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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 17, 2015 8:46:36 GMT -5
Treachery of the Gray Wolf!Script by Michael Fleisher Art by Val Mayerik and Ernie Chan  It happens regularly in comic-books: a story will feature an alternate version of familiar characters, and the interaction between the "real" ones and the doppelgängers will prove to be so much fun that the alternate universe will be visited again and again. The formula gave readers things like the Bizarro world, the Squadron Supreme, the Star Trek Mirror Universe and so many more. Back in issue #93, we were introduced to "the world beyond the mists", where three suns brighten the day and where the mighty country of Aquiloria is ruled by King Konar and his wife Queen Zenoria. Conan spent a while there and replaced the kidnapped king Konar for a few weeks, during which he proved to be an able ruler and had an affair with Konar's wife. It boggles the mind that Conan would not remember this adventure when, later in his life, he was poised to become king of Aquilo nia or when he met his future queen, Zeno bia, although a die-hard Michael Fleisher fan could argue that this is precisely why Conan refused many crowns during his life before he got a chance to get that of Aquilonia, and also why he decided to make Zenobia his queen pretty much on a whim. But let's set that aside and just accept the situation as it is. "The treachery of Gray Wolf" starts on that other world, where King Konar has just defeated King Zarnoff of Oph it on the field of battle. The two kings agree to sign a peace treaty and put an end to five years of war. This would not suit the purposes of King Olar of Neme ria, who has Queen Zenoria abducted, so as to keep Konar busy instead of taking care of the proper signing of treaties. To be able to both handle his kingly duties and rescue his wife, Konar sends for his transdimensional counterpart, Conan. Somehow people have learned how to travel from one world to the next since last time; all we have to do is ride into a certain mist that has decided to remain in one spot. To get Conan, Konar sends his best warrior, Gray Wolf. This fellow looks a lot like Conan himself (but then, most Ernie Chan-inked big burly guys tend to) and he wears a recognizable wolf pelt on his head and back. Gray Wolf arrives on our world at a very opportune moment, since he helps Conan beat back an assassination attempt by the Brotherhood of the Falcon. These guys, as you'll recall, were introduced as an organization (perhaps a cult) of highly-trained killers for hire. Their status as Hyborian age ninjas is however threatened by their repeated defeats, and they are increasingly treated as something of a joke as new stories come out. As one of them puts in this very issue: "Our assassins' league has laid a lot of good men to rest because of this wild-maned cur! And what's far worse, his victories against us have made many begin to question our world-famed proficiency as masters of the killing arts!" No kidding... Conan and Gray Wolf slay seven falconmen in three pages. These jokers deserve a visual pun!!!  For some reason I can't fathom, instead of explaining his mission and inviting the Cimmerian to join him, Gray Wolf decides to knock Conan out and abduct him. Brought to the world beyond the mists, Conan meets his counterpart again. King Konar is far less hostile than in issue #93, and he explains that queen Zenoria told him at length how Conan had not been an accomplice of the conspirators that had kidnapped him, but had instead protected the kingdom in his absence. Konar then explains that he wants Conan to play his role once again. The Nemerians who abducted Zenoria expect Konar to try and rescue her, keeping him from signing his treaty with king Zarnoff of Ophit. Konar wants them to think their plan worked by having Conan very visibly ride out of the capital, even as Zarnoff comes in to conclude the peace. (Konar knows exactly where Zenoria is kept, so I don't understand why he doesn't send an army to rescue her... or, barring that because a frontal assault may cause Zenoria to be executed, why he doesn't send the very capable Gray Wolf. "No, wait, I'll send for an other-dimensional version of myself instead" doesn't strike me as a very practical plan). Conan rides out of town on his rescue mission and king Zarnoff arrives a bit later to meet Konar and discuss the peace treaty. (Zarnoff looks very different on page 19 than he did on page 9! I have no idea what went wrong, although perhaps the artists meant the guy from page 9 to be Ophit's top general or something instead of the king himself). As Konar treats Zarnoff to a grand reception, we learn that Gray Wolf is secretly working for the king of Nemeria. Oh, the scoundrel! And the ineffective scoundrel, to boot! Why didn't he kill Conan when he had him out cold in our world? It would have been simple for him to report that king Konar's double had unfortunately been slain by the falconmen. But anyway. Conan reaches the fortress where Zenoria is kept, and he does a good job in infiltrating the place. Swimming through the sewers, bending an iron grid underwater, jumping sixteen feet straight up (12 cubits) he unfortunately manages to stand right on a randomly-placed trapdoor just as a guard is ready to spring it open. And lo and behold, this miraculous trapdoor leads right into Zenoria's cell! I mean, what are the odds?  Conan (still mistaken for Konar) is tortured for some reason. Apparently, the king of Nemeria wants him "to talk", but I don't see what Konar would have to reveal (and no question is actually asked). Since the prisoner is too stubborn to break, the king has Zenoria brought into the torture chamber as an incentive. Before the lady can be hurt, however, Conan demonstrates Hulk-level strength by breaking the cross on which he's attached. And no kidding, that wooden beam looks like it is twelve inches across! (The ropes are also damn stong, since they resisted longer than the wood did). They must be weaved of the same fibres as Bruce Banner's purple pants.  Conan, none the worse for wear after his torture seance, beats up all the Nemerians present and escapes with Zenoria. The pair finds Gray Wolf waiting for them, and Conan and the warrior have at it; their fight sends them both falling off a cliff into a river.  Seeing a wolf pelt-wearing fighter emerge alone, Zenoria flees to the capital. She goes to the king and tells him what transpired, and Konar is suddenly struck by his wife's apparent affection for Conan. (The king is unaware that Zenoria secretly loves the Cimmerian and had an affair with him),  Having witnessed the queen's return, the remaining Nemerian spies resort to a last-chance tactic and try to murder Konar, who walked off his apartments in a huffy. But before the eight would-be assassins can run the king through, Gray Wolf appears to help defeat them! The warrior then reveals himself to be Conan, who slew slain Gray Wolf by the river and disguised himself as him to fool the Nemerian spies in the capital. The plot foiled, the queen returned, King Konar can finally sign his treaty with Zarnoff. Conan rides back to his world once more (although I notice that he doesn't seem to be carrying his promised reward, "a bounty of gems such as that even an eastern potentate would envy"). Witnessing his wife's reaction to the Cimmerian's departure, Konar seems to understand where her true affections lie but he takes it like a man, much to his credit.  Notes: - Conan is still an 18 or 19-year old lad in this story, even if he looks much older. - Konar is a much more nuanced character than in his first appearance, and his reaction to his wife's love of Conan is surprisingly mature. - The Brotherhood of the falcon will be seen a few more times, as in CtB#152 and SSoC#116. - The very next month, the caption-less cover of Conan the barbarian #163 features a guy who could be Conan wearing the same clothes as Gray Wolf, or could be Gray Wolf himself. It was drawn by Ernie Chan.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 17, 2015 8:49:29 GMT -5
SSoC #104------------- Men of the shadows part III Script by Roy Thomas Art by Gene Day This story is very similar to "The lost race" which was adapted in SSoC #68-69: a Celt is captured by Picts and told about the history of the race, then he is set free. Here the prisoner is a Viking-like northerner. Captured and brought to Bran Mak Morn, he catches the eye of the king's young sister who whispers in her brothers ear and asks him to be spared. A Pictish shaman protests and tries to stare down Bran, but fails to do so. The king then demands the shaman to tell the story of their race, and this is the core of this tale. The artwork by Gene Day grwos better and better with each instalment; the scenes of migration and cataclysm in this chapter are just lovely.  Many double-page spreads, and the intricate page design that made Gene so respected when he worked on master of Kung Fu. Really worth looking up.
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Post by berkley on May 17, 2015 22:16:06 GMT -5
Pablo Marcos!
Gene Day!!
Once again, I fear I shall not be able to resist the artwork in some of these SSoC issues, as questionable as much of the writing seems to be.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 18, 2015 14:45:44 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #105, October 1984 Cover by Michael Golden  Table of contentsThe Mill, a Conan adventure The crypt, a Conan portfolio set in verse Savage sword of Conan #105. Here's what that issue evokes in the long-time Conan fan: After years of comedy/adventure, the arrival of writer Don Kraar heralded a new era of brutal action in a barbaric time, with a fatalistic philosophy sometimes bordering on nihilistim. It was as if a TV channel specializing in war stories, after years of G.I. Joe cartoons, suddenly presented Full Metal Jacket. Not only was Kraar's story a knock-out, but the second feature (verse by Jim Neal illustrated by William Johnson and Geoff Isherwood) combined the scholarship of a Roy Thomas with a splendid graphism worthy of the Barry Smith tradition. Oh, the joy!!! And as a Golden fan, how could I be anything but pleased that the cover to this great issue would be so cool? The colours are vibrant, the action is intense, and details like the finely-rendered chainmail or the notches in the sword made the young reader that I was simply ecstatic. Note that the corner logo has changed again; the face painted by Bill Sienkiewicz, which was used for a few issues, has been replaced by a new one that looks like the work of Bob Larkin. It will remain there up to issue 206.
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2015 14:49:57 GMT -5
This was the first issue of Savage Sword I picked up when I got back into comics during high school, that Golden cover screamed to me from the comic section in a 7-11.
-M
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 18, 2015 14:51:04 GMT -5
The millScript by Don Kraar Art by Gary Kwapisz and Bob Camp It is pretty clear that the artwork in this issue isn't as polished as when a Buscema, an Alcala, a Marcos or a Nebres is in charge. Kwapisz was still a very new penciller, and Bob Camp's inking had a rough edge that was far from Alcala's finely detailed brushwork. Still, because this story is firmly set in our real world, the naturalism of Kwapisz' faces and the earthiness of Camp's inking are perfectly suited. The clothes are miraculously appropriate for this tale set in the north: for once, people aren't traipsing around in loincloths but wear multiple layers of cloth, boots and even head coverings. (Some day we might even see mittens).  The plot is simple, the protagonists' motivations are raw, and far from the charming fantasies of the Arabian nights we are shown humanity in all its ugliness, its only redeeming virtue being its unwillingness to give up. Conan is a mercenary captain leading a handful of survivors after their army failed to suppress a peasant uprising somewhere "in the northern tundras", either in Hyperborea or the Border Kingdom. The ragtag band does its best to escape the blood-mad peasants that mean to wipe them out. They are wounded, they are hungry, they are scared, and they are clearly not good people. Right from the start, Kraar shows his knack for creating menacing but realistic characters. Yes, sure, a seven foot tall demon who turns people into worms can be scary, but the fantasy aspect of the concept also defuses our natural fear reaction. Some voice at the back of our mind reminds us that such a creature can not exist , and so cannot be truly scary. But a violent and ruthless man? That's something we should be wary of. Just think of the great Peter David-written "Sin-eater" storyline in The spectacular Spider-man. The sin-eater was not a guy with robotic arms, nor a herald of Galactus, nor a half-man half-lizard monster. He was a guy with a shotgun. And he's still the scariest villain I've seen in a Spider-man comic. That's the power of realism. Scumbags as they are, Conan means to get his men back to a safer territory (after all, is he any better?); but many of them don't like to take orders anymore and the Cimmerian has to impose his authority on several occasions, not ingratiating himself to his followers. Some of them even start muttering about murdering him. Things almost come to a boil when one of the men resort to cannibalism to assuage his hunger.  Conan gives him a chance to stop and to let matters lie, but the man has had enough of being ordered around and he attacks his officer. Conan has had enough as well, and decrees that if the guy wants to live like a beast then he can die like one (before breaking his neck). This turn of events almost leads to a direct clash between Conan and the others, and the Cimmerian's authority is clearly at its very end. Later, the mercenaries are ambushed by some more peasants and they lose a few men. Eventually defeating the attackers, they reason that the peasnts must have come from some camp nearby, and that this is their one chance to avoid starvation and death by exposure. Sure enough, they quickly come upon a fortified windmill (and almost go mad when they smell bread being baked).  Climbing the mill's sheer walls, Conan uses a window to slip inside the building where resides a small family. 
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 18, 2015 14:56:57 GMT -5
SSoC#105------------ The Cimmerian promises they will not be mistreated if they collaborate. Two brash young lads try to attack with a club, but are promptly thrown to the ground and told to stay put. Conan then lets his comrades in. The first thing the starving mercenaries do is to eat their fill. They then make clear their intention to plunder the mill and leave with all the grain they can carry, hinting that the miller will soon be too dead to care. One of the mercenaries, who had until then inspired our pity on account of his blindfold and supposed blindness, realizes that he's regained his sight and shows how misguided our pity when he attempts to rape the sole woman present (a young mother with babe in arms, too).  Conan intervenes and says he promised that the millers would be safe; swords are drawn and tempers flare. Snarls and curses may be involved.  While Conan is arguing with a burly bearded Brythunian, the would-be rapist sets the baby right in the path of the turning millstone, laughing evilly. One less child who will grow into a soldier-killing peasant!  Conan decides that enough's enough, and because the time for threats and chest-thumping is over, he skewers one of the mutineers. The mother retrieves her child as the mercenaries gang up on Conan who cuts off one hand of the Brythunian, barely misses another man with a thrown axe, and decapitates a third. His sword then breaks and Conan is struck a glancing blow to the side, bad enough to drawn blood. This is no "by the numbers" comic-book fight where characters jump around and strike poses while generic villains fall this way and that: every character is recognizable, and this makes the brutality of it all the more real. Another of the mutineers ends up with his head under the millstone (*crunch*) and the Brythunian, who was bad-ass enough to cauterize his stump in the fire, comes at Conan with an axe. Now the Cimmerian goes berserk and cuts off the man's other hand before chopping his head in half (laterally) as well at the wooden beam he had his back to!  Only one man remains, and although he suggests that his erstwhile captain could simply let him go away with food, Conan isn't feeling generous; the other would probably just wait for him in ambush. It's to the death! The fight is hard, especially since Conan is already wounded, but he manages to break his opponent's arm. Knocking him out, he could let him go weaponless, or tie him up or something... but no, the Cimmerian is now fighting mad and he breaks the man's back.  Crom! What a fight that was!!! Sitting down and complaining that even the marrow of his bones ache, the Cimmerian would be justified in expecting some gratitude from his unwilling hosts... but that's not the way it turns out. Distracting Conan with her charms, the woman allows her brother to try to garrote the Cimmerian from behind. Conan clobbers the lad, breaks the pitchfork the old miller was trying to hit him with, and puts the old man's head on the path of the blood-stained millstone while loudly shouting he should have let his men kill them all. The miller then feebly protests: what difference between the men killing his family and Conan doing the same thing?  Conan sees the point, and declares he will take his leave, taking only a sack of grain with him. He also asks the family, before anyone gets the idea to follow him, how much that sack of grain is really worth. Notes: - Wow. What a start for writer Don Kraar. Conan still demonstrates he's a decent guy deep down, but he's shown here to be a violent and hard man, not a superhero in loincloth. - People who scream in Don Kraar's stories go "agheeee" instead of "aieee". - Conan is wearing his old horned helmet, the one with the two horns facing front, from CtB#1-6. Or perhaps (more likely) it is a similar helmet. He also wears a three-piece medallion that looks like his original one but isn't actually the same. My interpretation is that the tale is set after one of Conan's returns to Cimmeria (which would agree with the vague pre-story blurb) and that both helmet and medallion are common enough there. - It's hard to tell how old Conan is. I'd put this story in between CtB#16 (in which he's in Cimmeria) and #17 (in which he's on the Vilayet sea), since the journey between the two places would bring him to the Border Kingdom / Hyperborea region; he'd then be about 21.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 18, 2015 14:57:55 GMT -5
SSoC#105------------- The cryptScript by Jim Neal Art by William Johnson and Geoff Isherwood What a treat! Jim Neal, known for several excellent scholarly articles published in the early years of the mag, provides verse beautifully illustrated by Johnson and Isherwood.  Neal slips in references to the Kozaki (thank you, Jim!) and to Octavia, Conan's one-time girlfriend during his Kozaki days, as seen in The devil in iron, SSoC#15. The art is beautiful. I was a huge fan of Isherwood's inking in those years; he made Conan the king a must-read comic, and I believe CtK#28 (the one with a sixty-ish Red Sonja) is one of the best inked comics I've ever read. William Johnson does great things with his designs here as well. Conan's helmet looks appropriately eastern,the hero does look like a giant, and this six-page story is worth the price of entry all by itself.
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Post by berkley on May 18, 2015 21:06:16 GMT -5
The Johnson/Isherwood art looks excellent, from that one panel or page. I've seen some of Isherwood's work in the colour comics and, while I didn't dislike it, it didn't strike me as forcefully as this sample. Maybe his style, like, for example, Vicente Alcazar's, was better suited to the black and white medium?
The Kwapisz/Camp artwork looks no better than average here, to me. Not terrible, but just kind of blah. Could it be that Camp was just the wrong inker for Kwapisz, or is it more that Kwapisz had yet to come into his own as a penciller? Some of the panels with close-ups or headshots against a blank background look hasty and the lack of detail kills the atmosphere for me.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 19, 2015 6:09:46 GMT -5
The Johnson/Isherwood art looks excellent, from that one panel or page. I've seen some of Isherwood's work in the colour comics and, while I didn't dislike it, it didn't strike me as forcefully as this sample. Maybe his style, like, for example, Vicente Alcazar's, was better suited to the black and white medium? The Kwapisz/Camp artwork looks no better than average here, to me. Not terrible, but just kind of blah. Could it be that Camp was just the wrong inker for Kwapisz, or is it more that Kwapisz had yet to come into his own as a penciller? Some of the panels with close-ups or headshots against a blank background look hasty and the lack of detail kills the atmosphere for me. i also do not much care for Isherwood's color work; as you say, he's better suited to black and white (just as Gene Colan and Tom Palmer, IMO). Furthermore, I liked Isherwood's style better in the 80s than in later years; his starkly contrasted style grew into something a bit murkier, and his characters started gaining more and more muscle mass until they all looked like the Hulk. But in SSoC? Everything he touched became magical. He's a bit like Dale Eaglesham, as far as my tastes are concerned; I liked his earlier work better. The best inker for Kwapisz is clearly Kwapisz himself. I probably wouldn't have liked Camp's inking over his pencils were it not for this story's very down to earth atmosphere (and a similar thing happened with the Bob Camp drawn CtB #145). Camp's rough and unpolished style served the scenario well, while it would have been totally out of place for, say, "Red Nails". Gerry Taloc is in the same boat, very often: I liked his work on some series like Unknown Soldier or Rawhide Kid, but definitely not on the Hulk. Next issue: Bor'Aqh Sharaq returns. That fills me with dread, but probably not for the right reason. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 19, 2015 17:06:41 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #106, November 1984 Cover by Michael Golden  I’m a huge Golden fan but this cover doesn’t do much for me, despite its eye-catching colour scheme and its light-hearted cartoony style. Perhaps it’s just a little too cartoonish. The lady looks like a man, and both she and Conan have a strong “Conan the destroyer” vibe, which fits with that movie having been recently seen on the silver screen in those days. Frontispiece by Steve Leialoha. I quite like this illustration. Leialoha’s art is a bit of a hit or miss with me, but when I like it I really like it (as is the case here).  Table of contentsFeud of blood, picking up where SSoC#92 left off, and reintroducing captain Bor’Aqh Sharaq. Men of the shadows, the third and final part of a Bran Mak Morn story.
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Post by foxley on May 19, 2015 17:11:27 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #106, November 1984 Cover by Michael Golden I’m a huge Golden fan but this cover doesn’t do much for me, despite its eye-catching colour scheme and its light-hearted cartoony style. Perhaps it’s just a little too cartoonish. The lady looks like a man, and both she and Conan have a strong “Conan the destroyer” vibe, which fits with that movie having been recently seen on the silver screen in those days. Frontispiece by Steve Leialoha. I quite like this illustration. Leialoha’s art is a bit of a hit or miss with me, but when I like it I really like it (as is the case here). Table of contentsFeud of blood, picking up where SSoC#92 left off, and reintroducing captain Bor’Aqh Sharaq. Men of the shadows, the third and final part of a Bran Mak Morn story. That is one hideous cover. The faces are just awful. This looks like it was dashed off in a few minutes. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 19, 2015 17:12:42 GMT -5
Feud of bloodScript by Michael Fleisher Art by Dave Simons After last issue’s story that had the grit of a Sam Peckinpah film, we are back into Jacky Chan & Owen Wilson territory: an action/comedy adventure. Not bad as these things go, but not my favourite treatment of Conan the Cimmerian. The artwork by Dave Simons is different, and kind of refreshing. Dave really seems to enjoy his work and infuses his art with humour. His designs are sometimes anachronistic, but then the Hyborian age is rife with anachronistic features. A few anatomical shortcomings may annoy at times, but I think that once in a while, a Simons-drawn issue is a nice change from the Buscema-Chan standard. Oh, and he’s really good with an airbrush. Sadly, the artist passed away in 2009 at the young age of 54. The story itself reintroduces captain Bor’Aqh Sharaq, the maimed pirate fitted with prosthetic weapons whose sole purpose in life has grown to be the destruction of Conan. Bor’Aqh Sharaq had grown to be something of a joke, just like the Brotherhood of the Falcon, and it is to Michael Fleisher’s credit that he does write the pirate as a comical character: someone so evil that it’s fun to have bad things happen to him. “But wait”, might you ask, “didn’t Bor’Aqh Sharaq die in SSoC#92, turned into a gemstone by a giant crystal cat that shot rays from its eyes?” (and this is probably the last time in your entire life that you’ll have the opportunity to utter such a sentence). You’d be right. But see, we are told what happened next, after Conan used a rod of metal and a giant bed frame as a substitute for a tuning fork to destroy the cat (because let’s not forget, in case we’re ever caught in a similar situation, that giant crystal cats are exquisitely sensitive to the vibrations of a tuning fork). After Conan and his companion Jessica left the ruined city where lay the transformed Bor’Aqh Sharaq, a volcano had erupted nearby! The molten lava had carried the crystal pirate into the water of the nearby Khorotas river, and from there to the ocean (if we judge from the pictures). And lo and behold, being dipped in lava and then in water happens to be the cure for being transformed into a big crystal! Bor’Aqh Sharaq, resurrected, decides to resume his quest for vengeance. Here, in a scene where the pirate walks away from the beach where he was cast, the artist and writer seem to work at cross-purposes for a while. Captions and word balloons seemingly try to anticipate and defeat future no-prize requests that could be prompted by the images. It doesn’t really hurt the flow of the story, but if you stop to think about the scene you conclude that a lot of it is unnecessary. Bor’Aqh is said to recover his quiver of weapons from a cache in the forest, which explains how he can be shown to have it with him (he didn’t when he was turned into a statue). But the explanation itself raises more questions: the man is clearly far away from the destroyed city where he was zapped; he’s on the coast of the western ocean! Besides, even if we explain that this is not the ocean after all but just a very wide part of the Khorotas river and that we really are close to the volcano even if we don’t see it, what kind of sense would it have made for Bor’Aqh to hide his quiver in the first place, right when he was about to attack Conan in SSoC#92? Then a tiger attacks (a nicely drawn one, too) and a caption tries to explain how a tiger can have ended up in Argos, where the story is set.  All right, this is a good idea, and the explanation is that it’s probably a beast escaped from a rich merchant’s menagerie, or from a gladiatorial arena. The pirate manages the extraordinary feat of defeating a tiger bare-handed (I didn’t think anyone this side of Tarzan could do that!), but during the tussle… he loses his quiver! The entire scene served no other purpose but to bring us back to square one: a quiver-less Bor’Aqh Sharaq! The pirate then does what he’s best at: invite himself in a honest family’s house and take it over. To his credit, this time he doesn’t kill and rape them all; but he still takes advantage of the house’s flirty daughter before unceremoniously dumping her. Since this book isn’t “The savage sword of Bor’Aqh Sharaq”, we should probably discuss what’s going on with a certain Cimmerian as all this is happening. Conan and Jessica, the young woman he met in SSoC#92 and whose father was murdered by Bor’Aqh Sharaq, are still travelling together. They reach a village in Argos where they leave their horse to a smithy so the animals can be reshod. The smithy remembers having seen Conan’s face before, and digging through a box of gewgaws he finds an old “WANTED” poster with the Cimmerian’s face on it! (I am taken aback by the idea such posters existed 10,000 years BC. Good art on them, too!  When our heroes return for their mounts, they are ambushed by Argossean soldiers wearing comical coal miner helmets.  In a typical comedy/adventure move, these guys don’t use weapons (heaven forbid they wait for their targets with bows and arrows); they go at them bare handed, resulting in a brawl. The Cimmerian’s resistance ends when the Argossean captain draws a dagger to Jessica’s throat, and the soldiers beat up Conan.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 19, 2015 17:13:08 GMT -5
We find the pair in jail a while later, in a local fortress. Jessica decides that this is the perfect time to change Conan’s mind from his bruises and gashes, and she treats her lover (and the readers) to some PG13 sex.  What’s missing from this page is an extra row of panels.  Argos happens to be at war with Zingara, a common enough occurrence, and the fortress finds itself besieged by invaders and in need of sending someone for reinforcements. The captain we met earlier, who has his eye on Jessica, suggests that the barbarian prisoner should be sent; as long as the girl is kept hostage he will no doubt do his best to carry his mission through, and if he dies it’s better than to lose a soldier. The fortress’s commander agrees and Conan is sent through the sewers. Left alone in her cell, Jessica notices through the window bars that someone is sending light signals from the hills; the Zingaran invaders must have a spy inside the fortress! Soon thereafter, the captain makes his move on Jessica, explaining that in short order she would find having a friend inside the walls a very useful thing. Understanding that the captain is the turncoat, Jessica plays along with his game until she has an opportunity to knock him out with a jar of wine. (This particular page does not seem to be inked by Simons; I’m not certain he even penciled it. It’s still a very nice style, and I wouldn’t have minded seeing an entire issue done in this style eventually. Any idea whose work it might be?)  Jessica then makes good her escape, trying to rejoin Conan. The Cimmerian, meanwhile, has been busy: Bor’Aqh Sharaq caught up with him! How could the pirate find his enemy so quickly? He explains (rather vaguely) that Conan tends to make an impression on the people he meets and that’s it’s fairly easy to follow his trail. Meh, good enough. It’s certainly easier to explain that how Bor’Aqh Sharaq managed to trail Conan last time, in SSoC#92, when the Cimmerian was flying on the back of a giant osprey. The two men engage in a bit of swordplay until they both fall off the traditional cliff.  For once, they do not fall into a river but onto a ledge, just as Zingaran troops who happened to be around start shooting at them. The two pirates must conclude an uneasy truce and wait on their ledge until the Zingarans lose interest. This takes more than two days, but eventually the Zingarans on top of the cliff grow complacent enough for the two pirates to climb up and set fire to their small camp. As Conan and Bor’Aqh Sharaq resume their fight, Jessica catches up to them and sends an arrow right into Sharq’s shoulder. The pirate’s sexist disbelief is amusing, “how can a girl have beat me and all that”, and he has to retreat. Conan and Jessica ride off. We then learn that the Argossean reinforcements arrived in time to save the fortress, and since we would be justified in wondering why Conan did finish a mission accepted under duress, we learn that it is Jessica (herself an Argossean) who pushed him to preform this patriotic act, even if the authorities had been pretty uncouth with her.  Captain Bor’Aqh Sharaq will return next issue… one last time!Notes: - Since this story follows a previous one that followed an even earlier one and so on to SSoC#75, we know that it is set after Conan’s career as a Barachan corsair. Because Conan,s Barachan corsair was immediately followed by his career as a Zingaran buccaneer, it must be set after that period as well. The Cimmerian must therefore be about 38 here, in what is growing into an extremely busy period of his life. - Jessica is kind of cool, and Simons draw her as very pretty. She unfortunately disappears between this issue and the next, which is a sequel. - Bor’Aqh Sharaq is nothing if not consistent: he keeps swearing by the Cimmerian gods Macha and Nemain and Morrigan. Never by Crom, though. Bad religion again... Cimmerian gods aren't known outside of Cimmeria. Bor'Aqh Sharaq could swear by Mitra like a good Hyborian, or by Set, or even by Ishtar if he's traveled a bit, or by any number of Shemite gods... but Macha? Nah. - I could bet good money that this individual panel was inked by Armando Gil: what think you, o reader?  |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 19, 2015 17:13:35 GMT -5
Men of the shadows, part IIIScript by Roy Thomas Art by Gene day Concluding the adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Bran mak Morn story. Only three pages that conclude the tale, but they look really, really pretty. The pictish shaman concludes his history of the Picts, now telling us of the days to come when Rome will fall. 
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