Fantasy worlds collide as Solomon Kane and Dark Agnes join Conan the Barbarian for Battle of the Black Stone comic book series

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By Crom! This September, Conan of Cimmeria is about to find out just what has been building in the shadows of his critically acclaimed Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures run from the beginning — and it’s a revelation that will include a number of other characters created by Robert E. Howard, as well!

Spinning out of events in both the current Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword of Conan comic book series — and especially Savage Sword of Conan #4, released August 28, which the publisher has flagged as explicitly leading into the new event — the four-issue Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone series will see writer Jim Zub and artist Jonas Scharf cross time and space with their story. Events expand to include characters such as Dark Agnes, Solomon Kane, and other R.E.H. creations that fans have been asking to see for some time. Want to see for yourself? Titan has provided Popverse with an exclusive look at some of Scharf’s interior pages from the first issue, unlettered:

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“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,” Zub has previously said in a statement about the new series. “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.”

Sounds like the series is going to be the kind of thing that longtime fans of Howard’s pulp stories have been dreaming about for years — and, as anyone who’s been checking out Zub’s Conan the Barbarian comics already knows, it’s also something that newcomers will be able to pick up and enjoy without any kind of previous knowledge of what to expect. Think of it as the perfect gateway into a new world of fantasy and adventure… as long as you’re ready to get your head cleaved in, of course.

Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone #1 will be released September 4, 2024, with covers by Gerado Zaffino, Sedat Oezgen, Stuart Sayger, Samwise Didier, and Tony Fleecs. You can see them in this gallery right here:

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