Review: The Savage Sword of Conan Volume One

Even though the new books show a lot of reverence for the original Marvel series, Titan Comics made Conan its own. Some fans wonder, at first, if the Titan books are a continuation or a reboot of the Marvel Comics Conan stories. It doesn’t really matter. They feel like an organic extension to all Conan comic books and original REH stories. So, whether you’re a new or OG fan, it’s a great time to be a Conan fan.

If you’ve missed the new run of Savage Sword of Conan published by Titan Comics, this trade paperback is an excellent way of catching up. Released January 21st, Volume 1 collects the first three issues of the new series.

Three issues might not seem like much for a trade paperback, but each issue of the new SSC magazine is packed with material; the total page count of Volume One is 212 (including the front and back covers).

Conan is back! Actually, he never really went away, but the good old days of the Marvel Comics Conan series were far behind us when Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures released Conan the Barbarian 0 during Free Comic Book Day 2023. Following the original Marvel run (1970 to 1993), Dark Horse Comics carried the torch for several years. Dark Horse did an awesome job keeping Conan going. Many fans feel that the Dark Horse era was more in keeping with the spirit of the original Conan stories written by Robert E. Howard. However, for fans who discovered Conan during the original Marvel Comics days, Titan Comics’s new Conan books feel like a return to form. (Marvel reacquired the rights to the character in 2018, but only published the title until 2022.)

Titan Comics resurrected the two flagship titles, Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword of Conan. A miniseries, Battle of the Black Stone, soon followed, heralding the birth of the Howardverse in comic book format.

Marvel took quite a risk when they published the original SSC books. (Magazine-sized comics were not as popular as standard-size comic books.) The series went on to become a huge success. SSC was not restricted by the Comics Code Authority, and the writers, illustrators and editors availed themselves of that privilege to publish some of the best sword & sorcery stories ever printed in graphic format. Titan Comics took a similar chance by relaunching Savage Sword of Conan in early 2024 (magazines are not-so-slowly disappearing from newsstands).

Volume One reprints the first issues of the magazine that would set the tone for the ongoing series. It features the work of a number of great writers—most notably Jim Zub, who was no stranger to Conan, since he worked on the new Marvel series before Titan acquired the rights to the IP. Zub is one of my favorite writers. I am a big fan of his work on the Dungeons & Dragons comics published by IDW. Volume One also features a short story in prose format written by Zub that makes me wish he would try his hand at writing a full-length Conan (or D&D) novel. The time he put into research to bring Conan to life in this new series is evident on almost every page. There is deep reverence for the source material here, and it will please both new and old Conan fans.

Artists who contributed include Max Von Fafner, Richard Pace and Cary Nord. The pièce de résistance is the cover by Legendary Conan Cover Artist Joe Jusko, whose work graced many SSC covers back in the Marvel days.

Max Von Fafner illustrated the Conan story for the first issue. The story was written by John Arcudi. Long-time readers of the previous incarnation of SSC will have already read several other adventures of Conan’s time East of the Vilayet Sea, but this story feels both new and nostalgic. It reads very much like many similar tales published in the previous incarnation of SSC, while still feeling fresh. It’s a typical Conan story where you can expect violence, female nudity and sword & sorcery. Von Fafner can illustrate an impressive story in black & white. He’s not only a master of both black & white, but also of every shade of gray in between. His black & white art feels as vibrant as a full-color story. His style and this story as a whole are so in keeping with the old Conan comics that they feel like an organic extension of the original SSC. OG fans will be pleased, and new fans will get to sample a Conan story in almost the purest tradition.

Volume 1 also includes a multi-part Solomon Kane story. I was really thrilled to see the return of Solomon Kane, another creation of REH. Volume One delivers a very satisfying tale of the swashbuckling puritan. I’m glad that, following this story, Titan Comics released a separate Solomon Kane series. The multi-part story published in the pages of SSC provides a good intro to the character and to the new series.

The story written by Jim Zub and illustrated by Richard Pace also delivers. Like Von Fafner, Pace has a unique style that maximizes the use of black & white.

The book also serves up a number of other goodies, including a short poem written by Zub and illustrated by Rob De La Torre. De La Torre’s work is a dead ringer for Legendary Illustrator John Buscema’s art. We’ve seen his work in the Conan the Barbarian comic book published by Titan Comics, and I hope we get to see more. Volume One also features plenty of pinups and alternate covers peppered throughout the book.

In short, this is a great book to add to any Conan fan’s bookshelf. Its content will provide enough of a sample of the new Titan Comics Conan for any fan to decide if they want to continue reading the barbarian’s new adventures. If you want to pick up the ongoing books, some comic book stores will have back issues in stock, or you can always try online stores like eBay.

Title: Savage Sword of Conan Volume 1

Publisher: Titan Comics/Heroic Signatures

Writer: Various

Artists: Various

Format: Trade paperback

Tags: conan, Savage Sword Of Conan

About the Author

Jules-Pierre Malartre Jules-Pierre Malartre currently lives in L’Île-Perrot, a small island west of Montreal (Quebec), which is as close to the Great White North that he will ever dare go, but still cold enough to save him from big-ass spiders, alien abductions, undead dinosaurs and tourists who find his French accent charming. In 2005, he quit a promising aerospace engineering career to go into freelance writing, which was a very, very bad idea according to his mother. Since then, he has become considerably poorer, but he has grown much happier. Along the way, he adopted cats—lots of cats! When he is not writing technical manuals, newspaper articles, press releases or blogs on anything from comic books to yoga, he is busy working on his first novel, a semi-autobiographical fictional account of his life that dares to ask the question, “where did God go wrong with me anyway?” His first short story, “The Rest Was Easy,” was published by the online literary magazine Amarillo Bay in 2013. The five people who read it liked it. He’s well aware that it took him over a decade to publish another one, so he’d really appreciate it if you'd cut him some slack about it! He loves coffee, cats and reading, mostly because those three things go very well together.