Conan's Wild Cimmerian Spring
'Wild Cimmerian Bull' has, of course, a double meaning. It represents the first real threat to Conan's village that he ever faces single-handedly (per Robert E. Howard's notes) but also a reference to Conan himself - who is really beginning to grow into his wild ways - sleeping with multiple girls, and generally reveling in being the barbarian that he is "...he was Conan, and was that such a bad thing to be? WHU-HAAAAHH!"
One has to marvel at the detailed notes Mr. Busiek has taken. Where he fills in gaps in Conan's life, as with this story, it is in accordance with what a scholar of Howard's works would do. This whole story, for example is based on a line from the Howard story 'Shadows in Zamboula' wherein he writes,
"You fool!” he all but whispered. “I think you never saw a man from the West before. Did you deem yourself strong, because you were able to twist the heads off civilized folk, poor weaklings with muscles like rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you call yourself strong. I did that, before I was a full-grown man — like this!"
As usual, Ruth's art evokes equal parts tribal painting, and Frank Frazetta and fits the character perfectly.
I did have to dock the story a little because of some minor improbable coincidences in the storyline quibbles really, but ones that somehow got to me, and a few panels of art that looked rushed. But all-in-all, a good addition to the canon.
