Egmont Publishing House has prepared another item from the Conan universe. This time, however, we are dealing with a spin off in which there is no iconic hero. So is this comic worth reaching for?
Return to the roots
As a publisher, Marvel is known primarily for its fully original superhero series, but it is worth remembering that it also offers comics based on external licenses, such as Star Wars . Some time ago, the House of Ideas took over the rights to the stories about Conan the Barbarian from the Dark Horse publishing house. In a sense, history has come full circle, as already in the second half of the 20th century, Marvel was publishing series based on stories by Robert E. Howard. In any case, this fresh start was to be a large-scale undertaking, as evidenced by the fact that not one, but three series was released. In addition to the two focusing on the adventures of the famous warrior, there is also a place for the subject of this review, i.e. the Age of Conan side series, depicting the fate of previously known characters, but in isolation from the title character.
The first five-volume volume is devoted to the pirate Bêlit. Although she only appeared in one of Howard’s short stories, she is considered one of the key characters in the Conan series. Tragic love was to change the Cimmerian forever. Hence, one can understand the desire to expand its history. The operation, however, did not seem to be entirely successful.
Young angry
Writer Tini Howard ( Excalibur , Thanos) chose a very safe side-story scheme, creating a standard prequel that summed up Bêlit’s life fairly quickly – from the teenage daughter of a pirate taking her first steps on a ship to the fearsome queen of the seas that Conan met. So we learn that even in childhood, the future warrior was fascinated by hunting sea beasts, she is relentless when she wants to achieve her goals, and powerful deities do not fear her. However, one should ask whether there was any point in telling this story, because predictability is one of its greatest problems. It’s not even that there was no attempt to reinvent the wheel (because no one expected it), but even the smallest twists were not tempted. Average storylines are forgivable if they make up for with expressive characters. Unfortunately, the comic book fails in this area as well. The dialogues play primarily an informative role, and the character of Bêlit is largely reduced to threats and insults. Thus, the famous heroine was stripped of the slightly mysterious aura resulting from understatements about her past, becoming another standard pop culture figure. The situation is not saved by the background, which plays a marginal role.
Call of the seas
Despite the story that sounds like mediocrity, the comic is easy to absorb. This is largely due to the drawings by Katarzyna Niemczyk. The artist known from the Mockingbird seriesintroduces a lot of life to the story thanks to a simple, yet expressive line. Malcontents may say that the chosen style does not fit perfectly with heroic fantasy, stripping Conan’s world of magical aura and pompous atmosphere. I don’t have the slightest problem with that, as it was clearly aimed at looser, pirate adventures with huge monsters in the background. Thick contours enhance the cartoon character, a wide palette of colors pleases the eyes, and large monsters, when they appear, look appropriately threatening. Rather, I have reservations about the fact that for some reason the works in notebooks 3-5 were finished by other artists, such as Andrea Di Vito and Scott Hanna. Unfortunately, the visual changes are clearly noticeable, which suffers from the consistency of the whole.
There is no need to read it
The Era of Conan: Bêlit , unfortunately, turns out to be an average painterly title, which is difficult to treat in terms other than just a simple clog, designed to quickly expand the range of comics based on the universe created by Robert E. Howard. The biggest problem is the extremely schematic scenario devoid of expressive characters. Even the greatest Conan fans have little to look for here, as the condensation of events and the speeding narrative make the story superficial; the presented world is not actually enlarged in an interesting way.
However, I have no reservations about the quality of the Polish edition. Egmont opted for a format known from the Marvel Now line. So we get a solid quality comic book released in a paperback with wings. On the last pages you will find several stylistically diverse alternative covers. The following notebooks are separated by original covers.
