Conan Volume 4: The Hall of the Dead and Other Stories

Conan the badass Cimmerian is back in the fourth installment of the awesome nemedian chronicles. This time we get to see 3 different writers in action, Kurt Busiek, Mike Mignolia (a personal favorite), and Timothy trueman. Illustrated once again by Cary Nord. One of the Greatest features of the book is it goes into great detail as to the beginnings of a unique relationship between Conan and Nestor. Like the other volumes in the series you'll get all of your gory hack and slash action, but this book throws in a more mythical aspect, and definitely less human interaction between Conan and his typical foes. I hope that this review has helped you in your decision. -D PS: Beware of the frogs.

Wonderful! The story is great! The drawings are wonderful! And the new characters (Nestor) are brilliantly charismatic. I won't write a long text about it, because everything seems to have been said already about it. But I definitely wanted to concur with what others said here. It's a great comic book like you don't often have the chance to get!

The abrupt departure of writer Kurt Busiek didn't slow the momentum of one of the best comic books on the racks. Mike Mignola deftly handles the creepy "Hall of the Dead" adaptation following a very strong prequel story from Busiek introducing Nestor, the rogue Gunderman. Hall is a a weird story and very well suited to Mignola's strenths and minimalist scripting. Cary Nord produces some of his best solo work in this volume, and even though this story arc was plagued by chronic lateness, the results make the wait worth while. Absolutely beautiful. The final two chapers are written by new regular scribe Tim Truman and herald some good things to come. Here's to more like this!

Robert E. Howard wrote a number of fantastic Conan stories in his lifetime but The Hall of the Dead was not one of them. Not that The Hall of the Dead isn't fantastic, but rather Howard didn't write it, at least not in full. Years after his suicide in 1936, numerous Howard material was found, which included a number of unpublished stories as well as various fragments and outlines for other stories. Among those was a brief outline for The Hall of the Dead. This story first saw publication in 1967 in Conan, the first in the series of paperbacks published by Lancer books and later reprinted by Ace Books. The story was credited to both Howard, and writer L. Sprague De Camp. De Camp is a bit of an anti-hero among Conan fans...On one hand, he played a pivotal role in renewing interest in Howard's work in the 1960's. De Camp, for a time, was the overseer of Howard's works. Conan might have been a mere pulp footnote were it not for De Camp. On the other hand, De Camp set himself up as a posthumous collaborator of Howard's from which he benefited greatly. But he also took it upon himself to edit Howard's original work. Those Conan tales in the Lancer and Ace versions were not pure Howard, and it would still be decades before these tales would be reprinted in their pure forms for the first time since originally published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in the 1930's. That now brings us to the Dark Horse version of the story, with its own unique take on the tale. Kurt Busiek, Mike Mignola, and Timothy Truman share the writing chores, while Cary Nord handles the art. For those interested in chronology, this story takes place shortly after the events in Tower of the Elephant, one of Howard's most famous Conan stories. This is fairly early in Conan's life, he's around twenty years old at the time and already has made a name for himself as a capable thief. The story is set in spider-haunted Zamora and its infamous City of Thieves. Conan is fresh off a daring robbery of a rich magistrate and added insult to injury by sleeping with his wife. The Magistrate sets a trap for Conan but instead captures another thief, Nestor the Gunderman. Nestor negotiates his release by pledging to capture Conan which the magistrate enforces with a sorcerous bond. The two thieves eventually set aside their rivalry when they discover the ruins of a forgotten civilization, rumored to hold a vast horde of treasure. But the treasure has powerful guardians, and no one who has visited there has ever returned. What Busiek and Co., have done is take the basic Howard plot and bookend it with a meatier beginning and end, all told collecting eight issues of the monthly Conan comic series. Mignola, who handles the middle portion of the story, infuses it with distinct elements of H.P. Lovecraft lore. While perhaps not intended by Howard, he was a fan of Lovecraft's work and wrote a number of stories that were heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Nord continues to improve as a Conan artist an

In this latest installment of Dark Horse's Conan comics, everyone's favorite Cimmerian brigand is still in the thief-city of Zamora and gaining quite the reputation as a master burglar - until his most recent exploit runs him afoul of a jealous local thief, his latest lover, and a powerful magistrate who wants his head. Chased out of town by a veritable army and winning through only by the skin of his teeth, Conan finds himself in a ruined, forgotten city ruled by unspeakable creatures - and its former inhabitants. Can Conan survive his explorations of the Halls of the Dead? And if so, what other dangers await him beyond? You'll have to pick up this volume to find out. One of the more interested elements in this volume is the fact that it marks the end of Kurt Busiek's run on the comic (he wrote the first two chapers) and includes three installments written by Hellboy's Mike Mignola, as well as two by Timothy Truman (who you might remember from his work on Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo in the 1990s, among others). The Mignola installments are an especially satisfying treat - it is noted in the book that Mignola provided page layouts for series penciler Cary Nord to work off of, and the pages of Mignola's three chapters practically bristle with his singular style; fans of Hellboy will delight in seeing how Mignola's visions of monsters, undead, and just plain creepiness translates into a Conan yarn - and how beautifully it works. Truman's installments are entertaining as well - by turns toungue-in-cheek, brutal, intense and amusing; and the amazing artwork of Cary Nord and Dave Stewart will stun you throughout. Not to be missed!