Great artwork. Good stories, well written and all Conan as Conan can be. Have never come across a bad Conan yet. This is no exception. recommended for fans for sure.

I did NOT enjoy this at all. It was weirdly sexual and vaguely misogynistic. Maybe I just missed the original Conan hype, but this one is a pass for me.

Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian is back in this new graphic novel. It includes everything that you would expect from a Conan story - pithy comments, violence, romance, violence, magic, and more violence. The artwork is first rate. A fun story for those who want to escape reality for a few minutes (and who hasn't wanted to do that?).

Great graphic novel for adults who love Conan the Barbarian. But it's not for kids! This is the R-Rated version of Conan. Bath stories featured are classic Conan stories. The test and pictures are very good and the story flows smoothly. Vol 2, also available via NetGalley is a more difficult read.

This graphic novel is awesome. It features adaptions of two separate Conan the Barbarian stories. After each story finishes the actual Robert E. Howard short story is printed for those of us who enjoy reading the source material. I loved being able to compare and contrast the graphic novel to the actual short story. I thought this was a terrific addition to a great graphic novel.

The stories in this graphic novel are great. There is plenty of action, adventure, love, sorcery, and awesome barbarian misadventures.

The art is Beautiful. The action is awesome, graphic, and gory. The love scenes are intense and fit perfectly.

If you enjoyed the original Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan movies you will love this graphic novel! Especially if you like the character, Valeria. She’s the heroine of the second story in the graphic novel. She’s beautiful, fierce, and every bit Conan’s equal.

I look forward to reading volume 2.

Stay awesome and keep reading!

It doesnt support or open after I download the pdf version of it. It's also not showing in my shelf in netgalley and I cant open it to read Please look into the issue and if you can send me the pdf in my mail ID- taniagungunsarkar@gmail.com I cant read the book from here. Please look into the issue

'The Cimmerian' is a graphic novel with adaptations of two Robert E. Howard stories featuring Conan the Barbarian. Each story has a different creative team.

'Queen of the Black Coast' is adapted by Jean-David Morvan with art by Pierre Alary. Conan finds himself hired by a pirate ship as his usual muscle. He finds himself captivate with the ship's captain, a woman who matches his fierce passion. They find themselves in the ruins of a forgotten city guarded by winged terrors.

'Red Nails' with adaptation by Regis Hautiere with art by Olivier Vatine and Didier Cassegrain takes Conan to a lost city where a group of people are trapped and at war with each other. With each death, one tribe drives a nail in to a post. Conan finds himself in the midst of this madness.

Each story concludes with the complete text of the original story, which is a real treat. The adaptations and art are spot on. I preferred the first stories team, but both were worthy. It was great to see these stories in a current adaptation.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Ablaze, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

This adaptation of two stories featuring Robert E. Howard's most famous creation, Conan the Barbarian, stays pretty close to the source material (which is also included in this collection).

I wasn't all that impressed with the overall content. It was okay but never really grabbed me the way something like this should. Perhaps because I grew up in the 1970s reading the old Marvel Comics version of Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword of Conan my expectations were too high... I don't know.

It's biggest claim to fame seems to be that it is more graphic (in violence and adult content) than previous offerings. That kind of thing is so common these days that I barely even noticed.

Bottom line: I won't be going out of my way to read any more in this particular series.

*I received a free digital copy of this title through NetGalley.

This contains 2 adaptations of Conan stories, Queen of the Black Coast and Red Nails by two different creative teams. These were originally printed in France and brought to the U.S. by Ablaze. The tag line listed these as uncensored but I didn't find these any more graphic than the Dark Horse series. Also included are the original prose, Robert E. Howard stories, a gazillion variant covers and some sketches.

Queen of the Black Coast adapted by Jean-David Morvan and Pierre Alary - ★
Everything about this adaptation was terrible. Morvan didn't seem to edit Howard's story at all to adapt it to comics. The pages are littered with text. The only saving grace was that Alary's art was so terrible that those extra text boxes were welcomed to help cover up the art that looked like blown up thumbnails.

Red Nails adapted by Regis Hautiere, Olivier Vatine, and Didier Cassegrain - ★★★★
This is how prose should be adapted into comics. It tells the story without pasting in all of Robert E. Howard's prose as exposition blocks. The art has a classic, pulp cover feel to it. Everything about this is great.

Lots of gore, lots of overly flowery language, heaps of stoic Conan, and a little sex combine to make a pulp comic extravaganza that ultimately was just ok. The over the top pulp narration did get in the way and the violence was so gratuitous and disconnected from anything that mattered that it was hard to care. It was cool that they printed the full text of the stories these two comics were based o and the art was aggressive and pulpy too but while this was fine adventure candy, it wasn't substantial enough to captivate me right now.

Good artwork, solid writing, good entertainment. The stories weren't too sophisticated but they offered enough of thrills to keep me reading.

Great artwork and Violent from the very beginning, Conan is brought to life for the 21st century. Two tales taken from Robert E Howard's short stories are here in boh graphic novel format and their original text. I really enjoyed the stories and loved the artwork. Expect and experience Conan the Cimmerian hacking, slashing and chopping his way through the pages as well as hordes of enemies.

Excellent adaptation of the classic Howard stories. Easy to dive into without worrying about masses of history or characterisation. Captures the violence and sexuality of the original without being explicit. An enjoyable read for fans of Conan or Conan’s spiritual successor, the Witcher.

This wasn't really my cup of tea. The art style didn't intrigue me and text was really hard to read. The story never really held my interest. I wanted to like this, but unfortunately, I did not.

Thank you NetGalley and Ablaze Publishing for the ARC.

The Cimmerian Vol. 1 includes two Conan stories. "Queen of the Black Coast" and "Red Nails".
"Queen of the Black Coast" is a story about Conan and Belit becoming lovers and discovering and sailing the seas while plundering cities. They come across an abandon city that nobody has been able to enter or come out of alive. The first part of this story was not extremely exciting to me. It wasn't bad at all it just wasn't what I was expecting. There was back story building, which is necessary. Then events take a turn and I was hooked. Conan became more brutal and there was more action involved. Overall I enjoyed this first story.

"Red Nails" is the second story and follows Conan and Valeria. Valeria is being hunted by a group of men. Conan finds her first. Together they must flee a dragon and they wind up in what appears to be an abandoned city. After searching for a while they come across other people and eventually learn the secrets of the city. This second story was way more action packed and entertaining to me. I really enjoyed it. I feel like it showed more of how Conan can be as a warrior. Also Valeria is so bad ass. I would love to read more tales of the two of them.

As a whole I would recommend this first volume to fans of Conan and fantasy fans. It was a pretty entertaining read. Warning: there is nudity and it is graphically violent.

I've always loved the Conan stories of Robert E Howard. It is further enjoyable to read them in comics, as the artist and writer can bring the stories out with pictures. Loved it. Hopefully there will be more of these adaptations. Plus, the actual stories were included to read again, and compare.

An interesting volume with two Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian tales brought to life (so to speak) visually. The artwork is generally pretty decent, the liberties take with the story are there to make it more entertaining for the reader visually. The reader knows what liberty has been taken, not because of having memorized the stories, but because the text is available right after the comic version of Queen of the Black Coast or Red Nails. So if you enjoy comics and you like tales about Conan beating great odds, these are two fine tales together in one volume, get them while you can!

Thanks Netgalley for the chance to read this volume.

Despite the description impressing the volume presenting some new level of uncensored and unrestrained violence and sexuality, there's nothing so shocking in the volume. The stories were verbose at times, but the added context available with the inclusion of the original stories makes for an interesting contrast.

Whether dubbed the barbarian or the Cimmerian, Conan has been kicking butts and taking names since Robert E. Howard dreamt him up and put pen to paper in the 1930s for seventeen exciting stories for the pulp magazine Weird Tales (with an eighteenth story published in rival Fantasy Fan magazine). Starting in 1970, Marvel began publishing comics of the antihero and continued to do so through the mid-1990s. Many talented creators worked on the Conan titles during these years, none more legendary than writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith. In 2003, Dark Horse Comics picked up the Conan license and kicked off their efforts with wonderful adaptations written by Kurt Busiek with breathtaking art by Cary Nord. In 2018, Marvel regained the rights to Conan and began with some excellent stories by writer Jason Aaron and artist Mahmud Asrar.

However, this is largely the (condensed) history of Conan comics in the United States. In Europe, the Conan stories have passed into the public domain. The French Publisher Glenat started publishing bandes dessinees (French for “drawn strips”) of Conan a few years ago. When new publisher Ablaze (based in Portland, Oregon) tried to publish English-translated versions of these comics in the U.S., though, they were issued a cease and desist order. Apparently, things were worked out, and the comics were released under the title The Cimmerian instead of Conan. (I have read conflicting reports of what exactly was agreed to in the deal.)

All this backstory, however, means little if The Cimmerian comics are not good. To my relief, these comics really do justify their own existence. This particular volume collects two stories: Queen of the Black Coast and Red Nails. The stories are very faithful to Howard’s original stories. The translations are excellent, and there are almost no grammatical errors (which can be a major concern in translated comics). The visuals are also done in a beautiful style popular among European artists. Readers should also delight in meeting the strong, formidable women in these stories, Belit in Queen of the Black Coast and Valeria in Red Nails.

One other thing worth mentioning is that this is recommended for ages 16+. Ablaze has stressed in their marketing that this is an uncensored version of Conan with plenty of sex and violence. I’d say that is somewhat true. However, the level of violence is no more severe than the Conan comics Marvel is publishing with a parental advisory right now. And while there is quite a bit of skin shown in some panels, it’s not gratuitous and most of the—ahem—important bits are covered up by an arm, a wisp of smoke, etc.

If you are more of a Conan purist and don’t care to see him running around in the same universe as Spider-Man and Marvel’s Avengers, these comics are for you. It is such a treat to see Robert E. Howard’s original tales adapted to comics with such fealty, passion, and talent. May this be the first of many Conan books that Ablaze publishes. I certainly will keep coming back.

*Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Net Galley for this free ARC in exchange for a honest review.

I really enjoyed these comics from start to finish. The stories were very entertaining and full of action. I was also a huge fan of the artwork in this comic. I would definitely read this comic again or recommend it to a friend.