In 2001, I went to the theater to see the big release of the summer. It opened, like many animated tales do, on a narrator expositing about a princess locked in a tower, waiting to be freed by the true love’s kiss of a valiant knight. Our narrator scoffs, “Like that’s ever gonna happen. What a load of…” as Shrek proceeds to wipe the shit off his ass with the pages from the story.
It made sense to me. The stories of my childhood were for babies who believed in sincerity, not for hardened, mature people like me who understood that the world was a cold, uncaring place. I was detached and nihilistic. I was 10 years old.
Shrek was a phenomenon. It was a true product of Generation X coming into positions where they could shape culture. It lionized the slackers, the cynical and the disaffected. It was a film about how sincerity is lame and how making fun of things was the height of intellectualism. It wasn’t cool to like things, and people who did should be ashamed. Twenty years later, Barbaric aims to do for Conan the Barbarian what Shrek did for Disney.
Michael Moreci and Nathan Gooden’s Barbaric #1 opens much like Shrek, with the promise of Hyborian gladiatorial combat being quickly subverted by our protagonist quipping, “Yeah … fuck this shit.”
You see, Owen the Barbarian was cursed by three witches, his damnation to Hell delayed at the expense of being compelled to always do what’s right. His greatest desire would be to burn out his life drinking, fighting and fucking, but he is forced to help those in need. Owen takes every opportunity to tell his magical talking ax, and the reader, how much he regrets this decision.
Now, Gooden’s art absolutely delivers on what a reader wants in a comic. The action is over the top. Gore and viscera flow comically from Owen’s slain foes. Colorist Addison Duke sets the tone with vibrant work that keeps things lighthearted while still supplying the low fantasy aesthetic the book skewers. The exaggerated character acting from the team sells the punchlines. One could question why this is the story being told — I sure am — but they can’t question that the art team is executing it flawlessly.
Rougher is the scripting from Moreci. The book is paced well, which isn’t faint praise. Moreci introduces the world, sets the tone, gives us the backstory of our barbarian and sets him down the adventurer’s road. The smarmy dialogue, however, is an absolute miss. Moreci juxtaposes his age undreamed of with modern turns of phrase. It can be jarring to undercut the epic action of Owen slicing through his foes with an ax that screams, “Get that sweet fuckin’ nectar of life, Owen! Get that blood!”
Midway though this issue, Owen sits in a corner of a tavern, listening to a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth tell the tale of his battle with the Lizard King. Owen looks to us to mock him, nearly chirping, “Get a load of this guy.” It’s clear the team has an appreciation for the tales of Conan, but they seem to be more interested in telling us how dumb these stories are. It’s that same attitude that I saw as the height of maturity in the days before I grew hair in my pits.
Thinking about this, another movie comes to mind. Walking into school on their first day as undercover cops, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill have a nearly horror-inducing realization. Being a cynical, disaffected jackass isn’t cool anymore. Trying is cool. Caring is cool. 21 Jump Street deftly skewered the attitudes of the children who grew up thinking nihilism was practical. For all the strengths of its sequential storytelling, Barbaric #1 feels like a book that’s two decades too late.
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
