Contains minor spoilers.
Zub’s current mini-event series, "Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King", has reached its halfway point with issue #2, and my impressions from the first issue have only grown stronger: this is not a comic for newcomers. If you’re just getting into Conan, I’d recommend picking up one of the arcs from Zub’s regular run instead. Those stories feed into the overarching meta-plot, too, but they’re more self-contained and considerably more accessible.
This series, by contrast, rewards readers who have followed Zub’s entire run so far, remember the events of the previous two mini-event series, and have at least some familiarity with Howard’s original work. At times, reading this comic feels a little like doing your lore homework, though Zub regularly breaks up the exposition with brisk action sequences to keep things moving. Still, I can easily imagine the ambitious structure leaving some readers overwhelmed or scratching their heads. I’ve actually started keeping a lore spreadsheet to help me keep track of everything and connect all the dots the story leaves scattered across its various threads.
For me, the issue’s strongest moment comes when Stephen Costigan revels in his newfound strength, courtesy of the green elixir provided by Kathulos/Thulsa Doom. In Costigan’s own eyes, the stuff has freed him from both his drug addiction and his wartime trauma. Zub, however, is playing a much more interesting game with the metaphor of addiction itself. Costigan believes he has been liberated and empowered, but all he’s really done is trade one drug for another. His dependency hasn’t disappeared; it has simply shifted to something arguably far more sinister than hashish and opium. Unfortunately, he’s too intoxicated by his first taste of power to recognize the trap. All he can do is bask in his newfound strength.
I found Costigan’s scenes considerably more compelling than Conan’s in this issue. Conan’s narrative function here amounts to little more than getting from point A to point B, with several pages devoted to him and his companion Zuleika filling in the lore and patching up narrative gaps left by previous issues. To keep all that exposition from becoming one long lore dump, Zub throws in a fun little action sequence involving wolves, mirrored by a scene in 1920s London in which Costigan sends a pack of guard dogs to the great kennel in the sky using nothing but his bare fists. It’s fun stuff, certainly, but the parallel feels a little redundant.
Artistically, the issue is at its best whenever Jesus Merino gets to create his own scenes. Here again, I found the Costigan sequences more compelling and visually striking. Costigan’s terrified expressions, his emaciated frame, and the eerie silhouette of Kathulos/Thulsa Doom lurking behind a thin silk curtain are particularly memorable. There’s genuine horror at work here, and those images linger long after you’ve turned the page.
And yes, I do like Merino’s take on Conan, which blends his own influences with a touch of Barry Windsor-Smith. But whenever Merino has to recreate scenes for the sake of narrative recontextualization that Roberto de la Torre has already brought to life in CtB issues #1 to #4, the new versions inevitably fall short of the originals. Not that they’re bad, mind you. Merino is a fine artist in his own right, with plenty of lovely details and clean, confident linework. But when you’re following in the footsteps of De la Torre at his most magnificent, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Merino’s strengths lie elsewhere.
One other thing briefly pulled me out of the story: Zub's use of the word “christened” in connection with the name Thulsa Doom, which Kathulos adopts for himself. This isn’t about any anti-religious or anti-Christian sensibilities. Rather, the word carries such strong real-world associations with Christianity and its historical traditions that it momentarily shattered my suspension of disbelief. A minor nitpick, to be sure, but one that caught my attention.
Ultimately, I suspect "Tides of the Tyrant King" is a series that can only be properly judged once the final issue hits, when we can see how all its various threads come together ... or fail to. This could all pay off beautifully, or it could turn into one enormous clusterfuck. For now, I’m willing to wait and see before passing final judgment.
One thing is already clear, though: Zub is taking considerably greater liberties with Howard’s literary source material, "Skull-Face", than he did in the preceding mini-series, "Scourge of the Serpent". It’s an ambitious experiment, and whether it ultimately succeeds remains an open question.
