Thursday, August 9, 2012

Comic Review - Conan the Barbarian #7


            I have long wanted to try Conan the Barbarian without having to drop massive amounts of money on the old Roy Thomas/John Buscema masterpieces.  I will get their eventually, trust me, but I wanted to get more into the character before investing that kind of money into it.  So in the grand Eat @ Shrimpy’s comic review tradition, I picked up the most recent issue of Conan by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan to give it a shot.  Here is what I thought:

Cover:
            The cover by Massimo Carnivale was a nice illustration, even though it was a little misleading.  The cover (as you can see) shows Conan and his partner/girlfriend/ conquest (not really sure how to describe the barbarian relationship dynamic) Belit standing on the shoreline during what looks to be a storm (or at least typical English weather).  While this is relevant in that Belit is a pirate queen, it has nothing to do with the story as the pair spends the entire issue (save for one panel) landlocked.  It is a decent illustration though, even if it is a bit monotone in terms of color scheme.  This just seems to be the order of the day though.  As comic coloring has advanced through new media, it has taken a turn from brightly colored characters to monochromatic blobs.  This does a decent job of highlighting Belit’s face, which is the brightest and least brown part of the cover.  The logo, even though it is a dark bluish-purple in color stands out from the background because of the darkness of the logo surrounded by the slight white stroke. 

6/10 – This is not a bad cover at all.  It gets dinged for its lake of relation to the interiors as well as it’s coloring.

Story:
            The story revolves around Conan’s return to Cimmeria as he is tracking someone that is killing butt-loads of people, and doing it in Conan’s name.  The story itself is a typical first issue of a story arc as it does more setup for what is to come than anything else.  This works incredibly well though as we not only find out what has brought Conan back to his homeland (the aforementioned imposter) but also the inner workings of Cimmeria itself.  We are clued in to the structure and hierarchy of Cimmeria, and it helps that Conan is not a king at this point (or at least he is not treated as such in this issue).  He is a well respected member of the community but he is not revered like he may have been in previous iterations.  It seems like Brian Wood is taking Conan back to the beginning to build him back up to mythological status which is a pretty interesting take on the character. 
            The story also helps further the relationship between Conan and Belit, showing that they are on more equal ground than any of the previous relationships that either of the characters has probably ever had.  Belit loves Conan enough to follow him to his homeland, away from her comfort zone of the open sea, and Conan loves her enough to follow her back to her land after he takes care of this current trouble (at least that is what he tells her).  I have a feeling that things will end badly for Belit though.  It is hard to imagine Conan tied down to one person for the rest of the series, and it does not seem like it would be in character for Belit to just shrink away and disappear.  While I hope that it is not the case as I like Belit as a character and the interaction between her and Conan is very well presented in both text and picture form by the creative team, I have a sneaking suspicion she won’t make it out of this alive. 
            My one major gripe with the story itself is that the first three pages show Conan and Belit trapped between a rock and a hard place (quite literally) as Cimmerians descend on them, wishing to do them harm.  We then switch to the extended flashback basically explaining how they got in that predicament.  However, the story stops before we get back to the point where we started.  Unless issue eight starts out with the two again trapped and the flashes back again (which it might, I have to wait a month to find out) then it seems like another one of those “written for the trade paperback” kind of stories.  If we are not shown Conan and Belit in their perilous position to start the next issue (and the one after that) then we as readers will most likely forget that they were even in that position to begin with.  Remember, while this may all be happening very close together in the characters’ timeline, and Brian Wood may be writing it all at once, the readers still have to wait a month at least between each part of the story.  This is pretty shitty as the rest of the story is very well written and does a good job of setting up the rest of the “Border Fury” story arc, but not referencing the first few pages that lead into the flashback feels like poor writing to me. 

7/10 – That one major gripe just sticks in my craw and won’t let me grade it any higher despite the fact that even without the sex and violence you would expect from a Conan story, this issue really works.

Art:
            Becky Cloonan does a superb job with the art on this issue.  She was never on my radar before, but her detailed backgrounds coupled with her ability to add subtle emotions to the characters through facial expressions make her an artist to watch.  The art and text (and there is quite a bit of text) works very well together to set the scene without stepping on each other’s toes. 

The look on Belit's face in the first panel is what you would expect from someone that has just seen snow for the first time.  The backgrounds are wonderfully rendered and the coloring by Dave Stewart is exceptional throughout.

That last panel may be my favorite of the book.  You need no context or words to determine that Conan is trying to calm Belit down and that she is uneasy about her surroundings.  In this setting, Conan is the rock and Belit is a bit of a loose cannon, which is illustrated beautifully by the expressions and body language.

            The only problem that I have with the art is the pacing of the story seems a little odd as splash pages and large panels seem to be doled out where they are not required.  Don’t get me wrong, the art is beautiful in those panels so that’s a plus, but the large panels feel out of place in the flow of the story, almost like they got to the end of the story but realized they still had to fill up two to three pages.*
            *In all fairness this may be on the writer and not the artist, it really depends on how tight Brian Wood scripts his books. 

This is not just a panel, this is an entire page.  And while the illustration is great (including the coloring by Stewart) it is hard to imagine that this necessitates a full page.

This too is a full page broken into two panels.  While the illustrations are great and the emotion and tenderness comes through beautifully here, it feels poorly thought out in terms of layout.

8/10 – The art is the main draw for me in this book.  Cloonan does a great job of making the characters feel “real” and giving them the full gamut of emotions in not only their facial expressions but also their gestures.  The acting in play within this story is top-notch and Cloonan deserves all the credit for being able to convey that successfully.

Overall: 
7/10 – Overall a very solid read.  This is not the best book to hit the shelves this week (that honor goes to Punk Rock Jesus #2, seriously buy that book and you will thank me later) but it is a good find nonetheless that should garner some new readers to the tales of everyone’s favorite Cimmerian. 



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