COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Conan the Barbarian 23 Universal
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Grade:
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9.6
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Page Quality:
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WHITE
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Certification #:
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2080279004
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Owner:
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Lee K
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
"Swords in the Night!" - which, I must confess, is better than Swords in the Knight - at least personally. So...here's the thing, or at least one of the many things, of things that I think about when I'm talking crap about covers...which is - I hate word balloons. They're almost always dumb, redundant, and unneeded to convey what's going on in the cover image. And one of the things that is uber-sweet about BWS' covers is the utter lack of word balloons, except issue 1 (where it really isn't bad or intrusive) & issue 2 (where it is absolutely god-awful and dumb). But now, Gil Kane is doing the cover in the Marvel Way; this issue - which feels and reads like we're trying to make it a Spiderman issue. Please no! Spiderman is heinous. Yep - two word balloons, unnecessary word balloons and an antagonist who has to announce his own name. Just ugh. Now that's out of the way - lets look at the cover - we've got a fight on a staircase. That's totally Conan. Conan has already whipped some butt. The scene behind him is dark and littered with corpses (the kind that don't move), but I love that there's still texture back there - hints of lights & windows; I also totally dig on the fact that the stairs aren't rolling in blood - yeah, there's some blood, but its not all over the place.
Conan's got himself a cutlass style blade with little to no curve & a short blade - let's call it a knife even though it has crosspiece, since it appears to have a single edge. He's got the high ground (probably not the big Obi Wan advantage when facing an opponent with wings - but maybe there's a roof), so he's scrunched down a little in his stance. That's good by me - he's providing cover for his exposed shins. Our wordy antagonist (ooohhh, the VULTURE) is standing on two different levels - but he left knee is bent like really deep. Like painfully deep and he's on steps what looks like three levels apart. I'm going to make a leap of faith here and assume he doesn't weigh all that much - assuming he flies on those tiny wings - so that position isn't too difficult to maintain. If he really is a lightweight - like literally - I can't see him electing to use a sword of that style, it doesn't play into his strengths which should be quick, darting strikes that are going to have to wear the monster barbarian down. Yeah, not going to happen anyway, but the wrong sword to do it with if he tried.
Overall - I don't know - there's a lot going on that I do like, but really - the word balloons. Just no. I'm going to have to say this cover is tied for least favorite in this set.
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