Barbarians! You know, those shaggy characters clad only in bearskin diapers who wander the wasteland doing battle with monsters and hordes and monster hordes? Well, barbarians do have their place. In vaguely racist 1940s pulp fiction. In cheesy movies and TV shows. Airbrushed on the side of custom vans. And of course, at the gates. But in your living room, or wherever you read comic books? Of course!


If you want your comic book reading to resemble your heavy metal album covers to resemble your book jackets to resemble the posters at Spencer's Gifts, well, this guy has got you covered. The only thing this cover is lacking is a half-dressed maiden in distress and a smudge from where you spilled bongwater on it. But enough about the aesthetics of this particular milieu, let's get us to readin' on them funnybooks.


His friends call him Zorann! His enemies something different! Something involving a verb, maybe. Something involving the death-angry voice of the star gods, which makes it sound like the star-gods ought to see a throat specialist.


Sometimes you think comic book captions might be getting a little verbose, a little self-important, and then you get gems like this one here, that asks us to feel sad about not being able to discuss spirituality with a dinosaur.

We spend a lot of time making fun of comics here, and usually it's due to the writing or the artwork or some failure of one or the other. But is content the only thing that can make a comic stupid? Can production itself deliver stupidity? Yes it can. Let's watch!


Here, for example, is a page of this comic that, well, I have to get into old printing terms here, bear with me. So printing a comic book back in the day meant you took the original pages of artwork, and somebody in the camera room made a negative image of the artwork onto a piece of photographic film. This film is then placed on top of a printing plate which has been coated with a photosensitive chemical and then an extremely bright light is used to "burn" the image onto the plate. Well, when this plate was imaged, somebody in the production department placed the negative onto the plate burner with the wrong side facing the printing plate, so the plate was burned in reverse. When that plate went onto the printing press, the page was printed in reverse, and then however many thousand copies of this comic book were printed and stapled and trimmed, and at no point did any one of several employees and supervisors and clients say "hey, this page is reversed." And that's... kinda stupid.

Anyway, what planet is all this happening on? Let's find out.


Planet Rynald is a lot like the world "we are told was ours." Which implies that our world... is no longer in our possession? That's a win for the space invaders, I guess.


What's great about barbarian comics is that the barbarians all lack haircuts and shirts and pants, they trudge through the wilderness on foot eating something they caught with their bare hands and then roasted over a fire, the only thing they own is a sword and various species of body lice. But they all talk like classically trained Shakespearean actors. That's just how barbarians are, one day they're a sweater-vest assistant professor in an English department somewhere, the next day they're mostly naked, fighting dragons in a cave. Sure, this comic never comes right out and says it's a barbarian comic. But bearskin loincloths don't lie.


But enough saluting the dinosaurs, Zorann has to get back to somebody named Relonda, who you barbarian fans will be pleased to learn is the only female anything that's mentioned anywhere in this entire comic book. Girls? Ew!


"Look Bob I JUST drew that dinosaur, why are you ruining my dinosaur drawing?"


It's a given that when various tribes of weird goblin people assemble for their annual dinosaur hunt and chili cook-off, one of the goblins is going to be all like "I'm going to set some traps so I catch all the dinosaurs and therefore become the champion goblin man." Every gang has its Reggie.


And so the great dinosaur hunt begins, which mostly exists so we can see the dinosaurs running around while their tiny little forearms flop around in front of them. So cute!


This year's dinosaur hunt is turning into a nightmare of smashing, gigantic horror as thunderous giant reptiles smash everything in their path! Who knew hunting dinosaurs would be so... so... so much like hunting dinosaurs? Especially dinosaurs that have "their witts" about them?


"The activities of the Star Warrior remain unnoticed." In other words, business as usual. Because this darn website making fun of it right now is the most notice the activities of this particular Star Warrior have EVER gotten.


"Rotate your body one hundred and eighty degrees on the horizontal plane in a slow and deliberate fashion, for the instrument that currently has its sharpened point directed towards the musculature of your exterior oblique abdominal area would cause trauma to your internal organs in an accelerated fashion!" Whatever happened to "Stick 'em up"?

Also: "yellow hair?" Zorann is supposed to be a blonde? Fire your stylist, Zorann!


"Please refer to my previous statements with reference to the intent of both my weapon and my body's readiness with which to place it into... arrrgh!"


Zorann would love to have been defeated by a clever stratagem instead of someone shoving pointy things into his back. Sure, call it a "ploy" if that makes you feel better about it.


Male pattern baldness can strike anyone - athletes, presidents, goblins, goblin president athletes, anyone.


He may be telling the truth! I found him destroying one trap, and also, he used the word "whilst," definitely a trustworthy sign.


hashtag #nomads #campfires #canopies #wagonlife


Campfires, hot drinks, fireside accusations leading to angry confrontations - this might be the best season of "Survivor" yet!


It isn't often a comic just comes right out and tells us it's too boring.


Getting real "Dances With Wolves" vibes from how this bold stranger suddenly shows up to show these nomadic tribesmen how to do things right.


Sounds to me like the sky needs to visit his optometrist! Maybe he can catch a ride with the star-gods when they visit their ear, nose & throat guy (as noted earlier).


Open the door
get on the floor
everyone salute the dinosaur! Again with the dinosaur saluting. And now YOU, Zorann, will also compete in this contest of champions, to see who gets to boss the goblin-man vanlife tribes. Because all primitive tribes everywhere are just waiting for some bold white dude to show up and tell them how to run things, right?


Look, get some sponsors, call it the, uh, Tough Rockclimb Ropefall Challenge, charge a hefty entry fee, you can't lose! Fitness nuts go crazy for these things!


Can't just say "what a way to die," he wouldn't be a Star-Warrior if he didn't jazz things up a little.


Zorann faces many challenges in this trial, including a feral hog and blazing molten lava, described here as something to do with Mother Earth's pantry, for some reason.


And of course Zorann and Magrok, here looking unsettlingly like the old Hanna Barbera character "Shazzan," find themselves pitted in very talky mortal combat. The prize? Getting to call yourself "Star Warrior!" Which does not seem worth the trouble.


Not many comics have the courage to give the reader a hint of, uh, Little Magrok there, but Zorann Star Warrior does not believe in things like surrender, mercy, athletic supporters or dance belts.


"Your idle boasts bore me, Zorann! In fact I'm so bored, I'm just going to hurl myself right into your sword and get this thing over with. You're welcome, readers."


While we're spirit-directing, might I ask the spirit of this comic return to haunt the goof in the comp room who screwed up the plate on page two?


No man can guarantee what the next day will bring! It may bring peace between Zorann and the nomads, it may bring a captured dinosaur to feed on Magrok's corpse, it may even bring Zorann back to the lovely Relonda, who actually did show up in an earlier Zorann adventure, whose co-creator's name appears nowhere in this particular story for some reason now lost in the mists of time and maybe a lawsuit, who knows. All we know is the future holds pain, confusion, trouble, war - and remainder bins!

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