Marvel Comics has announced King Conan, their latest new project featuring the iconic barbarian hero. However, this story has a unique selling point. It's poised to finally shed light on the last and least known chapter of Conan's life.
King Conan is written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Mahmud Asrar, the same team who launched Marvel's monthly Conan the Barbarian comic in 2019. This six-issue series picks up where their run left off in Conan the Barbarian #12, as an aging King Conan and his son, Prince Conn, sail west from Aquilonia and seek out new adventures in an unfamiliar land.
Conan creator Robert E. Howard never got around to chronicling this period of the character's long and bloody career before the author's death in 1936, and none of the movies, comics or other licensed stories have ever revealed what happened after Conan sailed west. It's unclear whether this series will actually depict Conan's death, but Marvel is ominously billing it as the Cimmerian's "last stand."
“I knew as soon as Mahmud, Matt and I finished 'The Life and Death of Conan' in CONAN THE BARBARIAN, one of the absolute personal highlights from my career as a comic book writer, that I wasn't done hanging out with everyone's favorite Cimmerian,” Aaron told Marvel.com. “As King Conan rode into the sunset at the end of that story, with his son, Prince Conn, by his side, I always knew where I wanted that story to take us next. Now at last comes that next chapter, as Mahmud, Matt and I reunite to reveal a pivotal moment in Conan's life as a king, as a father, as a mortal enemy of snake-worshipping Stygian wizards and as a barbarian who was born to chase the wind, even to the ends of the earth.”
King Conan #1 is slated to hit stores on December 15, 2021.
Marvel is also gearing up for Star Wars: Crimson Reign, a new limited series that builds on the fallout of the War of the Bounty Hunters crossover. The series will revolve heavily around the familiar movie character who recently made their surprise return in War of the Bounty Hunters.
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