World Famous Comics: The Chronicles of Conan Vol. 5: The Shadow in the Tomb and Other Stories
The Chronicles of Conan Vol. 5: The Shadow in the Tomb and Other Stories
By: Roy Thomas Publisher: Dark Horse Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Dark Horse Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 160 Publication Date: October 06, 2004
Product Description: The return of Conan is at hand. By the mid 1970s, Robert E Howard's seminal Sword and Sorcery hero had cut a path through the comic-book world, restored to vivid life by prolific writer Roy Thomas and his host of talented artists.Of those artists, none contributed more to Conan's legacy than the legendary John Buscema. Taking the lush and detailed realism that had already been established in the comic-book series, Buscema pushed the look of Howard's creation in an entirely new direction, illustrating what would become the definitive version of Conan for an entire generation of readers.
Nostalgia The new color wasn't too distracting after the first few pages. Otherwise, it was a treat to be able to re-read the old stories my dad used to bring home for me comic by comic 30 years ago.
way cool It took me a while to get used to the new digital coloring. It's not bad, just different. As for the artwork....You cannot go wrong with John Buscema(whom I personally prefer over Barry Windsor Smith). Buscema's Conan will always be how I see Conan in my mind's eye. It's how I envision him when I read the original Robert E. Howard stories as well. The stories are always good when Roy Thomas is at the helm, so we're covered there. You should buy all these editions reissued from Dark Horse, they're superb and I bought them all.
Recolored for your disappointment I can't stand the computer recoloring of the entire Conan series by Dark Horse. While anything past volume 4 is dubious to be reprinted at best, the slick gloss paper piles the ink up on the page making the art just seem garish, destroying any reason I have to read past Barry Windsor-Smith's run.
Seek the now out of print Essential Conan.
Thomas and Buscema begin reinventing Conan the Barbarian With Dark Horse securing the rights to turn Robert E. Howard's seminal sword & sorcery hero into a comic book for a new generation of fans, they began reprinting Marvel's original comic books written by Roy Thomas and drawn (mostly) by Barry Windsor-Smith (and Gil Kane). Since my original comic books are all sitting in sealed plastic and backing boards it was great to have these available without touching those classics with my bare hands. I was also impressed with the computerized coloring they came up with, and when Windsor-Smith's run ended with the stories collection in "The Chronicles of Conan, Volume 4" so did my interest in the reprints. But now there is reason to reconsider.
"The Chronicles of Conan, Volume 5: The Shadow in the Tomb and Other Stories" reprints issues #27-34 of Marvel's "Conan the Barbarian" comic book. Thomas is still at the helm, as he would be for the book's entire run, and John Buscema has taken over the penciling duties, with Ernie Chua as the primary inker. With Thomas continuing to adapt Howard's original stories, such as "The Blood of Belshazzar," it was Buscema's vision of a more muscular Conan that became the standard image of the barbarian, especially when Arnold Schwarzenegger played the role in a couple of movies.
What we have here to begin with are a series of one-issue stories. "The Blood of Bel-Hissar" finds Conan making his way across the desert and getting caught up in an effort to get an infamous blood jewel. "Moon of Zembabwei" has Conan fighting an ape-god in the jungle, while "Two Against Turan" takes place in the capital city of Aghrapur where Conan becomes involved in the intrigues of an ambitious wizard named Ormraxes before being "persuaded" to join the Turanian army. But most of "The Hand of Negral" is Conan dealing with palace intrigue in Yaralet rather than fighting with the troops. "The Shadow in the Tomb" has Conan's detachment trapped by hill men and before facing their champion in a duel to decide their fate, Conan recalls fighting his shadow as a lad (giving Buscema a chance to draw Conan with the horned helmet and three medallions of his youth that Windsor-Smith finally made a point of getting rid of).
The cover design here comes from the splash page of "Flame Winds of Lost Khitai," which is actually adapted from a Norvell Page novel. This is good because it finally means a multi-part story. Conan is given a mission to sneak into Khitai and deal with the Wizards of Wan Tengri. "Death and 7 Wizards" contains a nice two-page spread where Buscema gets to take Conan down memory lane again in terms of the Windsor-Smith years, as our hero ends up in the arena fighting for his life again. The story concludes in "The Temptress in the Tower of Flame," where Conan ends up getting out of Khitai alive having once again learned a lesson about why you never trust wizards when it comes to anything.
This (free) adaptation is the best story in the book but it is nothing special. But we know that Thomas and Buscema do not really hit their stride until they get to their epic "Queen of the Black Coast" storyline where they stretch out Howard's original story and flesh it out in detail. At this point they are figuring things out and Thomas is apparently too tightly wedded to adapting everything Robert E. Howard ever wrote in his entire life.
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