I think a good comic is a good comic no matter when it was published. Most of what I read is either before my time, something that came out when I was very little and had no idea it existed at the time, or is brand new. I don't read for nostalgia. I'm not reading what I was reading when I was a child, for the most part.

So while I don't think Action 1 was a good comic, I don't think the newest issue or any issue from 1988 were all that great either. I DO like plenty of EC comics, plenty of Barks comics, plenty of Eisner comics, plenty of Crumb comics, all from before my time though. And plenty of modern stuff. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

I just finished the second Blacksad album, and I have to say that I absolutely loved that final image.

New Comics for the Week of 02/11/15
www.previewsworld.com/Home/1/1/71/952

- Harley Quinn Valentine's Day Special #1
- Elephantmen #62

So, did Captain Marvel #12 not ship today or did my shop just not get it?

King Conan: the conqueror just came out in collected form at Dark Horse and... that's pretty much it. It's a honest comic, and even as a hard to please Conan fan I am O.K. with it; it is not, however, the best Conan comic I've read. Heck, it's not even the best adaptation of the hour of the dragon I've read.

Writer Tim Truman gets Conan and is in control of the source material; that is of course a huge plus. Fans of the character have been blessed by his years at the writing desk of the regular Dark Horse Conan comic, and then by his handling of several limited series. (Other writers, including a certain fan favorite, were meanwhile busy making a travesty of the character in his main title). This particular book, nevertheless, never seems to quite grab us the way the Howard original or the Marvel adaptation did.

Perhaps the fault lies in its framing device: the tale is told by a very old King Conan, decades after the events. This removes a sense of urgency from the adventure, as we already know that Conan will survive, Aquilonia will survive, Zenobia (his queen) will survive, and everything will be fine in the end. Yes, yes, we always know that the Cimmerian will triumph, but when a story is told as if it were happening right now, we can always entertain the conceit that he might not. Old King Conan is also an unpleasant fellow. It may be more realistic to show an aged hero as a bragging, pretentious and falsely modest old crank, but it doesn't mean we want to hang around too long with him! The idea that "the Nemedian chronicles" can be tracked back to one author and one book is also too reductive; I prefer the term to describe some ill-defined body of work given an overall title, sort of like "the Greek classics".

Truman felt that some things had to be changed from Howard's original when making the transition to the comics page. I don't begrudge a writer the right to change things when adapting a story; it is, after all, an adaptation and not necessarily a simple transposition. And while a fan of Howard's writing, I don't view the man's work as sacred. That being said, I did not agree with all the changes made. Some made perfect dramatic sense: having Conan present for the climactic final encounter with the main villain makes perfect sense, and in fact Roy Thomas made the same modification when he adapted the same scene in SSoC #10. Having Zenobia (Conan's love interest in this story) be the girl to be sacrificed in the same climactic scene is also more dramatic (if a little harder to explain, plot-wise) than some random lady. Having Zenobia kick ass alongside her man earlier in the tale also sounds pretty appropriate.

However, having Conan explain that he never married Zenobia after all seems wrong. She can not be queen of Aquilonia if the king just keeps her as his mistress, and their kids can not inherit the crown. Here that's actually the point: Conan doesn't want his sons to inherit a crown; he wants them to struggle and make their own way in life. An admirable sentiment, perhaps, but also an incredibly assholish thing to do. First, Conan claimed he would make Zenobia queen; that's even the very last thing he says, chronologically, in the stories written by Howard. Not having him fulfill his promise is a disappointment. Second, politically speaking, it is very dangerous for a king not to have a clear successor; most historical kings obsessed over the matter and tried to have an heir as fast as they could. The Cimmerian himself faced three attempted coups early in his kingly career, in part because he didn't have an heir. And third, even if one wants one's kids to grow up to be self-reliant, how fair is it for the children of a king to be bastards and without any claim to his loot just because he decided it was better for them? (Finally, in a Dark Horse limited series published previously -Conan and the midnight god- it is clearly stated that King Conan and Zenobia are married).

The art by Tomas Giorello looks beautiful, as usual, but I feel his lush and highly detailed work functions better as a series of standalone images than as "sequential storytelling", as it were. Many characters look alike, the scenes are often shown from the same angle and with the same depth, and there is little invention in the architectural or prop designs. One of the scenes from this novel was already shown in another Dark Horse book, painted by Paul Lee, and that one had a beautiful design for Khitan wizards; here they look pretty ordinary. Not bad, mind you, but more standard-looking.

The final mark would be a B minus. Still head and shoulders over the queen of the black coast book.

I read Starlin's early 2000's Thanos series and some of Infinity Abyss, but I'm afraid that the magic of Starlin's Marvel cosmic stories is gone for me. It's a shame because his Warlock stories and Thanos revival in the early 90's are masterpieces. The Infinity Gauntlet still remains one of the very few quality Marvel events.

Clearly I need to follow comic news more closely, because there is no way I'd have bought this knowing that.