History in the Making - The Bloody Nipple Saga

So now we have Conan's history being pieced together. Also, (the yet unnamed) Conan's player begins to understand that an RPG involves the players and GM constructing a story together.

I attempted to give this comic the feel of both Conan and the DM looking at bits and pieces of a story, rather than having a flashback. The last panel is square, to try to represent that it happens in the "now", and not in the construction of the history. The layout here gave me a bunch of trouble, and I'm still not really satisfied with the middle bit. Although, the last round-face Conan reminds me of the introduction to The Brady Bunch.

In the novelization by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, and Catherine Crook de Camp, Conan was actually trained before just being thrown into a gladiator pit. The film version is kind of stupid when you think about it - buying a burly slave who was the only one operating a mill must have been costly; then throwing that money away without training him? Here, we assume that Conan the character was trained because he was a first level fighter, not a zeroth level slave.

Transcript:

Scene: Conan looking at the DM's story unfolding

Conan:Why do I have an owner?

DM:You were purchased by the owner of the gladiator ring.

Conan:Who sold me?

DM:The slavemasters of a mill used by local farmers to push a giant millstone.

DM:You endured years of hardship at the wheel, earning you your incredible strength.

Conan:Did you just make that up?

DM:Yeah.

Conan:Can I do that?