Cover Cavalcade

  APRIL IS "WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SNAKES" MONTH!!!!

A 1977 cover by Gil Kane. 

REH By Someone Else, Part 1

 

I am one of those fans who generally prefers a strong continuity in the fictional universes I enjoy. I like maps, chronologies and hints at unpublished adventures from a hero's past. I like fan theories that attempt to explain plot holes and inconsistencies. 

But there is one attempt to give a stronger continuity to to a fictional hero that fell short of success. Despite being a fan of L.Sprague de Camp's novels and short stories, I was never knocked dead by the Conan stories he and Lin Carter wrote, which attempted to give the Cimmerian a cohesive life-long biography. 

I do believe that de Camp was arguably most responsible for rescuing Robert E. Howard's work from obscurity. But his style of storytelling worked best with the educated and urbane heroes who appeared in his original works. Howard's two-fisted heroes didn't fit him or allow him to exhibit his dry sense of humor. I also don't think he ever fully appreciated Howard's amazing skill as a storyteller. 

Also, though Lin Carter was a superb editor (see his work on the Flashing Swords series of books), I'm afraid I never cared a lot for his own fiction. I know he has his fans and I respect that, but his prose just doesn't work for me.

Finally, de Camp and Carter's attempt to put the Conan stories in chronological order--though it's an idea that obviously appealed to me--was a bit ham-fisted.

Like many REH fans, I discovered him through the Lancer/Ace paperback series (1966-1977)--12 paperbacks that organized the Conan tales into a chronological order and added new stories (or REH non-Conan stories re-written to star Conan) to fill in gaps in Conan's biography. 

The Lancer/Ace series included four original novels by de Camp and Carter. Of these, Conan the Buccaneer is simply dull. Conan the Avenger and Conan of Aquilonia plod along without ever being that exciting as they concentrated far too much on unneccesarily tying up supposed loose ends in Conan's life. 

The 1967 novel Conan of the Isles is the only one I remembered enjoying, so I recently re-read it again. 

In this one, Conan is in his mid-sixties and has been king of Aquilonia for several decades. He's now co-ruling with his young son Conn and he's bored to tears. He has defeated foreign enemies and his kingdom is prospering. He simply doesn't have anything interesting to do. His queen has died in childbirth and most of his old friends have passed on. 

But then strange amorphous "creatures" that come to be called the Red Shadows begin appearing, attacking people seemingly at random, then vanishing along with their victims. When Conan receives a vision from a representative of the gods giving him the job of stopping the Red Shadows (which are minons of a larger threat that threatens the entire world), Conan quietly abdicates and rides away, leaving his son to take over.

Conan heads to the coast, where he re-connects with an old friend from his days as a pirate. Soon, he has a ship and a crew. They sail west, leaving the Hyborian World behind.

What follows doesn't feel at all like a Conan story, but it is a fun and well-constructed fantasy adventure with some unique action scenes. There are several ship-to-ship battles, one of which involves a flame-thrower. Soon after that, Conan finds himself walking along the sea bottom, equipped with a breathing apparatus made from volcanic glass, getting into a fight with a giant octopus and a large shark. Later, he's attacked by a horde of dog-sized rats in an underground maze. He caps all this off by rescuing his crew from being sacrificed to a demon by releasing a horde of carnivorous 50-foot lizards into a proto-Aztec city. 

I really enjoy this last bit. It calls to mind old B-movies in which photographically enlarged lizards stand in for dinosaurs or generic monsters. It's a look that fits this story, which has a fun B-movie feel to it.

 

The book was meant to be the finale of the Conan saga and there is a short and legitimately melancholy chapter in which the barbarian reflects back on his life and his now-gone friends. But, since de Camp's Conan simply doesn't feel like REH's Conan, the novel can instead be looked at as a generic sword-and-sorcery tale or an alternate-universe Conan. 

I still like chronologies, fan theories and so on.  In fact, I would occasionally re-read the Conan stories in what I felt was an appropriate chronological order. But a comment on a Facebook REH group a few years ago convinced me that the best way to expreience the original tales is in the order they were written--as individual legends in the life of Conan without worrying about chronology. (Which doesn't mean I have stopped enjoying discussions about chronologies on their own.) 

So the non-REH stories can then also be taken on their own, to be enjoyed or dismissed on their own individual merits without bleeding over into Conan's "real life." Just like, for instance, we can read a biography of Wyatt Earp, then still enjoy his fictionalized adventures in novels, TV and film without it changing our view of Earp's real life.

In the case of Conan of the Isles, I once again enjoyed it. It does not inhabit that spot in the part of my brain that secretly thinks of Conan as a real person (only the REH stories live there), but I had fun with it. 

Some time in the next few weeks, we'll look at another writer's visit to the REH Universe with Karl Edward Wagner's Legion from the Shadows. 

Don't Take a Date to a Cursed Oasis!

 

cover art by Gil Kane (with some alterations by John Romita)

In the original Robert E. Howard stories, Conan is recorded as having visited the City of Thieves just once ("The Tower of the Elephant"), but other writers have brought him back to that city a number of times. Any place called the City of Thieves is just too ripe for possible adventures for many writers to ignore the place for long. 

Roy Thomas brought him back there in Marvel's Conan the Barbarian for several consecutive adventures after the Cimmerian had deserted from the Turanian army. One of these is "The Garden of Death and Life," from Conan #41 (August 1974). John Buscema is the artist.

Conan is planning a night of drinking and carousing. Naturally, something comes up to interfere with his plans.

A girl is being pursued by a mob. Partly because of his inate chivalry towards women and partially because he thinks she'll clean up nicely, Conan saves her. He has no real idea what is going on--most of the mob wants to kill her for unspecified reasons, but one guy is obsessed with either possessing her or destroying her.

Conan has to kill this last guy. And, even though he could have sworn the guy stabbed the girl before getting killed, she is unhurt. For someone of Conan's experience with supernatural threats, this should have been a clue that something wasn't adding up.

Anyway, he carves a way through the crowd and escapes from the city with the girl. Out in the surrounding desert, the girl--named Zhadorr--tells Conan about an oasis. They make for it, with Conan unsuccessfully trying to score with her during the journey, but she puts him off. He also notices that she goes off to be alone whenever he gives her food. He never sees her eat.

I sounded like I was making fun of Conan for not wondering about her earlier because of weird stuff like this, but Thomas actually builds up the tension nicely. There is something strange going on, but its not yet overt enough to indicate Zhadorr is something other than human. When everything hits the fan in a few pages, the build-up to it adds to the remarkable overall impact of the tale's denoument. 

They reach the oasis, where Conan notices a number of human skeletons spread out on the bottom of the water pool. Before he has a chance to process that, though, a group of bandits arrive to capture them.

One of them takes Zhadorr off into the bushes. Conan uses the old sharp-rock trick to cut his bonds, then rushes after them to rescue her. But she doesn't need rescuing. The bandit has been mysteriously skeletonized.

And soon, the other bandits and their horses are being stripped to the bone as well--by the giant tree in the center of the oasis. This, by the way, is effectively portrayed by one of the best two-page splash panels ever drawn. Buscema outdoes himself here:

The tree tries to eat Conan as well, but he manages to set fire to it. And Zhadorr? Well, she's still there as well. Sort of.

Thomas constructs an effective and legitimately creepy sword-and-sorcery/horror tale, with Buscema's art perfectly visualizing it. That splash panel alone was worth the price of the book.

Next week, we'll stay in the past, but jump forward to the 18th Century to visit with Ben Bowie.

Cover Cavalcade

 

A classic Frank Frazetta image gives us our third week of Man vs.Snake covers. 

When the Dead WON'T Stay Dead

Conan the Barbarian #78 (September 1977) was a reprint of a story that had originally been published in black-and-white in Savage Sword of Conan #1 a few years earlier. I think I first read it in Savage Sword (though the higher priced magazines Marvel published were only occasionally within my paper route-fueled budget) and I think that Conan's saga and John Buscema's superb art work very well in black-and-white. The story looks mighty good in color as well, though, and that's the format in which I now own it.

It takes place not long after Conan had deserted from an army and traveled to the notorious City of Thieves, arriving after a series of adventures that included an encounter with a monstrous crocodile. Now all he wanted was a night on the town before finding another army to fight for.

But Conan can rarely get through a night without needing to kill someone. This time, some panicking priests wearing hooded robes run past him, fleeing from armed thugs. The thugs don't like witnesses to whatever shenanigans they are up to, so they make the unwise decision to attack the Cimmerian.

He's not really having much trouble taking out the thugs until he trips over a ringed finger that one of the priests must have dropped. Fortunately, an old friend happens by to take out the last thug.

Red Sonja had first appeared in Conan #24 a few years earlier, in a story based on Robert E. Howard's short story "Shadow of the Vulture;" That story was set in the 16th Century, but moving Red Sonja ("Sonya" in the original story) to the Hyborian Age was not a bad idea at all. Barry Smith was still the Conan artist at the time and he drew Sonja wearing a chain mail shirt that probably showed her figure better than a chain mail shirt would in real life, but it was still a reasonable way for a warrior to dress.

Esteban Maroto first put Sonja in her chain mail bikini in a back-up feature in Savage Sword of Conan #1 and John Buscema kept the look that has become her standard "uniform" ever since.* I love Buscema's art, but I've always been bothered by this. I realize that most female comic book characters are going to have a role as eye candy for male readers and the appropriateness of this makes for an important debate in of itself. But what bothers me about Sonya's bikini is how impractical it is.  And how out of character it is. The armor doesn't cover enough of her to be of any significant help in a fight and Sonja has no interest at all in being attractive to men. So why does she wear it other than to provide a contrived reason to be eye candy for comic book readers?  In the end, it makes the character weaker and it's especially aggravating because Sonja was still nice to gaze upon in the mail shirt that Barry Smith gave her without looking like she was deliberately designed to be a centerfold model.

Oh, well, she's still a good character dropped into good stories. After saving Conan, she notices the ring on the finger dropped by the priest. It had belonged to Costranno a sorcerer who had been beheaded for practicing black magic earlier that day, after being betrayed by a woman named Berthilda. Berthilda had learned Costranno's power was in the ring he wore and cut off the finger, allowing him to be caught and executed.

Backtracking the priests, Conan and Sonja find Costranno's body and head laid out together. That the priests had been trying to bring all his body parts back together was obvious, but the two warriors decide the "why" of it all is none of their business. They toss the finger down and walk away.

The finger then moves on its own to reattach itself to the body...

So when Conan later sees a hooded figure wearing that ring walk by, he deduces that Costranno might have been resurrected. By this point in his career, Conan had run into enough dark magic to make this a reasonable guess. Feeling responsible, he talks Sonja into going with him to Berthilda's house.

They find out that the sorcerer has indeed come back to life and it getting ready to sacrifice the woman who betrayed him. This leads to a typically wonderful fight sequence of the sort that Buscema could choreograph and draw so well.

They win the fight, of course, which includes having to force a monster being called up from a pit back into that pit. But Berthilda shows very little gratitude about being rescued. After they get her outside, she insists on going back into her own house now that it's safe.

Of course, though Conan had cut Costranno's hand off during the fight, the sorcerer and the ring are still in the same room together. So, when Conan and Sonja here Berthilda scream, they decide they can't make a career over saving her from her own "treacherous folly."

It's a good, solid story and a fine re-introduction to the Hyborian Age version of Red Sonja, who would periodically return and also have her own book for awhile. Red Sonja stories have since been published by other comic companies, though I haven't read them and I don't know if they are still set in the Hyborian Age or if she's been moved into her own universe. But, despite my complaints about that silly chain mail bikini, she really is a great character--an Action Girl from a time before that character template had become as common as it is nowadays.

Next week, more sword fighting, but this time it'll be... Billy the Kid wielding the sword?

*Thanks to artist Joe Jusko for correcting me via a Facebook post after I initially credited Buscema with creating the chain mail bikini.

When Conan became Conan

It's in this issue--Conan the Barbarian #3 (February 1971)--that Marvel Comics' Conan  became the "real" Conan.

The first two issues in the series--written.by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry Smith--were both perfectly good sword-and-sorcery tales. But neither of them had that Robert E. Howard vibe to them. Conan was there. Smith drew him effectively and Thomas did a good job of catching his personality. But something really didn't quite seem right. I think it's the plots. One involved a wizard who was peering into the future. This includes allowing us to see some of his visions, which includes the sight of a NASA space ship in orbit--which is simply a bad fit for a Conan story. The second issue involves a small, hidden civilization of intelligent apes, which seemed to belong more in an Edgar Rice Burroughs universe than in the Hyborian Age.

(Roy Thomas makes these points about the first two issues himself in the afterward to Dark Horse's trade paperback reprints of the early issues, so I'm stealing from the author here.)

The 4th issue of the series would be an excellent adaptation of "The Tower of the Elephant," one of the original Conan tales. But I would argue that the 3rd issue is when the book really hit the right tone. This issue, by the way, was apparently written and drawn after "The Tower of the Elephant," but published first because Thomas realized it fit better there in terms of internal chronology.

It's got a great title: "The Twilight of the Grim Grey God." It is itself an adaptation of a Robert E. Howard story, though the original prose tale did not star Conan. "The Grey God Passes" is a fictionalized account of the 11th Century battle of Clontarf, in which the Christian Irish defeated the pagan Vikings. The point-of-view character (who would be transformed into Conan in the comic adaptation) was Turlogh Dub O'Brien, who fights at Clontarf for the Irish, but not before meeting the Norse god Odin. The worship of Odin is dying off, so the god is dying as well.










Barry Smith does a wonderful job bringing a lyric beauty (a phrase I am also stealing from Thomas' afterward) to the idea of a dying god. Names and settings are changed to fit the concept into the Hyborian Age. The story is streamlined a bit and one can argue even improved upon. The prose story (unpublished in Howard's lifetime) is largely excellent, but Howard gets a little too carried away in name-dropping historical figures who really fought at Clontarf and this throws off the pacing.

So this time, it's Conan who meets the God Borri and then ends up fighting against the Hyperboreans--who are the people that worship Borri. Other plot elements include a femme fatale who is playing a king and a soldier against one another; another soldier who befriends Conan but who is prophesied to die by his girlfriend; and Conan's drive to find and kill a particular Hyperborean who had tortured him.

Thomas effectively weaves all these elements and diverse personalities into the 19-page story without ever seeming like he's rushing the plot or leaving anything undeveloped. Smith, as mentioned above, really rises to the occasion with the art work. All the plot elements are properly set up and then satisfyingly crash together in desperate battle and vile treachery.

The scenes with Borri bookend the main events of the story. The dying god does not seem to directly effect events, but give the entire story a sense of finality and perhaps a small sense of futility regarding the wasted efforts and small-minded goals of us short-lived humans. But whatever moral we take from the tale, Barry Smith's art makes it look awesome. And, for the first time, the Conan of Marvel Comics was really believable as Conan.

Next week, we see what happens when the girlfriend of a giant, super-strong green guy gets turned into glass.

Cover Cavalcade

Classic Conan cover by Frazetta.

Cover Cavalcade

There's no doubt that Barry Windsor-Smith is a superb artist who helped make Conan's first comic book series successful, but to this day fans still argue about that darn horned helmet.

Conan vs Crocodile

cover by Gil Kane

The first Conan the Barbarian comic book I ever read was Marvel's Conan the Barbarian #39, written by Roy Thomas and drawn by the late, great John Buscema. It may have been the very first Conan story in any medium that I ever read. I (or perhaps my older brother) got hold of some of the Lancer paperbacks being printed at the time. The first of those I read was Conan the Conqueror, which was the title Lancer gave to Robert E. Howard's only novel-length Conan story, Hour of the Dragon. This would be one of the best stories to introduce one to the character, but if I read the Marvel Comic story first, that would have been fine. It's a pretty awesome tale in its own right.

During the 100+ initial issues of the comic, Roy Thomas did a wonderful job of telling Conan's adventures in a chronologically manner, starting from when he first came south to encounter Hyborian civilization. He created a lot of original stories, weaving them in with Howard's pulp-era tales, adapting some of Howard's other stories to Conan, and eventually using the de Camp/Carter pastiches as well.  He was essentially giving us Conan's ongoing biography in comic book form.

The 39th issue--"The Dragon from the Inland Sea," is what Thomas later described as a "filler story--an on-the-road, getting from here to there story, with overtones of Andromeda being sacrificed to the sea serpent in myth..." (quoted from the afterward in The Chronicles of Conan volume 6). Conan had been serving in the Turanian army (Turan being one of several countries analogous to the ancient Middle East) but had recently deserted. He's on his way to the City of Thieves in Zamora, but soon encounters a quartet of bandits.

The last thing the bandits ever learn was that trying to rob Conan never ends well. But the Cimmerian's horse is killed in the fight. On foot in the desert, he nearly dies before being taken in by a kindly man.

This quickly leads to another adventure. The man's beautiful niece is going to be sacrificed to a sea-going dragon by the insane ruler of a nearby village. Conan is soon a prisoner himself, but tying the barbarian to a stake is yet another thing that doesn't ever end well.

This leads to a magnificient fight scene--Conan (with some help from the desperate villagers) versus a giant crocodile. Roy Thomas recalls that he visualized the dragon as a giant croc and sent John Buscema a 1937 Prince Valiant strip to give the artist an idea of what he had in mind. Starting with this, Buscema "choreographed a battle, raging through the narrow streets of the seaside village, that took up five pages..."

In the past, I have cited Carl Barks, Russ Heath and Jack Kirby as my favorite comic book artists, but John Buscema often nudges up to stand equal to them in my mind's eye. This fight scene is an example of why--and probably the main reason I began to include Conan in my meager comic book budget whenever I could. Buscema's realistic anatomy and sublime composition highlights his ability to choreograph an exciting and logical battle sequence. The fight isn't stunning just because it looks cool, but also because it flows along in a manner that we can understand. Conan frees the girl from the sacrificial rock--he wounds the dragon and swims ashore--the villagers try to stop it at the gates but it crashes through. They drop a big net on it--it rips free of this but a desperate charge distracts it long enough to Conan to find a makeshift weapon that just might stop it. Everything that happens makes sense and we always understand the tactical situation. Buscema understood that individually great-looking panels of art by themselves aren't enough. They all need to flow together into a coherent story.


I just can't remember if this was my very first introduction to Conan, but it if was, it's understandable that I quickly became a life-long fan of the big barbarian.

Beyond the Black River--a video review

Here's a new video for my YouTube channel--it's a look at "Beyond the Black River," one of Robert E. Howard's original Conan the Barbarian stories.

"He Steals and Murders Openly"

We've been taking an occasional look at Robert E. Howard stories in which he uses a very effective trick to generate suspense: The protagonist is forced to team-up with a sworn enemy. The two must work together against a common enemy or because they have a common purpose, knowing that they'll try to kill one another as soon as that purpose is achieved.

Conan the Barbarian was forced into this situation in "People of the Black Circle." But that's wasn't the first time he'd been in a reluctant alliance.

Not long after Conan came to civilization--still naive about the ways of civilization (and probably still a teenager)--he became embroiled in the machinations of two feuding noblemen. All this is recounted in "Rogues in the House," first published in the January 1934 issue of Weird Tales.

It's set in an unnamed city-state or minor kingdom. The puppet king is controlled by Nabonidus, known as the Red Priest and also known to bring his political enemies to an unpleasant end. He's looking to do this to Murilo, a nobleman who has been lining his pockets by selling state secrets.

Threatened with exposure, Murilo hires Conan to kill Nabonidus. But the twists and turns of the plot soon land all three men in a catacomb beneath Nabonidus' mansion. Above them is Thak--an ape man that Nabonidus kept as a servant. Thak, it turned out, was just human enough to harbor ambitions of his own. He's killed Nabonidus' human servant and taken over the mansion.

So leaving the catacomb by the only available exit--through the mansion--means walking into the sharp talons and fangs of a brutal, super-strong humanoid creature.

The only way the three men can get out alive is to work together.

The story is one of the best of the original Conan tales. For one thing, it's a textbook example of good plot construction. In just a few paragraphs, REH introduces us to the main characters and tells us enough about their relationships and their personalities to give us a firm lock on them. He then moves the plot along quickly but logically, mixing in suspense and action in just the right doses.

Howard also mixes in the thematic aspects of the story so that it complements the plot without ever slowing down the action. Murilo and Nabonidus are rogues--dishonest men who use their power and position for personal gain. Even though Murilo is actually a little likable in that he shows personal courage when he has to, both men are essentially rotten hypocrites and thieves.

This is contrasted with Conan, who may also be a thief but at least isn't a hypocrite. As Murilo phrases it: "This Cimmerian is the most honest man of the three of us, because he steals and murders openly."

What good that may do the person Conan is robbing and murdering is debatable, but Howard still has us rooting for the big guy. It's really quite a balancing act in terms of good characterization. Conan does murder during the story, but he still has standards that raise him above Murilo and Nabonidus.

For instance, he shows a degree of mercy to a woman who had betrayed him. Well, sort of. He drops her in a cess pool instead of killing her. And he gutted her new boyfriend a few moments before that without batting an eye. But he refrains from killing a woman nonetheless.

He also shows loyalty to an agreement he made with Murilo even when he could have gotten safely away from the city. So we end liking Conan and hoping he survives despite his moral flaws.

Aside from the theme and the characterizations, the key action set-piece in the story is fantastic. Conan and Thak inevitably go up against each other in a savage hand-to-hand battle and it is truly awesome. Howard had a knack for describing exciting fight scenes, but this one still stands out from the crowd.

It is, in fact, Frank Frazetta Awesome

When you consider all of Howard's Conan stories together and remember that he did not write them in internal chronological order, then the character arc he gives the barbarian is a really remarkable achievement. The first Conan story Howard wrote shows us the barbarian as a king, with a degree of wisdom and maturity (though without losing the ability to hack his enemies apart in droves). But stories about a young Conan give us an impetuous thief and killer who barely understands much of what civilization has to offer. Stories set between these time periods give us a Conan who is maturing into a leader, less likely to act on blind impulse.

 "Black Colossus" (published in 1933) is a good example of Conan's overall character development. Set at a time when Conan has largely left thievery behind to work as a mercenary, the story shows us the first time he is given command of an army. Outnumbered, he deploys his troops in a conservative defensive manner. When someone comments that Conan normally leaps into the thick of a fight, he explains that he usually only has himself to look out for. But now he's responsible for thousands of lives and must act differently. It's a key moment in his career, allowing us to believe that this is a man who can one day rule a nation.

Once again, Howard didn't write these stories in any order. Each successive story jumped from one point in Conan's life to another at random. But string them together in an order that makes internal chronological sense and you have a definable and fascinating bit of character development.

All this and great fight scenes as well. Because that fight between Conan and Thak really does drip with awesome sauce.

We have one more example in which an REH character has to team up with an enemy. This will involve the pirate Black Vulmea, whom we visited once before. Before long, we'll take a look at "Black Vulmea's Vengeance."

"If we succeed, and live, we can fight it out to see who keeps her."

There are certain cliches in adventure fiction that--as long as the surrounding story is well-written--I am a sucker for.

For instance, I love it when circumstances force guys who would normally kill each other on sight to team up with one another. It's a trope that Robert E. Howard seemed to enjoy. I just re-read the Conan novella People of the Black Circle (1934), in which this happens. I can think of three other Howard stories without even trying in which something similar occurs.

I'll probably do entries on the other three "enforced team-up" stories, since thinking about them makes me want to read them again. In fact, I briefly considered making this part of my "Read/Watch 'em in order" series, but each of these stories features a different character and aren't directly interconnected.

In Black Circle, Conan has become leader of a tribe of barbarian warriors who live near Vendhya, the Hyborian Age analog for India. He's hoping to weld other tribes together into an empire.

But there's other plots afoot as well--one of them involving spies from the nation of Turan teaming up with a sect of ancient and evil wizards to kill the king of Vendhya. (And not just kill him--but to steal his soul while doing so.)

Circumstances allow Conan to kidnap the Devi--the now-dead king's drop-dead gorgeous sister. Despite being pampered royalty, she soon proves herself to brave and intelligent, allowing her to rise above being a stereotypical damsel-in-distress.

Which is always a good sign in an original Conan story. The best of Howard's Conan tales often included a strong female character, while the weaker ones would sometimes involve whiny cry-baby girls who just scream a lot until they are rescued. I've nothing against damsels-in-distress. I just like it better when they seem to be worth the effort of rescuing.

Howard manages to weave several plot threads involving several different characters together to keep the story moving, inserting his typically awesome action sequences along the way. Eventually, the Devi is captured by the evil wizards and taken to their mountain fortress. To rescue her, Conan must team up with a Turanian spy named Kerim Shah, who has been searching for the Devi for reasons of his own. Though they would normally kill each other on sight, Conan, Kerim and the spy's small band of henchmen must team-up to rescue the girl. They figure they can kill each other afterwards to see who gets to keep her.

The motley crew must fight their way through both magical dangers and more prosaic threats to reach the fortress. Once there--well, they face even more horrific dangers. Howard's Conan stories often include elements of horror as well as adventure tropes.

But messing with Conan the Barbarian--even if you have nigh-godlike powers--is never a smart thing to do.

People of the Black Circle is one of the best Conan yarns. It's particularly notable in that at one point Howard has at least three sets of characters plus at least three large armed forces wandering around the Vendhyan border, but he keeps track of all of them quite nicely. The overall plot is not that complex, but there's enough going on so that it might have gotten muddled and confused in the hands of a lesser writer. But the various elements involved are sorted out and explained to us with Howard's typical skill. That guy really knew how to spin a yarn.

A Barbarian and a Midshipman

What do Conan the Barbarian and Royal Navy officer Horatio Hornblower have in common?

Well, the most obvious thing would be that both have commanded ships. Conan’s checkered career includes time on the high seas as a pirate. Most famously was the few years he spent with his first real love—Belit the she-pirate. Even after Belit was killed, Conan returned to the seas several more times before settling down as king of the Hyborian Age’s most powerful nation.

And Hornblower commanded a number of ships during his country’s war with Revolutionary France and later Napoleonic France—the Hotspur, the Atropos, the Lydia, the Sutherland.  Later, as he moved up in the ranks, he commanded squadrons and fleets.

But these two otherwise totally different heroes have another thing in common. Both of them had occasion to capture a slave galley even when the odds were stacked completely against them.

For Conan, it happened when he was King of Aquilonia. During the events of The Hour of the Dragon (the only novel-length Conan adventure written by Robert E. Howard), our hero had lost his throne through treachery and sorcery. Up against a powerful wizard, he found out the only way to obtain victory was to track down a particularly powerful magical artifact.

Well, that kicked off quite a few bloody encounters—a ride through a small country racked by civil war; an encounter with man-eating ghouls; and a few instances of betrayal, torture and murder.

The trail leads him to a port city, where he dragoons help from a man who had been a fence for stolen goods during Conan’s pirate days. This guy double-crosses the barbarian, though, and Conan is knocked out and press-ganged aboard a merchant ship rowed by black slaves.

Well, that’s a mistake. A lot of the slaves had sailed with Conan in the old days. So, after breaking the captain’s arm and wrenching an axe from the weapons rack, Conan leads an impromptu mutiny. Within a few minutes, he’s the new captain.

Hornblower’s encounter with a galley happened in the late 18^th Century, not long after Spain had allied itself with France and also declared war against Britain. Hornblower was still a midshipman at the time, serving aboard the frigate Indefatigable. When that ship is becalmed and a Spanish galley arrives to attack some nearby merchant ships, the young hero and a half-dozen seamen lowered a small boat and took off after the much larger enemy vessel.

But what can those few men hope to accomplish? Well, for one thing, they certainly have surprise on their side.  Combine that with the well-aimed throw of a grappling hook and…

You know, I was going to summarize that action sequence, but I don’t think I will. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it. Find yourself a copy of Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and read the chapter titled “Hornblower and the Spanish Galleys.” You won’t be sorry.

I’ve always imagined that each year, Superman’s Fortress of Solitude hosts a gathering of all the people who aren’t actually real, but should be. (There would have been talk about having it at Doc Savage’s Fortress, but the Man of Steel’s place has an intergalactic zoo and all those Superman robots to serve refreshments.)

And you’d think that Conan and Hornblower wouldn’t necessarily spend much time talking to each other. The Cimmerian would be busy hitting on Hawkgirl or Candy Matson and Hornblower always felt awkward at social gatherings. But if you think about it for a minute, the two really do have some mutually interesting stories to swap.

Well, they would, if Long John Silver would ever let them get a word in edgewise.

Cover Cavalcade

Perfectly composed action scene--there's a very palpable sense of danger and movement.

Pirates, Indians and Treachery--Oh, My!!!!

Here's a slightly convoluted bit of publishing history. At some point in the 1930s, during his all-too-brief career as a writer of pulp fiction, Robert E. Howard wrote a story starring Conan the Barbarian. Titled The Black Stranger, it involved Conan on the run from the savage Picts (a Hyborian Age analog to American Indians). Conan stumbles across the bodies of some pirates and a treasure stored in the cleft of a rock. A nobleman living in terror of--well, something--has built a fort along a deserted stretch of coastline nearby. Soon, Conan, the noble, and two seperate pirate crews are hip-deep in machinations involving that treasure--with everyone pretty much determined to backstab everyone else at the first opportunity. There's a wizard wandering around as well, stirring up some supernatural trouble.

It's a great story, culminating in a wild battle sequence as the fort is overrun by the Picts. But Howard wasn't able to sell it. So he re-wrote it, moving the action forward to the 17th Century and replacing Conan with Black Terance Vulmea, a pirate who had a well-earned reputation as the scourge of the Seven Seas. The supernatural shenanigans were toned down, becoming more implied than overt. The story's title became Swords of the Red Brotherhood. The Picts became Indians and the nobleman became a Frenchman. Everyone still tries to double- and triple-cross each other regardless of their new ethnicities.

Howard wrote one other Black Vulmea story, published after his death in the November 1938 issue of a pulp called Golden Fleece. But Swords of the Red Brotherhood, like The Black Stranger, was never sold. It went unpublished until it was included in a paperback in 1976 titled Black Vulmea's Vengenance. This book included both the Vulmea stories and another fun pirate yarn written by Howard.

Anyways, when writer L. Sprague de Camp was reintroducing Conan to the public through a series of paperback reprints, he came across Swords of the Red Brotherhood and rewrote it into a Conan story titled The Treasure of Tranicos. It first saw print in this form in King Conan (1953), then in Conan the Usurper (1967). Howard's original version--The Black Stranger--was also eventually reprinted in its unedited form in The Conquering Sword of Conan in 2005, one of an excellent three-volume set that reprinted all of Howard's original Conan stories.

So what's the point of all this? Well, as usual, I don't really have one. But I will say thatall three versions of the story (two Conans and one Black Vulmea) are entertaining, slam-bang adventures.

If I had to pick a favorite, though, I think I'd go with Swords of the Red Brotherhood. The story has such a strong pirate vibe, I think it works better when set within Piracy's Golden Age than in an overt fantasy world. All the same, it's a pretty close call between the two original versions.

The Treasure of Tranicos, though still a good tale, comes in a distant third among all the versions. de Camp was a great writer (his time-travel novel Lest Darkness Fall is a true classic) and he deserves unending gratitude for his part in rescuing Howard's work from obscurity. But I don't think he ever really "got" Conan. His prose style--very noticable even when he was re-working Howard's original prose--never quite fit the barbarian.

But whether it's Conan or Terance Vulmea wielding a sword against savages, pirates and ill-tempered noblemen, Swords/Stranger is yet another example of the many wonderful stories that came out of the pulp era. If you're in the mood for some good pirate stories, hit the Internet used book services and dig up a copy of Black Vulmea's Vengeance. Or read it online here. You won't be disappointed.

Action sequences the way they should be done: Comic Books

For the first 115 issues or so--while it was being written by Roy Thomas--Marvel Comics' Conan the Barbarian series was consistently excellent. Thomas' scripts were action-oriented but still literate sword-and-sorcery tales with excellent plots and characterizations. Thomas weaved adaptations of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories together with original tales to create a self-consistent biography for the big barbarian.

And, of course, Thomas' writing was backed up by great artwork. Barry Winsor-Smith was the original artist for the first 20-odd issues. Then John Buscema stepped in, working regularly with Thomas on the book for nearly 100 issues.

Buscema's strengths as artist and storyteller are innumerable, but we will (as usual) concentrate on his ability to present us with great fight scenes. Conan fought a gazillion or so warriors, animals, monsters and warlocks. And Buscema gave us a really cool and always exciting fight scene each and every time.

You'd think it'd get old before too many issues of the comic went by--how many different ways are there, after all, to stage the action when Conan beheads or eviserates yet another villain? But Buscema was never repetative. Every fight scene has some element of originality to it, whether it was Conan's opponent(s), the setting or the way the action was choreographed. Usually, it was a combination of these elements.

Conan the Barbrian #53 (August 1975) provides us with a solid example of Buscema's skill. Here, Conan goes up against "The Brothers of the Blade," three guys who have had different parts of their anatomy replaced with weapons.

Helped by Thomas' descriptive captions, the battle unfolds in a logical manner over a total of seven pages. Thorough it all, we understand what's going on and where the various characters are in relation to one another. Buscema shifts his "camera" around freely from panel to panel, but does so without ever loosing track of the flow of the aciton.

And it is, by golly, a wonderful fight. I know I'm sounding like a broken record during this series of posts, but it's gotta be said again: A properly choreographed action sequence should make sense to its audience. It's more exciting and satisfying that way.

I picked Buscema's Conan stuff almost at random to demonstrate this. But find a reprint of Spider Man #4 (Spidey vs. Sandman in a running tussle through a high school--art by Steve Ditko) for another example of great fight choreography. Or Fantastic Four #25 (Hulk vs. Thing through the streets, subways and harbors of New York City--art by Jack Kirby) for still another. In each of these cases, the artists turn these battles into a story within the main story, making the comic book as a whole that much more satisfying.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Conan the Barbarian: "The Tower of the Elephant" & "The Frost Giant's Daughter." (1975)
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Okay, this one isn't really old-time radio, but it was a nifty-keen attempt to revive the medium with adaptations of two stories starring one of the most dynamic and entertaining characters to come out of the pulp fiction era.
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In the mid-1970s, a guy named Alan B. Goldstein got the idea of adapting Robert E. Howard's original Conan the Barbarian stories into audio adventures. Apparently, he had hopes of making this an ongoing series.
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Writer Roy Thomas, who was at that time writing a superb Conan comic for Marvel Comics, also liked the idea and penned the scripts for two of the stories.
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Both the stories chosen were set early in Conan's career--a wise idea if these were indeed to be the jumping off point of a continuing series. "The Frost Giant's Daughter" has Conan still in the northern part of his fictional world--not far from his homeland. Knocked unconscious by an opponent, he wakes up still dazed and sees a beautiful woman standing over him. The woman taunts him, causing him to run after her in a rage. But she is leading him into a trap involving her rather bizarre brothers...
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"The Tower of the Elephant" is one of my favorite Conan stories. On the one hand, it's a sort of fantasy "Mission: Impossible" story, with Conan and a more experienced thief breaking into a wizard's tower. But later, we see horror writer H.P. Lovecraft's influence on Howard's prose when Conan encounters an imprisoned being with a weird and cosmic back-story. The two themes mesh nicely into a tale that runs the gamut from taut suspense to action to creepiness to tragedy.
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Both the audio adaptaions (eventually released on an LP record) are excellent, with good acting and skillfully done sound effects. In both cases, a third-person narrator is used to move the story along while perserving much of Howard's entertaining prose.
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Sadly, Goldstein's vision of a continuing series never came to pass. But the two Conan stories that were produced were both worthwhile--solid, faithful adaptations of two excellent sword-and-sorcery adventures.

Decade by Decade: Part 5: Hour of the Dragon

While Cagney was blazing away with a tommy gun and the Shadow was matching wits with modern day pirates, Conan the Barbarian was busy defending his hard-won throne against assassins, wizards, carnivorous apes, giant snakes and vampires.

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Gee whiz, the 1930s really was a decade of slam-bang action.

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Conan was created by Robert E. Howard, who published the adventures of the blood-drenched barbarian in the pages of Weird Tales magazine. Howard wrote less than two dozen Conan short stories and novellas before his untimely death, recounting the character's varied lifetime in no particular chronological order. The stories jump back and forth throughout Conan's career as a thief, pirate, mercenary and (eventually) king.

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Hour of the Dragon, serialized in Weird Tales in 1935/36, is Howard's only novel-length Conan story and it is arguably the best of the lot. Picking up after Conan has become king of the powerful nation of Aquilonia, it involves a plot by a neighboring country to use a combination of military power and sorcery to overthrow the barbarian king. An ancient sorcerer named Xaltotun is resurrected to help, but soon proves too powerful himself to remain in a subordinate role.

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Conan, in the meantime, finds himself imprisoned in a dungeon, thought dead by the Aquilonians. But he soon manages to escape, killing a giant carnivorous ape on his way to freedom. He learns about a magical talisman that can be used to defeat Xaltotun and begins a quest to recover it.

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This provides a platform for Howard to give us a series of truly exciting action set pieces--everything from single combat between two opponents to epic battles involving thousands of soldiers. There's also some truly creepy stuff that reminds us Howard could provide us with horror as well as action-adventure.

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At one point, Conan has traveled to the sorcery-soaked land of Stygia (a fantasy analog to ancient Egypt) and enters a pyramid in search of the talisman. His wanderings through the pitch-dark maze, encountering a vampire and several other horrific beings along the way, makes for a truly hair-raising read.

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The plot is not perfect--relying on unlikely coincidence several times to carry the story along. Also, Conan is aided in his escape by a harem girl who pretty much pops out of nowhere (having fallen in love-at-first-sight with Conan) to aid him. But the prose is so vivid, fast-moving and just plain fun that we can easily forgive these flaws.

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This all begs the question: Who would win a cage fight between James Cagney, the Shadow and Conan the Barbarian?

They aren't real--but by golly, they should be: Part 3: Tarzan and Conan

TARZAN OF THE APES:

Tarzan of the Apes—chief of the tribe of Kerchak—Lord of the Jungle:

He’s one of the most popular and best-known characters ever. There probably isn’t a single member of Western civilization who doesn’t recognize the name—and a fair percentage of the rest of the world would know who he is as well.

Tarzan is popular first and foremost because his creator—Edgar Rice Burroughs—was a magnificent storyteller. In Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Burroughs gave us an enthralling adventure story with a fascinating and archetypal protagonist.

One interesting thing about Tarzan’s origin is that Burroughs’ didn’t know squat about Africa. In fact, he originally had Tarzan fighting tigers—not realizing there are no tigers on the Dark Continent. But all the same, he creates a fantasy version of Africa that we can easily accept as real. The tribe of apes that adopt the orphaned baby and raise him as one of their own don’t match up to any real-life simians, but their behavior (both as individuals and as a tribe) are logical and self-consistent.

Tarzan eventually learns about the rest of the world and spends time in both Europe and America, but he never really cares for civilization, preferring the honest savagery of the jungle to the hypocrisy of modern man. Throughout the original twenty-four novels, he travels extensively throughout Africa, stumbling across a number of lost cities, often remnants of ancient civilizations. There was, for instance, a city left over from the Roman Empire, where Tarzan eventually ended up in the gladiatorial arena. Then there was a city populated by descendants of Crusaders who had gotten really, really lost on their way to the Holy Land centuries earlier.

Danger, captures, escapes and many battles would ensue, but Tarzan’s high intelligence and matchless fighting skills would always see him through. Tarzan is the ultimate in wish-fulfillment, living exactly the life he wants to, without fear and always acting capably in all situations.


CONAN THE BARBARIAN:

Conan was created in the 1930s by pulp writer Robert E. Howard. The big barbarian, who lived in an age before the beginning of recorded history, starred in 20 short stories and one novel. The best of these are among the most visceral and purely entertaining sword-and-sorcery stories.

art by Frank Frazetta

Like Tarzan, Conan was disdainful of the hypocrisies of civilization. Conan, though, chose to leave his northern homeland of Cimmeria to spent most of his time in civilization, never hesitating to enjoy its pleasures.

Conan had a varied career, starting out as a thief, then later working as a mercenary, treasure-seeker, bandit leader, and pirate before eventually leading a revolt and becoming king of a powerful nation. Along the way, he ran into countless dangers, both natural and supernatural. He slew more than his share of giant snakes and oversized ape figures. He rescued quite a few beautiful women from fates worse than death. He encountered more than one evil sorcerer, just about all of whom met their doom on the edge of Conan’s sword.

Robert E. Howard committed suicide in 1936, while still a young man. Conan was nearly forgotten for a couple of decades, but then the stories once again found a publisher and his popularity surged. Since the 1970s, there have been countless new adventures appearing in prose, comic books, computer games and movies. Of these, few achieve the same level of quality as Howard’s original yarns. His best tales, such as “Tower of the Elephant” or “Beyond the Black River,” remain masterpieces of good storytelling to this day.

Like Tarzan, Conan was pretty close to unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat. When comparing the two, it’s interesting to speculate who would win a fight if they went at it. Personally, I have no idea which of them would win—but, boy, it’d be cool to watch.

Tarzan of the Apes and Conan of Cimmeria: They aren’t real, but by golly, they should be.