Unexpected. Just hope in the third number Marvel don't replace him with a black girl.
"Never assign to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity or ignorance."
"Great stories will always return to their original forms"
"Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable." James Baldwin
Serious question, does anyone still read Conan? It has always felt like a remnant of a bygone era to me. Even the original prose stories are quite old-fashioned and have many of the problematic issues that many pulp era books share.
That's a shame. I think Dark Horse was a much better home for Conan and I don't have a lot of faith in Marvel to do something cool with the character at this point. The great days of Savage Sword of Conan are far in the past now.
I hope that they get the rights to Red Sonja as well.
I think that right now can be complicated to see a bunch of writers able to overcome Roy Thomas take on Conan from past runs.
The exciting part of this is guessing who will take over the title. I think Simone, Cates, Ahmed, Aaron, Latour, and Hopeless would be good choices for writers. Stegman would be an interesting artist for Conan.
Marvel created the Hyborian age version but she was based on another Robert E. Howard character that was part of Howard’s non-Conan portfolio. Under the license Marvel had with the Howard estate, that made her the property of the Howard estate to do with as they wanted after Marvel lost the license.