Thanks. I'll keep an eye out for this.

Vengeance in Vendhya

Script by Roy Thomas
Art by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala
Adapting the story the people of the black circle, by Robert E. Howard.

When we last saw Conan, he and his impromptu ally Kerim Shah, the Turanian spy, had led a handful of hired hillmen all the way to the mountain of Yimsha, where dwell the terrible sorcerers belonging to the dread Black Circle. Their goal: to recover the abducted queen of Vendhya. After facing the gauntlet of several traps, magical and technical in nature, the small band had met and defeated the sorcerers' human acolytes.

The way being free, they now reach the castle atop Mount Yimsha. As you can see in this nice plunging view of the place, Alcala is back to his fine line style for this final part of the story.



Conan immediately demonstrates his experience in the field: refusing to put a hand on the castle's main door handle, he explains that it is shaped like a serpent's head... and that he's seen too many such things suddenly come alive. He prefers to reduce the door to splinters with mighty sword strokes.

Leaving one man behind, the group enters the castle. That lone guy will fare poorly: his attention is called by a man (one of the black seers!) who shows up on a balcony, right over him. The hillman wastes no time in shooting an arrow at the smirking figure, who simply snatches the projectile from the air and carelessly lets it fall back. The hillman reflexively catches the shaft, which suddenly turns into a snake that bites him on the arm! The man screams in pain and horror, and returning to see what's happening Conan and the others only find a corpse sprawled on the ground, an arrow sticking from its arm. (They also discover that they can't escape the castle; there is now an invisible wall blocking the doorway)!

With little choice, the small band resume their rescue mission. They find a vast room where an altar flanked by four golden snakes supports a crystal globe containing four golden pomegranates. (I love this kind of odd and exotic detail)! And there they face four wizards of the Black Circle, whose hands are misshapen demonic things showing that they're not quite human, if they ever were. Making a gesture, one of them enthrals the intruders and gets them to stand before him one by one, where he casually beheads them with one of their own swords. Conan, being a foreigner not taught from birth that it was useless to resist those wizards (and apparently helped by the magical girdle that Khemsa gave him last issue), manages to break the spell. But instead of rushing the wizards, he remembers the late wizard's words about "breaking the crystal ball" and runs to the altar. He strikes it several time, which results in the four sorcerers screaming in agony. Eventually, the glass shatters completely and the four pomegranates fly straight up to the heavens as the sorcerers drop dead.

It's now time for the big baddie, the Master of Yimsha, to make an appearance. He first states that he will take Kerim Shah's heart, and as he gestures the Turanian's heart does indeed burst out of his chest to land in the wizard's outstretched hand. Gruesome, but what a scene! He then turns toward Conan but once again the magical girdle protects the Cimmerian. Conan slashes at the wizard and feels the blade hitting something, but his opponent who turns into a giant snake that slithers quickly up a flight of stairs. Conan follows and reaches the beast as it's about to sink its fangs into a hapless queen Yasmina! A thrown sword and the skillful use of a knife force the wounded beast to retreat; as Conan follows, he sees the bloody tracks turn into bloody footprints. The Master of Yimsha is indeed a master of transmutation! Yasmina then catches up with him and the two embrace passionately.

Conan and the queen then retrace his steps all the way back to where he had left his horse and ride away. Yasmina expects the Cimmerian to ransom her, but he has no ionterest in money: he wants her to ride with him, to remain the woman of flesh and blood she is now and not resume her role as the aloof and godly queen of Vendhya. As they argue the question, they reach the edge of a valley where a great battle is under way: it is the Turanians that the late Kerim Shah had summoned who are facing Conan's faithless Afghuli followers. Conan decides grudgingly that he can't abandon his men, even if they turned his back on him first; Yasmina counters that he can't very well leave her alone to die in the mountain either. The conundrum is resolved when another army shows up: the Vendhyans looking for their queen! Yasmina reasons quickly that she can go to them, have herself recognized and lead them against the Turanians while Conan goes to rally his Afghuli. All Conan has to do is to choose his responsibilities over his desire of her. (Great Peter Parker moment, here, in a Hyborian context)!



The plan works and the Turanians are routed. But the day is not quite won yet: Yasmina is suddenly attacked by a giant vulture that swoops down from the sky! Conan succeeds in reaching it before it can harm the queen, and he stabs it with his sword. The bird screams with a human voice and falls off a cliff, its body turning into that of the Master of Yimsha. Conan and Yasmina part ways in a flirty manner, each trying to outdo the other in the "I'm master of my own fate" department.

One of Howard's best Conan stories, and one heck of an adaptation!

The man who was Conan, by Fred Blosser

A review of the book The last celt, a bio-bibliography of Robert E. Howard written by that pioneer among Howard scholars, the late and lamented Glenn Lord. That's one book I wouldn't mind reading someday, even if I suspect that the informations it gives have been pilfered by several more recent works on the same subject.


The castle of the devil
Script by Don Glut
Art by Alan Kupperberg and Sonny Trinidad

This is an adaptation and expansion of a fragment left by Robert E. Howard, the beginning of a Solomon Kane adventure. Oddly enough, the title is not given in the story itself, although it appears in the table of contents.

In this story, Kane meets another English adventurer, one John Silent; and it is really the sign of a great writer that the one thing that stands out in this story is Silent's character. You just want to know more about him! Howard wrote just a handful of pages of the devil's castle, but Silent's creation is all his. 

In Howard's story, Kane meets Silent after taking a boy down from a gibbet, and he explains that he intends to demand justice for the child's death from the local lord, the ill-reputed baron von Staler. Silent decides to go with him. That's all Howard wrote.

Here the dead boy is turned into a still-breathing naked young woman, which allows the writer to turn Kane into something of a dick. The Puritan covers the lass's nakedness not out of compassion but so her state of undress won't give him a boner. Oh, boy.

Baron von Staler turns out to be a mutant of sorts: he was born with the legs of a goat. Instead of thanking mother nature for this great way to save on shoes, he decided to make a pact with the devil: he would sacrifice five virgins every year, and at the end he would get normal legs. (The lass on the gibbet was to know that fate too, but it was discovered a bit too late that the flower had been plucked early and that she was no longer suitable). Kane and Silent, who got into the castle by pretending to be swords for hire, interrupt the unholy ceremony and as a result the baron turns entirely into a Satan-like figure whom his own men put to the sword. The end.

The art is more Trinidad than Kupperberg and it's not in the league of Wenzel, Weis or even Chaykin. The baron looks like a XIXth century Prussian and his guards look like XIVth century soldiers. It gets the job done, but that's about it. (Oh, and we see some naughty bits! Was that allowed, even in a black and white magazine?)




Finally, a house ad that brought a nostalgic smile to my face: 



Star Wars, at the time an almost-unknown thing, was about to save Marvel's comic-book business; and the House of Ideas became the host of these two great creations, Tarzan and John Carter. Ah, memories... 

You're in good company, Trebor! Few fans prefer the new coloring to the original, and many actually hate in in places. (the splash page of CtB #11 totally overdoes it with the gradient effects and ruins BWS's line art). Even when the new colors look good, I don't particularly understand why the original color scheme wasn't respected. Maybe it was more hassle than do everything over.

The Kull the conqueror trade reprinted the original colors, dots and all. It doesn't look as slick as Photoshop coloring, but I prefer things that way. 

I'm not sure what the thought process is on the overdone coloring, either. I can't see these collections appealing to newer fans as compared to the current Dark Horse material. Most fans of the classic stuff favor respectful restoration. I think I'm getting spoiled with the various Fantagraphic's collections I'm ordering (Bark's Ducks, Fosters Prince Valiant, Kelly's Pogo, etc.)

Eh. I've decided to start collected the trades and just enjoy the stories. It seems that Vol. 2 and 3 are currently out of print, so I might just go the digital route. (They're offering Vol.1-3 for just 24 bucks in a digital bundle.)

The savage sword of Conan #20, July 1977 issue.

I like the Earl Norem cover, which artfully uses a monster's tentacle-like eyebrow to flirt with what is permissible on the cover of a Marvel magazine. The red light coming from the bottom of the pit is a nice touch.



The frontispiece is drawn by Mike Nasser and inked by Dick Giordano; I haven't seen much Nasser work on Conan. 

This issue's contents:

The slithering shadow, a Conan adventure.
Sing a song of Sonjas, a text piece on cos-play at the San Diego comicon.
Solomon Kane's homecoming, an illustrated poem starring the adventurous Puritan.