r/ConanTheBarbarian

The model is finished and painted; it was a great pleasure to have made it and to see it in this final state.

​Just wanted to share this wooden beer mug I crafted recently for my collection.

​Everything was made entirely by hand, no power tools. Also in the photos: the axe I quickly forged to cut the staves because I didn't have a suitable one. I did almost all the woodwork with this hatchet.

​The tankard is, of course, set in the Conan context again (imagine a dim Cimmerian, Tauran, or Nemedian tavern 12.000 years ago - badly lit, the smell of cheap, sour wine and old sweat in the air, cutthroat mercenaries and adventurers from all Hyborian realms playing dice for their last pay or the meager loot taken from a fat traveling merchant, while barmaids, dancers, and harlots look for those with enough silver to spend the night...). But it would probably work in any other fantasy/LARP setting as well.

​The wood is cherry, cut from a nearly 40-year-old, well-seasoned log I still had lying around. It was treated multiple times exclusively with wood butter.

​The staves are as precisely joined as the deliberately irregular structure allows, and any remaining gaps were sealed with brewer's pitch/barrel sealant. So it’s completely watertight and functional.

​Height: 7" (18 cm)

​Weight (empty): ~53 oz (1500 g)

​Capacity: almost exactly 0.26 gal (1 liter)

​Materials: Cherry wood, steel, and custom forged bronze rivets.

​Now it's time to empty this thing. By Crom!

Well, maybe you're already tired of seeing my Conan statue here LOL, this is my last post about it, I promise 🤣🤣. My campaign is already live, I'm just very happy to have completed the sculpture to the very end, and being able to sell the file for printing is a gratifying and rewarding ending. I've been working with this for years, but after a long time I was able to do something that was entirely my own project, a project where I could unleash my artistic side and be happy!!! Maybe the campaign won't sell enough for what I need, but the experience I had was something I hadn't felt in a long time!! I'll leave the link to the campaign for printing enthusiasts, and for those who just want to take a look!!!

By Crom! That's a lot of authors! Many of the foreign ones on this list like Juraj Červenák and Jacek Piekara are legit full-time authors in their countries, with English Wikipedia pages and everything.

Why make this? Why not! It's not like anyone else was going to do it! Just assume everything between C and E tier is interchangable, with their works fluctuating from 5-7/10. There's only a clutch of authors in any language who get the character right.

Review of the 2025 Atlantean Award Winning Book. https://spraguedecampfan.wordpress.com/2026/08/18/review-robert-e-howards-hyborian-age-by-rodolfo-martinez/

REH was a pulp writer and a world-class pro at selling to that market.

His stories are perfect for the pulp format.

But in adapting his material to any other medium, I think that being faithful to the concept and the spirit of the original work is more important than a slavish, note-for-note transcription.

When I started adapting “Jewels of Gwalhur” as a series of storyboards, I quickly found out that complete adherence to the text was just not going to work for the audio-visual medium of live-action streaming.

In the sample I've shared here, art by Miguel Guzman, you might spot that even this early in the adaptation, I've made a change.

Can you see in this shot how I've already deviated from Howard's story?

Purists might bristle at any change in the master's canon, but purism can hog-tie an adaptation.

If you want a deeper look at my adaptation of "Jewels," and my view on comics in general, it'll be here:

https://charlessantino.substack.com/

DW Frydendall collaborates with composer/ horror author DiGelsomina for the Warrior Angel Saga, a series of graphic novels written by the composer. The first in the series, Swords of Nyarlathotep, will be published February 2027.

More info: https://www.facebook.com/share/1EDYt3aQ29/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Didn’t realize this one was a short story collection. So far so good, liked “The People of the Summit”. Not done with it yet but enjoying the ride!

Not pictured: all the other Russian and Czech authors, Brazilian fan fiction, Italian short stories, French works, and fan adaptions.

Just how much Conan is too much Conan?

There's over 20 million words of it floating out there... it would be an awful shame if someone translated it all.

I'm now done with Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 3, which collects issues #6-#9 of the bi-monhtly series. Given that each story has a different creative team, I think it's only fair that I look at each of them separately.

This volume starts with issue #7 and what ended up being my favorite story, Mark of the Beast by Rob de la Torre and Roy Thomas. This was fantastic, there was a thematic through-line that evolved during the story, it took us to a variety of Hyborian locales and there was plenty of action, intrigue, humans being base and despicable but also noble and loyal. My favorite part was the art, which felt very tactile. By this I mean that the scans of Rob de la Torre's pages are so good that you can see the faint marks made with pencil that weren't completely erased, or dotted lines that are invisible to the naked eye if you don't hold the book right up to your eyes. I feel this makes the inks feel almost feral, always on precise but brutal, made with confident strokes, which makes then perfect for Conan. All of this plus Rob's designs, framing and action make it unforgettable. I think I might prefer his art in B&W rather than color now.

The B story that accompanied the previous tale did not dissapoint. Penned by Patch Zircher and illustrated by Juan Alberto Hernández, this was an action/humor story that introduced me to Breckinridge Elkins, another REH character. This felt like a complete meal in only 10 pages and the framing of "Appalachian Hercules" worked wonders for this tall tale and was a fun framing. The art was also moody and appropiately extreme 🤘.

Moving on to issue #8, I actually did a full review of this issue when it was released, since it was my first approach to the new SSoC magazine and what made me decide to collect it in trade paperbacks. My opinion on it hasn't changed, I enjoy the opening Conan tale by Culver and Burnham, I felt confused and lost by Kennedy's and Rudy's outing, Davisson and Von Fafner's Cormac Fitzgeoffrey story feels too much like an introduction to the character and lacks dynamism, and I loved Liam Sharp's Dore-inspired take on Conan meeting a fallen warrior. The prose story was also really strong, now that I read it again, it was concise, action packed and true to Conan.

Issue #9's main feature is all Patch Zircher in story and art. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by this, I thought the beginning was really strong with a lot of great narrative hooks and interesting character dynamics, but the rest of the comic was a pretty straightforward dungeon crawl. It's not bad by any means, the quest is fun and every character has a chance to use their skills, plus the Conan-Valeria relationship remains a strong point of the whole story. However, I felt the resolution should have been less clean, since there were opportunities for double-crossing or political maneuvers. Zircher's art remains as good as ever and treats the reader to a variety of fun creature designs and an illustration of the aftermath of REH's classic Red Nails.

The B story for this issue focused on Kull, or rather, the Kingdom of Kull. Written by Fabian Nicieza with art by Sean Chen, we are given a broader look into the military and guard structures of Valusia that is framed as a fun cat-and-mouse story, which has a satisfying and cool twist at the end. The art for this felt very classic, and I was impressed with Chen's ability to differentiate colors in a B&W comic, and also his depiction of "invisibility", which must have taken a lot of time to work out in the art room.

As a small aside I wanted to mention that I caught a typo and an incorrect use of a word, which uhh... shouldn't happen. It's not a lot, but still, I noticed.

Overall, this is a comic that I enjoy a lot and that I plan on collecting more of. The variety that is afforded by the changing creative teams is always a delight, and even if I had some criticisms, at least each story offered a complete creative vision in a stand-alone story, which is something that I appreciate a lot these days.

In my collection I have multiple books and omnibus's, all 93 UK issues of Savage Sword, and a Savage Sword foil, because everyone should have 1 foil.

I'll probably plug that final gap with the upcoming Conan Mini series omnibus.