Review:
Conan: The Weight of the Crown

Publisher's Blurb:

With a heavy dose of wanderlust in his heart - reinforced by his grandfather's wild takes of travel, magic, and Hyboria's splendors - Conan leaves Cimmeria for a second time after the murder of Caollan, his lover. Betrayed by one of his fellow Cimmerians, already disgusted with the world's cities and the hallmarks of "civilization," and having lived as a loner, thief, and hunter, young Conan now seeks only to hire out his sword arm and earn some easy gold...

Dark Horse tagged Artist/Writer Darick Robertson to open the new year with a bloody bang in Conan: The Weight of the Crown (TWotC), a one-shot graphic novel featuring everyone's favorite bloodthirsty Cimmerian. Being a one-shot, the story itself is extremely easy to slide into, and isn't weighed down by the typical canonical baggage that would generally be associated with setting a story in an ongoing series (Conan the Barbarian).

In truth, all you need is the publisher's blurb to get your bearings straight in The Weight of the Crown, something that I am quite pleased with as I haven't been keeping up lately with the ongoing series; an oversight I intend to remedy eventually because frankly it's the best of Conan in any medium excluding the original Robert E. Howard fiction of course. If you take nothing else away from this article, recognize that Conan the Barbarian (the series) demands to be read.

With that said, let's talk about Conan as he appears here, a young and inexperienced mercenary, not yet tempered with the wisdom age brings. TWotC is essentially a story about Conan's first real taste with Leadership (or Kingship in this particular instance) and how he ultimately fails, quite profoundly I might add, at the task before him; but like all great failures, he is bettered for it. Near the end we the readers catch a glimpse at the nature of his character that will eventually propel him to Throne of Aquilonia where his reign fairs much better, and a certain extent that makes the blood spattered trip worthwhile.