Len Wein (1948–2017)

This one was a mixed bag for me. Both stories contained in this volume worked on one level (story and art respectively) and failed on other (art and story respectively).

First, Book of Thoth - this is origin story of one of the Conan's greatest antagonists, wizard Toth-Amon of Stygia. We follow him from his early days of youth in a problematic family with abusing father and [for all means and purposes] no-mother. Only person he has any love towards is his sister. Living in extreme poverty and forced by his father to beg and rob passer-byes in the street he is more than willing to grab first opportunity to achieve fame and fortune even if it means killing his friend and then orchestrating complete mayhem in Stygia to dark monstrous creature from the aeons past - Set. During this process Toth-Amon will slowly lose all of his humanity and soon turn his back to all people he loved. But his eternal hunger for power will be even too much for him and it will take rather unlikely allies to save his skin.

Story-wise this was excellent story, with powers of light and darking fighting through their avatars on Earth, population that gets pushed toward darkness thanks to thoth-Amon's actions used to push Stygians more and more to the brink until finally they can do nothing else but turn towards the cosmic darkness for safety.

Art is .... lets say not my cup of tea. This type of art is something Mignola is very good at and he makes it look very easy but believe me drawing characters on a high abstract level using only geometrical shapes and shade is very very complex thing and here it just did not work for me. While covers and some wide-shots truly look awesome rest of story did not click with me.

On the other hand second story - Mask of Acheron - had very decent art but story was ..... man. I might be wrong but this one seems o be comic adaptation of last Conan movie. Last I remember i did enjoy that movie but this story seems to be missing some of the pages. I dont know if it was rushed or actually missing story parts but it just jumps from one point to another without any explanation whatsoever. Weird.....

So as a whole mixed bag. But for me even with these .... issues? .... it was an enjoyable ride, especially the Book of Toth.

If you are fan of Conan give this one a shot but it might be good for you to first check art on the Net to see if it will sit well with you. Because lets not forget, comics are primarily bought for visual art.… (more)

Basically the stereotypical 70s Marvel output. Len Wein does most of the scripting here and it's...adequate. I'm still really sick of the 70s comic book writers really not knowing what to do with female characters, aside from having them call their significant others "darling" and constantly either have to plead to come along, or end up being the person the hero needs to save.

As for the art, I adore both John Buscema's and Walt Simonson's artwork. And, depending on the person he's inking, Tony De Zuniga can be quite good. But he does no favours to either Buscema and especially not to Simonson here. The basic posing of the characters is there, but the quirks of each of these very talented and distinctive artists gets buried under his inks. There's those inkers (Joe Sinnott, Terry Austin) that just brought out the best in the artists, then there's others that bury them under their own style. De Zuniga is the latter.

As for the stories, they're your typical Marvel fun. This is the stuff I ate, drank, and breathed as a young teen. As an adult, I'm still enjoying them.

Though, I'm excited to skip ahead to Walt Simonson's run on Thor that came a little later.… (more)