We move on from Jan Duursema to an artist who has been with Marvel almost since the beginning, Marie Severin. If you read comics in the 70s or 80s, especially Marvel comics, it's almost inconceivable that you wouldn't have seen some of Ms. Severin's work. Today's comic is a nice example of her 70s work, another R.E. Howard character snapped up and made visual by Marvel, something that resonates with the current Marvel U and the Savage Avengers.
Storywise, the comic is a bit of a miss. The tale is a good one, but it's not an original one: Kull is asked to help a neighbouring country, only to have them turn on him at the end. I worry sometimes that the proliferation of this kind of story is actually what makes us untrustworthy animals - we're so influenced by our fictions and stories (see: every organized religion ever) that we don't always tend to notice when that influence makes us worse. If we keep retelling a particular tale, like this one of betrayal, at some point we come to believe that it has truth to it, that we are an untrustworthy species. I wonder how long, and what kind of stories, it would take to convince us to actually trust each other?
"You will prove most useful, my curious savage."
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