Conan the Cimmerian #14: Home for the Hunt

Regular Conan artists Giorello and Villarrubia are taking a couple of months off, so issue 14 was drawn by Joe Kubert und regular writer Timothy Truman. Kubert's art covers the few pages at the beginning and end which feature Conan, while Truman drew the middle part, a story set in Conan's home village. Truman's rough style was used to great effect in a Conan mini-series, Conan and the Songs of the Dead, which was pure horror pulp fiction. Here it is somewhat wasted on a rushed tale of a monster out to kill Conan's mother. I preferred Kubert's few pages which tell the familiar tale of our favourite barbarian finding himself at odds with the dandified behaviour of the rich and noble; even if his style, coupled with the flat colouring used for this issue, comes across as a bit old-fashioned (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Still, this book is only a filler, and coming hot on the heels of the excellent Black Colossus story arc, a bit disappointing.

Issue 15 is also slated to be a one-shot, a fully painted issue written by Tim Truman and illustrated by Paul Lee.