Savage Sword of Conan Volume 10

The Savage Sword of Conan

by Michael Fleisher

Conan may be the most dangerous man alive, but that means nothing to foes that are already deceased! The walled City of Life is under siege by an army of the dead and Conan is trapped inside! But how do you kill an enemy who has already died? This volume also sees the rebirth of the deadly swordsman Bor'aqh Sharaq, the return of the extradimensional Devourer of Souls, and an unlikely alliance between Conan and his brutal mirror image, King Konar!

Genres: Comics, Fantasy, Graphic Novels

500 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 2011

About the author

Michael Lawrence Fleisher's comic-book writing career spanned two decades in which he authored approximately 700 stories for DC, Marvel, and other comics publishers. His work on series such as The Spectre and Jonah Hex is still highly regarded, as is his work on the Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes. After a widely reported libel case his comic output declined, with his last published comic assignment appearing in the UK anthology 2000AD in 1995.

Reviews

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 3 out of 5]

[7/10]

I'm on a two week holiday, so I decided to use the free time to indulge in some of my guilty pleasures, like watching steroid muscled barbarians fighting tigers with breasts.



By this number ten album the stories of Conan's adventures in the Hyborian Age have little to do with the original Robert E Howard stories, but the format is still good for offering graphic artists a platform to showcase their black & white penmanship and to experiment with more violence and sex than what the comic book censors allowed before the 1990's



In fact, the uptick in explicit gore and risque sexual jokes is the only thing that differentiate the tenth album from the previous ones. There is little originality in the plot lines, some characters are reintroduced in the absence of new ideas (like the one-armed pirate Bor'aqh Sharaq and the Devourer of Souls). Graphic art still has its good moments, but overall there is for me a marked step down in quality from the earlier issues.



In the absence of any distinguishing features, I still enjoyed the diversity of the settings offered here:

- "The White Tiger of Vendhya" has an Indian jungle flavor
- "The Treachery of the Gray Wolf" sends Conan to an alternative universe to meet his twin and to save a queen in distress
- "The Mill" is one of the most focused and most violent episodes so far, sort of Tarantino doing a western in a frozen waste.
- "Feud of Blood" marks the return of that ubiquitous pirate Bor'aqh Sharaq, still on a personal vendetta against our favorite Cimmerian.
- "The Eyes of G'bharr R'jinn" gives the above mentioned pirate a feisty female sidekick and two powerful magic artifacts
- "The Claws of the Osprey" is an above average story about warring city states (Conan as an Italian condottiere?) that excels at drawing large scale battles.
- "The Shatterer of Worlds" is the conclusion of a quest spanning several issues to deal with an evil entity from another dimension.
- "The Army of the Dead" is something weird with zombies
- "The Mud Men of Keshan" is fun with an African theme, introducing a band of amazons with 80's hairstyles.



All in all, it was a good escape from worries about elections and brexits and global warming. I guess I will continue with the series.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

The series was still going strong in these issues, which were published in 1984-85. Quality isn't quite what it was in the earlier volumes, but we're still getting many of the same artists, and Michael Fleischer is doing a great job as writer. A few of the stories seemed a little "choppy", as the transitions were confusing, but overall, another good read. This series is one of my favorite comic series of all time.

[Tony Calder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This continues the series of Dark Horse reprints of the Marvel Comics' Savage Sword of Conan. The original was published in a black-and-white magazine-sized format and was aimed at a more adult audience than the four-colour Conan comics that Marvel was also publishing.

The stories in this series jump around chronologically and tell tales from different stages in Conan's life, just as Howard's books did. That said, and perhaps because almost all of the stories in this volume were written by Michael Fleisher, there is a certain degree of sameness about the plots and an occasional tendency to give Conan near superpowers - in excess of the prowess he displayed in any of Howard's stories. Granted that he is the greatest warrior of his age, and stronger than anyone else, but if he is hit with a solid piece of wood across the back of his skull, it should have more effect than just the wood breaking and Conan getting angrier.

Still, if you are a fan of Conan, you should enjoy these stories.

[Paul Finch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharaq is to Conan what the big giant chicken fella is to Peter Griffin.

[sohrab sitaram]

Incredible. Fantastic language, mind blowing dialogues, lovely artwork too. ! Incredible storylines

[Á · Rating 2 out of 5]

These comics keep getting more and more incomprehensible in terms of plot. Were the 80s that devoid of the basics of story writing? Well, based on movies like Big Trouble in Little China, yes.