So the new Wood/Cloonan Conan is pretty good, and as a bonus I get to use the phrase "Cloonan Conan".
It's a bit decompressed for my tastes, but I dig the approach. Conan somewhere in his early twenties; he's not a neophyte but he's not a veteran either. I really like Cloonan's model for him; people have pissed and moaned that he doesn't have the muscles they're used to from the Schwarzenegger movies or the art of guys like Vallejo, Frazetta, and Buscema. But a lither, wirier Cimmerian works just fine, and is still distinctly recognizable as Conan. (And anyone who was worried that a woman drawing Conan would result in fewer sexy, scantily-clad ladies can put their mind at ease.)
And a shoutout to Dave Stewart. The colors popped out at me enough that I flipped back to the credits page to see who did them, and then I said, "Ah, of course." Few colorists really stand out to me (I can identify Laura Allred without a second glance, even when she's not working in tandem with her husband); Stewart is one of the best.
And yes I'm mentioning the writer last, but yes he does a pretty great job too. Wood's got the mood down, the "gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth". The one false note that took me out of the story is when Conan refers to going to "the clink" -- it feels like a weird little anachronism. (But it sounds like it'd be right at home in 1930's slang, so I won't rule out the possibility that the turn of phrase is Howard's, not Wood's.) Other than that, it's solid; I love the characterization and get a great sense of who this Conan is in the first few pages -- and it just gets better from there. I've been a Brian Wood fan for years and he hasn't disappointed; I never got around to reading Northlanders but this has me thinking maybe I should.
A very solid start -- even if the plot and pagecount are, like Conan himself, much leaner than in the 1970's Marvel era.