Conan: Born on the Battlefield

Story: Kurt Busiek

Art: Greg Ruth

This Dark Horse archival hardbound fills in the details of Conan's youth among the Cimmerians. Busiek does a superb job capturing young Conan's personality and attitude with events both predictable and surprising. A bully called Donal challenges Conan for the leadership of their little tribe of rug rats to his ever-lasting regret. The reader will be forgiven for thinking Busiek is setting us up for a later showdown, but what happens is utterly surprising and still logical, fulfilling drama's most difficult demands.

We see Conan's first love affair, and the siege of Vanarium that plays out across the page like "The Fall of the Two Towers."

Ruth's sometimes impressionistic, sometimes expressionistic artwork is well-suited to the subject matter, but I had difficulty telling Conan apart from his playmates during the early sections. This is not a problem in the later stages. A worthy addition to the Conan canon.