I Slay: The Appearance of Conan the Barbarian in Episode 10 of Wayne

Conan shows up in Episode 10 of Wayne as a character, on screen, speaking. If you’ve spent any time in fandom, you know how dangerous that is. The moment a show puts its hands on somebody else’s myth, a clock starts ticking. Get it wrong, and the people who love that myth will never forgive you.

Simmons knew this. He’d been thinking about Conan for the entire run of the show, building toward a moment where Wayne’s mythology steps out of the comic book and into the room. The actor he cast, Derek Theler, stood nearly seven feet tall. Heroic Signatures’ President Fred Malmberg sent the production a replica of the Father’s Sword form the 1982 classic to up the authenticity. The comic Wayne holds on screen is issue 52, “The Gods in the Crypt”,  one of Simmons’ favorite covers, and one he fought to include because it mattered to Wayne.

Then there’s the speech. Simmons pulled directly from Howard’s prose, stitching together lines from the original stories into something that captured the DNA of the character without turning it into a museum exhibit. The crown jewel: “I live, I burn, I slay.” Howard wrote those words for “Queen of the Black Coast,” Conan’s declaration to Bêlit the pirate queen, the one woman he truly loved. In the context of that story, it’s a statement of purpose. In the context of Wayne, aimed at a teenage boy who’s confused love with war for ten episodes, it becomes a mirror.

That’s where the Del connection, portrayed by Bravo, cuts deepest. Bêlit is Conan’s great love, a woman who is fierce, bloodthirsty, sovereign. Del is none of those things. She’s kind. She flinches when Wayne kills a rabbit. But both women do the same thing to their respective paramores: they make the beast want to be something else. Simmons has said he always writes romance as the cure, and the parallel between Bêlit and Del is structural. Both love stories ask the same question about whether tenderness can survive in a person built for violence.

When Curley pointed out the Bêlit connection during their conversation, Simmons’ response was sharp: “But is he trying to convince himself?” He was talking about Conan. He could have been talking about Wayne. The whole show lives in that question of whether “I live, I burn, I slay” is a war cry or a cope, and whether the answer matters if the person saying it doesn’t know the difference.

Simmons told us he was terrified of getting this wrong. He wanted any Conan fan who felt protective the second they saw the character on screen to exhale. To feel respected. He wrote toward that audience because he is that audience, and because the kid at the center of his show is too.

Wayne Season 2 and the Call to Stream

With such a high bar to cross, the normal reaction for anyone is to ask what’s happening with Wayne from here on out. That is an interesting and unfortunate story. 

Season 2 was written. Simmons had the script. Amazon gave every indication it was happening, then didn’t. Regime changes in the form of new executives inherited a show that was never theirs to begin with. And, you know the rest. 

The story of Wayne season 2 would have followed picks up with Wayne in juvie, still making things harder for himself because someone took away the only person who taught him how to be soft. Del landed in the foster system, sharing a house with three other troubled girls, trying to build something that looks like a life. She’d been visiting Wayne. He told her to stop. In his head, the math was simple: he was ruining her.

Principle Tom Cole, played by Mike O’Malley, would have become Wayne’s guardian. Simmons described it as a breaking-a-dog story. Taming something feral by giving it a home. Conan would have shown up again, too. Simmons said he always would have found a way back in, whether in the middle of the season or at the end. The Cimmerian was never a cameo. He was load-bearing.

That story is still out there, unfinished. Wayne is streaming now on Tubi, and it has a habit of resurfacing (thanks to its habit of collecting new devotees who send Simmons twenty messages a day asking where the rest of it is). The show finds people the way Conan found readers in the ’30s: not through marketing, but through the specific recognition of someone who’s lived in a hard place and needed a myth to get through it.

If you’re a Conan fan who hasn’t watched Wayne, this is your entry point. Ten episodes, a Cimmerian speech that will make you sit up straight, and a creator who understands Howard’s work well enough to smuggle it into a completely different genre without losing a drop. If you love Wayne and have never picked up a Howard story, start with “Queen of the Black Coast.” You’ll meet Bêlit. You’ll understand  Wayne’s struggle with barbaric vulnerability in a way you didnt before

Simmons keeps a Conan comic on his wall.It’s been there for years. When we asked about it, he didn’t hesitate: “Conan’s at the heart and soul of the show in a big way. He’s still hanging on my wall, and will never be taken down.”

Neither will Wayne.

Wayne is streaming on Tubi TV, and Eenie Meanie is on Hulu and Disney+.

Want more Wayne & Conan?! Head on over to our YouTube channel to watch the full interview with Shawn Simmons!

February brings a reckoning for King Conan and a feast of Hyborian Age treasures that spans fifty years of savage glory.

Steel yourselves.

Conan the Barbarian #29 – February 25, 2026

The crown of Aquilonia is barely warm on Conan’s head and already there’s a blade at his throat. 

Meet the Son of the Tooth: a spirit-hunter who wears the teeth of his prey like trophies and can track Conan’s very soul across the Hyborian Age. No fortress walls, no royal guard, no kingdom’s might can hide a man from something that hunts his essence.

Jim Zub and Doug Braithwaite kick off the eighth story arc of Titan’s ongoing series with a vicious premise: the Cult of the Black Stone isn’t done with Conan. Not by a long shot. 

After 28 issues of wandering, fighting, and clawing his way from thief to king, the Cimmerian finally sits a throne and the supernatural forces that backed the mad King Numedides want their pound of flesh.

Savage Sword of Conan Reforged #3 – February 18, 2026

Cannibals. A cursed dancer. The temple of the ape-god Hanuman. Roy 

Thomas and Neal Adams’ legendary adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “Shadows in Zamboula” has never looked like this before … because it’s never been in color before.

Reforged #3 cracks open Savage Sword of Conan #14 from 1976 and breathes new life into every blood-soaked panel. Forty-eight pages of the definitive Zamboula story, now blazing with contemporary color while preserving that oversized, premium format that made the original magazine a thing of savage beauty.

If you’ve never read the original, this is Howard at his most depraved and inventive. If you have, well, you’ve never seen it like this.

Savage Sword Omnibus Vol. 11 – February 24, 2026

Here’s a number for you: forty years. 

That’s how long the Skull of Set graphic novel – Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy’s masterwork – has been out of print and unreprinted. Until now.

This 856-page beast collects Savage Sword #146-158 alongside that long-lost graphic novel, covering the era when Chuck Dixon was forging his name on Conan’s blade and Larry Hama was steering the editorial ship. “Blood Circus,” “Slaves of the Circle,” and “Bane of the Dark Brotherhood”  are the pinnacle of the late-80s stories that kept the barbarian’s legend burning while the rest of comics chased spandex.

What you’re getting for this is a piece of history that collectors have been hunting longer than Conan’s been hunting sorcerers.

Frazetta’s Conan, Forged in Plastic

Every barbarian who’s flexed on a book cover since owes a debt to the paintings of Frank Frazetta. 

Now, ICON Collectibles has translated that specific Frazetta vision into a 5.5-inch retro action figure that looks like it crawled out of a 1983 toy aisle and a Frazetta canvas at the same time.

Eight points of articulation, signature weapons, removable armor, and a cardback that slides out for display. 

The first wave ships in May and includes the Death Dealer and John Carter alongside Conan. 

If you grew up with barbarian toys on your shelf, this is the one that was always missing.

Conan the Babarian: The Archive Issues – Out Now

Roy Thomas’s 1970s run on Conan the Barbarian is where Howard’s prose became four-color legend, where Barry Windsor-Smith and John Buscema turned the Hyborian Age into something you could see and feel on every page.

Now the first 117 issues of that run are available digitally on Kindle and Comixology. That’s the full Thomas era from the barbarian’s first Marvel appearance through over a decade of stories that defined sword-and-sorcery comics for a generation. No hunting through longboxes, no paying collector prices, no excuses.

Whether you’re reading Reforged and want to see the originals, diving into the Omnibus and want context, or you’ve just never experienced the run that started it all, the vault is open.

From a king’s first battle to a forty-year-old treasure finally unearthed, February has enough Hyborian steel to arm a small rebellion. Draw your blade and choose your adventure.

Go ahead: try it. 

They’ll draw Arnold Schwarzenegger. The oak-tree torso. The bowl-cut bangs. That heavy Austrian growl shaping the word “Crom.” 

For over forty years, the 1982 film has colonized our collective imagination so completely that most people don’t realize they’re picturing an interpretation. They think they’re picturing the character.

They’re picturing something else: a Conan that cinema created, not the one Howard wrote. The figure who stalked through the pages of Weird Tales in the 1930s moved differently: faster, leaner, stranger. Arnold gave us a myth. Howard wrote a panther.

And in 2011, an actor showed up who looked like the one on the page.

Jason Momoa was the most physically accurate Conan ever committed to film. Almost no one noticed. The production faced challenges that kept audiences from seeing what he was actually doing: tonal inconsistencies, editing choices that obscured his stunt work, a script that pushed him toward generic heroism rather than Howard’s drifter. The film didn’t land the way most had hoped, and Momoa’s performance got lost in the conversation.

But in order for us to properly appraise the question of “Was Jason Momoa good in Conan the Barbarian?” we have to go back to the source. Back to Howard’s original words, and the very specific man he put on the page.

How Did Robert E. Howard Actually Describe Conan?

Howard wrote with a pulp writer’s economy, but when it came to Conan’s physicality, he returned to the same vocabulary again and again. The words are precise. They’re animalistic. And they paint a picture that doesn’t match the one most people carry in their heads.

“Pantherish.” “Tiger-like.” “Cat-footed.” “Supple as a great cat.” Conan moved on “steel springs,” exploding into violence with a speed that caught trained killers off guard. This is movement language. In these ways, Howard describes the coiled readiness of something that survives by being faster than what it kills.

The muscle follows suit. Howard called it “corded”, meaning functional, dense, earned through climbing fortress walls and swimming storm-churned seas and fighting for his life across a dozen hostile kingdoms. This wasn’t the hypertrophic bulk of a man who trains for aesthetic competition. Conan’s body was a tool honed by necessity. He looked like what he was: a wanderer who’d spent years doing hard, violent things to stay alive.

Then there’s the face. “Square-cut black mane.” “Volcanic blue eyes” which are sometimes “smoldering,” often “sullen.” Howard gave Conan features that read as racially ambiguous, exotic, vaguely menacing. The Cimmerians were descendants of Atlantis in Howard’s mythology, a lineage that predated and stood apart from the proto-European peoples surrounding them. 

Nothing about the description suggests Germanic ancestry. Certainly, nothing even suggests blonde.

Then, there is the mind. 

“Gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth,” Howard wrote. Brainless berserker Conan was not.  He was a polyglot who picked up languages the way other men pick up scars. He commanded armies and understood tactics. He debated the nature of gods with dying sorcerers, philosophized about the futility of civilization, quoted foreign poetry when it suited him. The man thought. He observed. He carried a bone-deep melancholy about the impermanence of all things, punctuated by roaring bursts of joy when wine and victory aligned.

And his motivations? Pure self-interest. Conan drifted. He stole, he fought, he bedded, he moved on. No great destiny pulled him forward. No murdered family demanded vengeance. He was a thief who became a mercenary who became a pirate who, eventually, became a king–all because he was too stubborn and capable to die along the way.

That’s the benchmark. That’s the man against whom every adaptation must be measured. 

So let us do that. 

Was Momoa or Schwarzenegger Better as Conan?

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan is iconic for reasons that have nothing to do with Robert E. Howard. That is anything but in an insult, and instead is a distinction worth making clearly before we go any further.

The man had presence. He occupied the frame like a monument occupies a plaza. When Arnold stood still, you believed nothing could move him. When he moved, you believed nothing could stop him. That kind of screen power doesn’t come from unyielding adherence to source material. 

But iconic and accurate aren’t the same thing. We’re not measuring cultural impact here. We’re measuring against Howard’s text. And when you run that comparison honestly, dimension by dimension, a different picture emerges.

Physique

Arnold in 1982 was a competitive bodybuilder at the peak of his aesthetic development. Magnificent to look at. 

A bit wrong for the character, though. 

Howard’s Conan carried, as mentioned previously, “corded muscle” on a frame that was “massive” but maintained a “lean waist.” A hunter’s body. A climber’s body. 

Momoa, standing 6’4″ with functional athletic mass, looked like a man who had survived things. He had the physique of a predator who eats what he catches. 

He had the physique of the legendary Cimmerian. 

Movement

Watch Arnold fight. 

He’s glacial. Deliberate. His sword swings are broad, chopping motions that rely on overwhelming force delivered from a planted stance. Enemies come to him; he doesn’t chase them down. 

It’s effective cinema, but it’s not the Conan who moved struck faster than trained killers could track. 

Momoa, on the other hand, performed his own stunts, dual-wielding, spinning, footwork that actually covers ground. Isolate the fight choreography from the film’s chaotic editing and you’ll see the “pantherish” speed Howard described. 

The explosive violence of a man who learned to fight by fighting, not by lifting. The nature of Conan. 

The Look 

Arnold had the eyes for sure: natural blue, striking on camera. He wins that one outright. 

But everything else? 

The brown hair styled into bangs, the fair coloring, the clean-cut Hollywood look? That’s not what Howard described.

Howard placed the Cimmerians outside the ethnic map of his fictional world, as descendants of Atlantis, a lineage older than and apart from the proto-European peoples surrounding them. Conan was meant to look like he came from somewhere else. The “square-cut black mane,” the “volcanic blue eyes,” the “smoldering” intensity as descriptors don’t add up to any familiar category. Howard wanted his barbarian to feel foreign even in a world of foreigners. Momoa’s long dark hair, his complexion, his features that resist easy classification – these land closer to that deliberate otherness.

So Arnold wins eye color, but Momoa wins everything else.

Temperament

The 1982 film gave us a Conan who barely speaks. 

Some of that was strategic as Milius needed to work around Arnold’s thick accent, but it calcified into interpretation. The stoic avenger. The warrior who communicates through action and silence. 

It’s powerful, but it’s not Howard. 

The literary Conan talked constantly. He could not shut up. 

He argued. He laughed. He brooded. The man contained multitudes, and none of them were quiet. 

Momoa brought the smirk, the arrogance, the crackling hedonism of a man who takes what he wants and enjoys the taking. His scenes as the pirate “Amra” capture a side of Conan that no other film has even attempted.

So far, Momoa walks and talks and kills more like the Conan Howard dreamt of. 

Origin Story 

The Wheel of Pain is one of cinema’s great training montages. It’s also completely invented.

Howard’s Conan was born on a battlefield to a blacksmith, this is not up for debate. Conan was a free Cimmerian who wandered south by choice, not a slave forged into a weapon by trauma. 

The 2011 film gets this right. 

Momoa’s Conan enters the world mid-battle, cut from his dying mother’s womb, and grows up free. No chains. No destiny. No one else other than Conan. 

Stack it up and the pattern is clear. Momoa takes the majority of points for portraying the Cimmerian as Howard wrote him. 

Where Arnold does undeniably win, though, is on something harder to quantify: vibe. The mythic weight. The sense that you’re watching not a man but a legend in the shape of a man. That’s real, and it’s why the 1982 film endures.

But it’s not Howard’s Conan. 

It’s Milius’s. It’s Arnold’s. It became its own thing, and that thing is genuinely great.

 What Momoa was doing was different. He was reaching for the source and he got closer than anyone before or since.

So why didn’t anyone notice? Why did this textually accurate portrayal get buried under a decade of dismissal and mockery?

Because the film around him was collapsing. 

And nobody knows that better than Momoa himself.

The Production Set Up the Sword and Everyone Was Pushed Onto It

The 2011 film didn’t connect. Critics were harsh, audiences stayed home, and within a few years the reboot had become shorthand for a missed opportunity. But buried in that disappointment was something worth examining: a performance that was actually working, trapped inside a production that didn’t.

Understanding what went wrong explains why Momoa’s textual accuracy never registered with general audiences. Every production challenge functioned as camouflage, obscuring the very things he was doing right.

Still, the 2011 film has its defenders and they’re not wrong to defend it.

Scroll through any Conan fan group and you’ll find the thread that surfaces every few weeks: someone pointing out that Momoa’s version is actually closer to Howard. The pulp pacing. The pirate scenes. The fact that Conan feels like a wanderer stumbling into trouble rather than a chosen one fulfilling prophecy. These fans recognized something real. They saw the panther.

So why didn’t that recognition break through to wider audiences?

Part of it is genre translation. Howard wrote short, sharp stories where Conan drifts into danger, survives by instinct, and moves on. The 2011 script tried to reshape that structure into blockbuster architecture: a central MacGuffin, escalating stakes, a “save the world” climax. That’s not a failure of intent so much as a tension between source material and studio expectations. 

Part of it was visual language. The editing style was standard for action films in 2011.But that visual vernacular doesn’t serve a performer doing his own stunt work. Momoa’s choreography was fast, precise, predatory. The editing made it hard to track. Audiences felt the energy without seeing the craft.

Part of it was the tonal calibration. Different elements of the production seemed to be aiming at different targets. Momoa played it grounded; other performances leaned theatrical. The framing narration provided by Morgan Freeman signaled prestige drama where pulp weirdness might have served better. The pieces just couldn’t cohere into a unified register.

None of this erases what did work, though. The fans who love the film got to see a Conan that moves like the text, fights like the text, carries himself like the text. What they’re also seeing past is the noise that kept general audiences from recognizing the same thing.

Where the Legendary Barbarian Lives Uncompromised 

If you saw the panther inside the 2011 film, if you clocked Momoa’s movement and thought that’s closer, then you already know what you want. You want the details that films like Momoa’s Conan the Barbarian keep failing to deliver.

The page delivers them. No budget constraints. No studio interference. No editor shaking the camera or cutting for runtime. On the page, Conan gets to be everything Howard wrote: fast and strange and full of black moods, a philosopher-thief who wanders through eldritch nightmares and comes out bloody on the other side.

And here’s what matters: that Conan is still being written.

The Heroic Legends series is publishing new Conan fiction right now, stories that honor the source, that remember the panther, that don’t sand down the weird horror or silence the giant’s mirth. This is the Conan that Momoa was reaching for.

Stop mourning the adaptation. The Cimmerian was always on the page and, besides: Crom cares not for box office returns.

He cares for the blade that moves true. Find it in the words.

By Crom, the pits of winter is the time for drawing steel!

As the snow settles, the Cimmerian is already at war with mad kings, ancient serpents, and the boundaries of reality itself.

Here is the tactical briefing on the four essential acquisitions you need to secure this month to keep your collection formidable.

The Fugitive General: Conan the Barbarian #28 – January 28

The “Conquering Crown” arc hits a fever pitch on January 28 as the Cimmerian shifts from celebrated commander to hunted revolutionary.

After refusing King Numedides’ bloodthirsty war orders in the previous issue, Conan and Prospero are now running for their lives through a capital city on the brink of a riot.

You need to see how the Barbarian survives being public enemy number one when the very army he trained is ordered to bring him down.

The Timeless Finale: Scourge of the Serpent #4 – January 7

The coils finally tighten around three distinct timelines when this explosive finale drops on January 7.

This issue demands your attention as King Kull, a young thief-era Conan, and John Kirowan face the convergence of the Serpent God’s ritual across millennia.

Witness the satisfying conclusion where actions in ancient Valusia and the 1930s determine if the Barbarian breaks the cycle or finally falls to Set.

A New Monolith: The Conan TTRPG!

If reading about the Cimmerian isn’t enough, it is time you picked up the dice and carved your own path through the Hyborian Age.

The “Adventurer Pledge” edition of Conan: The Hyborian Age gives you everything you need to start playing immediately: the core rulebook, character and encounter pads, custom dice, and two volumes of tales.

With a system built for visceral combat and minimal prep, you will spend less time reading rules and more time spilling blood in the name of Crom.

The Stygian Nightmare: Conan TPB Vol. 6 – January 7

While you can pick up the standard edition of “A Nest of Serpents” anywhere, true connoisseurs know that rarity is the ultimate prize.

Heroic Signatures is offering a strictly limited run of just 300 copies featuring a haunting exclusive cover by Jason Shawn Alexander, paired with a matching fine art print you can’t get elsewhere.

Secure a piece of history that will vanish from the market faster than a thief in the Maul!

The year belongs to the bold. Don’t let these chronicles slip through your fingers while you hesitate. Claim your copies now.

As the cold settles in, Titan Comics delivers a concentrated blast of Hyborian fury to close out 2025. December is a month dedicated to the weight of crowns and the revitalization of legends. 

We have massive chronicles for the historian, stunning updates to classic tales, and a crucial turning point in the modern ongoing saga.

Here are four essential ways to endure the long dark of December with Conan the Cimmerian.

King Conan: Original Comics Omnibus Vol. 2 – December 16

Just two weeks later, fill the critical gap in your royal history. 

Arriving mid-month, this volume continues the definitive collection of Conan’s ascent and early rule.

Featuring iconic work from industry legends like Doug Moench and the incomparable John Buscema, this collection showcases the Cimmerian navigating the treacherous, civilized world of court intrigue (usually by shattering it with a broadsword). 

A perfect holiday acquisition for the completist looking to see how a mercenary truly becomes a king.

The Savage Sword of Conan: Reforged #2 – December 17

Experience a true masterpiece as you have never seen it before. 

The “Reforged” initiative thunders onward, taking the gritty, legendary black-and-white magazine tales of the past and breathing new life into them with vibrant, modern color.

Issue #2 presents the iconic saga, “The Devil in Iron.” Witness the combined genius of Roy Thomas, John Buscema, and Alfredo Alcala rendered in stunning new detail as Conan faces a resurrected demon-lord on the mysterious island of Xapur. 

This is Hyborian Age history rendered with fresh, visceral intensity.

Conan the Barbarian #27 – December 17

The modern masterpiece continues with a pivotal, history-making chapter.

We are deep into “The Conquering Crown” arc, chronicling the precise, blood-soaked events that force a wandering sellsword to eventually seize the throne of Aquilonia. 

The madness of the current King Numedides is now a rot threatening the entire realm. Conan, now a successful General, has painted a target on his own back with his battlefield victories.

This is the turning point where the mercenary realizes he may have to become a usurper to save the kingdom. Don’t miss the issue where destiny begins to take hold.

December offers a focused, powerful lineup dedicated to the glory of classic battles reborn and the inevitable rise of a king. End your year with steel in hand. By Crom, you won’t regret it.

Ask a scholar, and you’ll get something else entirely: a brutal meditation on the nature of strength itself, wrapped in blood and delivered at sword-point. The film poses a deceptively simple question – what is the source of true power? – then spends two hours systematically destroying every comfortable answer.

The Riddle of Steel is the philosophical spine of a film that dares to ask what other fantasy won’t touch. While Tolkien’s heroes resist evil and Lewis’s children discover faith, Conan confronts something more primal: the raw mechanics of power before morality even enters the equation. 

This is the deep dive into how one film smuggled hardcore existential philosophy into multiplexes, using broken steel and the Wheel of Pain to ask a question that modern fantasy still struggles to confront: When everything you trust fails, what makes you strong enough to continue?

(NOTE: This exploration draws from the following brilliant analyses across decades: David C. Smith’s Nietzschean readings at The Barbarian Keep; Francisco Miguel Ortiz Delgado’s examination of the Übermensch in Journal Etica y Cine; John Garlick’s psychoanalytic dissection at Mythic Scribes; The Cimmerian Blog’s Marc Cerasini; a number of discussions at AddFaith Forums and Filosofkongene.no; and a variety of academic perspectives on the concept of the “new barbarian” from ResearchGate.)

A Boy Watches His Philosophy Die

A father holds his son close in firelight, pressing a freshly forged sword between them. “No man, woman or beast of this world ought to be trusted,” he warns, his weathered hands guiding small fingers along the blade’s edge. Here – this steel – “the only reliable friend that you have.” Minutes later, that same sword shatters in Thulsa Doom’s grip. The father dies clutching philosophy turned to fragments. His killer claims the broken hilt as trophy while a boy watches everything he was taught to trust fail catastrophically.

This opening sequence of John Milius’s 1982 Conan the Barbarian births what the film calls the Riddle of Steel. Where other fantasy heroes inherit Excalibur or Sting, ancient blades humming with destiny, Conan inherits shrapnel and doubt. The question that will drive every frame forward isn’t spoken; it’s carved into a child’s psyche through loss. If steel breaks, if fathers die mid-promise, if trust itself proves lethal, then what actually makes someone strong?

Critics dismiss the film as “cheesy or nerdy, or an “overly macho” relic of the Reagan era. They see Austrian muscles and hear thunderous scores, then look away. Yet Milius and co-writer Oliver Stone crafted something far more unsettling: a thought-provoking mix of violence and philosophy that dares to ask questions most fantasy deliberately avoids. 

Most fantasy begins with moral certainty, as the hero knows good from evil, even if they struggle to choose correctly. Frodo understands the Ring is corrupt. Harry knows Voldemort must be stopped. Their challenges lie in execution, not existential questioning. But Conan? He begins with nothing except proof that his father’s truth was a lie. The strong take from the weak. Steel bends to flesh. Trust kills those who offer it.

In a single act of barbarism, Thulsa Doom demonstrates a competing philosophy through destruction. Power flows not from honest metal but from something else entirely, something the boy chained to slavery must discover or die trying to understand.

The Wheel Grinds Out An Answer

Years pass in circular agony. The Wheel of Pain claims children by dozens, grinding bones and spirits into dust across nameless seasons. Yet one grows stronger. Milius crafts “a masterclass in visual storytelling” here: no dialogue, no exposition, just flesh hardening against wood and time. 

The sequence deliberately evokes the Greek myth of Sisyphus. Milius intended this “allegory” for humanity’s “universal human struggle” and “fruitless toil of life.” Children push, they circle, they die. Most collapse within months. Some last years before breaking. One survives decade after decade until survival itself transforms into something unprecedented. This “brutal apprenticeship…toughens and ‘re-creates’ Conan’s very being. His identity becomes “forged on this wheel just as surely as the steel of his father’s sword was forged in fire.”

What separates the survivor from the dead? Not superior morality. Not divine favor. Not even conscious choice. The Wheel selects through pure mechanical cruelty, and those who emerge carry its circular logic in their souls: suffering creates strength, weakness invites death, and meaning exists only in the refusal to stop.

Freed from the Wheel, made gladiator, then thief, Conan eventually faces his maker. Thulsa Doom lounges among drugged followers, having traded battlefield violence for something more insidious. “Steel isn’t strong, boy,” he purrs, gesturing toward a young woman on his temple’s edge. Without words, using only his serpent eyes, Doom compels her forward. She steps into air, plummeting to stone below. “Flesh is stronger!” He spreads his arms wide, the prophet validating his gospel through murder. “That is strength, boy! That is power!”

The demonstration positions Doo as Conan’s true creator: “Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart, I gave you this!”. By killing the father, by forcing the son onto the Wheel, Doom claims authorship over what emerged. His philosophy transcends material strength entirely, as true power means “the power to command,” the ability to “brainwash” others into willing self-destruction. 

Why break bodies when you can possess minds?

Conan now carries two philosophies like twin scars: a trust in steel, and a command of flesh. 

Which inheritance will he claim? The broken sword or the serpent’s whisper?

Then comes the Tree of Woe, where individual will meets its limit. Crucified, dying, Conan discovers that pure “willpower, almost got him killed.” The Wheel-forged strength that seemed absolute proves insufficient against dehydration, exposure, gravity itself. Salvation arrives through “love and friendship”, as Subotai and Valeria fight demons to drag him back from death’s edge.

The rescue complicates everything the film has built. If strength comes from solitary suffering, why does connection save him? If power means commanding others, why do these companions act freely, demanding nothing in return? The man who trusted only himself, who survived through isolated endurance, owes his life to bonds he never sought.

Healed but haunted, Conan approaches his final confrontation bearing the weight of three philosophies now: dead father’s matter, living enemy’s mind, and something unnamed that pulled him from the tree through neither steel nor flesh but through grace he didn’t earn and can’t command.

The Decapitation of Thulsa Doom as Philosophy

Temple steps, torchlight, and ten thousand followers waiting for their prophet to speak. Conan stands before Thulsa Doom holding his father’s broken sword. Doom’s eyes catch the fractured blade. Recognition flickers across ancient features before transforming into something worse than mockery: paternal pride.

“My child. You have come to me, my son. For who now is your father if it is not me?”

The question hangs between them like incense smoke. Doom doesn’t attack. He opens his arms, the same gesture that sent his follower plummeting to her death. Every word calculated to complete his final transformation from destroyer to creator, from enemy to father.

The film shows Conan “visibly contemplating” these words, and that hesitation contains multitudes. Two philosophies war across his features. Accept Doom’s claim and become the perfected weapon of another’s will–the flesh made strong through submission. 

Or raise the broken steel his birth father trusted and prove… what exactly? 

That failed philosophy can still cut?

Neither option satisfies. 

Both answers died already: one in the snow of his childhood, one on the Tree of Woe. Yet Conan lifts the broken blade.

The decapitation takes three seconds. The implications resonate forever. By killing Doom with the shattered sword, Conan refutes his father’s thesis even while using it. Steel wasn’t strong. But broken steel still serves when wielded by sufficient will. The blade becomes mere “expression of the will directed towards a certain end,” nothing more than focused intention given metallic form.

Simultaneously, by killing the “flesh” that claimed superiority over steel, Conan destroys Doom’s antithesis. The prophet who commanded thousands through mind-control dies from primitive violence he claimed to transcend. His philosophy of mental domination proves helpless against someone who won’t be dominated. Doom’s flesh, for all its vaunted strength, parts before jagged metal guided by autonomous choice.

Victory belongs neither to steel nor flesh but to the “hand that wields.” This represents “a unity of all three” philosophies Conan wrestled with throughout the film. The synthesis Conan “contemplated on the tree of woe” emerges not through words but through action. In this decapitation, Conan performs the answer to the Riddle.

This creates what the film calls “Will to Power”. The Wheel taught endurance. The Tree revealed connection. The broken sword proved tools matter less than the force directing them. Combined, these lessons birth something unprecedented: a will that exists for itself, by itself, answerable to nothing beyond its own terrible freedom.

Blood spreads across temple stones. Doom’s head rolls past kneeling followers who came seeking submission and find themselves suddenly, horrifyingly free. Their prophet is dead. Their certainty shattered. The man standing above them offers no replacement scripture, no new father to follow. He burns their temple and walks away, leaving them to confront the same riddle he faced as a child watching everything trusted fail.

The Riddle Remains Unanswered

Years later, grey-bearded and crowned, Conan sits alone on a throne. 

The film’s final image refuses triumph. No queen beside him, no celebrating court, no peace in those eyes that learned too young what breaking means. The Wheel “unchained” him from common weakness but left him lonely, as sovereignty’s price is paid in isolation. This is what becoming the answer looks like: you rule, you endure, you sit apart from those who never faced your questions.

In his conception of this character, Robert E. Howard understood something his literary descendants seem to have forgotten: strength emerges from the unyielding brutality of life.

Modern fantasy wraps its heroes in destiny’s cotton, ensuring they’re strong because they’re good, victorious because they’re right. Every farm boy discovers royal blood. Every prophecy promises triumph to the pure of heart. We’ve grown comfortable with strength as reward for virtue, power as proof of righteousness. 

But what happens when fantasy drops its moral safety net entirely? When the only question is not “What’s right?” but “What works?” When strength comes not from being chosen but from choosing to continue when continuation seems impossible?

This Riddle of Steel was never meant to be solved. It’s meant to be lived, suffered, embodied. Each answer contains its own failure. The father’s sword breaks. Doom’s flesh bleeds. Conan’s will leaves him alone on cold metal.

Yet still the question persists, passed from the dying to those still deciding what they’ll trust when trust itself seems foolish.

Look at yourself.

The Riddle asks you: Would you survive breaking? And if everything you trusted shattered tomorrow, what would you forge from the fragments?

“The Conquering Crown” promises three issues of some of the most pivotal storytelling in the character’s legendary history. 

We sat down with editor Chris Butera to discuss why Issues #26-28 represent not just another adventure, but THE moment fans have been waiting decades to see properly told.

The Mercenary Who Doesn’t Want the Crown Takes It Anyway

“Conan cares nothing for these royal rumors and petty politics.”

That single line from the solicitation copy might be the most delicious irony in sword-and-sorcery history, and Heroic Signatures knew they had to do something with it. 

Series editor Chris Butera knows readers have been burning with curiosity since issue #25’s anniversary special revealed King Conan in all his regal glory. “Heroic hadn’t done a King Conan story in the monthly comic,” he explains. “Coming off the back of our first official one with #25, the question of ‘how did we get here with Conan on the throne’ kept coming up.” But rather than stretch this tale across a year of issues, Butera and writer Jim Zub chose radical compression, keeping his legendary ascendance locked to 3 issues. 

This economy of storytelling mirrors Howard’s own approach: drop readers into the action, trust their intelligence, deliver maximum impact. After twenty-five issues building mythology and momentum, everything strips down to its brutal essence. The result? A perfect entry point requiring zero homework for newcomers drawn by Bisley and De La Torre’s variant covers, while simultaneously delivering the story devoted fans have craved since page one.

Conan’s mercenary company – the Westermarck Wolves – ride to war thinking they’re fighting for Aquilonian gold. 

Their captain’s about to accidentally conquer civilization itself simply by refusing to concede before madness. But King Numedides of Aquilonia isn’t mad. 

He’s something far worse.

Mad King Numedides vs. The Mercenary

King Numedides is much more than another despot glutting himself on Aquilonia’s wealth. 

“Numedides believes he’s in contact with ‘The Woeful Eye,’ that it speaks to him, and that he’s receiving power and visions of the future from it,” Chris Butera reveals. Corruption on a cosmic scale makes this king both dangerously unpredictable and potentially empowered by eldritch sorcery. Against such madness, only someone completely outside the system could prevail.

That outsider rides with the Westermarck Wolves when Zingara’s invasion draws them into Aquilonia’s service. This Conan bears little resemblance to the bare-chested reaver of youth, for armor has replaced loincloth and tactical acumen has tempered rage. “He’s definitely wiser,” Butera notes. “The mind of a tactician/general is at the fore now, and he’s seen enough of the world to know when to speak up, and when to let other men talk themselves into an early grave.”

Yet wisdom doesn’t mean playing along with courtly games. When surrounded by sycophants and power-brokers, every scene crackles with tension: will the barbarian maintain composure, or will steel answer silk-tongued insults? Butera and writer Jim Zub understand that political intrigue only becomes thrilling when filtered through someone like Conan’s perspective: “It’s all about the tension in the scene… the audience knowing how things can go horribly wrong if Conan turns to his typical barbarous ways.”

The genius lies in how Conan navigates nobility. He “doesn’t so much as outmaneuver the nobles but blows past the song and dance of diplomacy when Numedides declares war,” as Butera explains. Where others calculate advantage, Conan simply states truth. Where courtiers cower, he stands unbowed. That honesty transforms from liability to revolutionary catalyst across three explosive issues. 

Issues that begin with a simple military victory…

Three Issues to Forge a King

Issue #26 erupts with Aquilonia bleeding. 

While Numedides descends deeper into madness, Zingara strikes at Poitain’s borders, vultures sensing weakness. The Westermarck Wolves answer the call.

Victory comes swiftly under Conan’s command, earning him the title “Hero of Poitain.” But heroes make useful tools for mad kings. Numedides sees opportunity: a barbarian-general to wield like a blade. That calculating gaze from the throne room becomes the first link in a chain of events neither man can stop.

Issue #27 brings Conan to Tarantia. The Mad King parades his new “bauble” before the court, whispering of the “Woeful Eye now awake” with such conviction that Conan recognizes both insanity and something darker. What happens when an unstoppable force meets unmovable madness? Butera promises “tension” that will leave readers breathless, as choices made in the throne room echo across an empire.

Issue #28 delivers the crown, but “of course… we know how this ends,” Butera teases. Howard told us decades ago. Yet those final panels promise a mystifying revelation about this legendary ascension. 

The crown changes hands, but at what cost?

“It’s an entire war campaign done in 3 issues!” Butera emphasized earlier, and that economy serves the story perfectly. No padding, no wheel-spinning: just destiny arriving with the weight of a broadsword. 

The fragments Howard scattered across four different stories finally coalesce into one definitive narrative.

Why This Arc Matters to Conan Fans

Howard scattered breadcrumbs across four stories: “Phoenix on the Sword,” “Scarlet Citadel,” “Hour of the Dragon,” and the “Wolves Beyond the Border” fragment. Each contained glimpses of Conan’s ascension, but never the full feast. Jim Zub gathered these fragments with scholarly dedication, drawing inspiration from various Hyborian Age scholars, including Dale Rippke’s extensive research, to ensure every detail rings true. “I made sure everything in there connects to ‘The Conquering Crown,'” he confirms, “even if events don’t play out in as straightforward a fashion as readers might expect.”

That unexpected approach serves Howard’s deepest theme: the barbarian outsider as civilization’s only honest savior. Aquilonia suffers through high taxes, war, and strife under Numedides until this foreign mercenary speaks truth where nobles whisper lies. The Cimmerian becomes their unlikely catalyst for revolution precisely because he doesn’t want the crown. Howard always knew that barbarism’s vitality could refresh civilization’s decay, and here that philosophy transforms from subtext to revolutionary action.

Fernando Dagnino captures this transformation across every panel. His battlefield compositions haunt Butera months later, particularly page 19 of issue #26, where “corpses and detritus from the battlefield” become architectural elements of the panelwork itself. Yet the artistic triumph extends beyond violence; watch how Dagnino evolves Conan visually from armored sellsword to reluctant monarch, tracking internal change through external details.

Zub layers the narrative with rewards for every reader level. Veterans will spot Baron Brocas of Conawaga, that obscure Westermarck frontier province from “The Black Stranger,” alongside dozens of similar deep cuts. Ancient evils resurface through careful symbolism, connecting to storylines that span the entire series. Meanwhile, newcomers experience a complete, satisfying epic that requires zero prior knowledge. 

Both audiences, regardless, witness history.

“Conan taking the crown fundamentally changes himself and the Hyborian Age as a whole,” Butera promises, yet stagnation isn’t a concern. Like Howard himself, Zub treats Conan’s life as a vast canvas–young thief, wandering mercenary, weary king–each era informing the others. Rather than end Conan’s wandering, this arc enriches every adventure that follows.

That’s why we think you’ll agree: the next edition can’t arrive soon enough.

This month, enjoy six ways to dive into the savage world of Conan the Barbarian, from classic Marvel reprints to the escalating modern crisis threatening three timelines at once.

Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 3 TPB  –  November 4

The current Titan Comics run reaches its third collected volume, gathering issues #7-9 into one blood-soaked package. 

Roy Thomas, Dennis Culver, Liam Sharp, and Fred Kennedy have been weaving their tales while Roberto De La Torre brings the visceral action to life with his distinctive artwork. 

This trade paperback drops first, giving you the perfect entry point before the month’s other releases hit.

Savage Sword of Conan #11  –  November 5

Fresh off the anthology special that set up the Scourge of the Serpent event, issue #11 marks Liam Sharp’s return to both writing and illustrating. 

Sharp’s distinctive style promises something spellbinding, as his previous work shows he understands the balance between brutal action and otherworldly horror that defines some of the best Conan stories. 

Plus, enjoy Ron Marz’s and Danny Earls’ introduction of another classic Howard hero in a backup backup story: Cormac Mac Art.

Conan the Barbarian #26  –  November 12

After the anniversary celebration in issue #25 sent King Conan’s soul through a greatest-hits tour of his legendary life, issue #26 shifts gears completely. 

“The Conquering Crown” arc begins here, pulling us back to Conan’s mercenary days. The mad king of Aquilonia might seem like distant royal drama to a wandering sellsword, but fate has other plans. 

This jumping-on point sets the stage for events that will reshape Conan’s destiny – though he doesn’t know it yet.

Conan the Barbarian Omnibus Vol. 7  –  November 25

Just in time for Thanksgiving week, this omnibus delivers issues #172-194 plus Annuals #10-11 from the original 1970 run. 

Inviting you to revel in the beginning of Christopher J. Priest’s game-changing run (writing as Jim Owsley), this omnibus serves as the introduction of the Devourer of Souls, a villain who redefined what cosmic horror meant in Conan’s world. 

Don Kraar’s writing paired with the artistic team of John Buscema, Alfredo Alcala, and Ernie Chan creates pure Hyborian Age magic.

Scourge of the Serpent #3  –  November 26

The month closes with the penultimate chapter of the timeline-spanning event. 

Kull battles infiltrators in ancient Valusia. Conan faces frame-ups and betrayal in Numalia. John Kirowan watches 1934 unravel as the Ring of Set reveals its true horror. 

Three eras, one ancient evil, and Set’s grand design for humanity finally coming into focus.

After two issues of buildup, this third chapter promises Conan facing the true, unspeakable power of Set himself – something even the Cimmerian has never encountered before.

November gives you everything: jumping-on points for new readers, deep cuts for collectors, and the escalating tension of a crisis that spans from the Thurian Age to the modern world. 

Whether you’re grabbing the trades for a complete story experience or following the monthly releases as they drop, you’re in for a month where ancient evil meets eternal defiance.

By Crom, your pull list has never looked this good.

Has it really been two years?

With the release of Conan the Barbarian #25, it’s time to raise our ale horns and reflect on what has been nothing short of a renaissance for Robert E. Howard’s most iconic creation. 

Since Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures joined forces in August 2023, we’ve witnessed restoration of the Cimmerian to his rightful place atop the sword-and-sorcery throne.

The Numbers, By Crom! 

It seems inappropriate to not start with the elephant – or mammoth – in the room. 

The first issue of Conan’s revival exceeded all expectations. 

With over 80,000 copies flying off shelves initially and projections exceeding 100,000 after multiple printings, Conan the Barbarian #1 became the largest-selling single issue in Titan Comics’ entire history.

But here’s what those numbers represent more than a market correction: they were a mandate. After years of watching the legendary barbarian get absorbed into superhero team-ups and universe-spanning crossovers, fans voted with their wallets for a return to pure, undiluted sword-and-sorcery. 

The critics heard that cry too.

Throughout the revival, it was not uncommon to see Conan comics earning 9.0+ ratings on Comic Book Roundup. The revival has been universally hailed as “everything [critics] could have hoped for,” with reviewers declaring the series was in “the best possible hands.” When professional critics – often jaded by decades of reboots and relaunches – start using phrases like “could have come straight from the tomes of yesteryear,” you know something special is happening.

Year One: When Titans Walked the Earth

“The Age Unconquered,” the 12-issue opening saga, was a statement of intent wrapped in a love letter to Howard purists. By immediately hurling Conan back through time to the Thurian Age to fight alongside King Kull of Atlantis, Jim Zub and the creative team made it crystal clear: this wasn’t going to be Conan-lite. This was deep-cut, lore-heavy, serious storytelling set in the Hyborian Age. 

Think about the audacity of that opening move. Instead of playing it safe with a simple tavern brawl or caravan raid, Conan’s keepers went full cosmic, bringing together two of Howard’s greatest creations in a time-spanning epic. For those of us who’ve spent years explaining to people that Conan exists in a rich, interconnected mythology that spans millennia, this was vindication. Finally, a creative team that understood the scope of what they were working with.

And then there’s Thulsa Doom.

While the creative team went with Howard’s original skull-faced lich – the ur-necromancer who set the template for every undead sorcerer to follow –  they weren’t above throwing in some clever winks to James Earl Jones’ iconic serpent-cult leader from the ’82 film. Issue #12’s climactic duel between Conan and a cosmically-empowered Doom was itself a mission statement rendered in spectacular full-page spreads and eye-catching typefaces. The artistic homages to Marvel’s classic 1970s Kull the Destroyer series were the cherry on top, showing a creative team that honored the entire lineage of these characters.

The Battle of the Black Stone 

Between Years One and Two came something unprecedented in Conan’s 50+ year comics history: the character’s first-ever crossover event, the “Battle of the Black Stone”. 

The four-issue miniseries (spinning out of Free Comic Book Day 2024) finally resolving the Black Stone mystery that had loomed over the entire first year.

But the event did more than just tie up loose ends. It reached all the way back to issue #4, finally explaining what happened to Brissa, the Pictish scout who disappeared early in the run. Set as a prequel to Howard’s “Beyond the Black River,” with Conan now stationed at Fort Tuscelan, the story connected seemingly disjointed plot threads.

Most significantly, “Battle of the Black Stone” launched what’s being called the “Howardverse.” The Black Stone’s influence rippled across time, pulling together Solomon Kane (the Puritan adventurer), Dark Agnes (the 16th-century swordswoman), and John Kirowan (the 1930s detective) and Conan the Barbarian. For the first time in comics, Howard’s heroes united against a common threat, establishing a framework for future crossovers.

This acted as  proof of concept. After decades of Conan being treated as an isolated property, here was evidence that his world was rich enough, complex enough, to support the kind of line-wide, interconnected storytelling typically reserved for superhero universes. The event acted as both a capstone for Year One’s foundational mysteries and a launchpad for an expanded approach to Howard’s entire literary legacy.

Year Two: The Serpent Strikes

If the first year established the series’ Howard bonafides, Year Two proved the creative team could evolve the mythology while staying true to its core. The overarching “Serpent” storyline, building from whispers to a full-scale cosmic threat, showed a level of narrative sophistication that elevated the entire enterprise.

Zula’s return in issue #20, in particular, was masterfully handled. No longer just a sidekick, this shapeshifting mystic from the Black Kingdoms emerged as Conan’s peer. 

But the true game-changer came in issue #23 with the direct, face-to-face confrontation between Conan and Thoth-Amon. What made this meeting so special was that it was the definitive confrontation for a new generation. In Howard’s original tales, the two never meet. In most adaptations, Thoth-Amon lurks in the shadows as a distant threat. But Titan and Heroic SIgnatures delivered a meeting that feels both earned and essential. 

The various serpentine arcs –  from “Fangs and Foolish Thieves” with its cursed Stygian daggers to “A Nest of Serpents” featuring horrific Man-Serpent breeding pits – built to “Scourge of the Serpent”, the second major comic event for Conan. Most impressive is that these arcs helped cement a cohesive Conan universe that rewarded dedicated readers while remaining accessible to newcomers.

The Creatives Behind This Renaissance

What makes this run truly special isn’t just the individual moments but the foundational elements supporting them.

Jim Zub’s writing has been nothing short of revelatory. Fans consistently praise him with variations of “He just gets it” – and they’re right. Zub has effortlessly channeled Howard’s voice, delivering that perfect blend of brutal action, melancholic poetry, and prehistoric grandeur that defines the best Conan tales.

The artistic direction has been equally crucial. Roberto De La Torre’s deliberately Buscema-inspired work created instant visual continuity with the classic Marvel era, while artists like Doug Braithwaite and Fernando Dagnino have maintained that “primal and energetic” aesthetic throughout.

And let’s not forget The Savage Sword of Conan revival. Bringing back the black-and-white magazine format – complete with its mature content and newspaper feel – was a statement that Conan is big enough, important enough, to support multiple formats and approaches simultaneously.

The Road Ahead – All Hail King Conan!

All of this has been building to the imminent issue #25 that delivers something truly special. 

Alex Horley of World of Warcraft and Magic: The Gathering fame is delivering 30 pages of a fully painted Conan epic set during his time as King of Aquilonia and featuring a mysterious wanderer. This painted epic represents everything this Conan comic book run has accomplished: respect for the past, confidence in the present, and ambition for the future.

So, as we stand at this two-year mark, basking in the release of issue #25, it’s clear that Conan is right where he belongs: in Titan Comics’ and Heroic Signatures’ hands. 

Here’s to two years of blood and thunder, sorcery and steel! Here’s to Jim Zub and every artist who’s brought these tales to life! Here’s to Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures for having the vision and courage to do this right! And here’s to every reader for demanding nothing less than the best for the legendary barbarian!

By Crom, if the first two years have been this good, imagine what lies ahead. 

Now, let us drink to the dead and to the glorious battles ahead!