With the recent release of Dark Horse's new Kurt Busiek/Cary Nord CONAN series, this appears to be a good time for Conan material, which will hopefully lead to more Robert E. Howard and pulp adventure material riding in on its success. I know the first issue sold out and went into a second printing. That has to be good.



I frankly wasn't wild about the stories in either the preview issue, or issues 1 or 2.
But I love the art, and hope the storyline will develop.



A series I really enjoy is the SOJOURN monthly series from Crossgen:



Like I said in some prior posts to other topics regarding SOJOURN, it's a nice mix of humor and Edgar Rice Burroughs-brand adventure. And the art is absolutely unbeatable, by Greg Land. I'd most closely compare it to the Bruce Jones/Brent Anderson/Ron Frenz/Armando Gil issues of KA-ZAR in 1981-1983.
Greg Land's art in SOJOURN alone is worth the price of the book.



And finally, HELLBOY. Which has been a great series for about 11 years now, and tomorrow will be released as a movie in theatres. It looks to be a great movie in its own right, as well as an adaptation that's consistent with the appeal of the original series.
Hopefully it will bring a lot of new readers to comics, who liked what they saw in the movie and are hungry for similar material in comics.



Quite honestly, I don't like any of the new material done by writers and artists other than creator Mike Mignola on the Hellboy characters.
But I really enjoy the five collected trade paperbacks of HELLBOY stories by Mignola.
In a lot of ways, the HELLBOY series reminds me of Jack Kirby's THE DEMON (1972-1974).
But HELLBOY is also a distinctly Mignola vision, and incorporates many other interesting elements, including monsters and demons based on real mythology and ghost stories Mignola has read, a blend of 30's/40's pulp adventure heroes thrown in, with real historical figures like Nazis and Rasputin added into the mix. Which adds both creepiness and realism to HELLBOY's adventures.

These represent some of the best recent contributions to pulp adventure in comics.