Exclusive preview from Geeks of Doom:
Brian Wood and Vasilis Lolos’s “Border Fury” concludes, as the secret behind Conan’s impostor is revealed! Separated on Cimmeria’s frozen plains, Conan and Bêlit each fight handicapped while facing a deadly foe — Conan by the unexpected identity of his pretender and Bêlit by debilitating snow blindness.
*Pedantic Esoteric Nitpick of the Week*
Seriously, snow-blindness in Cimmeria? A land of darkness and deep night, where the sun rarely breaks through the clouds, apparently still has people at risk from photokeratitis - which is something that happens when excessive UV rays from sunlight reflects from snow and ice. I can definitely see this as a hazard in Nordheim or even Hyperborea, certainly the upper reaches of the Himelians, but definitely not Cimmeria.
See, this is what happens when you use only "Queen of the Black Coast" and tacitly ignore the rest of the stories, because in QotBC, there are a few links of Cimmeria to cold:
To the people of the exotic climes, the north was a mazy half-mythical realm, peopled with ferocious blue-eyed giants who occasionally descended from their icy fastnesses with torch and sword.
(emphasis on to the people of the exotic climes: it's clear they conflate the Cimmerians and Nordheimr as one people)
Oh, tiger of the North, you are cold as the snowy mountains which bred you.
(This is Belit talking, she who has never actually seen Cimmeria, and explicitly saw no difference between Cimmerians and Nordheimr)
“In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity.”
"It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud..."
(The Cimmerian afterlife isn't necessarily reflective of Cimmeria as a whole)
So if you take those, and only those, descriptions of Cimmeria, I can understand coming away with the impression that Cimmeria was a land of "icy fastness," "snowy mountains," "icy winds," "ice and cloud" and whatnot. Unfortunately, that means effectively ignoring nearly every other description of Cimmeria in every other story, to say nothing of the poem "Cimmeria," which is a problematic approach for obvious reasons. I don't know what Dark Horse were thinking telling Brian to ignore everything else.
*Pedantic Esoteric Nitpick of the Week, deactivate*
That nitpick aside, lovely cover, beautifully rendered by Massimo Carnevale. Can't wait to find out what the unexpected identity of the pretender is (Relative? Offspring? Old Nemesis? Evil Twin from an Alternate Universe?), should be fun.
