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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 26, 2015 12:44:28 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #93, October 1983 Beautiful cover by Mike Kaluta.  Table of contentsThe world beyond the mists! ...where Conan jumps the shark. Really. Challenge, another sequential portfolio by Pablo Marcos, illustrating a rhyming text by Jim Neal.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 26, 2015 12:53:49 GMT -5
SSoC #93------------ The world beyond the mists!Script by Michael Fleisher Art By John Buscema, successively inked by Rudy Nebres (25 pages), Pablo Marcos (10 pages) and Ernie Chan 15 pages).  How to succinctly describe this story? Let's see. "The horror... the horror" would do it. A capital letter "WTF???" would do the job as well. Darth Vader bellowing a prolonged "Nooooooooooooo!" also comes to mind. Let's start by the good part: the art is all right. The three inkers suggest that maybe there were delays in the production, but the end result is quite acceptable; no complaint there. But the story... oh, my. Conan is still a 17 or 18 year old thief in Zamora, and this story is set after SSoC#84 in which he first met members of that professional assassin guild, "the brotherhood of the falcon". Apparently, it is entirely appropriate for an assassin guild to have a legal address in Zamora: they have an entire temple complex in its capital, Shadizar. We open with a ceremony in which the brothers of the falcon are assembled to swear revenge on Conan, because of his killing of the three guys who tried to murder him in issue 84. This raises several questions: (A) how do they know their guys were killed by Conan? It happened in a very remote and deserted mountainous area, and the sole surviving witness of the event at the time is both unknown to them and unlikely to tell the tale, considering that it involved her having sex with a yeti-like creature. (B) How do they know Conan's name, and that he is Cimmerian? The three falconmen from issue #84 were hired by a merchant to hunt down "a barbarian" who had absconded with his wife; they knew neither his name nor his origin, nor even what he looked like. (C) Why would they care? Is it a matter of pride, as in "never shall a prey escape us"? If so, how would they know that their guys didn't kill Conan? All they truly know for sure is that their men never returned to base, which does not mean they met failure. They might just have decided to change careers, or have had an accident, or gone on a holiday (it's only been a few months, tops) or heavens know what. And Conan is unlikely to have bragged about killing the three Falconmen when he came back to Shadizar. But let us forget those questions: the plot requires that the brotherhood seek revenge on Conan. Fine. And where is Conan as this ominous meeting proceeds? He's right in front of them, having decided that this general assembly of highly-trained and revenge-crazed murderers was the best time to steal the jewelled eyes of their falcon totem!!! How does that make any sense? Couldn't he have waited for an hour or so? Come back the next day? Show up at any other time but the one when everybody is assembled in that specific room? The Cimmerian is spotted while on top of the assassins' giant falcon statue, and is instantly recognized. "It's the Cimmerian!" How the hell could the Falconmen know what he looks like? Nobody among them has ever seen Conan; the merchant who hired them in the first place hadn't either; and all the Falconmen who ever saw him in the past are dead!!! Do they subscribe to SSoC or something? Conan escapes the temple effortlessly and rides off in the direction of the desert with many Falconmen in hot pursuit. Then there is a peculiar lunar eclipse and Conan finds himself transported to a different world where two suns shine in the heavens! The Falconmen are nowhere to be seen. Apart from the fact that there are two suns in the sky and that it is obviously broad daylight, this new world looks pretty much like ours: a John Buscema rocky country. Hearing the screams of a local girl attacked by big cavemen-like creatures, Conan flies to her rescue and dispatches the brutes. The girl then surprisingly mistakes him for the place's king! Led by the girl to the country's capital, Conan is greeted as... (steel yourself, reader...) King Konar of Aquiloria!BWAAAAAAAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!Yes, in this other-dimensional world, Conan's equivalent is King Konar of Aquiloria, married to queen Zenoria. Naturally, when "our" Conan gets of age, he won't mention that episode at all, or will brush it off as mere coincidence. He will also forget that Zenoria's double-crossing maid is named Vateesa, as will princess Yasmela's double-crossing maid in our world. Oh, great Crom, how can this farce have gained editorial approval??? Anyway. The real king Konar, who's a sexist, violent, brutal and altogether unpleasant man, has been abducted by scheming nobles who immediately understand that Conan must be an impostor. Nevertheless, since queen Zenoria becomes quite fond of this gentler version of her husband and that the teenage Conan proves incredibly good at ruling a country, they have a hard time proving it without revealing their own nefarious deeds.  The matter is taken out of their hands when king Konar escapes his jail and goes home where he confronts the scheming nobles, his unfaithful wife and the young impersonator who took his place. Conan and his double fight, and the Cimmerian escapes on a horse, pursued by Konar and his cohorts. Eventually, the Falconmen who had been pursuing Conan and made their way to this strange world see Konar, mistake him for Conan and attack him and his men. In the resulting battle, all the Falconmen die while Conan makes his way back home by simply riding into a strange mist.  Shall we expect the cult of the falcon to swear revenge on Konar of Aquiloria next? Notes: - Having a hero face his doppelgänger is a honourable tradition, but come on... this story sucks. - "Konar" in french is pronounced the same way as " connard", which is entirely appropriate. - The brotherhood of the falcon was introduced in SSoC #84 as Hyborian Age ninjas, a cult of unstoppable killers. Here they're shown as pompous and ineffectual idiots. - Unfortunately, this is not the last time we shall meet king Konar. ChallengeScript by Jim Neal Art by Pablo marcos Another series of images with a shared theme, this time accompanied by verses written by Jim Neal, who had provided several great articles in the better years of this mag. 
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 26, 2015 12:58:04 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #94, November 1983 Cover by Val Mayerik, who also did the pencils for the issue's story.  Frontispiece by Earl Norem. I always like to see how a painter also draws.  This issue contains only one long story: Death dwarves of Stygia, and a few pin-ups by Ernie Chan. Death dwarves of StygiaScript by Michael Fleisher Art by Val Mayerik and Vince Colletta Another contender for "the worst SSoC story ever", although not quite the one I hate the most. It's still a major stinker, so this review will be pretty short. It has Conan losing another Zingaran ship (the third one in this series, the fourth if you consider that Conan actually gave up the Wastrel in issue #67 as he said he would). It has another Stygian king ("Mehtvezem") around at a time when the throne is already occupied by either king Ctesphon IV or king Mentupherra (according to SSoC#94). It has a body-swapping wizard who almost has sex with Conan as he is possessing the body of Stygia's queen (an amusing turn of events that was meant to be interrupted by a jealous husband at the right moment... but in hindsight might not have been stopped in time, had Conan been a little hornier!) It has a Stygia that doesn't look at all like the Stygia we know, the Egypt-like land of mystery and strange, sinister cults. It's more like any fake European medieval country common in fantasy stories, but peopled with buffoons. It also has very lousy art. Mayerik and Colletta had done good enough work on Thongor in Creatures on the loose, I thought, but here the art looks rushed, with little backgrounds, awkward anatomy and few redeeming qualities. This is a typical page:  Perhaps we needed such an issue to remind us that "Konar of Aquiloria" from the previous issue was not necessarily the worst that SSoC's "Bad Old Years" had to offer. But do not lose courage, o Conan fan: issue #105 is approaching.
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Post by benday-dot on Apr 26, 2015 20:06:46 GMT -5
SSoC#92----------- - A bit of fun that went wrong: at some point in the production of this story, someone drew Conan smoking a cigar. And then forgot to erase it!!! That would be mentioned in the letters page a few months later, with the editor assuring us that Conan would never, ever smoke again. What with crystal cats, giant birds and tuning forks, and lastly cigars I think Dr. Freud might needs be consulted to unravel the meaning of this rather gonzo Conan "yarn." |
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Post by paulie on Apr 27, 2015 17:44:56 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #94, November 1983 Cover by Val Mayerik, who also did the pencils for the issue's story. Frontispiece by Earl Norem. I always like to see how a painter also draws. This issue contains only one long story: Death dwarves of Stygia, and a few pin-ups by Ernie Chan. Death dwarves of StygiaScript by Michael Fleisher Art by Val Mayerik and Vince Colletta Another contender for "the worst SSoC story ever", although not quite the one I hate the most. It's still a major stinker, so this review will be pretty short. It has Conan losing another Zingaran ship (the third one in this series, the fourth if you consider that Conan actually gave up the Wastrel in issue #67 as he said he would). It has another Stygian king ("Mehtvezem") around at a time when the throne is already occupied by either king Ctesphon IV or king Mentupherra (according to SSoC#94). It has a body-swapping wizard who almost has sex with Conan as he is possessing the body of Stygia's queen (an amusing turn of events that was meant to be interrupted by a jealous at the right moment... but in hindsight might not have been stopped in time, had Conan been a little hornier!) It has a Stygia that doesn't look at all like the Stygia we know, the Egypt-like land of mystery and strange, sinister cults. It's more like any fake European medieval country common in fantasy stories, but peopled with buffoons. It also has very lousy art. Mayerik and Colletta had done good enough work on Thongor in Creatures on the loose, I thought, but here the art looks rushed, with little backgrounds, awkward anatomy and few redeeming qualities. This is a typical page: Perhaps we needed such an issue to remind us that "Konar of Aquiloria" from the previous issue was not necessarily the worst that SSoC's "Bad Old Years" had to offer. But do not lose courage, o Conan fan: issue #105 is approaching. This might be the worst drawn of the 235 issues of Conan the Barbarian. I can certainly find the good in Vince Colletta but it was art jobs like this one that lead to his bad rep. I seem to recall a couple of pages that simply weren't inked at all. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 27, 2015 18:06:55 GMT -5
And of what pencil work there was on those pages, he may have erased one half!  |
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Post by berkley on Apr 28, 2015 2:01:38 GMT -5
I wouldn't have recognised that as Mayerik's work - wonder if it was something he'd drawn early in his career that Marvel had kept in storage or something?
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Post by berkley on Apr 28, 2015 2:05:51 GMT -5
I like the Earl Norem frontispiece drawing better than most of his covers, which confirms my feeling that it's his choice of colours that I find a bit lacking in his paintings.
I hate to keep repeating myself, but damn, I'd love to see all of Pablo Marcos's solo black and white artwork collected somewhere.
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Post by jbruel0 on Apr 28, 2015 10:49:42 GMT -5
Notes: - "Konar" in french is pronounced the same way as " connard", which is entirely appropriate. I love the perfection of your details  Jb |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 28, 2015 12:16:23 GMT -5
I wouldn't have recognised that as Mayerik's work - wonder if it was something he'd drawn early in his career that Marvel had kept in storage or something? I suspect it's really just a case of rushed inking over what were maybe mere breakdowns. The script by Fleisher can't have predated Roy Thomas' leaving the Conan franchise, which had happened just a few years prior. But yeah... it's a stark contrast with the artwork from issue #74! |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 28, 2015 18:32:23 GMT -5
Savage Sword of Conan #95, December 1983 Cover by Earl Norem, dramatizing a scene from this issue's sole story.  Frontispiece by Gary Kwapisz. Table of contents:
Night of the rat! with palace intrigue, an evil cult and the usual derring-do. The hill of horror, another of these portfolios telling a rhyming story,
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 28, 2015 18:38:45 GMT -5
SSoC #95------------ Night of the rat!Script by Michael Fleisher Art by John BUscema and Ernie Chan Night of the rat! is a fun story, which has the general feel of a Jacky Chan movie: there's action, there are hairbreadth escapes, and there is humour. It's not Howard nor even Thomas, but it's O.K... especially after we've had to endure The world beyond the mists and Death dwarves of Stygia in the two previous issues. The artwork by Buscema and Chan is fairly standard, with a few nice shots here and there. The setting is unusual: for this tale, Conan finds himself in Western Khitai, where he's a brigand chief. It's a welcome change from the usual Hyborian countries, although apart from a few architectural details and the more oriental-looking characters, it would be hard to tell where we are. Continuity-wise, I'm ambiguous about this story. On the one hand, it puts Conan in the Far East, which agrees with some passages in Howard's works; in Red Nails, for example, Conan states that he's robbed enough jade caravans to recognize it when he sees it. However, the classic Miller-Clark outline of Conan's career does not show him in Khitai at any time (since Howard never actually wrote a story about the Cimmerian in the Far East) and deCamp and Carter, when filling out the "saga", had Conan travel to Khitai as an officer in the Turanian army. Never as a bandit. On the other hand, in the Marvel Conan chronology, there is hardly enough room left to send Conan work as a thief in China. The pre-story blurb (which is increasingly unrelated to the actual "outline of Conan's career" it supposedly quotes) sets this story after "The jeweled bird" in SSoC #92, but that is hardly possible: "the jeweled bird" is set after Conan's career as a Zingaran pirate, and in the year separating that point and Conan's career as a scout on the Aquilonian Pictish frontier, he has to travel all the way to Stygia, Keshan and Punt for the stories Red nails, The teeth of Gwahlur and the ivory goddess. It hardly leaves time for the Cimmerian to travel to China! It is therefore hard to decide when Conan could have been a brigand out there. Personally, I would probably have chosen to send him further east after the people of the Black Circle, since he was already in India/Afghanistan. So Fleisher does some welcome completion, here, even if it's hard to reconcile it with the Marvel continuity. Whenever the adventure occurs, Conan is at the time a brigand chief in western Khitai, in a land called Kathai. That is an unfortunate name, as Cathay is the historical name for China, and Khitai is a variation on that name; it would no doubt have been less confusing to call this new "Kathai" something else. But anyway, no big deal. The emperor of Kathai has a perilous lifestyle: to guarantee his continued approval by the gods, he is very faced with choices that would prove lethal should he make the wrong one. For example, he always has two cups of wine served to him, or two apples; one is fine and the other is poisoned. As we start, the emperor chooses the wrong box of snuff and... is snuffed out by a viper. His young son succeeds him. (One will be excused to find this custom strange. That country must have a very high turnover of emperors).  Meanwhile, Conan makes the acquaintance of a competitor: the bandit lady named Snow Raven. Snow Raven (who has white hair and a front lock kinda shaped like a beak, as you can see on the issue's cover) invites Conan to join her on a daring operation: she wants to steal a priceless jewel from the imperial palace. Not having learned his lesson after Red Sonja got him to help her steal a certain tiara only to abscond with it in Conan the barbarian #24, the Cimmerian agrees.  The theft proceeds without too many problems, but once the two burglars are out of the city Snow Raven leads Conan into a trap. She has him trussed up by her men and abandoned in a dry well, although it's not certain whether she really wants him to die a slow and agonizing death as she claims or whether she wants to leave him a chance to escape. Conan does manage to escape the well, but fails to find Snow Raven again. A little later, the new emperor is welcoming his promised wife, princess Xianna of Kusan. The princess brings with her a jewel-encrusted crown, which Conan intends to steal to make up for the stone Snow Raven took with her. As fate would have it, the lady thief has the same idea and the two meet during the night in front of the safe where the crown is kept. Snow Raven once again manages to flee with the loot, leaving Conan to face an army of guards who suddenly show up. Taking advantage of the general tumult, robed and rat-headed men abduct princess Xianna.  (We learn a little later that they are worshippers of the rat god). As they take the lady away, Conan is captured by the Kathaian soldiers.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 28, 2015 18:42:53 GMT -5
SSoC #95------------ On the next day, the Cimmerian is to be executed by means of elephant-stomping.  Naturally, he manages to turn the tables on his captors and ends up in control of the pachyderm, thus facilitating his escape. (I like that elephant. Here it is again).  Instead of hightailing it to the hills, Conan makes his way to the apartments of the emperor, to whom he offers to go recover his abducted fiancée. (That's a very sudden idea, as the first Conan hears of the princess's kidnapping is through the door just before he enters). The emperor agrees, and Conan makes his way to a part of the country where the rat cultists are supposed to be found. It is not made clear how Conan knew the rat cultists were the ones who abducted the princess to begin with, although some kathaian nobles seem to know of it. (They don't want Conan to succeed in his mission, because they want the new emperor to die childless and leave the throne to them. Considering the emperor has a 50% a dying whenever he does anything in a normal day, I would have trusted the fates to take care of the problem, myself). A thrown stone knocks the Cimmerian out, and he finds himself in the paws of the rat cultists, along with the princess. (Note that these guys really do have the heads of rats; they're not wearing masks. After snake-men and wolf-men we must now contend with rat-men). The barbarian and the princess are to be gnawed to death by actual rats as a sacrifice to the rat god.  It's not the first time that a captured Conan has to face such an ordeal, and he handles it the same way he did in CtB#48 ("The rats dance at Ravengard!"): bleeding on his bonds. The rats chew through the ropes, and the Cimmerian breaks free. Taking the princess with him, he escapes the temple. On the road back to Kathai, he has to face a dozen nobles who had been tracking him, and who don't want the princess returned. Conan engages them, and has the sudden help of Snow Raven, who had also been following, having heard of the Cimmerian's rescue mission and the big purse supposed to reward its success. The two bandits make short work of the nobles. To celebrate, Snow Raven offers Conan to share a wineskin. Oh, foolish, foolish Conan... haven't you learned yet?  When the Cimmerian wakes up from his drugged stupor the next day, Snow Raven has already brought the princess back to the capital. Incensed, Conan barges in the throne room just as his rival is receiving her reward. The two argue their relative merits or lack thereof, and the timid emperor prefers to exit the room... but chooses the wrong door. Behind the one he's opened awaits a tentacled monster! Conan eventually slays the creature, but the emperor is dead.  The two bandits ride away once again before parting ways, and although Snow Raven believes she's managed to take the pouch of jewels that was meant as a reward for rescuing the princess, we readers learn that Conan replaced it with a similar one full of ordinary pebbles. Happy to have finally gotten the upper hand, he rides off laughing. Notes: - Depending on where you place this story, Conan is either 38-39 (if it really happens after "The jeweled bird", or 33-34 if it's placed after "the people of the black circle". - Curses! This time we have a Khitan bandit swearing by Macha and Nemain. Because it's well known that Chinese bandits swear by Celtic gods. - Snow Raven will be back once more, in SSoC#107, but at the other end of the continent, on the shore of the western ocean. As I said before, these stories treat the entire span of the european-asian landmass as if it were the size of New England. - One word balloon is duplicated on two different pages. I wonder how that happens.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 28, 2015 18:43:43 GMT -5
SSoC #95
------------ The hill of horrorScript by Alan Zelenetz Pencils by Ron Wilson, airbrushed finished art by Dave Simons. A portfolio with rhymes by Zelenetz. I like the Wilson-Bulanadi "What if..?" story featuring the team-up between Conan and Thor (in issue 39) but I'm not sure I would have liked Wilson to be the regular Conan artist. I prefer him on, say, Marvel Two-in-one or other bombastic super-hero books.  Next issue: the devourer of souls returns!!!
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Post by benday-dot on Apr 28, 2015 18:44:05 GMT -5
Ben when you you get to the end of this great saga of the Savage Sword, you really should pitch to Dark Horse, or more likely Twomorrows Publishing to put together one of those nifty Companion books they produce based on your excellent reviews.
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