From the mind of pulp titan Robert E. Howard comes a slew of thrilling tales of savage heroism and brutal adventure! This collection features larger-than-life Howard heroes like Dark Agnes, El Borak, the Sonora Kid, and, of course, Conan, and showcases some of today's top creators like Sean Phillips, Tony Parker, Joe Casey, Paul Tobin, and many, many more! This trade paperback collects all the original material from Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword #1 – #4, along with a cover and pin-up gallery.
Paul Tobin is the Eisner-award winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Bandette, Colder, and many other comic books and graphic series.
Bandette, drawn by Colleen Coover, was awarded the Eisner Award for Best Digital Series in 2013, 2016, and 2017; and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award for Graphic Literature in 2016. His original graphic novel I Was the Cat was nominated for an Eisner in 2015.
NOTE: I read the individual issues rather than the collection.
This was really good. It's an anthology comic featuring all of Howard's creations. Not only do we get the typical Conan and King Kull stories, but we get westerns, adventure stories, and more. There's a mixture of new material as well as classic reprints. Usually I don't care for mixing reprints in with new material, but in this case it works, possibly because some of the reprints are fairly obscure.
If you're a Robert E. Howard fan, you should definitely give this series a read.
Robert E. Howard is my favorite writer of all time. So I always approach any new treatment of his works with a very cautious attitude. I do NOT like it when people take liberties with the base concepts of his characters and change them into something "modern" or "more PC to fit the time". So I was extremely surprised to not only like but very much enjoy this comic anthology adaptation of many of Howard's characters. The stories are very well done adaptations of the stories. The coolest thing to me is that they choose both Howard's well know (Conan, Solomon Kane) and less well known (Dark Agnes, Bran Mak Morn, El Borak) characters. Great intro to the scope of Howard's work in comic form. Very Recommended
Collecting the "new" stories from the first 4 issues of the graphic novel.
I didn't see the "advantage" of re-collecting these, but they do make for a nice trade that exclude the re-prints that were in the series. Being a big Robert E. Howard fan though, I just knew I'd be getting this eventually... and eventually came alot sooner than I had originally planned.
The original Dark Horse series itself was presented in nice square bound comics, so this book is just "extra" as far as I felt concerned... but what the heck, right?
The stories and art do vary in quality, going from pretty darned good, to outright gawd-awful. Still, I cant complain seeing as having read the original from the series, I knew what I would be finding in this book.
Seeing as the original series has been on hiatus for about 18 months now, I wont hold my breath waiting for the second collected volume.
I initially read this as individual issues. I enjoyed the collected edition for as much as I enjoy anthologies, I hate the 30 day wait for the next installment.
The stories ranged from forgettable to pretty good. I liked the range of REH characters, including one I have not read before, The Sonora Kid, and one I’d never heard of: John Silent, but Silent is from a Solomon Kane fragment and almost felt like a cheat. I stopped in the midst of this and read the Solomon Kane Dark Horse Comic “Castle of the Devil”. The John Silent story here is a slight sequel to it.
I loved the idea of this series, an anthology comic showcasing all of Howard’s creations not just Conan, Kull and Solomon Kane. It featured new stories, reprinted in this volume, and reprints of older stuff. The reprints are not in these, and that’s a shame.
This collection offers graphic short stories in the tradition of pulp fiction of the first half of the 20th century with characters and world created by Robert E. Howard. All of the stories are masterfully adapted and crafted by top-notch writers and artists.
Ho acquistato il volume più per l'amore verso R.E.Howard che verso il valore dell'opera. Le storie sono da carine a belle, ma i disegni, a parte un paio, sono decisamente scarsi.
Credit to Dark Horse for producing a sampling of Howard’s lesser-known work, but the quality of this is too far afield, and too often lacking, to warrant serious recommendation.