CONAN: TIDES OF THE TYRANT KING #0 / Script by JIM ZUB / Art by JESUS MERINO / Colors by JAO CANOLA / Letters by RICHARD STARKINGS & COMICRAFT’S TYLER SMITH / Published by TITAN COMICS

Due in equal parts to spending the past week moving and planning to cover a convention, I did not get much chance to read the preview comics sent to me over the past week. Indeed, despite swinging by my comic shop first thing on the morning of Free Comic Book Day, I didn’t get a chance to read the books I grabbed until Sunday evening. As such, I’m a little late to the party in covering FCBD: Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King #0 despite Jim Zub himself sending me a digital copy of it. For this, I apologize, but the book proved worth the wait.

Those who have been reading the current Conan the Barbarian series from Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures will be on familiar footing here. Titan has used Free Comic Book Day to kick off Conan-themed crossovers over the past few years. The crossovers, in this case, involve other characters created by Robert E. Howard. And in the case of Tides of the Tyrant King, the story this time involves Sailor Steve Costigan – a boxer who headlined more stories than any of Howard’s creations, save Conan.

Zub establishes Conan and Costigan as warriors who share a spirit, despite the undreamed ages that lie between them. The battlefields of Zingara and France blur as the two men fight and both show the same crude chivalry toward the women who tend their wounds. Yet the two men are similarly connected by an evil that touches both their lives across time and space…

This is typical of how Zub handled Conan and Howard’s other creations in earlier events. Zub is equal parts fan and scholar, who writes Conan with a clear enthusiasm for the character in specific and sword-and-sorcery in general. However, he does his homework when it comes to the whole of Howard’s oeuvre.

All of Zub’s stories draw off of shared points of mythology and the fact that Howard placed his heroes in the same shared universe at different points in time long before such things were commonplace. While this #0 doesn’t offer much of a hint at the story to come, it does highlight its two protagonists well and has enough of a hook at the end to encourage further reading.

The artwork by Jesus Merino is equally detailed. This is Merino’s first time drawing Conan apart from a recent cover, but you’d never know it. The color art by Jao Canola is a bit bright at times, given the generally dark tone of the story but not distractingly so. And the scratchy letters by Richard Starkings and Tyler Smith subtly speak to the rough lives of both of our leads.

Based on this special, Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King will be another masterful adaptation. Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures have yet to hit a wrong note in their management of the franchise and Robert E. Howard’s legacy. If you’ve not given the new Conan the Barbarian a chance, now’s the time to see what you’ve been missing!

Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King #1 releases in September 2026.