Roay Thomas' Return to SSOC

 I meant to make a post on this a few months back. 

Roy Thomas's return to Conan happened a while back, and, as other fans are saying, it was well worth the wait. The issue of Savage Sword was #7, with lead story "Mark of the drawn the Beast, " drawn by Roberto de La Torre. This is De La Torre's first time on a lead feature for SSOC. The story is a "Conanization"of a short horror tale penned by Rudyad Kipling. From my research, and rather surprisingly, Kipling's original taale features a regular old werewolf, and not a weretiger as does Thomas's take on it. There story is also a sequal of sorts to Thomas's adaptation of "Moon of Zembabwei," a classic Howard horror story, but not  Conan tale, as was the case with a lot of other adaptations of Howard non-concn tales that got adapted back in the Marvel years. 

The current tale starts with Conan returning Helga, the beautiful slave girl from that tale to her father in Nemedia. After this, Conan meets a fellow named Raja, who becomes infected by a grotwsque "silver man" who seems infected by a type of leprosy. Later, Raja mysteriously, and Conan encounters the Mark of Jhebbal Sag, first mentioned by inb "Beyond the Black River", a symbol known by Pictish shamans to summon the beasts of the forest. It is also used by the sorcerer D'jegga the beat king, and is recognized by certain animal species, such as leopards, hyenas, pythons, crocodiles and birds of prey from the anceint time when beasts and men spoke the same tongue.

  Afterward, Conan encounters Dharahini, a beautiful and uber-sexy priestess of Jhebbal-Sag, who commands hords of leopards, wolves, pythons, hawks, and komodo dragons. She takes a liking to our Cimmerian hero, and Conan naturally obliges. But he rebels once he learns of her plans to conquer humanity and it's then that Dharini dummons forth Raja, now transformed into a were-tiger, now under her thrall. Conan triumphs of coiurse, after talking some sense back into Raja, even while under Dharini's spell. He then must take on her legions of beasts, during which Dharini is killed during the battle, and that about wraps up the lead feature. As others have comments, this could easily have been passed off as one of the better issues in classic '70s run of Thomas, drawn by Buscema. Yes, it's really that good!

   The back-up feature is a tale of one of Howard's little known heroes, Breckridge Elkins "The Twelfth Labor of Breckridge Elkins," an obvious take on the Twelve Labors of Hercules. To be honest, I could never get much into Howard's Breckridge Elkins tales, the main stumbling block being that Howard adopted a completely different tone for these tales, a comic "tall tale" dialogue that (for me, at least) completely diluted the darkness. This is possibly the first Elkins tale I actually enjoyed, probably because the art managed to overcome the corny diabloge. The story puts our hero up against a a hideous spirit grizzly summoned by an Amerindian witch. 

   All-in-all, its a fantastic issume. But there is one draw-back. Not of the issue itself, but the very apparent news that Roy Thomas is not here for a lengthy stay, as I had first assumed. No, this issue is a one shot for him. That's not to say he won't nesessarily be back for furture issues; only that he's not back as a regular writer. 

  Looking forward to future SSOC issues featuring Doug Braithwraite's art, as he did a fantatic job on Conan's recetn adventure where he re-nconters Zula, the Darfaran warrior of the early seventies Marvel issues--not be be confused with the female warrior Conan the Destroyer--though she  has as a quai-cameo in that story as well. 

A Witch Shall Be Born: An REH Classic

 

he two covers of "Savage Sword of Conan," both illustrating the famous scene from the REH classic "A Witch Shall be Born." The left one is by Boris Vallejo from back in the seventies, and the right one is by Joe Jusko for the current issue of Savage Sword. The seventies issue contains the actual adaptation of Howard's story by Roy Thomas and John Buscema. The new issue only contains a bunch of Conan short stories by current writers and artists. Good stuff, but I'd rather they'd just done a new adaptation of Howard's "Witch". For those of view unfamiliar with the story itself, it's about a good queen named Tamaris who is replaced by her evil twin sister Salome, the witch of the title. Every few generation a girl child is born with a witch's mark, and is left to die in the desert. An cruel act it would seem, only she truly is a witch, and very evil one. She is saved a wizard, and returns to get her revenge on Taramis, locking the real queen in the dungeon. Conan fingers her as an imposter, and she has the guard captain Constantius nail Conan to an X-cross out in the Turanian desert. Conan survives of course, the witch is defeated, and Taramis restored--but not before Conan slays a demonic creature Salome keeps and feeds her enemies to. And then our Cimmerian hero takes ferocious revenge on Costantius. The scene of the crucified Conan was incorporated into the 80s Conan movie, as was the Lin Cater pastiche "The Thing in the Crypt." The movie story though, is entirely different. The same thing was done with the red-cloaked ape from "Rogues in the House", for Conan the Destroyer.

People of the Black Coast: An ERB Connection

 

I first read REH's "People of the Black Coast" back in the days when I scoured the used paperback bookstores, for collections of Howard's fiction; I really hadn't known what I was missing until I read the Baen paperback: Cthulhu: Mythos and Kindred Horrors, a book that contained "Pigeons from Hell", perhaps the most terrifying story I'd ever read. The book was called "Black Canaan," the title of another Howard horror story contained within, with a cover illustrating "Black Coast" by artist Ken Kelly. The above pic is of another illustration for the same story, also by Kelly for Beyond the Borders, part of the "Robert E. Howard Library series of books released during the nineties. Both are out of print nowadays.

The story is a bizarre one: a man and his young finance are marooned on a strange island whose beach is backed by towering basaltic cliffs. While the hero is exploring to find the extent of the cliff wall, a terrible tragedy strikes; the man returns to find the girl dead and dismembered. Sick with grief, he wanders until collapsing with exhaustion. When next he wakes, to his horror he finds himself surrounded by the young woman's killers: enormous crab-monsters, whom he senses possess a vast intelligent, perhaps beyond his own. He muses that he felt as wild beasts must feel "when first confronted by men." I surmises that killed his fiance "to satisfy some useless scientific experiment." Fearsomely armed though they are, the protagonist is able to slay them with his blugeon, finding they have evolved to be less coordinated then their smaller brethren, presumably the result of their great intellect, similar to how humans have become weaker thanks to civilized degeneration. This gives our hero the advantage, and he spends the rest of his existence hunting and exterminating the creatures. The crab-monsters do, however, possess terrifying mental powers that can stun and overwhelm an attacker, perhaps to compensate their lack of physical prowess. The narrator tells us that they are at slower ebb at dawn, and that he must "strike and kill quickly, as a lion must kill an armed hunter before the victim can aim and fire." He plans he will eventually ascend up to the demon-city high in the cliffs where he will slaughter, and finally be slain himself, as a final act of vengeance. "They slew my mate, I take their lives."

Like many other non-Conan stories, this was adapted into a Conan tale by Roy Thomas called "Man Crabs of the Black Cliffs." This issue I never particularly cared for as the art by Buscema and Chan made the creatures appear more humanoid than they are in Howard's original. The crabs of the black coast have evolved sentience without evolving a form parallel to that of humans, something likely to be true of intelligent aliens, should they exist. 

But the really interesting thing about "People of the Black Coast" is that the intelligent crab scientists Howard's nearest equivalent of the Mahars, the sentient rhamphorynchoid pterosaurs of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar stories. Possessed of cold, vast intellect, seeing humans as mere curiosities to be studied and exploited, the similarity is striking, especially their frightening mental powers that can paralyze or kill a foe. There is a hint that this is also how they communicate with one another, in the same fashion as the Mahars, with powerful currents of intellect. The hero, though,  never establishes communication with them; he doesn't care to, seeking only revenge. 

Robert M. Price, an authority on the works of Lin Carter, states in Lin Carter: A Look Behind His Imaginary Worlds, that "the Mahars are absent from (Zanthodon) Carter's version of Pellucidar." He does note that there is a species of giant vampiric leeches (the Sluggahs), which a dwarfish race called the Gorpaks worship as gods and offer human victims, comes the closest, but that "these lack the Mahars' malevolent intelligence. The professor character does perceive what seems to be an icy intellect burning in the eyes of one of the sluggahs, but basically the leech-monsters are just animals, feeding off their victims as any other animal might. Very unlike Howard's crab-monsters, who are motivated by scientific curiosity.

This wasn't the case with my own (mostly unsuccessful) attempt at writing a Pellucidar-like lost world novel myself The Eighth Continent. True Mahar analogues are present, in the form of giant cephalapoid mollusks, which survived the end of the dinosaur era, and evolved intelligence in the intervening millions of years. They developed a communication system based on skin colors and patterns, a vastly more advanced form of what octopoid mollusks actually possess. They may own their existence to Howard as much as Burroughs. I also tried to incorporate lost human civilizations into the mix as well, a concept that didn't really work well. It would have been better to have the "Great Lords", dominating a world in habited soley by "cave people", similar to the world of the Mahars.

Conan: Cult of the Obsidian Moon

 

I just got finished reading Cult of the Obsidian Moon, the new Conan pastiche novel by James Lovegrove. It turned out to be not merely THE best Conan pastiches I've ever read, but one of the best novels I've ever read period. Okay, it's not in Howard's style. No other writer could match Howard's style, of course, and that's not to be expected.  That said, Lovegrove's style, like few other writers, is very engrossing, and keeps one turning pages until the finale. 

The story involves Conan teaming up with another Howard hero, a one-shot whom relatively few might have heard of, namely Hunwulf of the short story "Garden of Fear", one of the James Allsion stories, wherein the bedridden Allison relives past incarnations.  One need not have read "Garden of Fear" to enjoy this novel; the entire story is reiterated by Hunwulf as he explains to Conan about his past. To brief it, Hunwulf and his mate Gudrun flee their Aesir tribe to escape retribution from his kinsmen, as he has slain a fellow Aesir to claim her. Gudrun, whom Howard describes as much more beautiful than any woman of the modern age, is abducted by a bizarre winged humanoid, and flown to a black tower, surrounded by a circular field of vampiric blossoms which drain to blood of anyone foolish enough to venture within. Hunwulf uses fire to stampede a herd of mammoths who crush the flowers, after which he is able to scale the tower and rescues Gudrun, slaying the winged creature in the process. The story was adapted by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith back in the early days of the Conan comic, with Conan himself in the Hunwulf role. It is not known exactly if Howard intended Hunwulf's saga to take place in the Hyborian age, but Lovegrove assumes that it does, and who's to say he's wrong. 

Anyway, Conan befriends the couple following a bar fight in Eruk, a small Shemite town, and he learns that the two have spent most of their lives on the run from Ragnar Leifson, and his small band of Aesir warriors, bent on revenge for the slaying of Ragnar's brother. Ragnar was formerly a friend of Hunwulf's, but now he plans a most gruesome death for him and Gudrun for betraying their tribe. We also learn that Hunwulf and Gudrun now have a nine-year-old ashen-haired son named Bjorn, whom Conan befriends and teaches; Bjorn seems very like a young Conan himself. In another reference to Howard's James Allison stories, Hunwulf has knowledge and visions of past lives. This gives him the power to partially predict the future, and sues this psychic gift to win at gambling. Bjorn seems to have inherited a form of his father's powers, and can establish a psychic bond with animals, which he does with a street dog about to attack him, the first time he and Conan meet. 

As the next paragraph might contain spoilers for the middle portion of the novel, skip it if you don't want to know.

At Conan's advice, the Aesir couple leave to set up a trap for the pursuing Ragnar. They leave Bjorn in Conan's charge, but a wily, treacherous thief, whom Conan had assumed killed in an opening scene, appears, claiming he wants to treat Conan to a drink at a local tavern. Conan does not fully trust the man, but takes him up on the offer anyway (one wonders why). The thief, of course, betrays Conan to corrupt city guard, and meanwhile, Bjorn leaves his hiding place and ends up captured by Ragnar. Conan manages to bribe the guard captain, kills the man who betrayed him, and he, Hunwulf and Gudrun set out in pursuit of Ragnar and the kidnapped boy. It's at this point that, while Ragnar and his cronies are sitting about their campfire discussing their plans, with Born trussed up as bait, that we learn that Ragnar may still some measure of honor about him, but has become blinded by his desire for vengeance. One of his friends says he wants to kill the boy right there for wounding him during his capture, but Ragnar insists the boy be used as bait. Right about then a mysterious winged monsters tears out of night sky, slaying all of the seasoned warriors, save Ragnar, who is still fatally wounded, then makes off with Bjorn. When Conan and his friends ride into their camp prepared for battle, they come upon the scene of slaughter, with Bjorn nowhere in sight. The dying Ragnar relates what happened to Hunwulf, and they at least establish somewhat of a truce at the end, Ragnar seeing now only the friend that Hunwulf once was. 

Then the real quest begins.

I am not not going to relate anything further beyond this point for fear of spoilers, but I will say that I first expected that the winged monster was some kin of the creature that captured Gudrun in the original "Garden of Fear"; (references to both this, and the winged ape-like monster that slew Belit in "Queen of the Black Coast" are referenced throughout the novel), seeking some vengeance of his own. This proved not to be the case at all; the race of Bjorn's abductor (yes, there's more than one of them), are referred to as scaley and lizard-like, whereas the being in "Garden" was more manlike with ebony skin, more like Howard describes the yagas of the planet Amulric in the novel by the same name. Moreover, the creature in "Garden" and the winged ape of "Queen", themselves appear to be of disparate races, the latter being the last degenerate member of a highly advanced technological species. 

If this is ever adapted into comics form for Savage Sword or Conan the Barbarian, it would span several issues, not a single one like the Chuck Dixon novel I covered in a previous post. 

Anyway, this is very good novel, easily the best Conan pastiche I've read so far.

Titan's New Conan Comics (In General)

 

In general, as most other people are saying, Titan's new Conan the Barbarian is a return to the Conan comic's glory days, or at least as near as possible. Jim Zub is a solid writer, and Robert de la Torre, though a Buscema riff, is actually better, if anything, than the style he's riffing on. Doug Braithwaite has his own style, but is as good as most of the Old Masters of the 80s and 90s Conan comics. The first story arc, where Conan teams up with a Pictish female warrior named Brissa to defeat an army of Pict-zombies was pretty much excellent, but the Kull vs. Conan via sorcery tale that followed was even better. I believe it happened before back in the day--yes, at least once in a graphic novel. But here we get links to Conan's past (future?), notably the re-encounter with Yag Kosha, the emerald-skinned elephant headed extratrrestrial, who "remembers" what Conan did/will do for him in that future age.

Now when I first saw de la Torre's depiction of Kosha on one of the alternate covers, I suspected that they were either doing a new adaptation of that story (would have been fine by me), or just wanted to do a scene from that tale as cover, but with no connection to the Zub's current story. But now, the cover actually ties on with the story. Then, of course there is the revival of Thalsa Doom, a villain technically created by Howard, who Conan will later battle in the Hyborian Age. Note: the first Conan movie barrowed the name for the main villain played by James Earl Jones, but the original version was not the same. 

I'm not quite so sure about the new companion Savage Sword of Conan. Generally, yes, I'd say it's a return to the good old days; who would have thought B&W Conans would really be available in the old format, complete with pin-ups, editorials and all? The first issue story though, seemed just okay, as barbarian comics go. Not bad, just okay--nothing to compare the old yarns spun by Roy Thomas and Micheal Fleisher. The art looked too computery, and some readers had issues with the grayscale (I didn't so much).  Like I said it's okay, but its the back-up story Solomon Kane, that has really excellent art and story, a bit like a reverse of the old Savage Sword, where the lead stories were the ones with the better art. The quality lasted throughout the Kane story, but the second issues lead Conan tale had art that again was okay, but seemed a bit sketchy. The werewolf story in the third was drawn by Dark Horse comics; great Cary Nord, who probably qualifies as one one of the New Masters of Conan art, but his more painterly techniques he used with the Dark Horse Conan's would have been better. 

    As for the Black Stone series, its a treat to see Howard's other lesser seen heroes like Steve Allison and El Borak get the comic book treatment. But the story and art I just don't care for so far. So basically, much as enjoy the return of Conan to comic form, I'm still a bit lukewarm on the latter two. 

    

The Early Adventures of El Borak

The new collection of Robert E. Howard's El Borak tales features a T-rex-like dinosaur on its cover. Initially i supposed that this might be just a gimmick to sell the book, as non-Howard tale, as I have one El Borak collection and I was not aware of any dinosaurs anywhere in the pages.

Turns out I was wrong.

The El Borak stories are not ones I've read as extensively as the Conan ones, mainly for the reason that there's very little in the way of fantastic (not necessarily supernatural) elements in the stories, the one exception being El Borak's encounter with a carnivorous gray ape, not unlike the ones that tend to turn up in the Conan stories.

I was surprised a bit to find that the vast majority of tales here were fragments and unfinished. The cover picture is from "The Land of Mystery", a tale that pays homage to H. Rider Haggard's tales of lost realms in the heart of Africa. Now I really haven't read Haggard, because from what I know of them, they're basically lost world tales without dinosaurs. (Yes, there was that proposed movie that was a crossover with Sherlock Holmes and Quartermain, who encountered prehistoric beasts kept alive by the Flame of Irridar from Haggard's She, as I've written elsewhere--but that's not canon).

Howard, however, does not make the same mistake here. The story starts in a drawing room, wherein El Borak and some friends, including Howard's other hero James Allison, are sitting around, listening to El Borak tell of this adventure. While exploring a remote region in the Congolese Africa, El Borak enters a land inhabited by two feuding tribes, one friendly, the other hostile. He penetrates a forbidden land, and first encounters tree-living gorillas far more aggressive than ordinary ones, something like the gray killer apes of Michael Critchton's Congo. He enters a strange, eerily silent forest that all humans and even the savage gorillas shun. This is where he comes face to face with a living theropod dinosaur. The scene has an air of fantastic unreality, even for El Borak, who has experienced many strange sights. There is a certain spookiness to the encounter, something that is a signature of Robert E. Howard. He feels as though he has been transported back to a primitive era, and that the rile he carries is now a stone-age ax.

The theropod bounds toward him like an enormous kangaroo, a method of locomotion once believed to have been true of giant theropods, but is now known to be incorrect--the same was true for the allosaurus in Burroughs' The Land that Time Forgot. He manages to fell the beast with two slugs from his rifle and ventures on. He catches glimpses of the other dinosaurs in the weird forest, but none other attacks him. He makes it of the forest, across a vast swamp and plain and into an unknown range of mountains. There he encounters a lost city of strange architecture that at first appears to be abandoned. It turns out there are remnants of what must be the builders still living there, a strange white race that might be the descendents of a lost colony of--what? Atlantis? Lemuria? Mu? Howard doesn't tell us, because the story stops after the hero rescues a blonde, violet-eyed girl from large men who seem to be soldiers of some sort. Where the story would have gone after that is anyone's guess. As its merely a fragment, though a fairly lengthy one, it would doubtless have been submitted to Weird Tales. Still, it's a major find on my part and wonderful to read and own this vintage Howard Tale after I thought I'd already consumed all of his weird fiction.

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Wrarrl the Devourer (with a bit on Imhotep the Ravager)

 

Cover of SSOC #96 by Joe Jusko

Wrarrl the Devourer of Souls is a reoccuring antagonist of Conan, apparently created by Michael Fleisher, and introduced in Savage Sword of Conan #90. He is of an other-dimensional race of beings bent of conquering the earth. He he wears a bat-winged helmet that partially conceals his inhuman visage, and sometimes rides a bat-winged horse. His main magical ability is to reduce human beings to "souls" which look like worms, which he devours, hence his name. The columnist of Savage Sword, in answer to a reader's query "why worms for souls?" replied it was "Because that's how Wrarrl sees human souls. To him they're bite-sized tasty treats. Yummy!" 

   The Devourer was first summoned to this dimension by a sorcerer named Meldark, who sought a jewel that would open a door to Wrarrl's realm, from which the Devourer's legions could pour forth into Conan's world. This was when Conan first fell afoul of him. Unfortunately for Wrarrl, he tried to double cross Meldark, and the wizard caused the souls in the Devourer's pouch to grow huge and suffocate him. As with Bor'que Sharaq, it appeared that the Devourer was destroyed, but we learned later on that he was merely banished to another realm. 

Conan encountering the Ape-Bat, a lycanthropic spawn of sorcery

    Wrarrl returned to Hyborian age earth, seeking revenge on Conan, and to release his minions once more in SSOC #96, in another Fleisher story called "the Ape-Bat of Marmert Tarn." The story's intertwined plot has Conan encounter a town whose windows and doors are bolted every night. The reason for this soon becomes clear, as a saber-fanged, bat-winged ape-creature is terrorizing the town after dark. After his first brush with the monster, Conan saves a girl from a giant cliff-mantis. It turns out, she is the daughter of a local wizard who lords over the town of Marmet Tarn. As for the ape-bat itself, the creature is very like the one in Howard's own tragic "Queen of the Black Coast," who kills Belit, incurring the wrath of Conan. While that beast was the degenerate last specimen of a vanished race, the ape-bat of Marmet Tarn, is of entirely different origin; Conan soon finds proof that the monster and the wizard are one. The girl's father transforms by sorcery into the creature every night to terrorize the villagers. Meanwhile, Wrarrl has returned and is seeking vengeance. A brief scene occurs early one when some cat-throat brigands mistake Wrarrl for a rich traveler--a fatal error, as one could predict!

I just happened upon this Ernie Chan pin-up of Conan and Wrarrl

    After vanquishing the ape bat, there is the inevitable showdown with the Devourer. The rescued girl reads a spell incantation from her father's tome, which temporarily steals away Conan's soul rendering him invulnerable to Wrarrl's magic, and allowing him to slay the Devourer with his sword. Wrarrl"s minons are still there, however, and immediately seek revenge for the death of their master, attempting to dismember the souless barbarian, by "rippling off his limbs, gouging out his eyes," etc. The sorcerer's daughter once again saves Conan by summoning a horde of zombified drowned sailors, but, tragically, sacrifices herself , as they drag her into the sea as well, leaving Conan to contemplate the soridness of the human condition.

    The Devourer, of course, is still not really dead. Wrarrl's next appearance was in Savage Sword #109. In the previous issue, who's main plot involved Conan's conflict with another antagonist, the  traitorous Nemedian inventor Pol Tiurno (more on him in another post), a subplot had the Devourer's minions seeking a sacrifice to summon their master back to the Hyborian realm. This involved the murder of a girl who had just been cruelly rejected, which was a bit disturbing. This sublpot leads directly to the main story of the following issue,called "The Shatterer of Worlds." 

    This was quite an atypical issue of Savage Sword, as Conan was not even the main character, and didn't even feature that much until the end. The story centers instead around a young boy who is learning a trade, and happens to be a huge fan of Conan. Yes, Conan's exploits had become widely renowned by this time, enough that he had his admirers among the Hyborian common folk! 

    In any event, the lad comes across the body of a harlot murdered by Wrarrl's minions, and overhears their plot to raise the Devourer from the dead. The boy takes the most logical course of action-- naturally, he seeks out his hero! After coming across the victims of brawls, swordfights, and a gaggle of young pretty women who have been "tired out" by Conan, the boy at last manages to track the Cimmerian down. Unfortunately, he happens to barge into to Conan's room at an inn, when Conan is in the midst of making love to another girl! Conan is understandably annoyed at this, though it's a bit of headscratcher why he does not at first take the lad's story seriously; Conan has seen far too much in his travels, even battled to Devourer twice already, not to at least consider that Wrarrl might be coming back. 

                                                          

   The truth soon becomes apparent of course; Conan's current love interest is soon captured by the Devourer's minions, and though Conan manages to save her from the sacrifice, a few droplets of the girl's blood are all it takes to revive Wrarrl, back and ripe for conquest! Unfortunately, though, the Devourer becomes enraged upon discovering his acylotes have inadvertently released another otherwordly being known as the Shatterer of Worlds. This elder-horror resembles a gigantic eyeball surrounded by writhing tentacles. Realizing that the Shatterer will simply destroy Conan's world before he can conquer it (along with Wrarrl"s own dimension!), the Devourer forges a temporary alliance with Conan. Gorging on the souls of his transformed minions, Wrarrl rises up to confront the Shatterer of Worlds. It's all over swiftly, and the world is saved once again. It's somewhat of a departure from the standard Conan formula, and a unique SS plot, though it's a bit disappointing that neither Conan nor Wrarrl feature that much until the very end. 

    That was Wrarrl's last appearance in SSOC. But unlike Bor'aque Sharaq, who was never seen outside SSOC, the Devourer did reappear in the Conan the Barberian color comic, under Jim Owsley's reign. This occured shortly after a rather lengthy story arc by Owsley, in which involved Conan and a few allies (including Keiv, a man turned into a plant-creature by sorcery, a guy who didn't like Conan named Delmario, and a girl named Tetra) with a mad Kushite called El Sha Madoc, who fancied himself a god, and presided over a Kothian city-state by the same name. Tetra, by the way, a girl whom Conan was in love at the time, died and was replaced by a demonic entity that was a duplicate of her, who absorbed her feelings and was love with Conan! But that whole story is way to convoluted to relate here, other than it involved a lot of political intrigue. 

    Well, one other thing is notable: Owsley invented an otherworldly antagonist of his own named Imhotep the Ravager (not to be confused with the real-life historical pharaoh of the same name). This entity wore blood-red robes, and ALSO rode a bat-winged stallion (though the horse, too, was blood-red), ALSO commanded a legion, and was bent on world conquest. Imhotep and his legions are ravaging across the Hyborian realm, leaving city after demolished city in their wake. El Sha Madoc lies straight in their path when Conan and his allies become embroiled in local politics. It is during a battle that Imhotep finally shows up, and he and Conan battle, in what seems like a duel to the death. But Conan manages to best Imhotep, and the latter calls a truce between them. After the rule of Madoc is shattered, Imhotep rides off into the sky, promising Conan that when they next meet "it will not be as allies." This proves not to quite the case however, when Imhotep once more returns, but this time in SSOC, under the new reign of Roy Thomas, when he again strikes a bargain with the Cimmerian against a common foe. 

    But back to Jim Owsley and Wrarrl. A sect of wizards known as the Council of Seven, seeking to assume political power over the city of El Sha Madoc ressurect the Devourer as an ally to their cause. The Council does not want Jahli, a young boy and heir who stands in their way, to ascend to the throne, and have him murdered. Conan fails to save Jahli's life, and swears vengeance on those responsible. I recall the final scene of one issue, in which one smarmy little man "fears later facing the Devourer," and taunts Conan that he killed the boy himself, and enjoyed doing so. Conan responds accordingly by hacking him to pieces. The cult member who actually committed the murder is, in fact, later transformed by Wrarrl and devoured! I kept think thinking that the poor kid would actually turn up alive. Unfortunately for Jahli, it never happened. Jim Owsley was a very good, but also very depressing writer, who had little hesitation in killing off any character. Sort of like the Stephen King of Conan comics. 

    The Devourer was still around for several issues more however, also written by Owsley, in which he was in more direct conflict with Conan, but when Buscema left and a different artist was brought, I really didn't collect many more issues of Conan the Barbarian, so I can't really say much, save to look up online sources for him. I don't know if there was a final fate for the Devourer, but as he seems essentially immortal, we have not likely seen the last of him. There is a new action figure based on Wrarrl. I'm still waiting to see if Wrarrl will ever come into to conflict with Sharaq. Or with Imhotep, which would be a far more even match. 

 Wrarrl capturing a young girl who apparently harbored powers, from later in Owsly's reign.  According to online sources, Wrarrl attempted to transform her and devour her soul, but since the child was innocent, it backfired, and the child was restored to life! This was a Jim Owsley tale, apparently in a Conan annual. I don't have the issue, but apparently Owsley sometimes spared character's lives after all

Titan's Conan #9

 This Roberto del Torre cover for Titan's comics' Conan The Barbarian 9 got my hopes up that they were adapting Howard's "Tower of the Elephant." Del Torre IS returning for this story arc, but so far as I can tell, it's a brand new story. Howard fans will recognize the scene in which Conan confronts the elephant-headed alien, Yag-Kosha, and it is a much better rendering than Cary Nord's for Dark Horse, as accomplished an artist as Nord is. But shouldn't Kosha be green? I suppose it's the lighting. Anyway, it appears they are NOT adapting the story, so no one get their hopes up. Or is it possible that Conan and Yag-Kosha will cross paths again? Doubtful, this DOES appear to be a scene from that story--Kosha is chained to the throne, presumably by the evil sorcerer who has enslaved him.

Chuck Dixon's Siege of the Black Citadel

 

   Over this holiday season I read Chuck Dixon's rather slim new Conan pastiche "Siege of the Black Citadel", about Conan  as a sword for hire, leading an army of Kothian rebels against their insane emperor, and his "Black Citadel", a fortress guarded not merely by the imperial army of Koth, but by dark sorcery. If you don't know who Dixon is, he had a long run was the regular writer of Savage Sword of Conan, Conan's black and white comic magazine, back in the day. He wrote many good and memorable Conan yarns, often tending toward the gruesome, back in the late eighties/early nineties after Micheal Fleisher's long run. He's most remembered by comic fans for his creation of the Batman villain Bane, for DC comics. 

   This whole novel just feels like it could fit into an issue of SSOC; I can imagine it as just such as story, illustrated by Gary Kwapisz, Dixon's offtime collaberator. That's no criticism; it's something of complement, given that there hasn't been anything like the richness of Savage Sword, with its often incredible art, backups, feature articles on REH, pinups, etc. On the other hand, this was only a fairly good story that would make a decent SSOC issue, nothing outstanding, and would likely be run-of-the mill as Dixon's stories go, not one of his best. In fact, many of his SSOC tales outdid this one. 

   There is, naturally, a climactic battle between Conan and a demonic creature summoned from an alien plane by the Citadel's mage at the climax of the tale, as there often is.

   The one issue I did have with the story was with a character I sympathized with that (I'm fairly certain) was not intended as sympathetic; namely Ozmeth, the puppet prince who was foolishly left in charge of Black Citadel. He was merely a teen or preteen, and was horrified when soldiers got cooked alive during the battle. Ozmeth is later driven mad when he foolishly looks upon the demonic entity after being sternly warned not to do so. I'll assume he was killed along with everyone else during the final destruction of the Citadel, but by that point, his death would be more or less a mercy. 

 

   So that's about all I have to say about this book. A better than average book on Dixon's part, but nothing really great as Conan pastiches go. 

The Black Stranger, aka The Treasure of Tranicos

 "The Black Stranger" is one of the darkest and most disturbing Conan stories Howard wrote. It is nearly novella length. It's mostly about Buccaneers searching for the treasure along a stretch of Pictish Wilderness coast.  But at the core of the tale is the story of a corrupt nobleman, Count Valenso, on the run from a mysterious vengeful entity, the "Black Stranger" of the title. Valenso has joined one of two sets of feuding bucaneers, supposedly in hope s of securing Tranicos' treasure himself. But the true reason for his presence among them, which Valenso has kept secret, proves far darker. 

    The Count is accompanied by his young niece Belasa, and her younger (sister?) Tina, whom he treats with cold indifference. Apparently the two children are orphaned and are forced to live with their callous uncle, and are in among this rough crew of unfeeling adult males because they have no where else to go. Valenso makes it clear later on that he intends to sell both children into slavery or get rid of them. This element of the tale has an almost Dickensian feel to it.

   The most disturbing incident in the entire story occur when the Count is discussing with his men how to secure the treasure and survive the Picts, when the young serving girl, Tina, blurts out that she has witnessed a "black man" come ashore in a strange boat limned with blue fire. She was frightened and observed him from behind a ridge of sand. Valenso nearly goes mad, first with horror and astonishment, which then transforms to rage, as whips the poor bewildered child with insane fury, until her back is lacerated and nearly flayed, screaming for her to confess that she is lying. The child screams for mercy and insists she is telling only what she saw. Howard describes the faces of the other men as "uncaring as oxen", the awful scene of child brutality not moving them in the least. Belasa comes to Tina's rescue, as the rage suddenly desert's the uncle, and it is clear to the reader that he is now in state of terrorized despair. There is no question that nothing less than stark terror triggered his brutalization of the child. Needless to say, far from thinking Tina a liar, he believes her every word. 

    Now when I originally read this, it was a copy of the altered version retitled "The Treasure of Tranicos," and it was co-authored by L. Sprague DeCamp. And something didn't seem right. It is later revealed that the black stranger is none other than Thoth Amon, the Stygian sorcerer, and Conan's old foe. This didn't quite ad up. For one thing, Amon was DeCamp/Carter creation, and had appeared numerous times in the Conan comics. And also the Stygians (proto Egyptians) were dusky skinned, while Tina described the stranger as tall and "black like a Kushite." Knowing how Howard's original Conan stories bordered on belonging to the horror genre, and judging from Valenso's reaction to the news of the stranger's arrival, this being had to something far worse than a human sorcerer, either Stygian nor Kushite. 

  And thus proved to be the case. 

   It wasn't until many years later that I finally got hold of the original, unaltered Howard yarn, published along with other similarly dark Howardian yarns in the volume pictured above. When the stanger beats his drum within the woods, a wild storm wrecks Valenso's ship, leaving the men stranded and at the mercy of the indigenous Picts.  We learn from Valenso's lips that the stranger is actually a demon cast in a human-like shape, whom he paid a wizard to conjure up to destroy his (Valenso's)enemies, to gain him a position of power. But the corrupt noble tried to cheat the demon, and the dark entity slew the wizard that conjured him, and began pursuing Valenso to the ends of the earth. 

    Now that's vintage Howard for you!

    I won't say more, save---don't read if you don't want to know, slight spoiler---the stranger does get revenge on the count, and has a climactic showdown with Conan. Who unsurprisingly, is the one who recovers the treasure, and uses part of it to make sure the children Belasa and Tina have a secure furtue. One thing Howard makes disturbingly clear in this tale is the utter powerlessness of children, particularly (I imagine) female children among brutal and uncaring adults during the Hyborian age. And that, of course, goes for most of actual recorded history as well. 

Bar'aque Sharaq: Michael Fleisher's Deathless Villain

 

The Bob Larkin painting of Conan facing off with Bor'aque Sharaq. Sharaq was a re-occuring villain during Micheal Fleisher's long run at Savage Sword. He was a Barachan pirate who was captured and tortured by the Argossan navy to find Conan's whereabouts, and they gouged out his left eye in the process. After that, the disfigured corsair became obsessed with killing Conan.

All this happened in a story called "Temple of the Twelve-Eyed Thing," which ended with the titular creature flinging Sharaq to his apparent death out a tower window. But Sharaq survived, and reappeared off and on throughout Fleisher's run, on his quest for vengeance. The issue below is one of a two-part story featuring Sharaq. illustrating the climax, in which a demon from the netherworld reaches out to claim a sacrifice, but it's Sharaq he grabs, not the girl on the alter. It is at this climax that Fleisher cheats a bit, refering to Sharaq's "death-shrieks", as we learn in a later tale that the pirate survived the incident by making a bargain with the demon. He is eventually is able to escape the fiend's dimension, and resumes his quest for revenge. This tale was illustrated by Alfredo Alcala, by the way.

One thing that always bugged me about Sharaq is that Fleisher always had him slaughtering without a hint of remorse any innocent person who happened to get in his way, apparently to demonstrate how evil and ruthless he was. It's fine that Sharaq was so evil. What bothered me was the fact that these innocent people got killed. Worse, Sharaq never got his comupance. Each time Conan thought he had destroyed the corsair for good, Sharaq would always bounce back.

That is, until after an adventure with Snow Raven, one of Conan's many love interests, at the climax of which Sharaq was frozen in mystic ice. It was clear that the ice would melt, and Sharaq would be free, once Conan and Snow-Raven were far away. But ironically, this time Sharaq never showed up again. Fleisher's reign was at end at SSOC, and he later took over as the writer for Warlord at DC. Letters often inquired if Sharaq would be back, but he never was, not during Chuck Dixon's reign, or Roy Thomas's return.

Then again, if SSOC is returning, might it be that Sharaq might return as well?

Conan's Adventures in the Hyborian Americas

 

 In the last post, I explained how in the final current issue of  Marvel's  King Conan, Conan paddles off into the sunset, at last reaching the verdant coast of an unknown continent. This is either what is now called North or South America, or possibly an island off the coast.

Does this lead directly to L. Spraque L. DeCamp and Lin Carter's Conan of the Isles? Prince Conn is, and always has been a staple of Marvels chronicles of King Conan, is a Lin Carter creation (and has such has long been hated by Conan purists). De Camp intended his and Carter's A Probable Outline of Conan's career to be canonical. This was back during the barbarian boom of the sixties and seventies, Conan was going great guns at Marvel. The purist, with reason, vehemently disagreed, and now only the original Conan tales by Howard are considered canon, while the rest are basically pastiches. Therefor, all you can do is speculate. 

Conan of the Isles has the sixty some year old monarch, bored of tedious court life, venturing across the Western Sea, to battle a conclave of wizard who survived the sinking of Atlantis. Most of the action takes place on Antilan islands off the coast of the Central American mainland, in the city of Patchuan ruled by the demon god Xotli. I remember from the book and comics adaptation the giant dragon-lizards in the pit beneath the city, that are dispose of the corpses of those sacrificed to the demon-god, and how Conan sets the dragons loose to terrorize the city. After defeating the priests and their evil god, Conan ventures further west, knowing there lies the even greater kingdom of Mayopan (undoubtedly proto-Mayans), "tiger-like cats" (jaguars), and another apparent demon god the Quetzalcoatyl (an Aztec deity; the Mayan name for essentially the same god is Kukulcan). It is easy to see the ancient meso-American culture in the place and character names, as well as a connection of Atlantis with those cultures. 

None of this violates canon, as the tales of Conan as king by DeCamp and Carter, and the subsequent ones by Marvel, mostly by Roy Thomas, are based on a passage by Howard himself, that he journeyed to Khitai and other lands, including the two great continents across the Western ocean.

But's there's no mention of Patchuan or Xotli here. What the authors seem to have done is return to the source material, ignored the events of Conan of the Isles, and written their own version of what Conan might have encountered west of the Hyborian continent. 

The fly in the ointment here is Prince Conn. As with Conan of the Isles, the prince assumes the throne after his father's abdication, but little else remains the same. Conn is already a part of Marvel's continuum, and was invented by DeCamp and Carter. Plus he's already a part of Marvel's expanded universe. 

As is, of course. Conan of the Isles itself, which was adapted by Marvel in one issue of the annual "Red Shadows, Black Kraken", scrapped the next year in favor of a Jim Owsley story of two blonde twins with powers, one good the other evil, born during the era of King Kull--but that's another story. The entire adaptation of Carter's and DeCamp's pastiche was published in a graphic novel. 

So what gives here?

Of course, Marvel hasn't always been consistent with it's use of Conan anyway. One thing I've always been confused by is whether of not the Marvel incorporated Howardian continuity into their own "universe." This was debated back and forth in the letters column back in the day. It seemed settle when one writer opined that Howard's Conan tales take place in a world that "will eventually become our world today, not the Marvel super heroes' world". The editors seemed to agree and that was that. Only  there was a (very good) issue of What If, drawn by Ernie Chan that had Conan drawn into the modern world through the well of the sorcerer Shamash Shum Ukin, a villain from an early issue of Savage Sword. During his stay, there is a very brief cameo by Peter Parker and Mary Jane, proving that it's the Marvel super heroes' world after all! Another What If  had Wolverine travel back to the Hyborian Age to team with Conan. There was at least one other What If that had Conan in the modern world, but I know next to nothing about it, other than it was still the same universe as Marvel. These instances were often dismissed for the fact that they were "what ifs" only, and never canonically occurred. But the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe published around that time, made repeated references to the Hyborian Age, even including an entry on the Stygian god Set. The inclusion of Howard's hero in the now current Savage Avengers proves that Conan is, nowadays at least, a mainstay in the Marvel universe, as these stories are no "what ifs", but I have little idea of what goes on at Marvel these days. Only that having Conan adventure in modern Las Vegas (Zamora was the Hyborian Age's own "City of Sin"), is a far cry from the Howardian continuum, or even DeCamp's, Carter's, and Roy Thomas's subsequent embellishments. 

But I've let myself get sidetracked again. 

Conan of the Isles wasn't Conan's only venture to the Americas during Marvel's run, either. Sometime during the 90s Savage Sword run, Conan, while king of Aquilonia, traveled up the coast of South and North America, encountering a civilization that was either pro-Inca or Aztecs (probably Incan, as the name of capital Kuzco, suggests), the American Indians, and finally the Inuit where he slays a huge white whale feared by the natives as a god.  On the page that featured a map of Western Hyborian age world-continent, they presented a map of the American continents as they existed during that time. As Africa and Eurasia were merged into one super landmass, so were the Americas, the Central American landmass being much wider and vaster. 

The story above has Conan defeating an evil shaman, who is able to summon a monstrous bear spirit

Panel showing Conan smoking a native American peace pipe...

And communing with a coyote "Trickster" spirit

Prince Conn is merely a infant at this time, and his father has already had substantial adventures in the "New World" although he has reached here from the opposite direction than Conan of the Isles, having sailed east from Khitai. So Conan's venture to these two lands is already established (at least within the Marvel universe) well before the DeCamp and Carter novel takes place. 

There are two tales within the Howard canon that have a definite connection with the ancient Americas. One fits definitively with Conan's chronology, the other is, well, more controversial, being an original Howard tale, just not one about Conan. Until Roy Thomas converted into a Conan yarn for Marvel. 

The first Howard story is "Red Nails" a Conan classic that has been adapted first by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith back in Marvel Conan's early days, and then by another company in the 2000s for a three issue story arc in The Cimmerian.  This series only adapts original Conan tales. "Red Nails" is one of Howard's originals that I wish would have been re-adapted by one of New Masters, preferably Tomas Giorello, one of the young artists who has assumed the throne of the Old Masters, but it has never happened. 

The story had Conan and Valeria lost in the dense jungles of Darfar, when they have a run-in with a huge dragon, an apparent survival from prehistoric times. Conan slays the beast with a spear slimed with the juice of Derkata's Apples. Afterward, they come upon an abandoned city upon a flat plain. The city turns out to be a single vast palace with no open air streets or plazas, the walls, incredulously, of pure jade. This is not the first time Howard has Conan encounter a city like this. In Howard's "Xuthal of the Dusk," adapted by Roy Thomas as "The Slithering Shadow," Conan and the girl Natala discover a city of  Xuthal in the desert that proves to be one vast pleasure palace, whose drugged inhabitants are the prey of a Lovecraftian entity called Thog. 

Anyway, the city in "Red Nails" turns out to be not quite deserted after all. Conan saves a man from a seeming-supernatural entity, who takes them to a sealed-off sector of the palace-city It has become the feuding ground of two tribes of an unknown people who took refuge within its walls a century early. They are not city's original builders. Though once of a single tribe of refugees, a disagreement broke out among them and they split into two tribes when Techulli stole Xoctalanc's betrothed. They have been been slaughtering each other ever since, and vast network of darkened rooms between Techulti and Xochtalanc have become their battleground. The Techutli become the victors during Conan and Valeria's stay, and the Xoctalancas are wiped out; the victors bemoan the loss of a captive to flay alive. Their own dreams have been haunted ever since the feud's down of being captured and taken to Xoctalanc, the ultimate horror to meet the same grisly fate. For yes, whenever a warrior from the opposing tribe has been taken captive by the other, the poor devil is literally skinned, alive and screaming, for his captors' amusement. 

It should be noted here that the ancient Aztecs worshipped a "flayed god" and often wore the skins of flayed sacrificial victims. Some North American Indian did flay captive enemies alive. 

The name of the city is Xuchotl, not its original name, whose builders were presumably devoured by the stego-dragons (summoned by a wizard, out of some primordial age?) And the names of the inhabitants are meso-Amercian derivation as well. How then, did these American refugees end up in the heart of the main Hyborian world-continent? Howard does not tell us, and there has been speculative fiction on the part of other writers as to how they got there either.

What were they doing there?

There is one additional Conan tale of displaced Americans that might provide a connection, though not an answer. This is "Feeders from the Sky", aka "Nekht Semerkht" named for the title's villain and  based on the original Howard tale of weird fiction set in America, Hyborianized by Roy Thomas. In it Conan encounters a strange city, this one of definite meso-american built with a central tiered temple. It is tended by slaves "whose copper-skins are not that of Stygians." Conan saves a girl, Princess Ixlaca, from an evil stygian sorcerer Nekht Semerkeht who tries to sacrifice insect -winged saurians, the feeders of the title. How again, did Ixlaca's people com to be in Stygia? And how did the come under the thrall of the wizard? Some like the author, whose detailed account the story can be found  here:

https://classiccomics.org/thread/19/annotated-savage-sword-conan?page=95

are of the opinion that they might be of the same people as the inhabitants Xuchotl. As with "Red Nails" no explanation is provided by the author. 

Brontotheriums of the Miocene, apparently one of few prehistoric creatures to have survived into the Hyborian age as rare animals. They are called "thunder-beasts" by the Hyborians, what their Latinate name really means, based in turn upon what the Native Americans called them. The Indians supposed the beasts crashed to earth during thunderstorms, and smashed themselves into the ground, where they found their bones!

Howard's original "Nekht Semerkeht" took place in North America, during Coronado's search for the legendary golden cities of Cibola (a false trail invented by the Indians to get rid of him). A lone Spaniard stumbles upon a strange city of Nekt Semerkeht, an ancient Egyptian sorcerer who, in Howard's version, is the one displaced. Once again, the hero must save a native princess from the winged monstrosities. But the conclusion was left unfinished by Howard, and science fiction author David Drake gave the story an ending that was not quite in keeping with Howardian heroism.

There is a passage from Howard's original, where the Spanish hero battles a native. Before the Indian is slain he sees in the gleaming armored Spaniard, "the doom of his entire race." Howard, a man of his times, wrote the story from the perspective of his protagonist, a white man; but that didn't mean he couldn't relate to the other man's perspective.

And what did Conan find out (perhaps the answer to the previous question?) once he rowed himself to the "New World," at the end of his long career in the known world of the Hyborian age. Neither Conan of the Isles, nor Marvels conclusion to Conan's tale provides. There has never been a tale of what Conan's true final adventures were--but someday, so long as Howard's hero stays the test of time, there may well be.