This week’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN #28 feels strangely appropriate to the mood out there-

Conan of Cimmeria and his forces fight a desperate battle against the oppressive Mad King Numedides of Aquilonia and only one will survive their final confrontation! If you love epic swords & sorcery or ever wanted to know how Conan became king, do not miss this issue!

A Grand Zubstitution

Saturday night’s Dumpster Raccoon screening of the Director’s Cut of CAPTAIN AMERICA (1990) at the Revue was supposed to be hosted by current Cap comic writer Chip Zdarsky here in Toronto, but he was incredibly sick so I stepped in as his *ahem* Zubstitute.

Back in 2019, Chip subbed in for me at East Coast Comic Expo when I had to attend an Avengers creative summit in New York City. He tweeted that he was the superior “Z” and signed my comics while taking selfies with fans. 8 years later, turnabout was fair play as I signed a bunch of his Captain America #1’s sent as giveaways to the screening.

Big thanks to Anthony Oliveira for bringing me on board and the crowd for being good sports about it all. America is a terrifying mess right now, but the dream can endure if patriots keep fighting for it.

(Want more info on the 1990 Captain America movie? Secret Galaxy has a solid overview of its production woes and how the Director’s Cut completely changes the film.)

A Most MADdening Situation

Speaking of his Chipness, Zdarsky invited me to be a part of his guest edited April Fool’s Day issue of MAD Magazine called MAD ABOUT DC. I teamed up with my friend Ramon Perez on a brand new SPY VS SPY comic strip called GUY VS SPY with Green Lantern vet Guy Gardner squaring off against the pair of infamously hapless espionage agents.

As one of the millions of kids who grew up reading MAD Magazine and was changed by the way it playfully ripped the veil off pop culture and politics, it’s a rush to contribute to this issue, especially on Spy VS Spy, one of the most iconic features. Make sure you pre-order this special, as it’s jam-packed with comic talent.

Back in the Fight

Delayed several times but now finally in comic shops, the STREET FIGHTER MASTERS: ELENA one-shot is a throwback to my favorite fighting game franchise, reuniting characters I enjoyed writing back in 2010!

Ibuki and Makoto head to Africa to visit Elena and tournament-laden trouble ensues, with pulse-pounding artwork by Genzoman and Jeffrey “Chamba” Cruz!

Double-Zubble on Free Comic Book Day!

It’s rare having one release on Free Comic Book Day, but this year readers will be see Double-Zubble as I have two free books available Saturday, May 2nd!

Titan Comics unleashes our CONAN: TIDES OF THE TYRANT-KING Prelude, foreshadowing the return of Thulsa Doom, Necromancer of Ancient Atlantis, and UDON asked me to do some epic scripting on their Manga Classics take on JOURNEY TO THE WEST, an anime action-adventure version of the famous Chinese fables.

UDON just sent out their press release about Journey to the West HERE and it contains more info and preview artwork. I’ll have a lot more to cover on Tides in the coming weeks.

Happy Birthday, REH!

Last week, the Robert E. Howard Foundation celebrated Bob’s 120th birthday with readings of poems and story excerpts. I was honored to be in this year’s line-up alongside other authors, literary scholars, pulp researchers, and lifelong fans. Check it out and raise a glass to the man and his work:

Hugo Eligible

It’s that time of year when Worldcon members get their registration finalized (the registration deadline is January 31st, 2026) and think about which titles they will nominate for the Hugo Awards, one of the most prestigious awards in fiction. Stacy and I attended Worldcon in Seattle last year and it was an absolute whirlwind of panels, parties and time well spent with some of our favorite people in the business.

It can be an odd balance when it comes to making sure members are aware of work without coming across like you’re sucking up, but in this case I feel a deep need to beat the drum, so here we go-

CONAN THE BARBARIAN #25, “The Nomad” is a heck of an achievement. It took almost a year for Alex Horley to traditionally oil paint 38 pages of stunning sword & sorcery imagery and I did everything in my power to summon lyrical narration and dialogue to live up to those visuals. It’s a self-contained story about legacy, loss, and survival – poetry amidst pain. It’s one of the best comics I’ve ever worked on and the response from readers and reviewers was top notch.

If the Worldcon membership considers The Nomad worthy of nomination for Best Graphic Story or Comic and Alex Horley for Best Professional Artist, our whole team would be thrilled.

Anyone can join the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), even if you’re not attending this year’s event in Los Angeles in person, and a $50 base membership allows you to nominate up to five titles/people in all 17 award categories and vote on winners once the Hugo nomination ballot is ready. Get involved and nominate your favorites!

Current + Upcoming Releases

• Conan the Barbarian #27 – released Dec 17.
• Conan: Scourge of the Serpent #4 – released Jan 7.
• Conan the Barbarian vol. 6: A Nest of Serpents – released Jan 7.
• Conan the Barbarian #28 – releases Jan 28.
• Conan the Barbarian #29 – releases Feb 11.
• Skullkickers: Compact Attack Edition Vol. 1 – releases Feb 17.
• Conan the Barbarian 30 – releases Mar 11.
• Skullkickers: Compact Attack Edition Vol. 2 – releases Mar 17.
• Mad About DC – releases Apr 1.
• Skullkickers: Compact Attack Edition Vol. 3 – releases Apr 21.
• Conan the Barbarian #31 – releases Apr 22.

Upcoming Appearances

More shows have popped up on my Spring schedule:

Other Links

• Drew Petursson covers the core of what makes hand drawn animation so compelling and appealing, using examples from some of the best animated films EVER. As both a fan and a professional, this video pulled me right in.

• Speaking of glorious 2D animation, master animator James Baxter has posted up a wonderful tutorial about character walk cycles. Whenever I watch an expert showcase their process like this, I learn a lot even while I’m humbled at the same time.

• Meredith Gran has released PERFECT TIDES: STATION TO STATION, a point-and-click adventure game sequel to PERFECT TIDES, and both are heartfelt coming of age story video games. I first met Meredith way back in my webcomic days and it’s been amazing watching her skills and career flourish over the years.

• Steve Jackson Games has launched a crowfunding campaign for Munchkin 2nd Edition with all new art by my friend John Kovalic. If you’re a tabletop gamer like me you probably already knew about this, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Jim

Welcome to 2026, everyone! I hope your holidays were a worthy respite from the turbulent world around us. I had some great social time with family, relaxing time with Stacy, and nerd out time with movies, video games, board games and reading aplenty. Most of my clients and collaborators took vacation days until today, so there was a good amount of time to rest and reenergize before diving back into work this morning.

We originally planned for the final issue of Scourge of the Serpent to arrive before the end of the Year of the Snake, but a shipping slowdown bumped it to first week of the Year of the Horse instead. That’s okay – The issue no longer has to compete with holiday chaos and I’m eager to hear what readers think of the big reveals that erupt in this climactic chapter. (Speaking of which, Youtuber Tennessee Fats is the only person I’ve seen so far who picked up on this visual bread crumb I asked artist Dean Kotz to include in Savage Sword of Conan #4, released back in August 2024.)

In Scourge #4, artist Ivan Gil and colorist João Canola deliver a swirling, stirring finale that ripples backward and forward, recontextualizing moments that have come before and teeing up cool things still to be revealed…

As you’d expect, I have a lot of Conan projects on my plate and couldn’t be happer with that. Between multiple art teams working on the monthly title, more Savage Sword anthology stories, and our next event mini-series that will kick off with a free prelude in May (and I’ll start chatting about more in the coming weeks), the Hyborian Age will be central to my 2026 schedule but that doesn’t mean that’s all I have on tap. I’m reaching out to other editors and talking to a couple publishers, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit.

Serpents Everywhere

Also in stores this week, Conan the Barbarian vol. 6: A Nest of Serpents. Artist Fernando Dagnino joins our team and makes a huge splash with pulse-pounding action and soaring environments worthy of the world’s greatest sword and sorcery hero.

Fernando is currently drawing another storyline coming later this year, one he teased in this New Year’s sketch on his Instagram:

Yup, that’s Valeria, pirate swordswoman of the Red Brotherhood… 🙂

Movies + Games

With such an intense writing and travel schedule in 2025, I fell way behind on other pop culture stuff. I try to read comics or other books when I’m flying somewhere, but movies and video games took a pretty serious backseat over the past few months, so it was nice to bum around with a bunch over the holidays.

• Wake Up Dead Man, the latest Knives Out mystery movie, impressed the heck out of Stacy and I. It’s a classic whodunit with lots of fun twists and turns. Even though the film is packed with actors clearly having a blast chewing up the scenery, Josh O’Conner manages to outpace the rest and delivers a performance that feels both intense and effortless – genuine, humble and yet always engaging. We enjoyed it enough that it led us down a bit of a rabbit hole with a few other classic murder mystery films, but the genre can be a bit of a minefield with painful tropes and cringe-laden stereotypes, so it’s interesting to revisit some of them but hasn’t been a full blown revelation.

• Speaking of awkward classics, Christmas films can be a real mixed bag as well, with nostalgia goggles fogging out a lot of poorly paced storytelling that puts me to sleep. Over the years, Stacy and I have endured a lot perennial ‘favorites’ and slowly winnowed down our X-Mas movies/specials list to a handful we actually enjoy rewatching year after year.

Currently on that list: Scrooge (1951), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966), A Muppet Family Christmas (1987), The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Invader Zim: The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever (2002), Duck the Halls: A Mickey Mouse Christmas Special (2016), and Klaus (2019).

Feel free to suggest others, but don’t be too surprised if they’re not my cup of tea.

• We also watched Tokyo Godfathers, a 2003 tragi-comedy anime film that takes place around the holidays and enjoyed that too, though I’m not sure if it’ll become an annual tradition or not. Seeing the seedier side of Tokyo so well represented reminded me how many interesting and unexpected places can be found outside the more touristy spots in Japan. We tried to channel a similar off-the-beaten-path vibe in Wayward, my creator-owned teen supernatural series.

• On the video game front, my brother and I have been using our weekly gaming meet-up to chip away at Valheim (originally launched in 2021 but still technically in Early Access) and thoroughly enjoy exploring and surviving each challenge, bit by bit. The simple 3D models and environments are wildly enhanced by lighting and effects, creating a compelling atmosphere even though the game has a thankfully small footprint on my hard drive.

• I snagged Astro Bot thanks to a Playstation Store holiday sale and have been blown away by just how polished and charming it is. I’m about halfway through right now, and almost every single level has some kind of innovative gameplay element or twist on an existing 3D platform concept that surprises me and makes me smile. When it won Game of the Year in 2024 I wondered if it had been overhyped, but now that I’m playing it I can see exactly why it earned so many accolades.

• I also finally had the chance to finish Spider-Man 2, a game that came out late 2023 that I enjoyed, but just did not have the time to complete the main storyline until now. The whole Insomniac team did an incredible job distilling tons of comic book material into their own continuity, turning some of my least favorite comics from the 90’s into something actually resonant and interesting, which in itself is a heck of an achievement. The super smooth gameplay that makes you feel like you’re Peter Parker or Miles Morales – swinging, fighting, dodging and quipping the whole way is a damn delight. I’m hopeful that the studio’s upcoming Wolverine game is just as compelling and well executed.

Current + Upcoming Releases

Upcoming Appearances

Two shows announced so far for 2026, and more to come:

Other Links

• WatchingTheAerial has a neat short video essay about fans who scan 35mm prints of movies, and how they may be misled about their assumptions around film duplication, color grading, and other aspects of the film restoration process.

• I pulled our InstaPot out of the dusty dark corner of the pantry where it had been stashed and tried out Chris Young‘s time-saving chicken stock-making technique and, I’m happy to say, it works brilliantly well. Having top notch homemade chicken soup stock in the freezer will serve us well as we head into the coldest part of the year.

• Major Spoilers has the first look at Conan covers and solicits arriving in stores March 2026.

Jim

There’s a grand plan for the Conan the Barbarian series through to issue #50, using many of the original Robert E. Howard prose stories as pillars to build a larger mythic arc about men, gods, courage, sacrifice and storytelling. Each year we also have a 4-issue event mini-series that exemplifies and extends ideas from the monthly series, putting a button on broader themes and showing how adventures the Cimmerian has been part of echo outward, interacting with other characters in the ‘Howardverse’. My first Heroic Signatures editor Matt Murray and I generated this concept in brainstorming sessions long before the series launched, hopeful we’d get the chance to see it through and, as year 3 continues, it feels amazing to slowly unveil each major moment along the way.

Scourge of the Serpent #3 reveals the reality of a flashback first shown in Conan the Barbarian #18, built around the REH story God in the Bowl. Conan’s memories of that moment are hazy and I love the way artist Danica Brine‘s flashback version has a dreamlike quality while Ivan Gil‘s reality of that moment is more textured and horrific, even while both compositions are identical. Getting to plan all this out and see it executed so incredibly well by our team is a thrill.

With holiday shipping and distribution all jammed up, Scourge of the Serpent #4 has slipped to first week of January, but I promise that you won’t want to miss what gets revealed there, a big piece of the broader mythic puzzle.

Our year 3 event mini-series for Fall 2026 has already been teased in the upcoming distribution catalogue, but I’ll save discussion around that for after Scourge wraps up…

Conan.com Has The Crown

Conan editor Chris Butera talks with the official Conan website all about The Conquering Crown, the story of the Cimmerian’s rise to become the King of Aquilonia. There are exclusive sneak peeks at upcoming artwork and a lot more. Check it out!

Assembling Mighty Memories

There were a lot of fond memories of working on AVENGERS: NO SURRENDER + NO ROAD HOME in the interview I did with the Avengers Forever podcast. Working on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was a really special time for me. There are other discussions as well, but if you want to dive right into Avengers-related anecdotes, those start right HERE.

War Chatter

I was on World at War Comics last week, chatting on their livestream all about Conan the Barbarian – the current storylines, long term planning, our amazing artists, and a whole lot more!

Zub Books for the Holidays

When you’re looking at gifts for friends and family this holiday season, don’t forget to check out the Buy page on my website for a massive alphabetical list of books I’ve worked on over the years, across all different genres and age groups.

Support your local comics and bookshops if you can, but there are online ordering links there if you need them. Hashtag #BuyCrom 😉

Current + Upcoming Releases

Upcoming Appearances

Two shows announced so far for 2026, and more to come:

Other Links

• Flickering Myth reveals that Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons will get collected in a special library edition in May 2026.

• The old school Japanese fantasy TTRPG Sword World is being officially translated into English for the first time in 2026. This D&D-inspired game was part of the source material for the Record Of Lodoss War novels/anime and lit the creative fire for countless other Japanese creators.

• Edariad has some solid advice around running memorable combat for D&D and other TTPGs, making sure that battles are more than just pushing numbers around.

Jim