Gath of Bal by Dan Lawlis

 I recently found this excellent render of Silke's Deathdealer by barbarian artist Dan Lawlis. It looks the same as I pictured him back when I first read the novel!

The New Deathdealer Comic

    It's been done twice before, and neither time has James' Silke's novel series version been depicted. Each has been the authors' own interpretation Frank Frazetta's character. That had been my own introduction to the Deathdealer, as an actual character, I wanted to see it in print. 

   I had some hopes for this new series at first: That red-tressed girl in the background. Could that possibly be Robin Lakehair? And that woman on the alternate cover--could that possibly be Cobra?

   No such luck. 

   This Deathdealer is not Gath either. He does share some similarity though, as he lives an isolated existence, and is bound symbiotically to the power of the helmet, which in this version has the uncanny knack of speaking in his mind. 

   As for the girl on the cover, it turns out, is the same as the woman clutching a child in the snow with wolves about to attack, in a totally different Frazetta painting. This, BTW, was one of Frank's works that always disturbed me. It was actually done for an old paperback novel about Atlantis called Atlan by Jane Gaskell. Whether or not the heroine (if it is a heroine) on the cover survives is something I don't know having not read the book. I recall someone on FB, in regard to the FF painting, remark: "the situation looks pretty grim, unless Conan shows up."

   It's not Conan who shows up in the comic, though, but the Deathdealer. And I can't recall what his name is this time around, but he does have one, it just isn't Gath. After saving the woman and child from the wolf pack, and taking them to his lair, both end up getting kidnapped, and its up to the hero to save them again. Then there's battles with a giant saurian, a ride on some kind of desert shark, and city on the back of some colossal beast that rears up out of the sand! And a sorcerus who is dogging deathdealer's heels and has some manner of sinister design for him. 

It's an enjoyable enough series, better than the first two. Still not what I keep hoping for.