Conan the Barbarian: Thrice Marked For Death part two sees us follow Conan, now working with three others, as he attempts to carry out a commission to steal an item from the temple of Bel, the god of thieves.
Often, when reading a comic, there is a page or two that jumps out and captures your imagination. It will stick with you while you finish reading and long after. The second page of Conan does exactly that, feeding the senses and readying us for what’s to come. By paying attention to the small details in a comic it becomes possible to unlock a lot of meaning, as well as even create some that was never intended. So perhaps if we focus on just that second page, we can discover a little bit more about what this story is telling us?
Firstly it’s simple. Four panel grid, slightly irregular with all four the same height but a touch more width to the first and fourth, though the use of colours – which we will come to later – stops the slightly bigger images dominating the page.
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As with many of the best pages of comics, this one presents a self contained story. Each image juxtapositioned against the next. Firstly we see Conan in a moment of intimacy with Bêlit. But there is nothing carnal here, which is, until now, almost the only kind of closeness we have seen Conan sharing with women. He is putting a necklace around her neck as she lays against him. The colours used are light, almost washed out pastels. They are relaxed, we are relaxed. Artist and colour artist Doug Braithwaite and Diego Rodriguez have created a moment of stillness that anyone who has ever curled up with a loved one can automatically relate to.
The next panel sees Bêlit dead. Though we’ve already witnessed this in the previous comic, there it was from behind, a shocking scene but one that was almost self censored. Now, as we look up at her hanging corpse through Conan’s eyes there is a brutality in what we’re seeing. Gone are the light pastels, instead the panel is filled with a crimson fire. Deep reds and scarlets over almost the entire image, a visual violence that is only lightened on her face and most especially her eyes. The colours force us to look, locking onto that death gaze. White, bright, and open in death, she stares down at us – at Conan – and it is a shocking moment.
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The third panel cleverly continues this leitmotif of colour and power, but now those reds are the fires of passion. Again she is bare chested but instead of the vulnerability we saw in the previous panel, here she is a creature owning her body. Once again we are seeing her though Conan’s eyes, dancing on the deck of her boat, the moment he he knew he had to have her. Powerful, bold, vital and alive. There is violence here, but it is the primal violence of sex.
The final panel returns us again to the pastels, but now instead of creating a lightness and purity, it’s an almost washed out feel. We see Conan, so often described as ‘unbowed’, stood at the base of the mast where his love is hung. His head is low, he leans on crates for support. That calm has returned but now shows a man who has no idea what to do next, a man whose world has ended but he somehow has to go on anyway. It mocks the shared intimacy he had enjoyed previously and now it is the stillness of utter, bereft loneliness.
Consistently it has been difficult to criticise writer Jim Zub‘s skill at crafting prose for his characters. Here is no exception as he uses choice words to give even greater context to the art, as in a few well-chosen words he discusses the very nature of the gods and their relationship with humanity. Together Conan and Bêlit loved too deeply, they burned too bright, the gods themselves might have noticed them, which cannot end well.
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Of course that page must lead onto something else, and in the next page we learn that if the human will is strong enough, even the gods cannot keep such people apart.
These four panels, so close to the book’s beginning, herald an excellent comic. One with twists and turns, stunning art, a well paced story, and a riveting cliff-hanger. Each turn of the page impresses, with the now standard and much anticipated full width panel being joined by more page panels than we’ve seen so far, creating a sumptuous feast for our eyes to gorge themselves upon. It feels like everyone involved has taken things up several notches, and it’s hard to imagine what can come next that could be better. This is by far the best comic in the series so far; a glorious read from start to finish. It cannot be recommended highly enough.
Conan the Barbarian #6 is out on 27th December from Titan Comics.
