The Best Arak Story Arc Yet!
In the summer of 1984, Roy & Dann Thomas continued to breath life into the sword-an-sorcery genre by having their wandering Native American barbarian begin to dabble in magic, and wander into the Middle East.
With this story, Arak officially becomes a shaman – though it was hinted at last issue following his ‘death’. The change seems a little abrupt, though. Seems like it could have been handled a little better, but at least he doesn’t go fully into accomplished wizard mode, tossing around lightning bolts and whatnot.
The villain du-jour here is a Ghul, a type of Djinn, showing once again that the Thomases are going to try to remain somewhat faithful to the local mythologies of the areas Arak travels to.
The art team of Ron Randall and Rick Magyar also remains solidly good. The only real disappointment is that the Valda backup feature is no longer here – replaced with a tale of Arak’s youth which isn’t bad, but I could swear was previously printed in Warlord or someplace else.