Conan the Barbarian: The Mask of Acheron – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

This unmemorable comic acts as a prequel to the film starring Jason Momoa, who was so brilliantly menacing in Game of Thrones. The comic contains forty-eight story pages detailing the quest of Khalar Zym and his daughter to restore the all-powerful Mask of Acheron, eight text pages about the empire of Acheron, six adverts and a two-page map of Hyboria; by far the most interesting of those pages being, unfortunately, the adverts for Munchkin Conan and a new Angel & Faith comic.

I might give it another read after watching the film, to see where everyone came from (Conan is forced to drop boiling metal on his poor Dad’s head), but there’s no other reason to read this over the frequently superb Conan comics Dark Horse have previously published, especially at a premium price. (The creators are uncredited in my pre-release pdf; I’ve taken their details from Dark Horse’s website.)

Conan the Barbarian: The Mask of Acheron, by Stuart Moore and Gabriel Guzman (Dark Horse, one-shot, 64pp).