Bound in Black Stone collects the initial four-issue run from 2023 of the new Conan the Barbarian comic book from Titan Comics, along with a Free Comic Book Day prequel. The prequel "Looking for Lands Beyond" is an account of the sack of Venarium, and the main story is set not too many years later after Conan's first wanderings beyond Cimmeria. He is in the wilderness of northern Aquilonia--not far south of his homeland--when he encounters a menace that motivates him to return and defend his countrymen.

The plot has much to do with Conan-creator Robert E. Howard's notions of the Pictish people. It introduces a Gurian Pictish warrior woman Brissa, with whom Conan becomes intimate. (The Gurian Picts are represented as preservers of the noble Pictish type, as opposed to the degenerate tribes common to the Hyborian Age.) It also offers the visionary involvement of the shade of Brule--the Pictish companion of King Kull of Atlantis from the Thurian Age of Howard's fantasized pre-antiquity.

In both visual and verbal style, these comics largely reflect a return to the 1970s Marvel era. The illustration work by Roberto De La Torre is very much evocative of the John Buscema Conan, both in composition and rendering. Taking advantage of advances in production technology, the colorists have adopted the more shaded palette of the later Dark Horse comics--sometimes to the point of muddiness, I fear. Writer Jim Zub is a bit gabby, on the lines of Roy Thomas. He indulges in the sort of forsoothly archaicisms that Howard's prose spurned. He also lacks the patience that Tim Truman showed in letting the pictures tell the story. One way in which these comics are not a throwback to the offerings on the supermarket carousel racks of my childhood is the heightened saliency of sex and violence, which is certainly a match for anything that later comics and cinema adaptations have led readers to expect.

An appendix offers collected editorial sidebars from Jeffrey Shanks, who does a passable job of summarizing the history of the Conan character and the literary legacies involved in the present comic. He does make a misstep in comparing Howard's "little people" to Tolkien's hobbits, when Howard's model was clearly in the earlier tales from Arthur Machen, which are not so relevant to Tolkien, whose inspirations were folklore, fairy tale, and Dunsany. Machen did access that folklore, but he is responsible for the transformation that Shanks attributes to Howard.

There is a complete covers gallery reproducing the 54 covers under which the five individual floppies had been issued. I'm glad for this feature, as long as publishers insist on the bloated alternate cover practice, but the postage-stamp size of the gallery images leave quite a bit to be desired. A few bonus character sketches of Brissa are nice enough.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book, and I'll be likely to read its sequels.

A fairly reasonable attempt at bringing Conan back into comic book form, with some excellent, grim artwork reminiscent of some of Frazetta’s work (with some images in direct homage through many of the character poses), and some wonderfully evocative painted landscapes throughout.

The main issue is that whilst it does a fine job honouring the background of the lore with a throwback to his early days (including a nicely drawn round up of some of Howard’s stories in the prologue), the overall story feels too much like what modern audiences think Conan is supposed to be rather than what the original Conan was all about. Yes, Conan hit bad people and eldritch horrors with his sword, but there was usually plenty more going on than just that.

This is just one long series of sequential battles, full of over the top violence and not really much else. No soul, no depth and for me very little fun. Apart from his Pict companion Brissa (who is the star here really), none of the characters are notable and the “big bad” is largely glossed over. Even Conan himself is fairly dull here.
Contrast it to a classic Howard story and you can see the difference.

If you want a brutal, dark and visceral version of Conan and nothing else, this does that very well. If you want something a bit more fun and well rounded, maybe skip this round. ( )