I am not generally a fan of Brian Bendis' mainstream Marvel stuff, but I have liked a lot of his creator-owned stuff, especially the early Powers stuff, so I decided to pick up the first issue of The United States of Murder Inc. by Bendis and Oeming when I saw it on the shelf of my LCS this week. I was surprised to see it because he typically orders Icon stuff for pulls only and no one had preordered this. I was on the fence, and was going to trade wait and read reviews before deciding, but Oeming's cover was staring at me form the racks and I broke down and picked it up. It was pretty solid stuff. I really like Oeming's art and Bendis does crime stuff well. The world building is top notch and the characters are eminently readable, and it ends with a very interesting twist that sets up the rest of the series very well. So I think I am going to add this, which means something else needs to gett the axe as my pull is a zero sum gain these days...

-M

Ahh, summer of 2006 is when my new comics started piling up unread as I was hip deep writing for the rpg industry, so I missed that. That pile up of unread stuff is one of the factors that lead to my hiatus from comics in 2007, which lasted until late 2011/early 2012 (Saga, Fatale and the new Conan series by Wood/Cloonan are what brought me back in to new comics). The previews of the art I saw for Quinones look very cartoony/animated DC style, which is not bad, but yeah Amanda Connor on that would have killed.

-M

Speaking of bad Conan movies, and King Conan...did you see the King Conan movie poster with arnie debuted at Cannes recently? Ugh.

-M

If you had the money available, I would recommend picking up the Colossal Conan volume collecting all of Busiek's run and then some, if you haven't read it all. However, the likelihood of Kurt returning to write more Conan would be slim to none, as he seems to be fairly committed to creator owned stuff right now. 

Kurt has a deep respect and knowledge of the source material though. I was on a private Avengers mailing list with him when he was writing Avengers and afterwards, and there were a fair few Conan fans besides me on the list as well, and I remember some of the discussions we had about Conan that Kurt participated in. Scott Harris was part of that list as well, though I cannot remember if he was active at that time. Kurt had a plan and had laid groundwork for Conan's entire career, but life and health issues led him to leave the book before he got all that far into Conan's adventures. I agree that those that followed have been solid, but the Busiek/Nord team is one of my all time favorite Conan creative teams and none of the stuff that followed has quite reached the same level as they did. 

-M

I loved that scene when Conan stays behind to eavesdrop on the philosophers a little more after an experience with a deity that made him doubt his views on life. 

It's my favourite scene too. I think it perfectly shows what Conan is all about.

The Busiek-Nord run is,  to me as well, something special in the history of Conan adaptations. I believe that it is the only one (apart from the Thomas-Smith run and the few pages of the Truman-Corben run) that succeeded in crafting that unique alchemy of adventure, mystery and believeable pseudo-history that made the Howard tales so extraordinary. Many other Conan comics were extremely good, but rarely have they made me go "oh, yeah... THAT's the real stuff!"

Oh, mrp, I did see the King Conan film poster. I could cry. It looks as if by popular demand, we're going to see the return of Slave Conan and his damn wheel.

Unless Hollywood decides that, as usual, presenting something we've already seen before is the way to go and it is decided to re-adapt The Hour Of The Dragon (which was the basis for the equally horrible Kull movie of the 90s). Who knows? Perhaps this time they might do it right?