Zubby Newsletter #141: One Beast To Another

Posted by Jim Zub on January 5, 2026 Leave a comment (0) Go to comments

*Set telepathically communicates with our heroes in **Scourge of the Serpent #4**.*

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.

*Our treehouse in the Black Forests of Valheim.*

• 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.