Time to catch up with the current arc of Conan the avenger 'The damned horde'. With this new arc comes returns series regular artist, Brian Ching. I like most of the character design and artwork, except for Conan, I think I prefer Eduardo Francisco's take. Brian's Conan reminds me of 2D from Gorillaz whereas Eduardo's feels stronger. That being said the rest of the art is really great. The backgrounds are vivid and the action is great and easily followed. Like Nick before me, I have never read anything to do with Conan. I do love me some swords and sandals though. Fred Van Lente seems to of found his rhythm with the story he is weaving. This arc picks up after the last with Conan searching for the treasure Diana told him about. Through these three issues Conan's group merges with that of Almuric a prince who has banded together various groups of mercenaries. Together they attack the city of Nippr.

There's lots of action that is dynamically drawn. The writing is full of info and Conan is a bit more of a bastard (that's one of the few things I knew about Conan before reading). I mean he leads a group called 'Amra's bastards' so it's nice to see him living up to that.

Each of the final pages ends in a way that makes me look forward to the next issue. I think that even if you changed Conan's name this comic would still interest me. It's not blown my socks off yet but I have faith that this thing is going to keep getting better.

Score: 3/5

Writer: Fred Van Lente Artist: Brian Ching Colorist: Michael Atiyeh Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Price: $3.50 Release Date: 12/24/14 Format: Ongoing, Print/Digital