Man, you just can't pass up on a 99 cent comic.

OK, maybe you can, but I can't. I mean, things costing less than a dollar are so rare these days they don't even have the symbol for cent (that strange c form that probably looks like a kind of cuneiform to younger readers) on keyboards anymore. So to find a Conan book for that cheap is a pleasant surprise. To find a damn good Conan book for that price, well, that's worth killing your way through a field filled with Picts.

On the surface, the plot to Conan the Cimmerian is ridiculously simple. Conan, on his way back to his homeland after the evens of Conan #50, comes across a party of Vanir intent on doing some looting and pillaging. This, naturally, doesn't sit well with Conan who proceeds to butcher nearly the whole lot. So we've got 16 pages of (mostly) brutal action.

While this may not sound like much, Giorello and Villarrubia's work is worth the 99 cents alone. The depiction of battle, and all the Conan postering that goes with it, is beautifully brought to the page with the pencils and wonderfully rendered with colors.

In addition to that, Truman takes this simple story and uses it as a canvas for some of Robert Howard's original poetry. The poetry will give readers, new and old, an idea of just how deeply Howard felt about this particularly character and the world he inhabited. In correspondence with peers, Howard had occasional eluded to the idea that he didn't create Conan, but was only telling his story, and was perhaps a kind reincarnation of the barbarian king. All of this is indirectly captured in the story itself and directly shown in a well chosen Two-Gun Bob story in the back of this issue.

Short, sweet and to the point, this issue of Conan is a welcome addition to the collection and a great starting point for the new Cimmerian title. And damn well worth your 99 cents.

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