Conan and the Songs of the Dead (2007)

I have been reading and enjoying Conan stories and comics since I was a teenager. As far as comics go my era was during the seventies reading the Savage Sword of Conan with stories by Roy Thomas and art by the likes of John Buscema and Barry Windsor-Smith. This volume contains an original story by Joe R. Lansdale with art by Timothy Truman.

The story features a number of stock elements for any Conan story: short brutal fight scenes; an evil sorcerer (is there any other kind in a Conan story?) intent on ruling the world; a number of unearthly enemies including mummies, zombies and conjured creatures; a quest. The only thing missing is a damsel in distress that Conan has to rescue.  The plot concerns an evil sorcerer who is attempting to gather some magical artefacts to summon and control some dark gods and so rule the Earth. Conan stumbles into this when he rescues a thief who has stolen the first of these objects and he is reluctantly drawn into a quest to find the others as they seem to attract one another.

Although Conan starts out the story as a lone traveller in the desert, Lansdale quickly pairs him up with a smart ass thief who he rescues. Lansdale uses the relationship between the two to break away from the normal image of Conan as a surly loner. This allows him to inject a measure of humour into the story in the interactions between them. The sorcerer is also portrayed as being surrounded by bumbling minions and Lansdale uses his frustration at the incompetence that surrounds him as another source of humour.

I don’t know if this quite works for me as I like the image of Conan as a lone adventurer without much too say. The art, while fine enough, is not as dark and brooding as I like to see in a Conan story – though to be fair it is not really a dark and brooding kind of story. I prefer more claustrophobic tales where abandoned temples, caves, dungeons or other dimly lit locations have to be explored and any horror could be lurking round the next corner.

First published on RevolutionSF on Friday Oct 15, 2010