WONDER WOMAN/CONAN #1 - 6

"A CROW WITHOUT MERCY" | "BLADE, BRACELETS, AND BLOOD AND SAND"
"THE DANCE OF WICKED CROWS" | "WAR AND THE WIND RIDER"
"LIKE BLOOD FROM THE SKY" | "A FEAST OF FORBIDDEN FLESH"
Writer: Gail Simone | Penciler: Aaron Lopresti | Inker: Matt Ryan
Colorists: Wendy Broome with Tony Avina | Letterer: Saida Temofonte
Editor: Kristy Quinn | Group Editor: Jim Chadwick

I bought the digital collection of this series on a lark during a Wonder Woman sale at Comixology a while back. I like Gail Simone (though I've honestly read very little of her work outside of her brief DEADPOOL/AGENT X run of a couple decades ago), I like Aaron Lopresti, and I like Conan and Wonder Woman -- so why not give it a try?

The story, in my opinion, is more like a Conan adventure guest-starring Wonder Woman than a true team-up of co-headliners. I have no problem with that, but it seems worth mentioning. It follows Conan as he makes his way into a city of slavers, where he watches a woman battle in a gladiatorial arena. Conan believes he recognizes her as his first love, a girl from a tribe of women who he once knew as Yanna. Leaping to her aid, Conan is captured and imprisoned with the woman.

Of course this is actually Wonder Woman -- it's not a mystery and so the story makes no attempt to hide it. However she has no memory of her true self, and the real puzzle for readers is -- what's the deal here? Is this what we used to call an "Elseworlds" story? I.e., is this just sort of a case of "What If Wonder Woman existed in the Hyborean Age"? As the issues progress, Conan trickles out his history with the girl, Yanna, who he believed killed when they were both teens. But, come issue 5, it becomes clear that this really is Wonder Woman. She's been lost to time, and her fellow Amazons, sent back to the past by Queen Hippolyte, find her and bring her home to present-day Themyscira.

CONAN / RED SONJA

Script by: Gail Simone & Jim Zub | Pencils by: Dan Panosian (#1-2) & Randy Green (#3-4)
Inks by: Dan Panosian (#1-2) & Rick Ketcham (#3-4) | Colors by: Dave Stewart
Letters by: Jimmy Betancourt at Comicraft
Conan was created by Robert E. Howard
Red Sonja is based on a character created by Robert E. Howard

At some point in the nineties, the rights to Red Sonja and Conan split apart. Sonja had been created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel's CONAN THE BARBARIAN comic series, but somehow her intellectual property was deemed separate from Conan's but also separate from Marvel's. Both IPs were allowed to make use of Robert E. Howard's Hyborean Age settings and concepts, but neither could use the other's title character. Thus, for close to two decades, Conan has been published by Dark Horse Comics while Sonja has had a home at Dynamite for about the past ten years. And for a while, rumor had it that Dark Horse and Dynamite were not willing to play nice for any sort of crossover.

So it was kind of a big deal in 2013 when the two publishers jointly announced a CONAN/RED SONJA mini-series to be written by the characters' respective ongoing writers, Brian Wood and Gail Simone, and published by Dark Horse. The series eventually saw print in 2015 with Wood replaced by Jim Zub, and a collected edition was released later in the year -- which brings us here.

The story by Simone and Zub follows Conan and Red Sonja across a handful of meetings spanning several years of their lives. The first encounter each other in their youth, a pair of brigands hired separately to steal a precious box from a corrupt prince. The container's contents are eventually revealed as deadly "bloodroot seeds", and the man after them is a servant of the evil wizard Thoth-Amon. Conan and Sonja are unimpressed, burning the seeds before they can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction, then killing their employer and going their separate ways.

THE UNBOXING - JANUARY 2014

Time for a new feature. The second week of every month, I receive a box of pre-ordered trades and/or hardcovers from my preferred online retailer, Discount Comic Book Service. I've decided, for no particularly good reason, that the first free Sunday following the arrival of said box (meaning a Sunday when I don't have another post already scheduled), I will post the contents here. It'll give an idea of what collections you might expect to see covered at some point in the future.

This month, my goodies include:

• DEADPOOL BY JOE KELLY OMNIBUS
  
• DEADPOOL CLASSIC, vol. 7 (the first part of Gail Simone's run)
  
• THANOS: INFINITY ABYSS
  
• TRANSFORMERS: REGENERATION ONE, vol. 3

Of the above, I expect REGENERATION ONE is the book I'll get to first for coverage here. But I'm waiting until volume 4 comes out as well, then I'll cover both together, as I did a few months back with volumes 1 and 2.

The Deadpool books are items I want to get to one day, but for the foreseeable future, they're just shelf-candy/skimming material. I have very good memories of reading Kelly's DEADPOOL when I was in college, and the Simone run, with spectacular art and color from UDON Studios, was a whole lot of fun. But I won't get to that book until volume 8 is released to complete Simone's time on the series.

And INFINITY ABYSS is Jim Starlin's last really good work at Marvel, so I expect I'll cover it here eventually as well, but not until after I've gotten to Starlin's CAPTAIN MARVEL, WARLOCK, SILVER SURFER, INFINITY GAUNTLET, INFINITY CRUSADE, and INFINITY WAR. So don't hold your breath for it.

Final note: There are plenty of books on my bookcase already that I haven't gotten to, so even though I'll be posting everything new here going forward, there will still certainly be some surprises coming up. Plus there will be certain things I'll pick up elsewhere, from Amazon, etc., which will not make "The Unboxing". Unless it's something I'm really excited about, then perhaps I'll do a supplemental post.