SSoC #120
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Night of the monkey
Script by Chuck Dixon
Art by Geoff Isherwood

King Kull usually enjoys festivals, but not the one being celebrated in Valusia that day: the feast of the monkey god. A figure of mischief that's celebrated by people acting crazy for a day, the monkey god is a figure of evil in Atlantis; a god of trickery and madness.

Kull and a few of his Red Slayers witness the murder of people in the street, murders committed by guys in robe who look definitely like evil cultists. Following these fellows in the sewers, they are met with a fierce resistance. The cultists are worshippers of the monkey god Kodatha, whom they mean to bring to our world by a ceremony in which they use the splattered blood of their victims.

Kodatha does take physical form and Kull starts wrestling him, eventually managing to impale him on one of the red Slayers' lance. Cutting the ape-god's head off, the king later throws it reproachingly at the feet of the Valusian revellers. (Such a killjoy, that King Kull!)

Besides, that was no monkey, that was an APE!!! 



It's a quickie of a story, perhaps a tad irritating in that it suggests that Kull is always right, even in his religious bias. Isherwood doesn't have much of a chance to shine, but his work is all right.

The Kull stories in SSOC during this era, what, 115 - 145 or something like that, were really hampered by their brevity. They were only 8 pages right? There never seemed to be any direction to the strip.

There is a great story, drawn by Semeiks, coming up where Brule gets waylaid in a village being scourged by deserters. Great stuff!

SSoC #121
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The fountain of Umir
Script by Larry Yakata
Art by Rudy Nebres


About the story:

It strikes me upon reading this issue (and the following ones) that while writers like Don Kraar or Michael Fleisher write about what Conan does, Larry Yakata writes about who Conan is. His scripts more often than not seem to focus on what makes the Cimmerian click, on what his Weltanschauung might be. In this issue, Yakata explores Conan's morality, and maybe (if there really is a meta message to this tale), tries to show us readers that a man who is described as a thief, a reaver and a slayer can not realistically be a good man.

That's an interesting attitude to take for a Conan writer, but one fraught with storytelling perils.

We readers thrill to Conan's adventures because of the main character's admirable traits when he faces overwhelming odds: his strength of character, his courage, his never-say-die attitude. But a strong and brave man facing difficult challenges are not enough to define a hero: we would not consider "Captain Nazi" a hero even if he could bench press a Buick while stoically undergoing a vasectomy without anesthetics. Our civilized sensibilities demand that Conan be more than strong and brave: he must also behave in a honourable way. He should have some kind of moral code that, even while allowing him to steal things and kill people, does not turn him into an outright villain. (Stealing and killing are, after all, activities usually frowned upon).

Accordingly, writers will often depict Conan stealing gold and jewels from some exceedingly wealthy and greedy merchant who has too much anyway, from some baron or prince who hoards the wealth of an oppressed people, or from some abusive priest who takes advantage of his position to fleece his flock for all it's worth. In none of these cases do we feel that Conan is actually doing something wrong, since he's just stealing from other kinds of thieves; it could even be argued that he's performing some kind of social justice by redistributing the common wealth among innkeepers and their employees.

Likewise, in battle Conan takes on thugs who strike at him first, pirates, brigands, or soldiers from an opposing army... but always in a honourable manner.

Even if that works well in the context of a comic-book (or an adventure novel), in real life we know it doesn't really work. Someone who sells his killing skills for the highest bidder can hardly be a good and honourable person, and that's basically what Yakata shows here. It should go to his credit that he makes the demonstration in a convincing way, but on the other hand it makes the main character rather unpleasant; Conan is not a hero in this story. Not at all. That makes it hard to root for him.

I should add that another point Yakata makes is that the Cimmerian might simply be a product of his time; just one who has mastered its cruel and brutal politics better than other men. We will find absolutely no honourable character in this nihilistic tale where everyone is either a despicable tyrant, a hypocritical fraud, a gullible sheep, an insufferable braggart or an egotistical jerk. How far we are from Superman's noble intentions!


The story:

As in every Yakata-written issue, the introductory blurb offers no useful information. "Battle-weary from the long and bitter siege of Shadizar, Conan wanders aimlessly until he hears rumours of secret riches lying west along the Libnum hills..." Since the story is on the western coast of Shem, that's an awfull lot of "aimless wandering". Several thousand kilometers worth of wandering from Shadizar to western Shem. Editooooooor!!!

In Shem, the Cimmerian finds himself near the city-state of Thusidas, ruled by King Aragu. The king is facing the unwelcome activities of a former slave turned prophet, one Dachivu, who preaches equality, virtue and kindness. Many are the peasants who flock to him, but Dachivu is a scoundrel who then sells his followers into slavery.



After he kills several of the king's men who "meant to test his skills" (they were just overconfident bullies, really), and after breaking the jaw of several patrons of a local tavern, Conan is offered a job by king Aragu on account of his formidable reputation. The Cimmerian says he will think about it, and retires to a hostel room to await the unavoidable counter-offer by the forces of Dachivu.



When Dachivu's men show up, they bring gold and women. They do not have time to discuss terms for very long, because more of the king's men also show up with a counter-counter offer of more gold and more women, and they kill all of Dachivu's henchmen. Conan accepts the king's gold, keeps Dachivu's gold, and has sex with all the women (all four of them). Waking up a little sick from overindulgence, the mercenary has to face more of Dachivu's men, angry that Conan took their gold without honouring the contract. They are quickly dispatched.

Conan later sits at his meal, unconcerned about fights that erupt in the streets between Dachivu's followers and the king's men. Aragu shows up, and although he manages to refrain from openly criticizing the Cimmerian for taking his gold and just sitting on his rump, he sends him on a mission: to murder a certain important ally of Dachivu, one Ganel, who lives in the monastery of Umir.

This suits Conan just fine, for the reason he had wandered into this region in the first place was that he had heard of that monastery, where once a year a fountain is said to give up masses of liquid gold. It was Conan's plan all along to get his hands on that gold, not to serve this side or that side of the civil conflict.

On his way, Conan brutalizes farmers who attack him for being a mercenary in the service of the king. He also witnesses the shipping of slaves on foreign ships; and obviously the people doing the selling are not Dachivu's men but the king's own guards. Both sides, therefore, engage in slavery.

Conan reaches the monastery of Umir, where he captures Gamel. The religious man asks what Conan's ultimate devotion might be, to which the barbarian replies "I side with myself". "YES!" would exclaim Friedrich Nietzsche while pumping his fist into the air.

Conan witnesses the "miracle" of the liquid gold, and steals the ingots that the priests make of it (murdering some of them in the bargain). He then escapes on horseback, with a heavy sack of gold on his back.



Things come to a boil between Dachivu and king Aragu; mercenary troops having arrived from Kush and Keshan, the king is ready to strike at the rebels' position. For no obvious reason other than to show that he's an evil man, the king then orders the ships filled with slaves to be burned with all souls aboard.

Conan, slowed down by the weight of his gold, finds his way to Argos cut by the battle raging between the two armies. He tries to cut his way through, but is then faced with a singular opponent: a pretentious man named Hanbo the nomad (one prone to shouting his own name) who deems Conan worthy of facing him in battle.



Hanbo insults and belittles Conan all through their duel, something that sat very poorly with several readers if we judge from letters received by the magazine a while later; some fans couldn't accept that Conan might have met his match, and one that called him names to boot. But if we must be fair, Hanbo does indeed appear to be as skilled as Conan, if not more, something that also goes along Yakata's intention of depicting this issue's characters as closer to real people than to idealized ones. It would be very surprising if, in a sword-swinging career spanning several decades, Conan had never, ever met an opponent capable of beating him.



Anyway, after a long and difficult match Hanbo trips and impales himself on the spear held by a corpse lying on the ground, showing that despite all his bragging maybe he wasn't as good as he thought. As Hanbo lays whining about this cruel twist of fate, an enraged Conan forbids him to die from any other hand than his, and strikes the final blow.



The fight has died out around the two duelers, and as Conan recovers his gold he witnesses the arrest of Dachivu, who tries one last time to bribe the soldiers arresting him and the departing Cimmerian, offering gold, position, salvation...

Conan leaves, reflecting that his only salvation lies in beef, bread, grog and comely wenches.


Notes:

- Hard to place the story in the saga, but since Conan has a reputation I would put it during his thirties. Perhaps around 34 or 35, before The slithering shadow (adapted in SSoC #20) and Drums of Tombalku (adapted in SSoC #21).

- Hanbo claims to be born of the fierce and ancient Kutchemes, another bad use of Hyborian Age lore by a Marvel writer. Kutchemes is seen on the map at the start of every issue, which is likely why it's mentioned here; but readers of Black colossus (adapted in SSoC #2) know that Kutchemes is a cursed city that has laid uninhabited for 3000 years. Editoooooor!

Are you reading Van Lente's Dark Horse series? The Slithering Shadow is set wayyyyy before his 30's friend. Of course they set Black Colossus prior to his meeting Belit which makes ZERO thematic sense to me though REH gave not one dot for thematic sense. This stuff shouldn't be that difficult.

I never thought I would say this, but I'm starting to see something I like in Rudy Nebres's artwork. Maybe his style evolved over the years, or he deliberately altered it for Conan? Whatever it is, I like these recent samples much better than, say, his work on Doctor Strange in the 70s. It looks more controlled, for one thing - maybe he was trying too hard on DS to emulate the wildness of the early Gene Colan issues?

Savage Sword of Conan #122, March 1986



Cover by Ernie Chan, who had also provided that for issue #119 and would do the same for #123, in all three cases using themes from the main story that he illustrated himself.

Ernie's covers are certainly colourful. You can tell that his approach on these pieces is that of a cartoonist using colour and not that of a painter, but they're no less interesting to look at for all that.

The cover girl is there to sell books, she's not in the issue!

The back cover could almost be said to feature a Barry Windsor-Smith pin-up, even though we must admit that it is an unused cover for the cancelled Kull comic. It still looks great!




Table of contents

The blossoms of the black lotus, Conan vs drug traffickers
One against all, a Kull adventure