THE HYBOREAN AGE

Art by Alex Ross

Though by no means a hardcore fan, I do enjoy dabbling now and then in the sword-and-sorcery genre, and for me, no world better represents my ideal version of that concept than Robert E. Howard's "Hyborean Age" featuring Conan the Cimmerian and Red Sonja, she-devil of the Hyrkanian steppes.

A while back I covered MARVEL TEAM-UP #79, which featured a pairing of Spider-Man and Sonja, and noted at the time that my review copy of the issue was included as part of Marvel's printing of the 2009 SPIDER-MAN/RED SONJA mini-series. Since then, a couple of "Unboxings" have shown that I picked up the CONAN/RED SONJA and RED SONJA/CONAN crossovers from Dark Horse and Dynamite, respectively. And on top of all that, last year I pitched in a few dollars to a Dynamite-sponsored Humble Bundle which netted me a digital version of the opening story arc to Dynamite's 2005 RED SONJA ongoing series.

Now, each Friday for the next few weeks, I'm going to cover all those bits and pieces of Hyborean lore. We'll lead off with RED SONJA #1 - 6, followed a week later by SPIDER-MAN/RED SONJA, then it'll be on to CONAN/RED SONJA before closing things out with RED SONJA/CONAN. So this past Friday's MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE installment was merely a prelude to a month of brawny barbarians, buxom she-warriors, and more decapitations than you can handle. I'm looking forward to this.