At last, we’ve arrived at the end. Months of build up culminating in one final, fateful issue to close out the Scourge of the Serpent miniseries. It’s been an interesting ride from Jim Zub, one full of conspiracies and supernatural horrors that span countless eras to tie together three otherwise unrelated heroes (or, perhaps two partially connected heroes and one far removed from the affairs of the ancient past) against a common threat: the serpent god Set. For three issues we’ve followed King Kull, Conan the Barbarian, and Professor John Kirowan as they’ve come up against the various forces of Set, and now, at long last, they stand before the serpent god himself, or perhaps more appropriately herself, given the pretty guise adopted by the deity. Each stands ready to face the ageless menace as best they can, but what happens next is a battle unlike anything any of them could have anticipated.
*Mild spoilers ahead for Conan: Scourge of the Serpent #4*
When last we saw our three heroes, their separate stories had finally converged, bringing them together from across the countless eons separating them to stand before the serpent god Set. What they encounter, however, is not what they might have expected. Standing before them is not some monstrous force capable of instilling terror into even the bravest of hearts, but rather a woman, scantily clad and greeting them not with hostility, but with horrific visions of what is to come: war. A war the likes of which the world has never known. A war that will bring about the end of every living soul. A war fought “upon a field beyond dreams and nightmares.” This is the End War, heralded by the Woeful Eye, and from it shall come no victory for the inhabitants of our world. Not, that is, unless mankind joins forces with Set to create a race capable of standing against the Eye’s might.
I’ll admit, I was pleasantly surprised by this twist in the story. While I can’t say for certain what I expected from this series given how separated the three storylines had been in previous issues, Set attempting to seduce the three protagonists was not something I would have ever predicted. Nor would I have expected the final battle to be one not of swords and physical might, but of resilience to resist said temptation, that they might overcome their baser desires to defy the dark god.
And then there’s the reveal within this final issue: The Woeful Eye. A malevolent force beyond even Set’s power. Much as Zub had been setting up the threat of Set across multiple titles (along with other Titan Comics’ series such as Patrick Zircher’s Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring) in the months leading up to this miniseries, it seems it was in service of building up to something even greater. We saw traces of this looming threat in his previous miniseries Conan: Battle of the Black Stone, which also saw a cast of Howardverse characters coming together across time and space to combat an ageless supernatural menace. We’ve also seen hints of this in the most recent issue of Conan the Barbarian, through a vision Conan experienced during an interaction with the mad King Numedides, with the king even naming “The Woeful Eye” when speaking to Conan. Such things cannot be mere coincidence, as Zub does not appear to do things in his stories merely for brief shock value or callbacks to Robert E. Howard stories. These things all have a purpose, one that I’m certain will be made clear in time.
Bringing the focus back to this particular issue, it’s a decent conclusion to a miniseries that in my opinion has struggled a bit to tell a cohesive story. It’s not a bad series by any means, but I felt it was ultimately hindered by the way it kept its three storylines separated as it did. In my write-up of issue three, I praised how each of the protagonists faced a foe that related to who they were individually, and I still feel that this was a concept that could have worked really well with the way the story was laid out. But this issue seems to backstep on that idea and beg the question of what each threat was ultimately for. Was Set testing each of the heroes, bringing against them foes that could best determine their worthiness in the dark god’s grand plan? Or were these merely unrelated incidents occurring to men already bound together by the serpent’s machinations? We do not receive an answer to this as far as I could tell, with the final issue instead seeming more focused on establishing a new threat than closing out each storyline cleanly.
Speaking of the three storylines, let’s take a moment to address them since this is the final issue of the miniseries.
Out of the three plotlines, only King Kull’s story felt fully realized, from being forced to contend with the realization that various individuals in his palace have been replaced by Set’s shapeshifters to the reveal of the final challenge threatening his kingdom. This felt like a complete story, with both compelling instigating incidents and a satisfying conclusion to give a sense of actual story progression. While I would have liked the story to expand a bit more on the shapeshifter plot unfolding within the kingdom, I was ultimately satisfied overall with this particular arc.
Kirowan's storyline, meanwhile, stumbled at the end. While overall not as fleshed out as Kull's, Kirowan's arc had been interesting in its own way. Part of this was how it had provided a contrast to the other characters, as although Conan and Kull both had distinct storylines, the two characters ultimately felt interchangeable to me due to their similarities in demeanor and appearance. Kirowan, however, presented a much different hero, with his portions of the miniseries feeling more like a supernatural Sherlock Holmes than more of the same. Unfortunately, issue 4 is where his story feels like it hits a wall. Due to the way the narrative handles the confrontation with Set, it feels like everything that was unique about his character up to this point goes out the window here. This is worsened by an ending that feels woefully rushed. I had high hopes for this particular storyline after the reveal that the agent of Set Kirowan was to go up against was one with a very personal connection to the professor, but rather than run with that idea the story just...stops. Everything is resolved with little fanfare, bringing a story that could have proven as interesting and satisfying as Kull's to an ending that was ultimately just alright.
Conan’s story, meanwhile, felt the weakest to me of the three, despite him being the titular character. Where the events of the others were drawn out over the course of a few days to create some sense of stakes and featured at least some degree of steady progression, Conan’s story felt largely stagnant by comparison. He broke into the museum, was caught with a dead body, got into a brief altercation with the city watch, and then fought a snake monster. All of this within the span of what seems to be only a few hours in-universe. Even when he finally came up against the monstrous creature in the third issue, the battle felt like an afterthought. Both Kull's and Kirowan's respective foes had some degree of personal connection to them, whether from duty to one's kingdom or aiding a friend and colleague. Conan's, meanwhile, feels like nothing more than a means to bring him to the climax with Set. Further weakening this storyline is the lack of real stakes or consequences from it. Kull's felt like a natural conclusion to his arc, and though Kirowan's suffered from the rushed ending, it at least felt like it left some kind of impact on him. The events of Conan's story, meanwhile, don't seem to have made any lasting impact on him. The story simply ends, with Conan off to pursue whatever his next adventure will be.
Admittedly, Conan's story not being as strong as the others isn’t a huge detriment to the miniseries overall. I love Jim Zub’s Conan works, but it was great to get to see other Howardverse characters taking the spotlight here, especially after Zub just finished an arc on his Conan the Barbarian series that saw Conan going up against the forces of Set. By focusing more on other characters, the miniseries avoids feeling like it's just retreading the same story by focusing on different elements: political intrigue and occult mystery. These kept the series from feeling like just another Conan book, despite the name, allowing it to become something different.
At the same time, the lack of interaction between the three characters cannot be ignored. In Battle of the Black Stone, the various characters actively interacted with one another, even if it ended with none of them recalling the events of the story. Here, however, it feels less like a crossover and more like three stories that happened to meet at the same place, and even this is debatable as a crossover moment, as so far as I could tell the three characters didn't even seem aware the others were there. While I did like the concept of events throughout time being tied together such as they were, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a bit disappointed by this lack of true interaction between the characters, especially given that the events of this miniseries seem to be leading to something bigger down the road.
Ultimately, as stated before, Conan: Scourge of the Serpent #4 is a decent finale to the miniseries, wrapping up the story in a unique way while also appearing to introduce a new threat to the larger Howardverse. While parts of it felt a bit rushed, it closes out the various story threads well (albeit perhaps not as thoroughly as I might have preferred) and leaves no loose ends that I could see, save for the hint of what is perhaps to come. The unexpected manner in which the heroes were forced to contend with Set was a nice touch, as it would have been easy to just present an unbelievable fight in which the unified heroes of the Howardverse impossibly manage to defeat a literal god. By making their bout one less contingent on physical might and more on the resilience of the heroes, Zub avoids jumping this proverbial shark with each of these characters while still presenting them with a surmountable hurdle they must overcome before completing their individual challenges. Of course, it remains to be seen if this is the end to the conflicts between Set and the heroes of the Howardverse. The serpent god has proven resilient itself in its endless machinations, and with the shadow of the End War and the Woeful Eye looming over the Howardverse, all we can do is wait to see what will come from all of this.
Conan: Scourge of the Serpent #4 is available now from Titan Comics.
