Today an article came across my Google feed about an upcoming comic book series, and I'm pretty excited about it. As you can see from the cover above, it stars some of the grittier Marvel favorites, with one oddball exception: Conan the Barbarian.
Last year Marvel reacquired the rights to Conan from Dark Horse and they've spent the first part of 2019 reintroducing titles featuring everyone's favorite Cimmerian. I'm a big fan of Conan, but I haven't read the new series. However, this Savage Avengers has got me intrigued. It has the potential to be either really great, or really dumb. Or maybe even both at the same time.
I'm sure there will be some standard "fish out of water" stuff, with Conan marveling at the new technology of our age, ala The 1980's Masters of the Universe Movie or the SNL "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer" sketches. I'm sure he and Wolverine will fight each other, and he'll probably try to get with Elektra. It has the potential to fall into so many traps and tropes, but it also has the potential to be really really awesome.
From the looks of it, they've got a solid creative team on board, and they're actually putting some resources behind promoting the book. There's even a teaser in the Avengers Free Comic Book Day offering this year. So maybe it won't be terrible.
Mostly I'm excited to see Conan out of his element. Other than the odd one-shot crossover, he stays pretty firmly planted in the Hyborian Age. On the surface, he seems really outgunned. He doesn't have a healing factor, he can't track ninja assassins by their breath or heartbeats, and one well-placed bullet from the Punisher could put him on his back. So I'm very interested to see how they keep Conan relevant in the context of mutants and superheroes.
I'm going into it with an open mind, and I will be there in May, reading issue #1, fully expecting an entertaining ride.
