Anyone else growing disenchanted with the Conan comic?

[Strom]

So far, I'm really happy with the comic, as a collector I'm just happy to see Conan back with sequential art! As a fan of the pastiches Iron Chef, I would think you would be more tolerant of new ideas within the Conan mythos. From the font to the art and writing and all the extra's in the back, I would suggest you give 4 & 5 a read, perhaps even finish out the Hyborea storyline and see where Kurt leads us next. But, I realize some comics just don't appeal to everyone.

Mitra and Crom! I like this comic! 8)

 

[Anonymous]

A lot of that comes from Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote Hyperborean tales (non-Hyborian Age, however. Only the name is the same). One of those CAS tales, The Seven Geases, mentions the Eiglophian Mountains, which is where de Camp and Carter lifted the name and added it to the Hyborian Age.

Thanks for the info, Vincent, maybe I'll check out some of the CAS tales when I'm done catching up on my REH reading. They were quite the literary circle, Lovecraft, REH, Lin Carter, CAS, eh?

As I think on it, I believe you guys have made a good choice in keeping the game firmly rooted in canon and then letting individual GMs modify it (for instance, my game will certainly have Lovecraftian elements, but maintaining the heroic fantasy aspects of it). It seems less contentious that way. Looking forward to Road of Kings.

Besides, I'm sure someone on here will stat out new-style Hyperboreans, right?

 

[crash_beedo]

Hmm... I guess I wasn't logged in.

 

[Qjedi]

The honorable Mijoro has statted these things up over here:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2555

Please drop by and thank him, to encourage him to do MORE work for us. :wink:

Later!

 

[Anonymous]

The real problem with the Conan comic isn't the increasingly blurry art or the uneven quality of the cover paintings.
It's that the storyline is so pedestrian.
Conan is captured by a decadent race of sorcerors who toss him into an arena and he leads the gladiators in a revolt after being helped out by a babe who likes his looks.
Sounds like the plot of every second 'Sword & Sorcery' story written since Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The tone is fine and there's a real enthusiasm radiating from the creative team.
But we really need plots with a bit more invention than this.

 

[terryallenuk]

I too am a little worried over what I see as a steadily decreasing quality in the art . I know from the first few issues that Cary can certainly turn out an excellent book and when it was announced the Tom would be joining the team on backgrounds I thought that would be the icing on the cake.

But for some reason things arn't meshing . Is Cary too stretched [ is he working on any other books ] ? Seems to me that Tom could be doing more than we thought and Dave is having to cover up the joins.

Certainly won't stop me buying the book but I hope things turn around artistically.

Terry

 

[Anonymous]

Deja Vu, didn't I just read that at the Conan Darkhorse boards?

 

[Iron_Chef]

As a fan of the pastiches Iron Chef, I would think you would be more tolerant of new ideas within the Conan mythos.

Not when it was advertised as being "true to REH" and then delivering just another pastiche. If they had come out and said it's just another pastiche, I'd be less disenchanted, but still, as far as it's pastiches go, it's become second rate --- Above Roland Green, and about on par with Steve Perry, but nowhere near as good as John Maddox Roberts, Robert Jordan, or John C. Hocking... certainly nowhere close to REH. It's become just more hackneyed, generic sword and sorcery. Nothing special whatsoever, from the art to the story. They've totally dropped the ball and I'm not buying another issue until they start giving me my money's worth... If I even bother to look at it again. I don't collect comics anymore, so this was the only comic book I was bothering to go to the comics shop for.

Whoever said the art is getting too sketchy/blurry is absolutely correct. It's inexcusably inconsistent in its quality compared to the first few issues.... and the covers... (ugh) don't get me started! Dark Horse should cut its publishing schedule to every other month or quarterly if they can't keep up the quality --- either that, or axe Busiek and Nord in favor of a team that can consistently deliver the goods every month. Rough patches this early in the game are signs of serious trouble to come... and the promise of issue 8 being a "fill-in" issue (art and story) sounds dreadful.

 

[terryallenuk]

As it was always going to be an on-going series adapting only Howard's stories but with Kurt filling in the gaps I think it was going to be seen as a pastiche by most readers .

I would like to see all Howard's stories re-adapted though but it'll take years if they plan to do them all in this book .

The fill-in is planned to ease the burden on Cary , a one-off young Conan story between each arc that will be eventually collected in it's own trade . I think it's a pretty good idea rather than disrupting the main storyline.

Terry

 

[slaughterj]

I think the comic is decent so far, but the story has been a bit slow, with the Hyperborean thing going for several issues...

 

[Iron_Chef]

The fill-in is planned to ease the burden on Cary , a one-off young Conan story between each arc that will be eventually collected in it's own trade . I think it's a pretty good idea rather than disrupting the main storyline.

Terry

So its only purpose is economic for the publisher and to give the creative team a break they haven't earned (IMO). Sounds like it will be a real artistic endeavor. Have you seen the fill-in artist's work? It's Gary Ruth from Freaks Of the Heartland. More sketchy/blotchy yuck, totally ill-suited to Conan. The only reason I know about Ruth is I saw the announcement about the "fill-in" artist in the Conan comic and looked at a Freaks issue to check him out. *sigh*

 

[Cranus]

So its only purpose is economic for the publisher and to give the creative team a break they haven't earned (IMO). Sounds like it will be a real artistic endeavor. Have you seen the fill-in artist's work? It's Gary Ruth from Freaks Of the Heartland. More sketchy/blotchy yuck, totally ill-suited to Conan. The only reason I know about Ruth is I saw the announcement about the "fill-in" artist in the Conan comic and looked at a Freaks issue to check him out.

Actually, its to give Cary a break as from what I understand Busiek is still writing it. Honestly, many comic artists have trouble churning out quality detailed work for a year. In fact, I have known artists who find two pages per day to be ungodly. The loss in art quality could be due to "fatigue". That's why he's taking a break. Of course, it remains to be seen as to whether or not the art quality improves...

I think the comic is decent so far, but the story has been a bit slow, with the Hyperborean thing going for several issues...

You must not read a lot comics, especially Marvel. What we have here is the story arc/multi-parter. Its moving much faster than most decompressed comics these days.

 

[Iron_Chef]

You must not read a lot comics, especially Marvel. What we have here is the story arc/multi-parter. Its moving much faster than most decompressed comics these days.

Actually, I think it is moving much too slow and a lot of time is being wasted. It took forever for Conan to get to Hyperborea and it's taking even longer for him to get out. Maybe it only seems so slow because I have no real interest in the current storyline whatsoever... :roll:

I don't read comics anymore. They stopped being interesting to me around the time I turned twenty (McFarlane's solo Spider-Man title killed my enthusiasm for the medium it was so badly botched). The medium changed: everything started looking the same, prices went up and the collector's market collapsed. I am proud to say I have not bought any "new" comics in over a decade and I consider the medium pretty much dead with precious little to recommend it. I started collecting again with Conan, but the title has gone downhill so fast that it's killed my enthusiasm faster than McFarlane's inferior writing skills on Spider-Man, LOL. Maybe I'm just older and wiser (or grumpier) and know when to stop buying. I kept buying McFarlane's Spider-Man not because I enjoyed it, but because I thought of it as an investment --- still, I could only stand it for the first eight issues before giving up in disgust. And this coming from a guy who was a huge McFarlane fan for his run on the Amazing Spider-Man with David Micheline writing. Those were some cool comics (around the same time as the original "Armor Wars" in Iron Man, another awesome story).

 

[Strom]

Actually, I think it is moving much too slow and a lot of time is being wasted. It took forever for Conan to get to Hyperborea and it's taking even longer for him to get out. Maybe it only seems so slow because I have no real interest in the current storyline whatsoever... :roll:

I don't read comics anymore. They stopped being interesting to me around the time I turned twenty (McFarlane's solo Spider-Man title killed my enthusiasm for the medium it was so badly botched). The medium changed: everything started looking the same, prices went up and the collector's market collapsed. I am proud to say I have not bought any "new" comics in over a decade and I consider the medium pretty much dead with precious little to recommend it. I started collecting again with Conan, but the title has gone downhill so fast that it's killed my enthusiasm faster than McFarlane's inferior writing skills on Spider-Man, LOL. Maybe I'm just older and wiser (or grumpier) and know when to stop buying. I kept buying McFarlane's Spider-Man not because I enjoyed it, but because I thought of it as an investment --- still, I could only stand it for the first eight issues before giving up in disgust. And this coming from a guy who was a huge McFarlane fan for his run on the Amazing Spider-Man with David Micheline writing. Those were some cool comics (around the same time as the original "Armor Wars" in Iron Man, another awesome story).

Well, you may have hit the nail on the head Chef! Seems you may have issues with the comic medium as much as the latest Conan interpretation. As a disenchanted past collector, it may be difficult to feel your getting your moneys worth with today's comics. Prices have certainly gone up and the page count hasn't. A comic is over very fast (even if your a slow reader) and it is difficult to justify the cost unless the storyline or character captures your interest. For me, that is the case. I am a Conan fan and a fan of Busiek and look forward to each issue and feel Kurt is capturing Conan as well as Thomas (whose run I also collected).

I hope you return to your comic shop because there are numerous diverse storylines to choose from and you may find something you like.

 

[Iron_Chef]

Well, Strom, you're probably right. Today's comics drive me nuts. It's mostly all flash in the pan gloss with little substance; I've looked. The only alternatives are glitzy soft vampire porn, awful manga or boring B&W weirdness like Tales of the Luftwaffe 1946. They're remaking comics like The Micronauts (my childhood favorite) but ruining them. Marvel only makes comics now to keep their characters alive for franchising in movies and video games. :wink: I don't think kids read comics (or anything else anymore); they just sit around playing video games, LOL.

What bugs me most is there used to be a thriving back issues market locally, but there are ZERO back issues at my local shops. Which is just no good if all you're interested in is picking up back issues from your childhood like me. I love browsing old issues, but I have to travel too far to get to a shop that has them. I picked up some on ebay, but it's just too much trouble and too expensive.

 

[Möhbius of Numalia]

Dear Iron Chef, dear all,

As a suggestion only: I had the same opinion on the comics world that you have... just until I discovered things like America's Best Comics (The League of the Extraordinary Gentlemen, Tom Strong) or such special superheroes(?) as The Authority (not these days, I'm afraid).

Even Marvel has published recently some quite interesting (even amusing) things like "The Ultimates". Real fun the jokes the Captain makes!

Of course, it's only a subjective apreciation. These weeks I'm trying to find and buy again... my old issues of "Savage Sword of Conan". Yes, the 1-60 ones.

 

[Möhbius of Numalia]

Not to mention Hellboy!

 

[Hollywood Hogan]

I took a look at the first two issues and was totally unimpressed by the art work. I'm a visual artist, so how a comic is presented visually is very important to me. I didn't like the interpretation of Conan, and I found a lot of panels that didn't have a lot of detail in them - something that all good comics now-a-days have. So from the beginning I didn't care for them.

- Hollywood

 

[Jason Durall]

I'm not entirely won over by the comics - or at least the non-REH elements.

I do find the art all right - I wish Nord would spend a little more time on elements like armor and weapons, though, and maybe make them appear a bit more consistent from panel-to-panel.

I find Busiek's treatments of Hyperboreans to be interesting, but I don't think they fit that well with Howard's take on them (such as the Hyperborean mentioned in Tower of the Elephant).

The thing that really disappoints me, however, is the commonality of the magic - from the mundane "spell of somnolescence" crystals to the pedestrian manner in which souls are drained from corpses to make the weather nicer.

And the Linsner covers are, in my opinion, not really in the style of the comic. I'd love to see more Nord covers, as the #0 was the best of the lot.

 

[Anonymous]

Today's comics drive me nuts. It's mostly all flash in the pan gloss with little substance; I've looked.

LOL! It's the truth Chef! One gem amongst the copper pieces is Knights of the Dinner Table (KODT). My brother Dave sent me one for X-mas and I have forever been indebted to him for it! This is a comic/magazine that is very original and side-splittingly funny! Not only are there storylines that evolve but great articles on gaming and current gaming news. This is a great comic for everyone and I would be surprised if it was one you couldn't enjoy. It is b/w but never boring. The articles range from comic reviews to computer games, old game reviews, new dungeons, new NPC's for numerous genres and more! But the heart and soul of the comic (besides Jolly!) are the Knights! Give them a try, if you like them you can get it delivered to your door and save the drive time.

Also, they are always looking for submissions and/or guest articles or editorials and anyone who frequents this board knows you are one creative dude Chef! You have helped me out a lot! So, send away! Roll for Init! :lol: