King Conan #4 - Video Review by ComicBook.beer

Alright, here we go. It’s been so long. Comicbook.beer. Today I’ll be taking a look at King Conan issue number four. Here in the King Conan series, which eventually turned into Conan the King. I picked up a bunch of these recently, including issue number one. But number four is my favorite so far, so let’s check it out.

So, in the previous issue, which could be worth $2,500 to you if that offer is still valid, probably not, Conan and his son Khan get hauled away by these dragon things to a secret city under the control of Thoth Amon and this other guy, I forget his name, that guy. But anyway, everybody dies except for Thoth Amon who runs away. He flees like a coward. And in this issue, we see Thoth Amon blasting Conan with a laser beam on the front of the cover, but don’t always believe the covers of these Conan comics. As I’ve shown you before, sometimes there’s like girls in the background that don’t even exist in the comics. Occasionally, they lie. Thoth Amon to the death.

Alright, well, so after we learn about the NBC Saturday morning cartoons, which look amazing by the way, the Godzilla Dino Mutt Hour. Like today, we get social media bullshit. Back then we got Space Ghost and the Herculoids.

Future sucks, I want to go back to the 70s. Although I think this is 1980. Same difference, doesn’t matter. Anyway, so after pondering whatever he’s about to do, Conan and Khan and a bunch of warriors from this village fly on the dragons that they’ve, I guess, dragon‑napped or whatever, retrained the dragons that were left by the other people who all got killed, and they fly to this mysterious skull place, which is mysterious indeed.

Because it’s filled with beautiful women. And of course, who can resist, right? They’re all hanging out. Conan’s just getting quietly drunk in the background. Classic Conan. Well, Khan is the teenager here. He’s a little more observant of the surroundings. And it’s actually a really funny issue because Khan ends up… we know these ladies are up to no good, but we don’t know why just yet.

So one of them kind of walks off over there and Khan follows her and, well, we think Connis is about to have a pretty.... Conn, C‑O‑N‑N by the way, not like Wrath of Khan, we think that Conn, Conan’s son, is about to have a life‑changing moment until he spots that the beautiful woman is actually a snake monster. No! I mean, like that would stop a 15‑year‑old. Come on. Anyway, Conan’s friends show up, there’s a great battle, and Conan and Thoth Amon disappear in the middle of the battle.

They’re fighting the serpent men and followers of the snake or whatever, and the artwork in this one is, I think this has improved. This is a better issue than the previous one. I really like some of these panels in particular. Conan looking a lot like Conan. But see the creative team here is John Buscema and…

I wasn’t as wild about the previous issue. I just didn’t think, maybe Danny just, you know, kind of got more into the groove or maybe I don’t know. Sometimes things just hit you differently depending on what they are when you’re reading it. This one was just more fun. Also, there’s a sweet ad for this Wildfire pinball machine. What you got to do? I don’t have one of these. That looks… super bonus cave, you can get up to 40,000 points in there. I want to know how I get my $2,500. But that doesn’t hurt anyone’s distraction. So it’s a huge battle at the end.

I ain’t giving away the endings here, you have them, you ain’t giving away spoilers, but you can always stop the video if you don’t want to see a, you know, kind of a spoiler. But Con—C‑O‑N‑N—it’s like they were filling out his birth certificate and Conan was drunk and forgot to put the A in there. Conan Jr. saves the day. It’s actually a nice ending, a touching ending that we do feel his loss for the snake woman. Anyway, it’s a shorter issue than the previous one because they fill the rest of it with these pinups.

Pinups which are, ooh, those look fun. With these pinups, I think are kinda half‑ass, but that one’s my favorite because who doesn’t want the pinup of the guy’s ass? Just a giant hairy ass. That fits. That’s the one I’m gonna hang on my wall. This one’s my favorite actually. See, we got that one there from, that’s the one from John Buscema. Actually, this one’s pretty funny because Conan’s just like, “There’s a thing,” and she’s like, “Look, there’s a thing.” It’s like they had these drawn for other things and were like, “Let’s just put them in there as a pinup.” They’re not the best, but this one is my favorite.

Then we get one of my, of course, all‑time favorite ads. Anything with fruit pies. I’m all about fruit pie. I love fruit pies. We get Iron Man and fruit pies.

And it’s a fun issue. I like this one. These early King Conan issues, the ones written by Roy Thomas, they’re drawn by John Buscema, they’re great. I think the series went downhill pretty quick after the first couple. Maybe the first years, so they must have gotten bored of it or whatever. Didn’t make enough money. So the A team got put back onto other stuff and they got the B, C, and D team on King Conans or Conan and Kings. But these early ones are great. They’re not worth anything. Nobody’s buying these except for me. So head on out to your local comic store and pick up King Conan. Because I know you want to know. Now we’re going to know together.

The Mighty Marvel Win Yourself Some Big Bucks Contest.

The official rules. Okay, we’re going to ignore those. Ages 10 and under: “Who’s your favorite Marvel superhero and why?” Batman. Ages 11 to 14: “Who’s your least favorite Marvel character?” I’m gonna go with Jar Jar Binks. Ages 15 and older: “How should the Marvel Universe change to face the challenges of the 80s?” By not leaving the 80s. Staying in the 80s so that we can all never leave the 80s together. That’s what I want.

So Doctor Strange or whatever, make some sort of magic potion thing that we just stay in the 80s so we can just like rock out to Whitesnake and like the Beastie Boys and watch MTV and watch like original Star Wars and not ever have the horrible future that we live in. So that’s what I actually want. Now somebody owes me 2,500 bucks.

King Conan issue number four. Highly recommended. You’re probably like, “There’s no beer in this video.” That’s not true. Here’s a beer. Fortunately, it’s not open because we’ve got other stuff I’ve got to do later. But this is from December of 1980.

Just go back and stay there. Highly recommended, this whole early run of King Conan. Awesome. And of course, complemented by a nice beer. Mmm. The champagne of beers. Conan would approve.