No doubt, if only in the Swords & Scrolls section.

Black Cloaks of Ophir
Script by Roy Thomas
Art by Ernie Chan

Just how many of these stories did Roy have in reserve when he left Marvel? I'm not complaining, mind you, if it means a few more "real" Conan stories before the bad old years set in for good. This tale is adapted from a plot by Andrew J. Offut, who wrote two pastiche novels adapted in issues 53-58 (as well as a third novel which we wouldn't see adapted for more than a decade). I learned since reviewing those issues that Offut's prolific output mostly consisted of porn novels! I had never suspected, although in retrospect that might explain the abundance of nakedness and bondage in those Conan tales!

The art by Ernie Chan is not the best he's ever done, but it's serviceable. And I am sure it was delivered on time, because Ernie was an amazingly fast and dependable artist.

The story deals with big time politics, with the crown of Ophir in the balance. Conan had already been involved in Ophirean politics in issue #44, when he helped queen Marala escape her prison (and her feeble-minded husband, king Moranthes) and flee to Aquilonia where she would adopt the name "countess Albiona".

As our story starts, a little more than five years have passed. Moranthes is long dead, and was succeeded by his brother Varis. This Varis was a tyrant who formed his own secret force, the Black Cloaks, who could do basically whatever they wanted and happily plundered the land, making life miserable for everybody. A nameless peasant having assassinated the king during a public holiday, the crown passed in turn to Varis's daughter (Moranthes's niece), young queen Varia.

Under the advice of her chief counsellor Shahela, queen Varia allowed that woman to form another military body to counter the power of the Black Cloaks: the Iron Maidens, consisting entirely of women and answering to Shahela herself. But Shahela has eyes on the crown, and she and Balthis, the leader of the Black Cloaks, reached an uneasy balance of power when they both had a hand in jailing the queen. Notice how the Iron Maidens (some of them, at least), actually look like warrior women and not like buxom cosplayers at a comic book convention).



When Conan arrives in Ophir, he first meets Shahela as he saves her life from a murder attempt engineered by Balthis. She tells him a slanted version of how things currently are in the country. Later, in Ophir's capital Ianthe, Conan meets Balthis who recruits him to the Black Cloaks and regales him with his own self-serving version of Ophirean politics.



On the orders of Balthis, Conan spies on a certain secret assembly of nobles suspected of plotting to free queen Varia from her prison cell. Their discussion convinces the Cimmerian that these guys are the ones deserving his support, and when the Black Cloaks are mandated to kill them all, Conan manages to capture their leader without hurting him.

In Ianthe's royal palace, Conan then makes an attempt to free the queen himself, but a suspicious Balthis has him followed and prevents Varia's escape. In the ensuing fight, Conan falls into the palace's catacombs. There he encounters a giant creature, undead and clearly cannibalistic, whom he severely wounds. Following the man-like monstrosity, Conan finds the tomb (and armour) of Ophir's founding king, the legendary Thanus. Donning the armour, he makes his way to the surface and rouses the people against the twin evils of Balthis and Shahela.



The crowd marches on the palace to free queen Varia, and an angry Shahela tries to get to her first for a bit of regicide before her career plans are scrapped. Conan stops her, and their fight is interrupted by the arrival of the catacombs monster who kills Shahelan even as Conan puts a sword through its body.



Once again sitting on her throne, acclaimed by her people, queen Varia wants to make Conan her first counsellor while others want to make him commander of the army. And as in so many other pastiches, Conan uncharacteristically turns down their offer, preferring to ride away on a new horse with a few bags of jewels he stole from the catacombs.


Notes:

- The placement of this story is a bit difficult. The pre-story blurb says "For several years, Conan, captain of a Barachan vessel, is highly successful until a disastrous encounter with other Zingaran ships forces him to flee inland, even unto mighty Ophir". Okay. This is confusing because Conan went from a Barachan corsair to a Zingaran buccaneer in the story The Pool of the Black One, adapted in issues #22-23, and he didn't set foot on land in between the two careers (it happened at sea). Perhaps we're pursuing the idea that I personally would defend regarding Howard's Conan canon, that when Conan took over the Zingaran ship Wastrel he took it to the Baracha islands and simply continued his piratical career. (My main reason for thinking so is that when Conan is recognized as a famous pirate in "the black stranger", it is as a Barachan captain and not as a Zingaran buccaneer, which he would last have been, chronologically speaking). But in SSoC the deCamp-Carter version is the one used, in which the Cimmerian becomes a buccaneer... for consistency's sake, we should stick to it.

Even setting that aside and saying "all right, after Conan was a pirate, whether a Barachan or a buccaneer, he went back to the mainland and that is where we are at the start of this story". Reasonable, sure enough, but in Red Nails (ST#2-3), Conan tells Valeria how his career on the main ended: "The Zingarans sank my last ship off the Shemite shore—that's why I joined Zarallo's Free Companions. But I saw I'd been stung when we marched to the Darfar border." The Shemite shore is a far cry from Ophir, and Darfar even more so!!! But let's perhaps cut SSoC some slack... maybe Conan simply omitted to specify that between having his ship sunk off Shem and his joining Zarallo's company, he had a few more adventures.... including this one in Ophir.

- Conan must be around 38 at the time.

- The story includes appropriate references to king Moranthes and to the time elapsed since SSoC#44. Kudos.

- Conan disguising himself to fool people into doing important things seem to be a favourite trick in Offut's stories. The Cimmerian pulled a similar stunt in the novel Conan the mercenary.

- There would be another group of warrior women named "Iron Maidens" whom we would meet on a few occasions later in the series; these were a small band of scantily-clad thieves and mercenaries.

A Pablo Marcos portfolio

There are times when Marcos does beautiful work, especially when he's not rushed. Here's a pretty decent picture.



I still find his way of twisting bodies in nearly-impossible (and certainly impractical) ways a little annoying. In some images from this portfolio, either Conan or the mandatory accompanying Victoria's Secret models are almost certain to pull some ligaments.

The story concludes in the next issue, b-d. Gene Day provided the art for another Pict story that's a lot like The Lost Race: Men of the shadows. It's probably not too far in the future.

The Picts seem destined to evolve into the Little People, if we can trust The Lost Race. However, it was my understanding that these Machen-inspired Little People were the same folk as the Worms of the Earth, and by the time of Bran Mak Morn we had the two co-existing in the bRitish Isles. Perhaps Howard adjusted hys mythos as time went by.

Yes, there were panthers in Britain. There was a big cat known as the European jaguar, fossils of which have been found in Britain. Whether or not it ever overlapped with human habitation of Britain is another matter.

There are indeed a few gaps here and there where we can fit a lot of adventuring, the limiting factor mostly being the time it takes to cross a continent. The original Miller & Clark chronology allow a few years for Conan to return from Vendhya (after People of the Black Corcle) and find work as a mercenary in assorted Hyborian lands. We even have a little leeway there, because they placed The Slithering Shadow in that period, (a few years after The Devil in Iron, then) even though that particular story makes reference to The Slithering Shadow. My guess is that Conan must have been 34-35 or so when he came back from the east, 35-36 when he joined the Barachans, 38 when he left the sea for one last trip in the southern lands(Red Nails and The Teeth of Gwalhur) and 39 when he became a scout in Conajohara (Beyond the Black River).

Eye of the sorcerer
Script by Roy Thomas
Art by Ernie Chan and Alfredo Alcala

Another inventory story left by Roy before his departure, eye of the sorcerer is a tale I would deem a rather strange one. When I first read it in 1981 I didn't much care for it, but upon re-reading it today I couldn't quite understand why at first. Although not one of Roy's best stories, it's quite enjoyable and has many charming aspects. 

And that, I think, is what felt wrong about it initially: those charming aspects are typical not of a Conan adventure, but of those of a different character. As I live and take breath, this is not a Conan story; this is a Sinbad adventure! 

It has action and adventure, which are traits common to stories starring either of these characters. But it has these very Sinbad-esque elements, too, closer to the Arabian Nights than to Weird Tales horror: important lessons accepted with due humility by the hero, a sidetrip to a magical kingdom, technology mixed in with the magic, flying people, the importance of respecting ancient customs, castles made of one gigantic seashell, people transformed into animals, a scenery that seems to magically move, and a heartwarming finale asserting traditional family values and respect for one's elders. Not quite Conan decapitating a demon while his friend Balthus sacrifices his life in a rearguard action while half of Conajohara is burnt by the Picts!!!

Still, if we're fine with high fantasy, it can be fun.

The art by Chan and Alcala is not much to my taste, as Ernie never was my favorite penciller to begin with and Alfredo uses his gotta-meet-the-deadline inkwash style. Apart from the snail shell castle, there's little invention here, and not nearly as much movement as when Buscema provides the breakdowns. Nevertheless, the art does the job; this is not "Conan year one" drawn by Ron Lim.

In this story, Conan joins a Shemite caravan that brings a certain rich merchant to the faraway castle of a wizard. We can not see the merchant, as he constantly remains hidden in a palanquin, from which he transmits his orders via the woman Valiana.

Valiana first has to decide who will be captain of the armed men who accompany the caravan; both Conan and a man named Udelas vie for the position. Udelas is accompanied by his son, young Dern, who will quickly come to admire the Cimmerian and see his father in an increasingly bad light. A contest must decide who gets the better-paying job, but although Conan wins a fake swordfight and equals Udelas with a bow, Valiana decides he did so with poor grace and notes that he quickly lost his temper. She gives the captaincy to Udelas, and Conan accepts the decision. 

During the journey, Dern gets lost in a cave during a heavy downpour. His father and Conan go after him, and get caught in a six-page side adventure into another dimension where flying people use slaves from all over the multiverse. They quickly make good their escape back to our world.



Later along the road, the caravan is warned by a local man that if it intends to cross a certain forest, small offerings should be deposited for the forest god along the way. Conan leaves a few squirrels, but Udelas orders him to stop this superstitious nonsense. Sure enough, after a few more miles, the caravan is attacked by the god of the forest: a bear-like creature with psychedelic tattoos. 

Then the caravan nears the mountain where the wizard's castle is to be found, and the mountain seems to move at will; sometimes near, sometimes far, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left. To gain access to the place, two of the merchant's pretty slaves have to stand under rather modern-looking arches while holding a pricey gift in their hands. (Both times the slaves vanish mysteriously).

The wizard's home is a huge conch shell (quite pretty, too):



Inside, we encounter the two slave girls again; they are trapped, alive, in transparent pillars. Their host the wizard is named Giyune of the three eyes, and he does have a closed eyelid on his forehead. The wizard is pleased with the gifts brought to him, but still he asks for something more if he is to remove the spell he put on the merchant: he wants Valiana as well. The merchant (obviously desperate) agrees, and the wizard turns the woman into a tigress by opening its third eye. And now the joke's on the merchant, for the animal smells him within his palanquin and tears out the curtain that hides what is within; that's when we understand that the hapless man had been a pig all along!



The wizard cruelly reverses his spell, but the merchant is immediately killed by the tigress. 

Conan decides to charge the wizard, but is in turn changed into a lion and the two great cats have it out. The tigress quickly dies of exhaustion. Before the leonine Conan can attack Udelas and Dern, however, the lad ties a cord around Giyune's neck, forcing him to return Conan to his normal form. The distracted boy then lets the wizard escape his hold, and the evil man paralyzes the two adults with a stare. He then amuses himself by forcing a difficult choice on Dern: which of the two men shall go free, and which one be slain on the spot? His hero or his father?

Conan insists on Dern choosing his father and Udelas agrees, much to Dern's discomfiture. As Giyune approaches Conan with a sword Udelas runs away, and the wizard claims he's always happy to see his faith in human nature renewed! But before he can strike the Cimmerian, he is struck in the magical third eye by an arrow: Udelas only meant to go get his bow, not to escape. 



Father and son are reconciled, and the three escape the castle as fast as they can, as Conan suspects it was built by magic and might vanish at any time (which it does). Then they part way, and Conan hopes he can some day have a son like Dern.


Notes:

- Udelas and Dern come from Koth, where the rest of their family still resides, but he is later on called a Shemite and he swears by the shemitish gods Bel and Ashtoreth. It could be that Udelas is a Shemite who settled in Koth, and came back to Shem to find work.

- This adventure could have happened at any time, but the pre-story blurb (the exact same as that of the previous issue) places it when Conan is about 38. I personally would have put it much earlier in the Cimmerian's life.

- I wonder why the tigress dies of exhaustion, as is so helpfully explained by the wizard. What was wrong with the Conan lion killing the Valiana tigress while under a spell? Conan literally wasn't himself.

- I liked the competition for Dern's respect and affection that goes on between Conan and Udelas. Very authentic-sounding.

- I have no idea if this plot was originally meant for some other character than Conan, but I think it would be cool if it were so!

- A character at some point calls Conan a "Summeritan". That's how I like it: not everyone knows about distant countries.