Conan the Barbarian #152 - Video Review by 80s Comics

Is everyone ready for fun. By the end of this review you won’t even remember what it was like to not have fun. You’ll be having so much fun. It’s Conan the Barbarian issue number 152, back when comic books cost sixty cents and had advertisements like this on the back cover. Brand new, Return of the Jedi Death Star Battle for the Atari 2600. It’s a great game. And this is a great comic book Conan.

Look, it’s a Cracker Jack story. That’s great. Let’s get back to this one. We’ve got magic, we’ve got romance, we’ve got betrayal, and we’ve got courage, all contained within just a few super duper old school pages of comic book from 1983. The Dark Blade of Jergal Zadr. Everyone got that. Say that three times fast. So there’s this thing here, Jergal Zadr. It looks like a Thundercat if the Thundercat was sprayed with toxic waste and somehow combined with a screwed up robot. That’s a very scientific description. Anyway, this thing wants to steal Conan’s power because it can see into the fire that Conan is going to be king, and of course that’s unacceptable. Rather than just getting Conan drunk and hitting him on the head, it has a very elaborate plan to use a magic sword that steals his life force. And it’s going to work, and it works with this magician here whose name is Cleo the whatever. We’ll see that in a moment.

So we’ve got some plot here, and then here’s Conan riding a horse. Crumbs thunder. He sees this pterodactyl monster thing stealing a girl in a bikini, and of course that’s just unacceptable. What is acceptable is this amazing ad for Solar Fox. Speed and strategy are all that you have, and they just might be enough. Awesome. That’s a good game too. That’s one I reviewed on Classic Gamer like ten years ago. Back when this comic was new. Well, maybe not that long ago. But anyway, Conan of course saves this woman by bashing this monster on the head with his sword. Obviously. But what he does not know is that she’s a magician who’s there to fool him because she’s working with this guy whose name I already forgot, the red ape robot thing with the snake wrapped around his leg. Okay.

So his sword is broken, but she leads him to this thing, what do we call this thing. It’s an ancient temple. That’s what we call this thing. She leads him into an ancient temple. As a general rule, you probably should avoid ancient temples that look like that, but Conan’s not that bright. Anyway, she lures Conan into this temple and gets him to steal the sword, to take the sword from Zarugal whatever, and then using her magic laser eyes, scientific term, magic laser eyes, conjures up an image of all of these acolytes who start to attack Conan. And he hacks and slashes, hacks and slashes at them. You try doing this in one take. He hacks and slashes at them with the magic sword, unbeknownst to Conan it’s taking his power every time he kills one of the magic hologram things. Which of course pleases Zergald Blythe, who’s watching Conan and Cleo whoever in his magic fire there.

There’s so much magic in this book, you gotta love it. It makes barely any sense. I had to read it twice, but actually I liked it more the second time once I figured the whole thing out. It’s a little complicated, but it does make sense in the end. It’s an elaborate ruse to fool Conan. And she looks very evil there. It’s nice page layout too, I like this one. Using her magic laser eyes she conjures up a giant dinosaur lizard right next to the bubble yum head. Conan pushes her out of the way and immediately goes after the giant dinosaur lizard even though he’s weakened by the magic sword.

Now as you might expect, after enjoying an ad for Popeye on numerous game systems, she’s incredibly attracted to Conan’s bravery, mullet, and his sizeable muscles. Risking his life, he slays the monster and wins her heart even though she’s betraying the monster at the beginning of the book whose name we already forgot. Zergo something. I hate these two page comic book ads. They suck. I mean, they’re okay if they’re Atari games. Otherwise, they can just stay out of my way.

This enrages the monster, the magic monster with the cyborg legs, who threatens to kill her because she’s betrayed him. Our hearts go out to her because she loves Conan for like the next two pages until she probably dies. That’s the way these books always go. There’s an epic battle at the end of the book. She, using her laser magic guys, actually knocks out Conan to protect them because the sword pretty much almost kills them. So she knocks out Conan and does most of the dirty work for him.

She throws the sword into the water and shows us the true meaning of love by disappearing into his arms. She basically does Conan a favor because rather than getting eaten by a monster or breaking up with him or something, she just dies and turns into dust and blows away in the wind and probably gets sucked into a jet intake somewhere. Really, whatever. He’ll remember her forever until the next issue. That’s why Conan is great. Conan 152. This is a fun read and I love the cover design. It’s ahead of its time. It looks a little bit more modern than 1983. Have a nice day. See you next time on 80sComics.com.