Bottalk Reviews

Sword-brothers, sword-sisters, it is time once again to pay the venerable spinner rack a visit!  60 spectacular pages of barbaric savagery in black-and-white printed on newsprint!  Inside this magnificent magazine you'll find the following treasures: John C. Hocking, an autobiographical essay Conan: City of the Dead, Omnibus Preview A fresh new Pin-Up of Kull the Conqueror and Thulsa Doom by Alex Horley CONAN: WOLVES OF THE TUNDRA by Frank Tieri and Cary Nord  A Werewolf grabs a snack in the snow. It spies on a family. The family members are revealed to be Werewolves too! A fight ensues. The only lycanthrope that survives the scuffle is... Conan the Werewolf. Flashback: A famished Cimmerian enters "the Hungry Claw" inn, taxidermy wolves adorn the place, Werewolves in human form start harassing Conan, the lights go out, Conan gets bitten during the bar brawl. Conan wakes in a barn where he's decimated every single animal inside. The owner of the animals recommends elim

The Conan the Barbarian screenplay adaptation from 1982 is back in print! What!? Crom listened? Yes! By L. Sprague de Camp, his wife Catherine Crook de Camp and Lin Carter  Foreword by L. Sprague de Camp A movie novelisation based on a screenplay by John Milius and Oliver Stone Also available Unabridged on audiobook read by Bradford Hastings  Also available in Portuguese: ISBN-13: 9786554481540  Conan o Bárbaro – Novelização Oficial do Filme Spoilers! Spoilers!  King Conan is know as Conan the Great. Kallias of Shamar is our narrator from southern Aquilonia, instead of Akiro, the Wizard of the Mounds. Corin the smith, Conan's father, masters the secret of steel from the Atlanteans. The father sword's pommel resembles the hooves of an elk, its grip is wrapped with string made from the intestines of forest tigers. Mystic rites are performed to make the Cimmerian sword INVINCIBLE. Conan's father beheads a Vanir raider from Vanaheim and kills a horse. Maeve, Conan's mother,

Conan the Barbarian: Bound in Black Stone wins this year's Robert E. Howard Foundation "The Costigan Literary Achievement" and "The Rankin Artistic Achievement" awards at Howard Days! Brule's life was just about to be extinguished by a freshly revived Thulsa Doom... it is finally time for: Jim Zub's The Age Unconquered part 4: Terror Undreamed Of! Thulsa announces a "New Age of Doom" and that the Spear-Slayer is out of time. We get a flashback: A meteorite strikes the earth. Only Kathulos (the sorcerer, magician and scientist from the novella Skull-Face) is brave enough to touch the Black Stone from outer space. The Black Stone uploads DARK knowledge and DARK magic into Kathulos's brain. Kathulos is now able to control the deceased. He builds himself an army of the undead and renames himself Thulsa Doom. Thulsa enjoys being a successful tyrant for some time, we even get another Renato Casaro Conan the Barbarian 1982 movie poster homage from

Jim Zub's The Age Unconquered part 3: Call from the Depths continues. We are still knee-deep in the Thurian Age aka the Pre-Cataclysmic Age.  Brule has been burning to know, since issue 9, what was said during the secret meeting between Yag-Kosha and Conan. Conan spills the beans via a flashback: The elephant man made the barbarian aware that he is indeed in the past, that spirits can roam free, but mortals are stuck in specific times, impeded by their own memories. Yag-Kosha knows that Conan has been strategically sent back in time by unknown divine forces. Conan thinks that perhaps he's being used by these godlike forces. Yag-Kosha, limited by his current physical form, cannot foretell Conan's future beyond his own death (at the hands of Conan in The Tower of the Elephant).  Yag-Kosha can see Conan only because they previously encountered each other in the future. He actually sees the Cimmerian as a floating chest hole, a phantasm without physical limitations. The friendl

Also available in Spanish: ISBN-13: 9788467964325 Conan el Bárbaro: La Historia Oficial de la Película Also available in German: ISBN-13: 9783986663438 Conan der Barbar: Die Entstehungsgeschichte des Kultfilms Also available in French: ISBN-13: 9782364809482 Conan le Barbare: L'histoire d'un Film Culte Also available in Portuguese: ISBN-13: 9788550822174  Conan o Bárbaro: a História Oficial do Filme John Milius's magnum opus gets an official hefty coffee-table book on its 41st anniversary. You know the sword-and-sorcery story: Warrior. Thief. Gladiator. Conqueror. Conan. It takes a little from "The Tower of the Elephant", "Queen of the Black Coast", "The Devil in Iron", "Shadows in Zamboula", "A Witch Shall Be Born", "Worms of the Earth", "The Shadow Kingdom", "The Cat and the Skull", "The Thing in the Crypt" and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954). Young Conan learns of the Ridd

Jim Zub's The Age Unconquered part 2: Far Shores and Fearless Men continues. We are still stuck in the Thurian Age aka the Pre-Cataclysmic Age.  The King of Valusia, Kull is having a vivid nightmare. Friendly large wild cats are asking his young savage self (last seen in Exile of Atlantis) to join the hunt. The lion wants a naked Kull (no leopard-skin loincloth for this dude) to return to his old village of the Sea-Mountain tribe... now debased by a spire made of BLACK STONE. Kull bypasses the spectres of the dead villagers and enters the tapering BLACK STONE structure. Kull sees his future selves and chieftain Brule, the Spear-Slayer in a hall of mirrors (last seen in The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune). Kull ages into a living corpse, but before dying he reaches the BLACK STONE, but it will not yield its secrets. The BLACK STONE self destructs, this kills the Atlantean King, peeling the flesh from his frame. The BLACK STONE tower explodes.  The capital of Valusia, the city of Valusia nic

Jim Zub's The Age Unconquered part 1: Suffer Not the King of Wonders, starts here. Conan stabbed himself in the chest and died on the way back to his home planet? The End? Nope! Not the end. Conan gets The Terminator treatment and gets sent back in time by unknown mystical forces to the Thurian Age (The Age of Atlantis), the epoch of Atlantean King Kull of Valusia and his buddy Brule, the Spear-Slayer, a Pict of the Borni tribe. We see Brule once again piercing the loathsome Black Stone statue with his blessed spear from way back in issue #4. Lighting from heaven's grasp strikes the spear and the obelisk shatters. Time traveler Conan still alive with his clothes, horned helmet and Brule's sword, emerges from the destroyed Black Stone sculpture, you know, like in Ghostbusters with the charred Terror Dogs. Brule's Pictish warriors suggest killing the slime covered barbarian from the future. The Spear-Slayer stops them. A confused Conan does not remember Brule (from previo