The world of Conan, and all of the other major Robert E. Howard heroes that Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures are featuring since they netted the Conan license, are about to overlap with each other in a major event called the Battle of the Black Stone, and CBR has an exclusive preview of the first issue, out next week.

Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone #1 is from writer Jim Zub, artist Jonas Scharf, colorist Jão Canola, and letterers Richard Starkings and Tyler Smith, and when the project was first announced, Jim Zub noted, “Battle of the Black Stone uses story threads we’ve been weaving in right from the start, from last year’s Conan the Barbarian #0 Free Comic Day issue and our tire first year. The mysteries and powers of the Black Stone are one of the pillars I put into my original proposal for the series and, now that we have momentum, we can really go all out in telling this epic tale of pulp-inspired adventure across the ages. Black Stone is a mysterious material that showed up in multiple Robert E. Howard prose stories, and we’re using it to link not just Conan’s Hyborian age to Kull’s Thurian age, but other points in time and characters from those eras as well.”

CONAN THE BARBARIAN: BATTLE OF THE BLACK STONE #1 (OF 4)

(W) Jim Zub

(A) Jonas Scharf

Format: Comic

Publisher: Heroic Signatures & Titan Comics

FC, 32pp, $3.99, On Sale September 4, 2024

CONAN OF CIMMERIA IS HAUNTED BY SHADOWS, LIVING NIGHTMARES CONNECTED TO A MYSTERIOUS EYE SYMBOL ETCHED IN BLACK STONE.

An unspeakable evil looms over the Hyborian Age and every age connected to it… and it will take more than a lone barbarian to stop its relentless march upon time, space, and sanity.

BATTLE OF THE BLACK STONE, an epic new CONAN EVENT from Heroic Signatures and Titan Comics, begins HERE, from Jim Zub (Conan the Barbarian, Dungeons & Dragons) and artist Jonas Scharf (Dark X-Men, Basilisk)!

The main cover of the first issue is by Gerardo Zaffino, and the other variants are by Sedat Oezgen, Stuart Sayger, Samwise Didier, Tony Fleecs, and a special Black and White version of Zaffino’s cover, and a colored blank cover.

What happens in the preview pages of Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone?

The preview pages show us two men visiting an explorer’s club in Chicago in 1936. They are there to meet a famed explorer, as they want his information about a black sigil that they discovered. The other explorer is shocked to see the sigil, and this is where we learn that this black-marked stone has been around since the time of Conan the Barbarian.

We then cut to the past, during the fictional Hyborian Age, the era of Earth’s history where Conan and his allies roamed the world. We see in the past that Conan has just come across the sigil, and obviously, Conan will get into some trouble with this sigil, but you’ll have to pick up the issue next week to see HOW.

Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone #1 is due out next week.

Source: Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures