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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 1, 2014 19:46:11 GMT -5
At the mountain of the moon godScript by Roy Thomas, art by John Buscema and Pablo Marcos. This is an original story, serving to tie up the loose ends from the previous issue and Black Colossus. Conan has just led the forces of Khoraja in a smashing victory over the army of Thugra Khotan/Natohk and has apparently conquered the heart (or at least gained the serious attention of) princess Yasmela. Everything is going the Cimmerian's way, and so if we want him to continue his adventuring something has to save him from wedded bliss and a steady job!  Everything starts with a bit of spilled wine, and Conan and Yasmela retiring to her rooms so she can change her clothes (or at least remove the wine-stained ones). However, just as the candles are put out, in through the window comes a grievously wounded man! He identifies himself as a spy that Yasmela had sent to Ophir to investigate the whereabouts of her captured brother, and as per instructions he came in secretly to report what he found. Yasmela's brother, Khoraja's rightful king, is held in Ophir in a prison built atop the mountain of the Moon-god, of which he brought a map. Having fulfilled his mission, he dies. A likely excuse is found to explain why there's a corpse in the princess's bedchamber, but while this is being settled the map to the prison is stolen! It is quickly discovered that Vateesa, the princess's servant, made off with the document. Conan, who had memorized the map with just a glance, decides to ride off immediately to rescue the king with only a pair of soldiers, with the traditional reason that "few can get where an army wouldn't". Yasmela remains behind, asking Stygian prince Katuman to tell het tales of his country and take her mind off her worries. (Katuman was an ally of Thugra Khotan, but came over to Khoraja's side after the wizard's defeat). As Conan proceeds to Ophir and the mountain, Vateesa goes to the king of Koth's court to sell the map. Strabonus, the king, would love to recover Khoraja (which initially split from Koth itself) and having its king as his own prisoner would suit him well! He charges a bull-necked henchman, Sergius of Khrosha, to use the map to recover the captured king. He will bring Vateesa along, to make sure she's on the level. As the different parties reach the mountain of the moon-god, they all run into trouble: first Sergius' gang manages to kill Conan's two companions with an impromptu rockslide, and our hero barely manages to slip into a large crevice to save his skin. Said crevice is connected to caverns that honeycomb the mountain, and in a large open space Conan finds something that looks like a giant egg. Leaving it behind, he starts climbing up a vertical shaft, hoping it will lead to the lower levels of the prison. But meanwhile, Sergius and his crew are captured by the Ophireans guarding the place! Vateesa tries to charm her way out of jail by acting all friendly to the place's commander, but as he invites her to his room to "discuss", Conan pops out of a crack in the floor and grabs her ankle, quite upset at her betrayal. Fighting ensues, and as Conan chops down Ophirean guard after Ophirean guard, the commander runs to the king's cell to execute him (as per his interactions in case of an attempted rescue). Conan succeeds in following him quickly enough, knocks the man down and flees with the king (with Vateesa in tow). Sergius of Khrosha asks Conan to free him, but the Cimmerian, remembering the business with the rock slide, decides to let him rot in his cell. The escaping trio scrambles down the shaft that led Conan to the inside of the prison. The commander, hot in pursuit, swears that he won't be the first of his line to fail his sacred duty and tries to tip over the giant vats in which the Ophireans keep boiling oil ready to ward off any siege attempt -tip them over the wrong way, that is, not toward the outside but toward the cracks in the floor, hoping to boil Conan and the others alive. His clumsy attempts sort of succeed, but he manages to ge caught in the flow of boiling oil and is cooked instantly. Down the shaft, the trio has just had time to reach the big room with the giant egg when the oil starts arriving through the hole in the ceiling. They avoid injury by climbing on big rocks, but the egg is apparently damaged by the heat and cracks open, revealing a pteranodon-like creature within! The big reptile attacks the trio, and after a bit of hectic fighting Conan manages to break off its lower jaw. He then plunges his sword in the beast which falls dead, and the Cimmerian collapses from exhaustion. The treacherous Vateesa sees her chance, grabs the sword, and tries to swing it at the prone barbarian; but the Khorajan king tackles her and she falls on her own sword. Conan and the king escape back to Khoraja, but when they arrive they discover that Yasmela has decided to wed prince Katuman who, unlike Conan, has noble blood in his veins. The Cimmerian gracefully accepts (or feigns to) this ungrateful treatment, and just asks for a fast horse… and perhaps a week or so of partying. Notes: - While at the end of Black Colossus it seemed clear that Conan and Yasmela were about to have hot post-armageddon sex, here it sounds as if they haven't gotten to third base yet. When Black colossus was readapted in CtB249, however, Conan and Yasmela were caught in flagrante delicto by Red Sonja and Zula. - Nice bits of continuity, here and there: the king of Koth is Strabonus, and that of Ophir is Amalrus, the two kings we will meet again in the scarlet citadel, a tale set some 15 years in the future (when Conan is king of Aquilonia) and adapted in SSoC #30. However, contonuity can be a glitchy thing... SSoC #44, The Star of Khorala, is set in between today's issue and SSoC #30; and yet, the king of Ophir at that time is called Moranthes. Sergius of Khrosha, for his part, will be seen again in Iron shadows in the moon, where he will reproach Conan for letting him rot in a cell. - Katuman is wearing his arm in a sling as the story opens, due to his injuries suffered during the recent battle; however, he's still wearing it at the end, even if more than a month must have elapsed. Maybe his arm was badly broken? - A sequel to Black Colossus was also written by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, and published in their anthology Conan the swordsman. That story, Shadows in the dark, was not adapted in the Marvel Conan magazines.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 1, 2014 19:47:10 GMT -5
The first barbarian, continuing the essay on sword & sorcery's history by Lin Carter. Here we review the creation of Kull, again with lovely Severin illustrations.  Blackmark, part 3, story and art by Gil Kane (and uncredited script by Archie Goodwin, as Ron informed us). This series is far more in the vein of Burroughs than Howard, but I like it nevertheless. The pace is quite good, and in between last chapter and this Blackmark has grown from a child to a young adult, has escaped slavery, has led a band of brigands and has finally been captured by the local lord, chubby King Kargon. Slated to die in the arena, Blackmark catches the eye of the king's lovely young wife, who has a reputation for enjoying the company of strapping gladiators. The arena has an interesting feature: Kargon had it built around a silver tower that none can enter, and there is a local custom that anyone can ask permission to try… but failure is punished by death! The silver tower we recognize as the nose of a partly buried spaceship. As he awaits dawn and his final trial, Blackmark meets a man in his cell: it is old Balzamo, the guy who had accompanied king Amarix, the very one responsible for Blackmark's birth! (Balzamo recognizes Blackmark by the cross-shaped birthmark he has on the hip, the same that his mother had).  In the morning, the two are sent in the arena along with a fire-breathing dragon! But Blackmark manages to slay the beast and the crowd cheers. To be continued!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 1, 2014 19:48:49 GMT -5
Kull of Atlantistext by Robert E. Howard, art by Barry Smith. Once upon a time, Roy Thomas and Barry Smith toyed with the idea of a paperback-sized comic featuring Kull, and Barry produced many images in preparation. Some of them are presented here in a partial adaptation of the Kull story "exile of Atlantis".  Very nice material, with a still young Barry showing his departure from Kirby's style (this is the style seen in the very first issues of CtB and in the sword and the sorcerers story published in Chamber of Darkness #4). This early style always appealed to me; it has a great magical quality to it, even if the horses look a bit odd. Kull was wearing the same type of helmet with horns facing front seen in both Chamber of darkness and CtB. That helmet, too, I really liked… nobody else had one like it.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 1, 2014 19:50:48 GMT -5
Demons of the summitScript by Roy Thomas, art by Tony Dezuniga. This is an adaptation of a 1970 pastiche Conan story written by Scandinavian fan Björn Nyberg (who had written the novel "the return of Conan" in 1957). Let's not mince words: "People of the summit" (here "demons of…") is not a very good story. But it's at least mercifully short, and fans back then couldn't publish their fanfic on the internet. My main gripe with it when I first read it was the introduction of a quasi science-fiction mcguffin: a mask that to all intents and purposes is like a plastic bag, and that allows one to see through and to breathe in a heavy fog. In a nutshell: Conan and a partner have to cross hostile territory, and are ambushed by a wild and headstrong girl whom they make prisoner. They intend to keep her hostage until they're safely away. She warns them that they're headed toward haunted mountains, but they pay her no heed. Soon they find signs of human activity (a corpse spread eagled on a cross), Conan's partner is killed by a falling boulder and the girl is abducted by unseen attackers (the fog being quite dense). With Conan in pursuit, the girl is brought to an ancient castle peopled by masked folks apparently belonging to some ancient race of which they are the sole survivors, and they intend to use her as a brood mare (or to feed her to their pet monster if she doesn't collaborate). Conan arrives in the nick of time, kills them all, kills the monster, and makes off with the girl. Interestingly, this story was reprinted in CtB 87 (a fill-in issue; it wasn't chronologically supposed to be there). However, "reprinted" isn't quite the right word as I could swear it was redrawn, either importantly or completely. Compare these pages: on the left you have the SSoC3 version, on the right the CtB87 version.   The layouts are the same but many things change; look at the screaming girl's face or the skull on the ground, for example. Notes: - This story is set during Conan's stint as a Turanian soldier. I don't know how much L. Sprague de Camp changed it from Nyberg's original version. - The girl kinda dresses like Bêlit, but is unrelated. ----------- Finally, in the letters page, we have a letter by Harlan Ellison. Pretty cool.
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Post by Ozymandias on May 2, 2014 9:26:33 GMT -5
Blackmarkstory and art by Gil Kane. Blackmark was intended as a series of graphic novels to be published as pocketbook paperbacks; apparently, although they did well, they didn't do quite well enough to warrant a sustained series. So Gil Kane was left with three graphic novels, only one of which had been published. Others' loss would be SSoC's readers gain! (at least for a while). The format is interesting, turning away from the classic comic-book grid. Captions are more literary, closer to an actual prose novel. In this first instalment, we witness the origin of the lead character. Blackmark's world is a post-nuclear war Earth, which has fallen back to a medieval level and where mutant monstrosities roam. Life is hard. A king called Amarix, who hoped that science could help restore mankind to its former glory, was cast down by his people who blame science for the Earth's state, and associate it with sorcery. Fleeing upon the desert wastes, a mortally-wounded Amarix chances upon a young, barren woman whose husband is away, hunting. He tells her that he can make it so that she becomes fertile again, and that he'll bequeath on her unborn offspring all his knowledge, giving it a chance to change the world for the better. She reluctantly accepts (in exchange for a pouch of gold, too) and Amarix and his aide strap on Kane-esque gizmos to her. Amarix then goes away, still hunted by an angry crowd. The lady's husband, meanwhile, is quite angry at what happened, and when a child is born a year later he refuses to recognizes it. But the baby boy finally grows on him. This is a very good start; the hints at the mysterious aspects of this new world are quite intriguing. (Blue lights flickering at the horizon; strange mutated men with mental powers living at the north pole… it all makes me want to read some more0. This is, IMO, the best Kane ever. |
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Post by Ozymandias on May 2, 2014 9:33:00 GMT -5
I totally loved the inking on those early (50) issues of SSoC. Pablo Marcos would be my 1st choice, but DeZuñiga was probably my favorite.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2014 10:08:21 GMT -5
I totally loved the inking on those early (50) issues of SSoC. Pablo Marcos would be my 1st choice, but DeZuñiga was probably my favorite. I always preferred Marcos as an inker to when he was doing full art. That may be because in the latter case, he had to work twice as fast; but even taking that into account he tended to twist limbs in a very Frank Robbins-like way. |
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Post by Ozymandias on May 2, 2014 10:18:42 GMT -5
I totally loved the inking on those early (50) issues of SSoC. Pablo Marcos would be my 1st choice, but DeZuñiga was probably my favorite. I always preferred Marcos as an inker than when he was doing full art. That may be because in the latter case, he had to work twice as fast; but even taking that into account he tended to twist limbs in a very Frank Robbins-like way. None of them, Buscema's regulars, were very good at drawing, which is why they mainly did inking. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2014 10:19:37 GMT -5
...aaaaaaaand bookmarked! That's one neat blog; thanks for the tip, b-d!
That's actually my fault: I scanned these two pages in greyscale so we could better compare them with the original SSoC material. (For the splash page that was hardly necessary, as we can plainly see it's been redrawn). I did have the intention of scanning the B&W reprinted (and translated) pages from Editions Héritage, but they're buried in boxes in the garage... victims of a house reorganization and the need to free space for one of my sons' new bedroom!
I agree with MRP and benday-dot's assessment overall. There are really four phases in King Conan / Conan the king as a series.
1) The first eight issues adapt the L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter and Björn Nyberg pastiches from Conan's kingly career and published in prose under the book titles "Conan of Aquilonia" (actually four short stories) and "Conan the avenger" (also known as "the return of Conan"). They're O.K., with Buscema art and either Bulanadi or Chan inks. The first four issues depict the "final"* struggle between Conan and Thoth-Amon; issues 5-8 are told in flashback and depict Conan's quest to recover his abducted queen, a quest that will lead him to revisit pretty much every place he's been to in his career and that will let him tie up many loose ends. It's really fan-fictionish, IMHO. Revisit old friends like the wizard Pelias from the scarlet citadel: check; kill King Yezdigerd of Turan, a personal enemy since CtB #20: check; bang Yasmina from the people of the black circle: check...
2) Issues 9-15 are a mixed lot with artwork by different artists (Buscema, Frenz, Kupperberg, Silvestri) and scripts by Doug Moench. They're usually quite enjoyable, and although there is little surprising character development, the tales are solid.
3) With issue 16, new writer Alan Zelenetz really gets into gear with plenty of character interaction, emotional turmoil and political intrigue. This warrants a change of title with issue 20 (from King Conan to Conan the king), which also starts a continuing storyline. When Zelenetz leaves the title with issue 28, the story is continued by writer Don Kraar; the many subplots left hanging will be resumed and concluded in Conan the king 50-55 (written by Jim Owsley and not by Alan Zelenetz, but Owsley was the editor of the title when Zelenetz wrote it and must have had a hand in crafting the overall plot). This story arc, #20-#28 and #50-55, all have Kaluta covers except the last one (Mike also drew the covers for issues 29-31 and 49) and most have beautiful Geoff Isherwood inking or full art. Issue 28, in particular, has spectacular artwork by Marc Silvestri and Isherwood. They're arguably the best issues of the run.
4) Starting with issue 29, new writer Don Kraar continues the storyline begun in issue 20, but turns away from intrigue to favour military action as Conan engages in an imperial campaign. It's straightforward fun with efficient art by Mike Docherty (for most issues) or Judith Hunt. I liked it a lot as well, although I missed the intrigue and emotional conflict from the Zelenetz run. Still, I'd argue that this simply reflects a change in tone, not a change in quality; there are many great moments in that run too. Issues 29-30 have gripping moments of action, and there are very funny one-liners here and there. The Kraar storyline ends with issue 49.
Interestingly, the end of King Conan contradicts the story Conan of the isles, which was adapted in Conan annual #7 and in a Marvel Graphic Novel.
For a while in the 80s, before Jim Owsley started writing Conan the barbarian, King Conan / Conan the king was simply the best Conan comic out there.
*It was meant to be final at the time.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2014 10:27:30 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #4 The Boris Vallejo cover is definitely in the Frazetta tradition, and it features a scene from the lead feature of this issue. Powerful stuff! I love those early Boris covers. The issue contains... Iron shadows in the moon, a Conan story The Corben Conan collection, a portfolio by the famed underground artist Blackmark triumphant!, the conclusion of Gil Kane's character's first tale. No article in this issue, but it's quite a fine package. There is a photo from a historical movie, something of a constant since the early Savage Tales days; these may lack in overall artistic merit but they're charming in their kitshy way. There is also a house ad for subscriptions illustrated by Tim Conrad! The letters page contains a feature that used to be found in Weird Tales, a reader's poll, but that will be short-lived. Iron shadows in the moon is an adaptation of a REH Conan story that gives it back its original title, Weird Tales having published it under the tamer header of "Shadows in the moonlight". It is written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by the combined talents of John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala. It is one of my personal favourites, perhaps because of the joy I had in first reading it in Marvel Treasury Edition #19 back in 1978. (I remember the purchase and the excitement quite clearly)!  The yarn says a great deal about Conan's career choices: influenced by the works of Harold Lamb and his brilliant Cossack stories (1), Robert Howard made Conan a Kozak, the Hyborian age equivalent of those Ukrainian riders. In this story, the Kozaks have just been severely beaten by the Turanians (the equivalent of the Ottoman Turks, thus anticipating actual historical events!) and Conan will become a pirate on the Vilayet sea by the end of the tale. Generations of REH nerds (and I say that with affection) have argued about where to place this tale in Conan's career! Personally, I find preposterous the idea that this would be placed before Queen of the Black Coast, which is what Dark Horse decided to go for in its current adaptations. Olivia, the female lead, goes topless for the entire issue, although her hair manages to always fall just right to cover her bosom. Initially I thought it was because the prose story must have described her as naked, which would have made sense for an escaping slave, but it actually describes her as wearing a girdled tunic. Her partial state of undress must be an artistic decision emphasizing her desperate situation. The story opens as Olivia, a daughter of the king of Ophir mentioned last issue, runs in a panic through the reeds of the swampy shores of the Vilayet sea, located where the modern Caspian sea lies (although the Vilayet is much longer in its north-south axis). Olivia, no longer a princess, has been sold away by her father to punish her for refusing to marry a prince of Koth he had selected; she has spent the previous months as the plaything of a Turanian governor, Shah Amurath, who severely abused her. Olivia has taken advantage of the very recent military victory of Shah Amurath over the wild Kozaks (and the party that ensued) to run away from her master, but the latter is in hot pursuit. Amurath is on his own, apparently very much a man of action who won't let underlings do the work for him. He catches Olivia and although she threatens to drown herself he replies with scorn and threats of violence. As he grabs her, the reeds part to show an unlikely saviour: Conan of Cimmeria.  Conan was one of the defeated Kozaki (3), and he escaped the massacre of a week ago by hiding in the marshes, eating muskrats raw to survive, barely escaping the Turanians again and again. He has prayed to get his hands on Shah Amurath, the man who killed and tortured his friends, and there he is at last!!! The two engage in swordplay, and Conan not only defeats his opponent but butchers him until the corpse doesn't look human anymore. Then, his anger assuaged, he agrees to take the traumatized Olivia with him. The two of them must leave that shore as soon as possible, and do so by means of a half-rotten rowboat. They get a chance to talk a little, and Conan has this famous line: "They call my race barbaric… but we do not sell our children". (1) Now available again in a neat format thanks to the University of Nebraska Press (2) Shah Amurath is here described as an able and cruel warrior. In a later issue of SSoC, renamed "the shah OF Amurath", he will be described as a fool wearing a stupid tiara; this strange version will be seen again in a Conan limited series titled "Flame and the fiend". (3) L. Sprague de Camp decided that Conan must have been the Kozaks' leader, and that's how it was written in the Marvel titles, but nothing indicates this is the prose version of this tale where Conan just says "I was one of those dissolute rogues". He would eventually become a hetman among other Kozaks at a later point in his life, however, as described in The devil in iron.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2014 10:28:16 GMT -5
After an entire night, they reach one of the islands that dot the Vilayet sea. There they meet a big old parrot that utters human-sounding words in an unknown language: "Yagkoolan Yok Tha, Xuthalla". Finding fruit, the pair begins to eat in a sunny clearing and starts to relax. Suddenly, they are attacked by some unknown entity: a large block of masonry is thrown at them from clear across the clearing, and only the Cimmerian's quick reflexes saves the day. Intrigued, he tries to lift the block, but finds it too heavy to be thrown any farther than a few feet away. Finding it more prudent to move, he and Olivia prepare to reenter the jungle, but Conan's keen senses tell him that death is watching them from under the trees; carrying Olivia like a child, he runs as fast as he can in the opposite direction. Shortly thereafter they reach an old, vine-choked and abandoned temple filled with many statues apparently made of iron, all black, and surprisingly realistic. Olivia is quite scared of the gloomy place and begs Conan to resume their sea journey, but after they take a look at the horizon from a nearby rocky hill they conclude that a newly-appeared white sail makes that a dangerous proposition: it might be Turanians, or pirates. Better to stay the night on the island, in the temple, away from the dangerous jungle.  That night, Olivia dreams: in this very temple, the black creatures (not statues, but alive!) torture and murder what seems to be a young and fair godling whose cries for help are answered belatedly by the appearance of a Zeus-like individual. The bearded figure cradles the lifeless form of the youth and utters the same words as were earlier spoken by the parrot, and in reply to this godly curse the black men are turned into statues. The god then points at the moon and vanishes. Olivia wakes screaming and feels that the statues are moving; she runs out of the temple with Conan trying to catch her. Conan is quite ready to believe in her tale of statues that move by moonlight, having seen his share of things that go bump in the night. Unfortunately, as they decide to leave the island, they find out the rowboat has been smashed to pieces! They return to the craggy hill, away from the jungle and from the temple. In the morning, they see that the ship observed the previous day belonged to a pirate ship that is now beached. Conan, familiar with the ways of the sea, leaves Olivia in a safe spot and goes to meet the pirates, hoping to join their ranks to escape the island. But by ill luck, the ship's captain is none other than Sergius of Khrosha, the guy Conan left to rot in an Ophirean jail last issue!!! The two fight it out and Conan slays Sergius, but is then taken out by a slinger. The pirates start arguing about what to do with him: the law of the pirate brotherhood says that Conan is their new captain, having slain the previous one, but some say that the law applies only to people who are already pirates. They eventually carry the unconscious Conan to the temple, where they decide to strike camp. Olivia, meanwhile, has witnessed all that; on her own, she almost falls prey to despair. Suddenly seeing a large, anthropoid form climbing the rock wall atop of which she hides, she flees again, making her way to the temple. Under the cover of night, she cuts Conan's bonds (while the pirates all snore). No sooner are they back in the jungle that the two are attacked by the creature Olivia had seen just a while before: a large gray man-ape with a foul temper! The beast and Conan fight, and steel luckily make the difference. But no sooner is that threat taken care of that screams of horror erupt from the temple! It seems that when the full moonlight strikes them, the iron stature do come alive, and they're busy tearing the pirates apart! When the hapless crowd reaches their beached ship, they find Conan and Olivia already on it, with the Cimmerian promising to cleave the skull of the first man who tries to board. Desperate for safe haven, the pirates vote Conan in as their new captain, and all sail away, leaving the cursed living statues behind. This story has an overall arc that really defines the Conan character: as it starts, he is as destitute as can be; mud-covered, bleeding, surviving on rats, but still a well of physical energy and personal drive. By story's end, he is a ship's captain with a beautiful mistress and the promise of more adventuring! From gigantic melancholies to gigantic mirth indeed!  H.P. Lovecraft made this comment about the tale, in a letter to REH: "You weave a haunting magic around that ruin with the moon-wakening statues -and the primal, pre-human phrase in the parrot's mouth is the master stroke! The wide popularity you are achieving is certainly well deserved. At present you come close to forming the star of the WT outfit!" Notes: - Turan's king in this story is Yildiz. In the other Conan story featuring the Kozaki ( the devil in iron, the king is Yezdigerd (as he is in people of the black circle), and it is usually assumed that Yildiz is Yezdigerd's father, as was indeed the case in the Marvel series. - There are other instances of parrots remembering an old phrase generation after generation: in Tintin's adventure "Red Rackham's treasure", a group of island parrots have perpetuated Captain Haddock's ancestor's curses.  (But in truth, REH said in a letter to Lovecraft that the idea of the old parrot repeating an ancient phrase came from a poem by Alfred Noyes). - Conan is about 28 during this adventure. - The story is continued in the Conanized tale " the road of the eagles". |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2014 10:29:02 GMT -5
Richard Corben is a famous and gifted artist not foreign to REH fans: he freely adapted the REH tale the valley of the worm to craft his magnificent Bloodstar, and recently contributed a beautiful sequence for Tim Truman's Conan the Cimmerian title for Dark Horse. Many fans demanded to see Corben draw Conan on that occasion, as the pages he did featured Conan's grandfather only*, and I had quite forgotten about the present portfolio. There are only a few plates, unfortunately,all of them showing a scene from the original stories. But let's not complain, it's already cool to have these few pages!  * but even so they were my favourite pages of the entire run! They had a very strong Weird Tales flavour, I thought. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2014 10:29:42 GMT -5
Blackmark triumphant!Uncredited script by Archie Goodwin Uncredited art assist by Neal Adams Everything else by Gil Kane.  Blackmark has defeated the fire lizard, and now demands the right to try and enter the silver tower. Thinking he will fail and so forfeit his life, king Kargon agrees. But Blackmark's brain contains information even he is not aware of, thanks to the machinations of Amarix's machines. The lad knows just where to touch the tower to open a door, and he steps into what is actually a spaceship. Handling the controls as if he had always used them, he takes off in a roar of flames and Kargon's people revolt against their tyrant, acclaiming their new lord who mastered the silver shrine. Blackmarks lands the rocket, and armed with a sonic sword he found on board he helps the rebel masses. Unfortunately, her fails to catch the warlord whom he recognized as his parents' slayer, and king Kargon dies before telling him. As Blackmark accepts his role as these people's new leader, they all observe that the events have been monitored by a strange flying creature which is no doubt a spy for the Psi Lords who live at the North Pole, bad news for tomorrow. I was under the impression that Neal Adams had inked a few of the pages seen here, but Wikipedia states that Neal's own site used to say (on pages now unavailable) that he had actually pencilled a few of them. I don't know; it looks like Adams over Kane to me; what d'y'all think? Was Neal trying to make his art look like Kane's?  Notes: - This story's sequel will be partly continued in Kull and the barbarians #2, and then presented fully in Marvel Preview #17.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2014 10:31:33 GMT -5
Once again a sound and pretty cool analysis, b-d!
Regarding Howard's racism, I was always a little unconvinced before reading his letters to other writers and reading his actual opinions (which are, I fear to say, pretty embarrassing by modern standards). That's because in his stories, while characters might utter racist nonsense, the actual events do not often reflect a racist agenda. To wit: even in the slur-filled "Black Canaan", where white characters go on and on about non-whites and all their faults, a neutral reader can only observe that (a) most of these white dudes are stupid assholes, and (b) most of the non-whites are clearly rebelling against oppression, which is a very sympathetic position. What's more, the villain of the tale, even if he's dark skinned, is highly intelligent, brave and resourceful. So rather than a racist story, I thought Black Canaan was a story with racists in it.
In Vale of Lost Women we have a similar situation: Conan has a racist attitude, in that he feels like he has to go to the defense of a woman not out of a sense of justice but because of the color of her skin. That makes Conan himself a racist, but nowhere is it shown that this is a proper attitude. In fact, in that very story we see the hero do things that are highly reprehensible : he betrays his host king Bajujh and murders him so that his own tribe, the Bamulas, can take over.
Naturally, I was proven wrong after reading Howard's and Lovecraft's exchanges on racial memory, bloodlines and other biologically nonsensical tripe. It's always a pity to see intelligent people be taken by grotesque theories that invariably favor their own kind, be it defined by skin color, cultural heritage or language.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2014 10:32:21 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #5I never made a tally of the most important SSoC issue, but I'm convinced that were it the case, SSoC#5 would be somewhere in the top 10 (or even top 5). It adapts the story containing the most badass scene from the Cimmerian's career: the one where, crucified and left to die, he still finds the strength to kill a vulture with his teeth! That scene, just about the only one from a real Conan story that John Millius saw fit to include in his movie, is familiar to an entire generation of moviegoers.  The cover to SSoC#5 is painted by Boris Vallejo again, as would be most of the early covers of the mag. This time, though, the design cover was provided by John Buscema (whose sketch would be seen in the letters page of issue 7).  In this comic we find the following: A witch shall be born, the longest Conan story adaptation yet; Caravans and kingdoms, an essay on the trade routes of the Hyborian age, written by Robert Yaple; The Kline Conan, a series of pin-ups by artist Robert Kline. Not as many features as in previous issues, as you can see, since the main story takes so many pages! The frontispiece image is drawn by no less that Jeffery Jones, but is reprinted from another magazine titled Infinity. It still looks pretty cool. A witch shall be born was reprinted in colour in Marvel Treasury Edition #23. Looking back, we notice that SSoC#1's main story was reprinted in CtB#78, that issue #2's Black Colossuswas reprinted in colour in Marvel Treasury Edition's #15, that issue #3's At the mountain of the moon god was reprinted in colour in CtB annual #3, then issue #4's Iron Shadows in the moon was reprinted in colour in Marvel Treasury Edition #19, along with next issue's People of the dark! To warrant so many coloured reprints, this string of stories must have been quite epochal indeed!
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