Rating: 4/5 – A Classic Conan Tale Retold by Two Maestros of Sword and Sorcery
An old king is grieving for his beloved queen inside her dark but ornate tomb. A lowly scribe quietly enters and is almost accidently eviscerated by the still very capable warrior king. The king soon realizes his mistake and plunks down right there in the tomb, with wine, to tell his life story. This is writer Tim Truman’s effective way of using a third person to tell Conan’s story in one big flashback. Overall, The Hour of the Dragon, is a very enticing fantasy comic leaving me excited for more of the story.
The Hour of the Dragon, is Conan creator Robert E. Howard’s only story written as a complete novel. The book deal actually fell through and was later published broken up in sections. All the other REH Conan stories were only short stories written for the pulp magazines of the 1930’s. The novel will be adapted in this series from Dark Horse in twelve issues, in two six issue mini-series.
Tim Truman is faithful to the original Conan story but not afraid to put a bit of his own flavor into the mix. A lot of this issue is story set-up but necessary for the scope of this epic tale. Tomás Giorello’s fantasy artwork is exquisite with heaps of added details. His tight pencils are not inked but José Villarrubia’s colors really make it all work gorgeously. The whole comic is really a nice tight package with Richard Starkings’ spot-on letters, and Gerald Parel’s alluring cover.
A King Conan comic by Truman and Giorello is really like your favorite rock band playing one of their classic tunes live. They’re giving the fans what they want, and seem more than happy to oblige. This is the third King Conan series from the duo at Dark Horse Comics. Truman also has written twenty-five issues of Conan the Cimmerian, with Giorello on art duties for most of those issues. This comic book team is very confident with what they’re doing on the Conan property and it shows on the comic book page.
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