About Heroes

Writers: J.M DeMatteis, Len Wein, Larry Hama, Robert E. Howard, Roy Thomas.
Artists: John Buscema, Neal Adams, Ernie Chan, Bob McLeod, Vicente Alcazar, Yong Montano.
Publisher: Dark Horse

Ah yes, as time passes, so comes another volume of Conan. The 15th volume Dark Horse has put out of The Chronicles of Conan, this trade encompasses seven stories of the Barbarian from Cimmeria

The first story in this volume called "Crawler in the Mist" starts out with Conan being rescued by some nomads, having laid in the desert sun, poisoned and weak. As Conan comes to, he finds his rescuers are traders and soon realizes that they mean to trade HIM as a slave. Conan being well... Conan, whoops some arse and sends two of his slavers fleeing, the third unable to run, left chained to the mighty Barbarian. Deciding not to cut off the slaver's hand and be free of him Conan drags the trader along with him as he looks for shelter with night approaching Wandering through the desert Conan and his "traveler" eventually come upon a city...seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The trader warns Conan of this city being home to a monster that prowls the streets at night taking anyone foolish enough to be wandering out of their homes, Conan scoffs at his companions' plea and they enter the city laying down on the streets for sleep. Deep in sleep Conan is awakened to hear his friends' cry as a huge red slug-like creature takes hold of the trader. Amidst the battling, the slug creature severs the chain linking the trader and Conan, fleeing with the helpless slaver in tow, Conan in pursuit. From here the rest of the story plays out Twilight Zone-like so I won't ruin it for you, other then to say it ends somewhat sadly.

The rest of the stories within this volume play out pretty close to the first one, Conan either runs into trouble or goes looking for it, a tussel ensues and the foe is defeated. All the tales are enjoyable to an extent. Certain readers will definitely get more out of these collected Conan volumes then others. Those not big on reading loads of text I can tell you right now will have issues with this Conan volume. At about 190 pages this sucker feels like twice that in overall dialogue I personally like the expanded dialogue as it gives more depth to the story an characters BUT...then again I am a fickle/weird comic reader.

The art within each story varies with the artist. For the most part John Buscema does a majority of the art within this volume and it is alright...it's not mind-blowing but half this stuff was in the 70s and 80s so you gotta cut the guy some slack. The best page out of this whole volume though in both story and art is in, "The Phoenix on the Sword". Art by Vicente Alcazar an Yong Montano, it displays Conan looking to tear apart those before him, an image of Kull of Atlantis above him, Roy Thomas writing of the parallel in this scene between Conan & Kull.

I don't know what it is but this page just kinda hits you in a right way...almost makes me wanna go back and read up on Kull of Atlantis, (another creation of of Robert E. Howard's).

In closing, this volume as a whole is GOOD. Not great but good. If you like Conan you'll dig this volume and for those that have never read of the mighty warrior borrow this volume from a friend...you may just be glad you did.