Customer Reviews

Conan Volume 3: Tower Of The Elephant & Stories (v. 3)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
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While this volume has the same story line padding of the previous two that padding is showing more depth and originality. Conan is growing on every page. He's smart, resourceful but still a little naive which makes his adventures all the more interesting. I've mention my reservations with Kurt Busiek's writing in the previous volume but this string of tales shows that he can write some engaging situations and has a keen grip on Conan's character development. My greatest concern is that the writing might be too clever, more like Fritz Leiber and less like Robert Howard. Is that really a bad thing? Even Fritz saluted Robert's work and thought his writing opened a door to a type of fiction that was truly unique in it's day.

Cary Nord and Dave Stewart are still a delightful art team. My two reservations are that while the coloring is good there's a dream-like haze, here. This has been a problem from the outset of this series. He has a rich palette and very good range so it's no worse than a lot of the films being made today with the manipulation of color in this digital age. I just wish there were deeper blacks and an occasional crystal white highlight. My second pick is a simple one; Conan's looking a little on the loutish side. I hope Cary moves away from this at some point because it has a way of making Conan look older than he is in these tales. I've always been fond of Yag Kosha's summation of Conan when he says, "The clean, lean, fierceness of the wastelands marks you." This does not make me think of a burly man-boy, but that of powerful, lithe man. Howard was fond of descriptions like compactly built and catlike and that does not summon up images of professional wrestlers from the television. Cary's not drawing Conan quite like the bodybuilders but Conan is starting to bulk up a bit more in his drawings.

Nitpicks, both, I assure you. The stories are showing Conan maturing, learning to flow more with the city dwellers surrounding him. While he still stands out his mannerisms show that he's starting to be at home in his new surroundings, the city of thieves. I particularly like his attempts at learning philosphical ideas.

Then's there's the bonus. The "Tower of the Elephant" adaptation is the best to date. To put the icing on this cake veteran comic artist (Batman, the Shadow, Carson of Venus, Conan, The Rocketeer, etc..) designer, cover artist and illustrator, Michael Kaluta draws the sequence explaining Yag Kosha's tragic history on Earth.

This volume is easily the best of the three to date.

As a fan of Robert E. Howard in general and Conan specifically, I've been pleasantly surprised by the treatment given these seminal stories by Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord. In the two previous volumes, each has been centered around a canonical Howard story (the Front Giant's Daughter and The God in the Bowl, respectively), with the storyline showing us what adventures lead up to the tale and what adventures subsequent happen as a consequence. Conan Vol. 3: Tower of the Elephant follows this same pattern and does not disappoint.

Picking up where Vol. 2 left off, we find a hungover Conan waking up in an inn, robbed blind by his companions. Fed up with what he sees as the wickedness of civilization, Conan skips town and begins his travels anew, fighting demons, Lovecraftian tentacle-beasts, dark sorceries, and scheming allies and lovers along the way. It is in coming to the wicked thief-city of Zamora that Conan learns of the mysterious Tower of the Elephant, and the supposed riches and unspeakable dangers that lay within. What follows is a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl-type story in the style that only Howard could tell it, with (as they said in the 1930s) a fantastically 'weird' finish.

Busiek treats Conan with respect and does justice to Howard's original vision. The pencil-sketch artword of Cary Nord, combined with the digital painting of Dave Stewart, creates a brilliant landscape of fluid action that is reminiscent of Frazetta artwork. I am consistently impressed with the quality of this series and look forward to future volumes. Fans of Conan, or of great graphic art, shouldn't hesitate before buying this. Enjoy!