Cloud of Hate

cover art by Howard Chaykin

In 1973, the short-lived title Sword of Sorcery began to treat us to entertaining adaptations of Fritz Leiber's wonderful "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" tales, with a few completely original stories featuring the two heroes mixed in with the adaptations.

Sword of Sorcery was a DC title and I'm sure it was a response to the success of Conan the Barbarian over at Marvel. That's a good thing, though, since Fafhrd and the Mouser are also great characters. That they didn't have the commercial success as comic book characters that Conan did is a shame, but Sword of Sorcery was a valiant try.

Denny O'Neil wrote all but one of the stories in the series and Howard Chaykin was the usual artist. Today, we'll be looking the title story from the fourth issue (September-October 1973), written by O'Neil, with Chaykin splitting the pencils with Walt Simonson.

"Cloud of Hate" is one of my favorites of the prose stories and it is interesting to see the changes O'Neil made when adapting it to a comic book. In the prose version, Fafhrd and the Mouser are broke, with the Mouser bemoaning this situation and Fafhrd joyfully taking a more philosophical attitude, claiming they should enjoy life as they find it. But after an encounter with four killers controlled by a literal Cloud of Hate and then dealing with the Cloud itself (via teamwork and the Mouser's agility), Fafhrd just wants to take money looted from the bodies of their opponents and use it to fund a proper good time.

Like most of Leiber's stories from the series, "Cloud of Hate" is clever, imaginative and full of dry humor.

But is also very dialogue-heavy. This, I think, is probably the main reason O'Neil rearranged the events of the story so drastically. Comics are, after all, a primarily visual medium. A story in which the two characters debate life with most of the action coming only at the end would not work as a comic book story.

So the story begins with Fafhrd already bemoaning their poverty and they get jumped by villains who simply want to rob them. The ensuing fight takes its cue from the parallel fight in the prose version, but it serves to set up the plot rather than bring it to a finale.

Nearby cultists are summoning up the Cloud, which sends tentacles across the city of Lankhmar to snatch up weapons. Fafhrd and the Mouser follow, reasoning that the cloud might be gathering up valuables as well and they might be able to claim some riches for themselves.

As they trail the Cloud, they see it murder an innocent girl, thus giving the partners an overtly heroic motive for dealing with it above their desire for loot. This element, not present in the prose story, might have been added to satisfy the Comics Code, but it fits nicely into O'Neil's version of the tale, so there's no harm done.

They trail the Cloud to a cave full of cultists, where, much like in the original, they defeat it with a combination of teamwork and the Mouser's agility.

"Cloud of Hate" is among my favorites of Leiber's original story, so I can't help feel a little disappointed that O'Neil turned it into something with a completely different feel to it and with most of the humor absent. But, as I mentioned above, drastic changes were probably necessary to make the story work in a comic book. And the story we are given in this issue is a good one, enchanced by Chaykin's and Simonson's excellent art.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll visit again with our favorite agents from U.N.C.L.E.