The Dark Horse Conan series began promising: the Howard stories were usually well done, and the additional stories that modern writers made up were not always that bad. But gradually things deteriorated. Piracy and Passion, the fifth installment of the series, is a bit of a swindle. To be fair, there is a pretty good version of the story “Queen of the Black Coast” by Brian Wood (script) and Becky Cloonan (art), one of the best in the series, and with about 65 pages that may just be enough to make this book worthwhile.

But it is the only decent Conan story we get, and as it turns out it is merely the first part of it – for the rest you’ll have to buy volume 6. The remaining ca. 350 pages are filled in with uninspired storytelling and at best mediocre art. The boring opening story, taking up more than 90 pages, is so clichéd and poorly drawn that it is below abysmal. The rest of the book unnecessarily stretches the story of Conan and Bêlit, the absolute low point being a chapter in which Conan takes his fiancée home to meet his Mom... ( )