King Conan by Aaron & Asrar

They gave us Conan’s first solo epic in his Second Age at Marvel, and now Jason Aaron and Mahmud Asrar have reunited to give us his last.  With the rights to the character leaving the company again, Marvel has decided to give the character a proper send off by showing us Conan  in his days as King of Aquilonia.  Bringing back Aaron and Asrar gives the impression that the company is putting a proper effort behind this final run, until you remember that most of their “The Life and Death of Conan” was just them playing the character’s greatest hits.  Until they got to the end, that is.  The good news is that the creators have taken more inspiration from that moment Conan met his maker to deliver a miniseries that’s half as long as their previous storyline, and one that’s twice as good.

“King Conan” opens with the title character crawling out of the sea, puking up grubs as he crawls onto a dark and desolate island.  What he was doing out here isn’t initially known, though we’re told that he was sailing the Western Sea far off the edge of any known maps.  Surviving on an unknown island may be old hat to Conan, but this is no ordinary place.  Not only is it home to someone with a very deep-seated grudge against the barbarian-turned-king, but an even more ancient magic that commands tigers, apes, sea monsters, and even the dead themselves to do its bidding.

We’re also presented with a series of flashbacks to Conan as King of Aquilonia while this present-day story plays out.  While stories featuring the character in this time have always indicated that it has been something of an ill fit for him, Aaron shows the king lashing out in ways that endanger his kingdom.  Conan is determined to find some new threat to fight even though every obvious one has been subdued at this time.  Which is likely why his thoughts have turned to his son, Conn, and how he can turn the boy into the man he should be.

Given Conan’s current circumstances, and what it’s implied about his character from the flashbacks, you’d be forgiven for assuming the worst regarding Conn’s fate.  Particularly when you consider that the writer is no stranger to going to some really dark places in his previous titles.  To results both great, and… not so much.

The good news here is that Aaron is fully aware of what his setup implies and plays against the reader’s expectations quite well in this story.  Speaking for myself, I thought I was getting one kind of Conan story here, but was pleasantly surprised to have received something different.  It helped put a new spin on things to the point where I was able to properly enjoy the animal/monster/zombie fighting action in this miniseries, despite how played-out those kinds of things may be at this point.

I also liked seeing what the writer did with the first character Conan encounters on the island as well.  They’ve got quite the history, even if precious little of it has been with the two of them together.  So it was still interesting to see them work together after they got the initial round(s) of fighting out of their systems.  It’s just one more way in which this “Conan” comic manages to set itself apart from the many that I’ve read before.

If you’re expecting to see a lot of familiar “Conan”-style action, however, this miniseries still has you covered.  Each issue features the title character fighting his way through a myriad of foes with all of the style and cunning that you’d expect from him.  It’s all rendered quite well by Asrar who gives the present-day sequences an appropriately gritty and forsaken look to them while making the action come off as appreciably brutal.  The flashbacks fare better from a dramatic perspective as the writer has more character drama to sell here and he pulls it off quite well.  There aren’t any scenes of Conan setting a zombie’s head on fire and using it to light barrels of Stygian lava tar, though.

All of this makes “King Conan” a worthy send-off for the character’s time at Marvel.  Though I’ve generally enjoyed what the publisher has done with Conan in their second go-round with him, I wouldn’t say that most of it was on the same level as the multiple series that came from Dark Horse’s tenure with the character and their ambition to create a unified chronology of the character’s stories.  While that’s never going to happen now, Aaron and Asrar can at least take heart in knowing that they’re ending Conan’s second age at Marvel on a high note.