SSoC #88
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Isle of the hunter

Script by Michael Fleisher
Art by John Buscema and Rudy Nebres

The Buscema/Nebres combination is beautiful. I was sold on Nebres' inking because of my love for Marvel's John Carter book, and even if I eventually came to care a little less for his full artwork I think his inking always remained very nice, and especially appropriate for desert tales. In this issue, I was struck by how beautifully he depicts the shadow of foliage in this scene:



The story:

In this riff on Richard Connell's The most dangerous game, a very rich man (Wazir Hassan Hassad Khan)who brags about being the greatest manslayer ever enjoys hunting capable warriors on his secluded isle on the Vilayet sea. Ensuring his privacy, he has a tamed sea monster that can be controlled with a big conch acting as a dog whistle.




To "recruit" victims, the hunter hires the twin sisters Saroya and Sabrina, wisecracking and sword-wielding damsels. Their modus operandi is to dance in taverns, get the patrons all heated up, trigger a big bar fight and walk out with whoever remains standing at the end, since that one is arguably the best candidate. They are then supposed to get the man to follow them with promises of riches and hanky panky.



Conan the Zuagir chief is in the city of Zamboula collecting information when he gets involved in such a plan, and naturally he's the one to defeat all the other customers. Unfortunately for Saroya and Sabrina, Conan is arrested by the city guard and condemned to death when he's recognized as the leader of the Zuagirs. The two girls have to save him from a dawn execution by taking on all the soldiers surrounding the execution block, scant seconds before the Cimmerian is to be decapitated.

The trio flees Zamboula with an armed squadron in tow. The girls convince Conan to help them rob the palace of a certain rich merchant living on an island of the Vilayet sea; the Cimmerian accepts their argument that they really don't want his Zuagirs around, preferring to split the loot three ways rather than share it with an entire band of thieves.

The barbarian and the girls reach the sea, where the twins had hidden a boat. It takes more than a day and a night' sailing to get near their goal, where a sea monster erupts from the waves! (See above). The girls explain that unless Hassad Khan orders the beast to attack by using his special conch, they have nothing to fear.

As the small boat nears the island, Conan is knocked out by a cudgel blow to the head, courtesy of one of his bodacious comrades. He is then left to regain his senses in the forest, where Hassad Khan's men start chasing him as hounds would a fox. But they have miscalculated as badly as those cops chasing Rambo did in the movie First blood; Conan's woodcraft is much better than theirs, and by climbing trees and engineering booby-traps, he proves to be more of a predator than a prey.

I have no doubt that the Cimmerian would have had little problem dispatching all the clumsy beaters sent after him, but he is given an opportunity to let others take care of that for him: the Zamboulan soldiers who had followed him from that distant desert city have reached the island (they're DAMN good trackers, apparently) and the Cimmerian manages to get them to engage Hassad Khan's own men.

As the two armed groups clash, Conan makes his way to Hassad Khan's palace, where he and his would-be hunter have words. After slaying the decidedly overrated "greatest manslayer ever", Conan off-handedly defeats the duplicitous Saroya and Sabrina and takes them captive, claiming he intends to sell them as slaves to make up for the time he lost. (Why he simply doesn't loot the palace as per the original, if fake, plan is not made clear. It would have struck me as more profitable and far easier than bothering with carrying two unwilling captives back to a slave market).



When the trio gets back to their skiff and sail off, they are pursued again by the Zamboulan soldiers who have finished killing off Hassad Khan's men. using Hassad Khan's conch, Conan manages to summon the sea beast, which then crushes the Zamboulan boat under its weight and eats a few of them for good measure.

There are still more bad news to come:




Conan's craft has a leak, and the only way to make it to shore is by jettisoning dead weight... as in people. The two sisters start fighting each other to decide who will be thrown in thwe water, but as they are still chained to each other all they manage is to fall overboard together. Still intent on killing each other, they don't notice the sea monster that has returned and that makes a quick meal of both of them. The creature then lets Conan go, maybe because it recognizes him as the one who used the conch earlier.




Notes:

- Conan is in his Zuagir period (which is getting increasingly busy as new issues pile up) and so is aged 30 or 31.

- We see quite a bit of Zambpula's satrap in this issue, even if he is not actually called by name. According to the Sword of Skelos storyline (SSoC#56-58) and to Shadows in Zamboula (SSoC#14), chronologically placed before and after this issue respectively, the satrap of Zamboula at that time is Jungir Khan, a strapping young man; not the balding old fool we see here. Maybe this is not the real satrap but only someone acting as such while Jungir is on vacation somewhere?



- Although the twin sisters' convoluted plan to recruit capable warriors falls within the accepted limits of pop-culture logic, the plot gets overly complicated when they risk their lives to free Conan from the executioner's block. Does it make sense, even for two carefree souls, to engage an entire garrison just to free an easily-replaceable man? I mean, since Conan has been captured, why not simply start another bar brawl and settle for whoever wins that one? Plot-mandated nonsense like that may lead to neat action scenes but makes the stories hard to take seriously.

- What is the purpose of the sea monster/watchdog? Once again it has a part to play in the plot, that of dramatically appearing at the end to deal poetic justice to the treacherous sisters, but in its official role as a watchdog it seems to fail dramatically. I can understand that it first lets Conan and the sisters reach the island because it is instructed to do so by Hassad Khan, but why doesn't it stop the Zamboulans from following? (It could have been explained that the sea beast was trained to keep people from leaving the island, and not from reaching it, but even then it took Conan using the conch to wake it at the story's end).

- The Zamboulans tenacity is admirable, if a bit unlikely. They follow Conan from Zamboula to the Vilayet sea, a journey of 1400 miles as the crow flies, despite having their horses scattered at some point. Agreed, the satrap of Zamboula made it clear that he wanted Conan recaptured, but it's still quite a chase. As ever, the Hyborian age geography is used as if it covered a very tiny portion of the world.

- Not ONE apostrophe in Wazir Hassan Hassad Khan's name. Good job, Michael!

No! No! A failure. How could he let us down like this?

Savage Sword of Conan #89, June 1983

Cover by Bob Larkin. Wow! That's a nice, highly contrasted one. I love the hot/cold colour palette. But Conan has brown eyes on it, instead of his well-known volcanic blue ones!



The frontispiece is the first contribution by a young artist who would soon become a fan favourite on this title: Gary Kwapisz!




Table of contents

Gamesmen of Asgalun, a Conan adventure set after Black Colossus
Rite of blood, a tale of young Conan in Cimmeria
Bonus pinups!, two images by Ernie Chan

SSoC#89
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Rite of blood
Script by Michael Fleisher
Art by Mary Wiltshire and Armando Gil

I like the stories of Conan as a kid. Here we see him outsmart (and kill) two roving Vanirmen who came to Cimmeria to plunder. Conan also shows a local bully that he won't take guff from nobody.

As in the previous "young Conan" tale in these pages, Mary Wiltshire provides nice artwork, enriched by Gil's fine inking.



Oddly enough, Conan's parents are shown as still being around. (His mom doesn't look like she usually does, being fair-haired here instead of black-haired). It's not that I mind, far from it, but Fleisher himself showed in issue #85 that they had died and left Conan all alone when he was a toddler.

Ah, and there's the matter of the bully Conan takes care of. His name is Brule, which is a really un-Cimmerian one... It's even a Pictish name!



Next issue will be much better, I promise.

Wait a second - I just noticed this: you mean all six plates show the same scene? Are they in sequence so that they recount a a brief story or episode?

Savage sword of Conan #90, July 1983

Cover by Earl Norem, with a pair of warrior-women who will be less scantily-clad in the actual story. (Which is also true for Conan, in all honesty).



The inside front and back covers are used to represent the Tim Conrad map of the Hyborian age first seen in SSoC#9.


Table of contents

Devourer of souls!, a Conan adventure introducing recurring villain Wrarrl.
Those barbarian artists, a portfolio with plates by several different artists.

SSoC #90
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The magical jewel is found among Conan's belonging, and some believe that it was his payment for his activities as a spy; king Savarro is not quite convinced, but decides he can't take any chances. The jewel remains in his royal tent.

Going back to the besieged city of Qurha'at Lok, we find its king, Granak, deciding that he's had enough of his impertinent wizard. He sends a few soldiers to get rid of the sorcerer, but the men meet Wrarrl as well as Meldark; and then we learn another of Wrarrl's secret: he has the power to extract men's souls and turn them into worms, which he then eats. Eating souls is the way his race sustains itself.



The king should not have angered the sorcerer and his enforcer; he is quickly shown the errors of his ways.



Free to pursue his work, Meldark informs Wrarrl that the hour approaches. (Take a look at this gorgeous laboratory!)



But then, disaster strikes: the precious magical jewel is gone! A few spells later, Meldark discovers that the jewel was stolen by Conan, and that it is now in the hands of king Savarro!

Since time is of the essence, Wrarrl sets for the enemy camp, which he enters easily on foot. The image below shows why this character gained a certain popularity in those days: unlike the silly-looking Bor'Aqh Sharaq, Wrarrl is a striking figure with his dragon helmet.



All the devourer wants is the jewel, but king Savarro won't have any of it: he attacks the giant with a spear and is slain. The guards who hear the fight and rush in to help their liege are scattered like tenpins, and Wrarrl vanishes in the night.

The next day, seeing that the forces of dead king Savarro still intend to attack the city (for loot, if no longer for political reasons), Meldark estimates that should they do so they might well get over the walls before the proper hour for his transdimensional spell. In order to gain some time, he leads the troops of Qurha'at Lok in a desperate sortie; his goal is not to actually win, naturally, but he is quite ready to sacrifice the men he leads.

The battle goes badly for king Savarro's side, and their siege engines are set ablaze; realizing that their only chance is to get Conan to retake his position as war chief, Moira and Melicynth free him. Encouraged by Conan's return, his men take heart and start routing king Granak's soldiers. Meldark himself is wounded before he has time to hie himself back to town, as per his original plan. He asks Wrarrl to help him to his feet, but the devourer realizes that now he has the jewel, he doesn't need Meldark at all; he leaves him to die in the dirt. He then must face Conan, and things go badly for the Cimmerian: not only is Wrarrl something like eight feet tall and inhumanly strong, but his sword is also filled with a terrible energy that zaps Conan each time the blades meet.

Sent to the ground, the Cimmerian is saved in extremis by Moira and Melicynth, who heroically engage the devourer... with fatal results.



Conan gets ready to renew the fight to avenge the brave girls, when Meldark manages to find enough strength to cast a final spell: one that allows the souls that Wrarrl has captured and turned into worms to start growing... and this includes both the souls he keeps in a pouch for a late snack, and the ones already in his belly!



Wrarrl vanishes in an explosion of light, and Meldark collapses, dead. Conan smashes the magical jewel, and grimly prepares the funeral rites for the two brave shield maidens who died to defend him.


Notes:

- All in all, a good tale. Redondo's inks really makes it look good.

- Wrarrl would return pretty soon. He'd go on to be the main threat in the storyline that culminated in CtB #200 (which also confirms that the "corsair" period mentioned in the pre-story blurb is that on the Tigress and not Conan's career among the Vilayet pirates or the Barachans).

- Wrarrl would also show up in the last few CtB issues, and even in a miniseries publies after the cancellation of that title.