Liam Sharp’s long-running ambition to make a Savage Sword of Conan comic is getting another chapter. Savage Sword of Conan #18 is scheduled for January 13, 2027, and its centerpiece will be a 64-page sequel to Sharp’s earlier story, The Wuthering.
The issue is planned as an 80-page, black-and-white special from Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures, priced at $9.99 for its standard editions. Sharp is credited as both writer and artist on his Conan material, returning to a format that is particularly suited to detailed ink work: a larger, monochrome magazine-style comic rather than a conventional color monthly.
That makes #18 more than a routine continuation. It closes the title’s third year with an unusually large page count, brings Sharp back after his 2025 contribution in Savage Sword of Conan #11, and pairs the Conan sequel with another piece of Robert E. Howard-derived fantasy fiction: a Bran Mak Morn story by writer John Arcudi and artist Leno Carvalho.
A return to The Wuthering
The announced 64-page story is explicitly a sequel to The Wuthering. The available details do not establish its plot, setting, or the characters beyond Conan, so readers should be wary of assuming that a sequel means a direct continuation of every thread from the earlier installment. What is confirmed is the scale: 64 pages is the dominant share of an 80-page issue.
For Sharp, the return also completes an arc of a different kind. His path to the character has involved missed opportunities, a cancelled assignment, and then a realization of a project that he had wanted to make for decades. In 2021, Sharp discussed having passed on a Conan job in favor of drawing Wonder Woman, a decision he regarded as the right one even as he remained eager to eventually tackle Conan.
That eventual assignment appeared to have slipped away in 2023. Sharp said at the time that a planned 48-page black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan story, which he had written and was to draw, would no longer proceed for reasons outside his and the publisher’s control. He described the loss as painful precisely because the character and format mattered so much to him.
One year later, the outlook changed. Sharp revealed that a 44-page script had been approved, noting that its first draft had been written roughly 25 years earlier and subsequently revised. That work ultimately reached readers in 2025 as Savage Sword of Conan #11. The 2027 special confirms that it was not a one-and-done detour.
Why black and white matters here
“Black and white” is not merely a production detail in this case. It identifies a visual tradition Sharp has openly celebrated. He has cited the older Savage Sword magazine’s painted covers and ink-heavy interiors among the formative appeals of the series, naming artists including John Buscema, Barry Windsor-Smith, Tim Conrad and Alfredo Alcala. He has also pointed to Frank Frazetta’s enduring connection to Conan as a major influence.
In comics terms, black-and-white interiors leave the artist’s line, texture, spotting of blacks, and page composition doing work that color might otherwise share. “Spotting blacks” refers to the deliberate placement of large dark areas to shape depth, light, mood, and the reader’s eye across the page. It can be especially potent in a sword-and-sorcery setting built around deep shadows, dangerous landscapes, magic, and violent action.
Sharp previously said he hoped to pursue a level of detail inspired by Barry Windsor-Smith’s Red Nails. That should not be read as a promise that the new story will imitate a particular older work. Rather, it helps clarify why Sharp has repeatedly wanted the magazine-like, monochrome version of Conan: the format invites elaborate rendering and gives the inking a central role.
Sharp has characterized his Conan approach as a classic weird-fantasy adventure with grand settings, fights, and magic, while preserving the ornate introductory and concluding narration he associates with the classics. “Weird fantasy” is a useful phrase here. It generally signals fantasy with the uncanny and supernatural pushed to the foreground: strange rites, threatening magic, old horrors, and worlds that can feel more alien than a straightforward medieval adventure. It is a natural match for Conan, but the description also suggests a project consciously engaging with the tone of earlier stories rather than trying to remodel the character from scratch.
That commitment to dark, heightened fantasy has a clear adjacent appeal for game audiences too. Readers interested in how fantastical worlds move between media may also want to see Beatrix’s dark-fantasy board-building battles, a very different use of the genre’s atmosphere and imagery.
Bran Mak Morn joins the special
Sharp’s Conan sequel will not be the only story in #18. John Arcudi and Leno Carvalho are set to deliver a Bran Mak Morn comic, described as the first Titan-era comic story starring that character. Arcudi is credited as writer and Carvalho as artist.
That inclusion makes the special broader than a single-hero showcase. Bran Mak Morn is another character created by Robert E. Howard, which makes the issue a compact gathering of related sword-and-sorcery and historical-fantasy material rather than a Conan-only package. The announcement does not provide a page count or story premise for Arcudi and Carvalho’s contribution, so its exact size and relationship to Sharp’s story remain unconfirmed.
There will also be a contribution from the winner of Heroic Signatures’ inaugural pin-up contest. A pin-up is generally a single illustration rather than a sequential comic story. In an anthology-sized issue with a black-and-white magazine lineage, that is a fitting use of the remaining space: it recognizes an artist while echoing the standalone art features associated with comic-magazine culture.
What collectors and readers can choose from
The base edition of Savage Sword of Conan #18 is listed at $9.99, while the announced cover program adds premium variants. Alex Horley and Liam Sharp are each supplying cover art, with standard covers as well as “virgin cardstock” and foil versions.
A virgin cover typically means a cover image presented without the usual logo and other trade dress across the artwork, though buyers should always inspect final retailer listings or publisher imagery for the exact presentation. Cardstock indicates a heavier cover stock than standard comic paper. A foil cover uses reflective material or finish as part of its surface treatment. These treatments can make editions visually distinct, but they do not change the interior contents stated in the announcement.
- Cover A: Alex Horley, $9.99
- Cover B: Liam Sharp, $9.99
- Cover C: Alex Horley virgin cardstock, $11.99
- Cover D: Liam Sharp virgin cardstock, $11.99
- Cover E: Alex Horley foil, $19.99
- Cover F: Liam Sharp foil, $19.99
The practical choice is therefore straightforward. Readers chiefly interested in the stories can select either standard cover, since the announced distinction is exterior artwork. Those who value a particular artist’s cover, a logo-free art presentation, heavier cardstock, or foil treatment have progressively more expensive options. The announcement supports no claims about print quantities, rarity, resale value, or long-term collectibility, and none should be inferred simply from the use of variant materials.
A special built around a creator’s long-delayed dream
What gives #18 its particular charge is not only its page count. It is the persistence behind Sharp’s return. He had described Conan as a dream job, said he had waited 40 years to draw the barbarian in comics, and connected his enthusiasm to a personal history with the old Savage Sword magazine, Frazetta’s art, and the Conan film that left a mark on him.
There is an important distinction between that background and a claim about the new story’s quality: anticipation is not a review, and no finished-page assessment can be made from the announced credits and format. But it is fair to say that the project has unusually clear creative intent. Sharp has not presented Conan as an incidental assignment. He has framed it as an opportunity to work within a tradition he knows intimately, using a black-and-white format he considers essential to the appeal.
For readers, the key confirmed facts are pleasingly concrete: an 80-page black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan #18 arrives January 13, 2027; 64 of those pages will continue Sharp’s The Wuthering; Arcudi and Carvalho will bring Bran Mak Morn into the current publishing era; and the issue will offer six announced cover choices. For Sharp, it is another turn in a Conan journey that, after years of stops and starts, has become considerably more than a single long-awaited chance to say “Crom.”
