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DanicaBrine

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on March 7, 2025.

Conan the Barbarian #18

By Jim Zub (Writer) and Danica Brine (Artist) – Titan Comics – February 19, 2025

Review by Robin Marx

Having decided to spare the life of Tarnasha, the foolhardy thief that invaded their bedchamber in Conan the Barbarian #17, Conan and Bêlit allow themselves to be talked into a plan to rob a local antiquarian of a priceless treasure of Stygian origin. Conan has misgivings, as his last encounter with Stygia and its Set-worshipping snake cult was an unsettling one, but he’s swayed by his pirate queen’s talk of riches and her eagerness to pull one over on the hated Stygians. The trio immediately begins plotting a daring heist. Once their hastily assembled plan is put into action, however, bloodshed and betrayal ensue.

This issue concludes the two-part “Fangs and Foolish Thieves” storyline. All previous arcs in Titan Comics’ Conan the Barbarian series have run across four issues, so it’s perhaps inevitable that this particular story feels abbreviated. Indeed, the pacing felt rushed the first time I read through this issue, with several elements introduced late into the story and left unresolved. That feeling lessened upon revisiting the issue, however. Tarnasha will doubtless reappear in a subsequent plotline, as will the other dangling threads established herein. The 2025 Free Comic Day Issue of Conan the Barbarian is set to launch an event called Scourge of the Serpent, and a Solomon Kane series entitled The Serpent Ring is scheduled to arrive even before that, so it appears that readers have a decidedly reptilian year ahead of them. Appropriate for the Chinese zodiac’s Year of the Snake.

Issue #18 includes some entertaining references for knowledgeable Conan fans. The Stygian episode Conan flashes back to in the opening pages is, of course, a nod to the original Robert E. Howard prose story “The God in the Bowl.” The Stygian relic at the heart of the story is unmistakably the same intertwined serpent dagger wielded by James Earl Jones’ villain Thulsa Doom in the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie. The cinematic Atlantean Sword and Thulsa Doom himself (despite being King Kull’s foe in Howard’s work) have also appeared in previous issues of this comic, demonstrating Jim Zub’s fun willingness to embrace the Conan the Barbarian body of work in all its forms and expressions, rather than limit himself to strict Howard purism.

Judging from online commentary, Danica Brine’s artwork in the previous issue was a point of contention for some readers. While admittedly the art style does feel a tad on the “cute” side for Conan—Tarnasha and her truly outrageous pastel outfit would fit right in with Jem and The Holograms—I’d rather see a variety of representations of these characters than witness Conan the Barbarian stagnate and settle into dead-end “John Buscema Über Alles” conservatism.

While our reunion with Conan and Bêlit is regrettably a brief one, Conan the Barbarian #18 caps off a whirlwind caper. The shorter storyline and fresh artwork show that Jim Zub is still willing to experiment with the Titan Comics series, even as the title sprints towards its second anniversary.

#ReviewArchive #ComicReview #SwordAndSorcery #JimZub #DanicaBrine #TitanComics #ConanTheBarbarian #GrimdarkMagazine #GdM

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on March 3, 2025.

Conan the Barbarian #17

By Jim Zub (Writer) and Danica Brine (Artist) – Titan Comics – December 4, 2024

Review by Robin Marx

Launching the “Twisting Loyalties” story arc, Conan the Barbarian #17 depicts Conan adventuring alongside the pirate queen Bêlit. Having served at her side for close to a year under the assumed name of Amra the Lion, Conan joins Bêlit and the crew of their vessel The Tigress for some rest and relaxation in the port town of Kyros. Conan and his beautiful captain settle in for a night of passion at a posh inn called the Hidden Haven, but reckless bandits hoping for an easy score literally drop in on the pair.

In the original source material, Conan’s time at sea with Bêlit is related in Robert E. Howard’s 1934 story “Queen of the Black Coast.” While that story begins with the barbarian throwing in his lot with the crew of The Tigress and concludes with Bêlit’s tragic death, the largely unchronicled gaps in the narrative have been fertile ground for subsequent creators. “Conan the Pirate” is a premise that immediately appeals, and Bêlit is one of the strongest female characters in Howard’s literary output. In the classic Marvel Comics Conan the Barbarian title, Roy Thomas showed Conan and Bêlit voyaging together for nearly 40 issues (1976-1979), and this era in Conan’s career was also revisited in Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan’s 25-issue Conan the Barbarian series (Dark Horse Comics, 2012-2014). While Bêlit has appeared in both flashbacks and in spirit (e.g., Conan the Barbarian #8), this marks her first appearance alive and in the flesh with Conan in the current Titan Comics title.

While this issue only offers a brief and—so far—landbound depiction of Conan and Bêlit, it feels good to see the pair back in action again. In both the artwork and the narration, Bêlit is portrayed as being appropriately competent and ruthless, and the issue concludes with a hint of the greed and ambition that led to her eventual demise in “Queen of the Black Coast.” From a storytelling standpoint, so far, so good.

Danica Brine is an interesting choice as an artist. While a handful of women (Rebecca Puebla, Ashley Izienicki, etc.) have done covers for Titan Comics’ Conan the Barbarian, Brine is the first to handle the interior artwork. She doesn’t have the deepest resume, but she did handle a variant cover for Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone #3, and she previously worked with Conan scribe Jim Zub on some cover artwork for his Image Comics series Wayward (2014-2018). It appears that her most extensive work to date was for 2022’s Chef’s Kiss, a wholesome-looking gay romance comic from Oni Press. Perhaps due to that background, both Conan and Bêlit appear a little, for lack of a better term, “cute” in this issue. Her Conan is still brawny, but it feels like he’s rendered in a way that is more geared to appeal to heterosexual women readers than the more common scarred, veiny, brutish depictions of Conan. Brine’s version of Bêlit is beautiful but not as overtly sexualized as some versions of the character. Conan the Barbarian is quite a change of pace from Chef’s Kiss, but the violence in this issue is presented sufficiently dynamically, if not as gory as combat scenes we’ve seen from artists like Doug Braithwaite and Jonas Scharf.

Conan the Barbarian #17 brings back sword & sorcery’s original power couple, and it’s great to see Conan and Bêlit reunited. The series also features a fresh new look, and I suspect the artwork will be an area of special interest during this story arc.

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