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The Chronicles Of Conan Volume 5: The Shadow In The Tomb And Other Stories

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With Dark Horse securing the rights to turn Robert E. Howard's seminal sword & sorcery hero into a comic book for a new generation of fans, they began reprinting Marvel's original comic books written by Roy Thomas and drawn (mostly) by Barry Windsor-Smith (and Gil Kane). Since my original comic books are all sitting in sealed plastic and backing boards it was great to have these available without touching those classics with my bare hands. I was also impressed with the computerized coloring they came up with, and when Windsor-Smith's run ended with the stories collection in "The Chronicles of Conan, Volume 4" so did my interest in the reprints. But now there is reason to reconsider.

"The Chronicles of Conan, Volume 5: The Shadow in the Tomb and Other Stories" reprints issues #27-34 of Marvel's "Conan the Barbarian" comic book. Thomas is still at the helm, as he would be for the book's entire run, and John Buscema has taken over the penciling duties, with Ernie Chua as the primary inker. With Thomas continuing to adapt Howard's original stories, such as "The Blood of Belshazzar," it was Buscema's vision of a more muscular Conan that became the standard image of the barbarian, especially when Arnold Schwarzenegger played the role in a couple of movies.

What we have here to begin with are a series of one-issue stories. "The Blood of Bel-Hissar" finds Conan making his way across the desert and getting caught up in an effort to get an infamous blood jewel. "Moon of Zembabwei" has Conan fighting an ape-god in the jungle, while "Two Against Turan" takes place in the capital city of Aghrapur where Conan becomes involved in the intrigues of an ambitious wizard named Ormraxes before being "persuaded" to join the Turanian army. But most of "The Hand of Negral" is Conan dealing with palace intrigue in Yaralet rather than fighting with the troops. "The Shadow in the Tomb" has Conan's detachment trapped by hill men and before facing their champion in a duel to decide their fate, Conan recalls fighting his shadow as a lad (giving Buscema a chance to draw Conan with the horned helmet and three medallions of his youth that Windsor-Smith finally made a point of getting rid of).

The cover design here comes from the splash page of "Flame Winds of Lost Khitai," which is actually adapted from a Norvell Page novel. This is good because it finally means a multi-part story. Conan is given a mission to sneak into Khitai and deal with the Wizards of Wan Tengri. "Death and 7 Wizards" contains a nice two-page spread where Buscema gets to take Conan down memory lane again in terms of the Windsor-Smith years, as our hero ends up in the arena fighting for his life again. The story concludes in "The Temptress in the Tower of Flame," where Conan ends up getting out of Khitai alive having once again learned a lesson about why you never trust wizards when it comes to anything.

This (free) adaptation is the best story in the book but it is nothing special. But we know that Thomas and Buscema do not really hit their stride until they get to their epic "Queen of the Black Coast" storyline where they stretch out Howard's original story and flesh it out in detail. At this point they are figuring things out and Thomas is apparently too tightly wedded to adapting everything Robert E. Howard ever wrote in his entire life.