SSoC #135
-------------


Three lives for N'Garthl
Script by Chuck Dixon
Art by Gary Kwapisz and Ernie Chan

This frontier tale in the tradition of Beyond the Black River certainly emphasizes one of Dixon's qualities: he writes virile stories! His characters are tough! His dialogues are tough! The reality he depicts is harsh! Just what the doctor ordered.

The setting is the Pictish Wilderness, where Kwapisz can exert his skill at drawing intricate and real-looking trees as well as an interesting landscape, full of intricate hills and valleys. Kwapisz's forests never look like a set; they look like he went out and drew a place that really exists.



We open with Conan, now working for the Aquilonians on their western border, leading a band of warriors west of the Black River. This is Pictish land, as you'll recall, and a place where no civilized man can endure for long. Conan and his men's mission is ill-defined, and they may actually be there just to kill as many natives as possible since there is a near constant state of war between Picts and Aquilonians on the frontier.



I like the way Dixon does not pick sides in the feud: his Picts are not a worse people than the Aquilonians (or Conan, for that matter); they are just "the enemy". And when some Picts are killed in battle by Conan's men, one of them makes a point of taking as many scalps as he can because they're worth a lot of money. This scalp bounty reflects our own North American history, in which some governments paid for native scalps (Massachussetts did so in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, for example).

Conan's group is unfortunate enough to later happen upon a large Pict war party, and all but a few of them are killed. The Pictish leader asks the group's scout (also a Pict) why he would turn against his own people, to which the other replies "not MY people... I'm from the Oranadi tribe". That gets him killed, but it's a great exchange that illustrates how Picts are NOT a unified people, just as not all Native Americans were united against the Europeans, nor all the Gauls against the Romans.

Conan, an Aquilonian named Koros and a young Gunderman are brought by the Picts to their village, built at the centre of a small lake. They are kept alive for the village's shaman who will concoct some deviltry with them. (Here Koros expresses his desire to see a legion of the empire one day burn the place to the ground. While not an illegitimate aspiration, this illustrates how Chuck Dixon mostly treats Aquilonia as if it were imperial Rome; some online fans use the term "Romilonia" when they refer to Chuck's version of the place. This was particularly apparent in the limited series "Conan the barbarian: the usurper", published after the cancellation of the regular Conan series).

The three men are left trussed up in a hut, where the young Gunderman expresses his anguish at what fate might expect them; Koros mocks him a little, seeming not to be above some gallows humour at his own -and his comrades'- expense.

The shaman who is to use their lives is a pot-bellied little guy whose testicles make an unfortunate encounter with Conan's boot when they first meet. This does not endear the Cimmerian to the feathered learned man, and he promises that the intruders' end will be grisly indeed. THe shaman means to summon a primordial demon named N'Garthl, who can be brought to our world by certains magical techniques and whose services can be bought in exchange for three lives. Guess whose lives are to clinch the deal?

The shaman performs the appropriate ceremony and N'Garthl does indeed manifest himself.



He reminds me of the mutated bear in the old shlock horror movie The prophecy:



Conan finds in his ghastly appearance the motivation and strength to break his bonds, and he quickly frees his comrades before N'Garthl can make a meal of them. The shaman orders N'Garthl to pursue them, but the creature reminds the medicine man that the deal is not complete yet, and that "you're not the boss o' me". (Man, that critter's BIG!)



The demon pursues the fleeing trio anyway. Conan's wood lore serves the escapees well, which Koros grudgingly admits, but it doesn't save the young Gunderman from a Pictish booby trap that skewers his right leg.



The lad can't run anymore, and Koros stresses the point that he's doomed, and that it would be a mercy to kill him now rather than let him be eaten by N"Garthl. That is too cold for Conan, even if he agrees that the lad is beyond saving; he nevertheless tries to double back and attack the monster from behind. The plan works insofar as Conan manages to hurt the creature, but he is simply to huge to be slain so easily and both opponents come tumbling down a wooded slope. Before Conan can finish his life as a hors d'oeuvre, however, he is saved in extremis by Koros, who might argue with the Cimmerian all the time but is a stand up guy anyway. Koros throws his heavy lance at N'Garthl, who leaves Conan for the nonce and starts chasing Koros instead. The running Koros runs over the prone Gunderman, telling him as he goes "Sorry, kid, you're on your own now!"

SSoC #135
-------------

Fool's night
Script by Chuck Dixon
Art by Val Semeiks and Fraja Bator


This short and humorous story is sort of the capstone of Dixon's Kull stories to date, as several previous plot threads converge and get resolved. Once again, assassins are planning to murder the king; but this time, there are three independent groups of them! The first bunch are followers of Caristah, the priest of Ral and keeper of the law who was impaled last issue. The second gang are followers of Ohris Dejhal, the wizard whose head we last saw thrown to a giant octopus at the bottom of the sea. And the third group are worshippers of the monkey god, whose return to this mortal plane Kull foiled a few issues ago.

All enter the royal palace via different points of access, but none are exactly where they expected to be: a map was out of date, an informer was too vague, etc. No matter! The king must die!

As Kull and his mistress Laria (about whom we never did learn if she was possessed by the soul of a male wizard or not!) retire for the night, the followers or Ral, the Dehjal acolytes and the monkey worshippers all make their tentative way toward the royal apartments.

As you would expect, two groups fall upon each other, mistaking their vis-à-vis for Kull loyalists. Their number is greatly reduced in the ensuing battle, but the few survivors join forces to conduct their holy mission of regicide... until they are assaulted by the third group, also mistaking them for royal guards.



The sole survivor of the massacre is a monkey worshipper, who finally gains access to the king's bedroom... where he trips on one of Laria's slipper and falls on his own knife.



The king can continue his night unmolested.

I love a good humour story!

Savage sword of Conan # 136, May 1987



The Doug Beekman cover for this issue has very nice-looking wolves and an intricately detailed helmet, but nothing to do with this month's story (set on the wine dark sea and on a tropical island). No big deal.

The frontispiece by Dale Eaglesham is probably what I liked most about this issue. It shows Dale's early style, a very unusual one that is both exotic and intriguing. Dale would soon begin drawing the Kull back-up feature.



(Sorry for the smudge on the right, I think the image moved while being scanned).


Table of contents

Seventh isle of doom, a Conan maritime adventure
The tolltaker, a Kull short story

As well as a few pin-ups by different artists.

SSoC #136
-------------

At this point, most characters would probably say "well sod this, let's just head back to our boat and get away from this island". But Olaf, Xualza and Conan decide instead to head into the "forbidden region", because the odds of meeting cannibals in there should be smaller. 

And hey, whatever  killed that big black warrior and sent the others scurrying can't be all that scary, right?

After trudging through a swamp for a while they happen upon a new beach where Takma is kneeling on the ground and crying near the wreck of a small boat with its ribs jutting from the sand. "It cannot be", moans the pirate. Conan is pretty much fed up with this guy but Takma begs for mercy once again, offering a great treasure if his life is spared. (First it was a boat, now it's a treasure. Whatever will it be next?)



Takma insists that there should be a small chest filled with rubies nearby, and sure enough Conan finds it by digging the sand in the centre of the boats' ribs. Takma then explains how he knows about the treasure.

He and a few comrades in crime once plundered a cargo ship and made good their escape on this very boat. A storm had however foiled their escape and Takma had been thrown overboard, being recovered by another ship later on. The treasure and his companions had been "lost into a hazy dream faded by the years... until now".

Er... How in hell would Takma know where his comrades went after he went overboard? How could he know they came to this island, where he just drifted by accident? How could he know where on the island their boat was supposed to be, or that it would still be there? How could he know that this severely-damaged and buried wreck is actually the boat of his comrades? This makes even less sense than what came before! (Now in all honesty, it looks as if Andy and Larry aren’t telling the same story here… If we look at the picture and ignore the text, it looks as if Takma and his friends reached the island together before being chased away by the Natives, explaining at least how the man recognizes the place. But since the three of them sailed away together, it still doesn’t explain why his friends’ ship returned at a later date, nor how Takma could have known where they had landed the second time around, nor that this was indeed that precise ship).



Anyway, we have to go on... Takma claims that "the treasure must still be here". Really? Well, all right... should we start digging some more, since the chest filled with rubies was found right here, in the middle of the boat's remains? No, of course not! It's much more logical to go back into the forbidden swamp, for some undisclosed reason! And because there’s never such a thing as too many boats, Princess Xualza finds one right there on the beach, next to the old wreck! Our tresure hunters will be able to float back into the swamp! (All except Conan, that is, because he pulls the boat with a rope, in the water up to his chest. Never an easy day for a Cimmerian).

The quartet makes it way into the sludge, the leeches and the mosquitoes, soon finding telltale weapons and small piles of jewels to show them the way. Eventually they reach a cavern hidden behind a small waterfall. Outside they find many jewels and coins; inside, Conan finds a native girl, all trussed up and alone. He frees her and tries to carry her back out of the forbidden region, but is met at its border by the island's warriors. They explain that the girl was meant as a sacrifice to the "swamp monster", and that by freeing her Conan has f***d up big time. Still, they're kind of grateful that he'd have gone through the trouble of helping one of their own and instead of killing him outright they force him to return into the forbidden zone.



Olaf then falls into a pit filled with pointed spears; we strongly suspect that it is Takma who threw him in there (especially since the pouch in which Olaf carried his share of the jewels somehow didn't fall with him). Conan, Takma and Xualza resume their treasure hunt (wait, what? Didn't they find the treasure at the mouth of the cavern? Why would they assume that there is more loot to be found elsewhere?) and a sword lying on the ground points them toward ANOTHER cavern where more jewels await them... piles and piles of them.

As Takma and Xualza jump into the baubles, Conan sort of hypocritically blames them for being obsessed with money. Hey, where does he get off being so judgemental? He's the one leading them on a treasure hunt in a forbidden swamp!

Anyway, instead of filling his pockets Conan decides to explore the deeper recesses of the cavern because... plot. Since it's dark as the inside of a dog in there, he lights up a torch that just happened to be there, using... magic? A Bic lighter? We don't know. But sure enough, the torch reveals that this is the swamp creature's dwelling place!



Conan and the monster fight. The Cimmerian grabs a roughly pyramidal rock and jumps at the creature, and the rocks proves pointy enough to act as a spearpoint. (Could have fooled me, really, it looked kind of harmless). Conan finishes the job with his sword.

Takma arrives just then, and seeing that Conan is lying on his back and is badly wounded, decides that it is time to get rid of him. Oh no, how will Conan manage to get up in time and defend himself?

We don't know. One image he's flat on his back and helpless, the next he's standing and throwing Takma to the ground. We don't see of hear about Takma after this image.



The Cimmerian and Xualza decide to leave this place (something they really should have done a long time ago, as in right after setting foot on this island), and the girl states that she now quite likes her companion. The two are met by the cannibals, and in the ensuing battle Conan gets a spear clean through the thigh. No matter! It's barely a scratch! (The Gunderman from issue #135 was a goner when he got a similar wound, and a Vanirman in the same predicament in issue #137 will claim he's a dead man. I guess Conan's just tough).

The leader of the islanders then stops the fight and expresses his admiration for the Cimmerian's prowess. Being a wise man, he finds a political way to "punish" the outlander for his exactions without actually harming him: he condemns him to exile from the island, and orders a boat to be loaded with food.



(I actually liked that unexpected twist! That war chief is a clever politician!)

Princess Xualza then offers her pulchritudinous body to the Cimmerian, but the next morning she discovers that her paramour has stranded her on one of the island's high peaks, and that he has taken off on their boat, promising her from afar to tell the Argossean government where it can find her... in exchange for a ransom and a new ship.



Oh, great Crom, that was really not as good as it could have been. On many occasions I had to go back and try to understand what was supposed to be going on. I do not recommend tracking down this issue; it's like "Plan 9 from the Hyborian Age".


Notes:

- Where to place this story in the chronology is something of a conundrum. Conan is clearly not a Barachan pirate when the story opens: he's serving as a humble sailor aboard an Argossean royal ship. Despite this being clearly established, on the final page we hear Conan explain how he'll ransom the princess's position for gold and for "a new ship", as if the boat sunk in the opening pages had been one of his many doomed pirate commands.

Roy Thomas, in his Conan Saga chronology, suggests that this tale is set during the period he wasn't writing Conan the barbarian, meaning when the Cimmerian is 26-27. He even places it right before "The colossus of Argos" (SSoC #80), making princess Xualza the daughter of the aged and benevolent King Tahrend. I find that parsimonious, but also a little hard to accept: would Tahrend be as kind to Conan as he was shown to be in SSoC #80 if Xualza had explained how the Cimmerian abandoned her on an island peopled by cannibals after having sex with her? It seems hard to reconcile. My own opinion? Write off this story as apocryphal, or as a tall tale that Conan told around a campfire when he was more than passably drunk. (That would actually explain the inconsistencies).

Savage sword of Conan #137, June 1987

Cover by Bob Larkin, who always painted interesting eyes.



The issue also has a few pin-ups, including this interesting one by Wlliam Johnson.



Table of contents

The lost legion, a Conan adventure on the Pictish frontier
The brawl, where King Kull breaks a few jaws

SSoC #137
-------------

The brawl
Story by Chuck Dixon
Art by Ernie Chan and Fraja Bator.

It's rare to see Ernie Chan being inked by someone else! His pencils are actually quite good.

In this short story, a barroom fight between Kull loyalists and Kull critics gets personal when the king himself shows that he is present. Removing his crown to fight a man who called him coward, Kull pummels him to the ground and then invites all those who defended his name to join him for a drink at the palace.



The theme of a king who disguises himself to find out what his people really think of him is a tried and true story device, and one that has been used in both Kull and Conan stories. It always leads to fun and adventure.

 

SSoC #138
-------------

Lair of the lizard
Script by Chuck Dixon
Art by Gary Kwapisz and Ernie Chan

This story marks the return of Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, one of the two sword women that Robert Howard actually featured in his Conan stories (Red Sonja being a creation of Roy Thomas, based on a Howard character whose adventures were set in the XVI century).

Valeria should have been a major recurring character in this magazine, after her first appearance in Savage Tales #2-3, adapting the Howard story Red Nails. However, perhaps because she appears fairly late in Conan’s life (he met her when he was a Barachan pirate, when he was 35 at the youngest), she was basically absent from all of Marvel’s Conan mags for the longest time. The second story we saw her outside of a cameo was in the entirely forgettable (and best forgotten) adaptation of the piratical tale “island of pirate’s doom in SSoC#73, 74, 76-79. We would then see her as a child in the two-issue Red Sonja limited series from the 80s and next in SSoC#127, where she and Conan agreed that although they loved each other, they simply couldn’t live together since both insisted on being the boss.

Perhaps seeing in Valeria an unexploited resource for good stories, writer Dixon reintroduces here… with his own interpretation of how her character developed since Red Nails. Personally, I think Valeria’s new personality clashes with the woman we met in ST#2-3 and SSoC#127. Back in those stories, Valeria was an extremely independent woman; one who would deliberately endanger herself so as not to depend on others. “Oh, this would never have happened if I had stayed with Conan” is something I would never have expected her to say! She was also quite adamant about her chastity, even if Conan’s rough charms seemed to woe her in the end.

Here she’s described as a flirt, a tease, a shrew, and her impulsive nature is nearing airhead territory.

The sex aspect is what seems most out of place about her new persona. I suppose that it’s possible for someone to undergo a major change in attitude regarding sex after one’s discovered it, but I am really surprised to see Val evolve so far in that direction. 

Also very annoying, the capable and strong pirate from Red Nails turns into a slightly ridiculous, scheming and rather ineffectual individual; the only traits she retains from her previous incarnations are a devil-may-care attitude and greed, although this is now much greater than it used to be. Perhaps the change was implemented to make her clearly different from Red Sonja, but it’s a bit of an usurpation to have Sonja be closer to the “real” Valeria than the comic-book one would be.

The interactions between this new Valeria and Conan are amusing, make no mistake: the two are still caught in a “can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without 'em” dynamic, but one that’s based on lust rather than genuine romance as it was previously. There is also a new Laurel & Hardy-like quality to their relation, with Valeria apparently always getting Conan into trouble.

Anyway, after his return to the book, Roy Thomas would later write a teenage Valeria and an adult one much closer to the Red Nails one, attributing her hussy period as being due to her being momentarily down on her luck (which I interpreted as being depressive as well).

For all that, Lair of the lizard god is another effective adventure story from Dixon, with nice art by Kwapisz and Chan. It uses the standard tropes of lost cities, treasure maps and dinosaurs, but never feels like a story told by numbers.

Conan is still working in Conajohara, following the events from last issue. We actually see and name Fort Tuscelan, the fortress first introduced in Beyond the Black River (SSoC #26-27). The Cimmerian is obviously getting tired of the lousy weather and worse food, which leads him to accept (perhaps a little too hastily) the offer of a man met in a tavern.



The fellow claims to have a map leading to a lost city where a fabulous treasure can be found. Not being the adventurous sort himself, he would happily enlist a partner. As proof of the map’s authenticity, he shows a huge emerald that he won’t let Conan handle, fearing the Cimmerian will simply drink it away.

Conan accepts to look for the treasure and to *ahem!* bring back a share to the map peddler. No sooner has Conan left the tavern that we learn the man hasn’t been entirely truthful: while the map is a real one, the emerald is fake. Furthermore, recruiting Conan was not his idea: it was that of his boss, who is none other than Valeria of the Red Brotherhood! She amusingly reflects on how angry Conan will be when he realizes he’s been tricked.



The next day, Conan is on his way through the Pictish wilderness with a few other mercenaries who were as fed up with their job as he was. They are Fox the Gunderman, brothers Njall and Ymac from Aesgaard and brutish Sloth. (Here let me note that while Dixon keeps his ethnicities straight, having the Aesir swear by Ymir, the artists draw pretty much everyone as short, dark-haired people. The Aesir, like the Vanir from the previous and upcoming issues, should be big and fair haired: either blond or red-headed for the most part).

Valeria and her accomplice Rhonk follow the handful of treasure-seekers, but are discovered fairly quickly. Conan knocks Rhonk to the ground and slaps Valeria around until she agrees to behave, explaining her duplicity. She claims she didn’t come to Conan openly because she feared he might turn her down, since their previous parting had not been a good one. (That must be from some untold tale, because their parting in SSoC #127 was bittersweet, not acrimonious).

The entire group continues to follow the map, losing Sloth when he arrogantly declines to heed a local man’s warning about how treacherous the mud at the bottom of a pond can be.

Valeria takes the first opportunity to flirt with Conan, who makes a show of not caring much for her offer. (Nice try, Cimmerian. We can hear you breathe hard all the way from here!)



The map leads to an isolated plateau that can be reached via a narrow rock bridge of natural origin. A Pictish village bars the way, prompting the treasure seekers to reflect on how best to attempt the crossing. During that night of reflection, Valeria and Rhonk try double-crossing their partners and get to the plateau on their own, but are captured by the natives.

Conan and the others are awakened by the Picts’ chanting; they seem to be calling something called “Otha”. Following the sound, they discover that the entire tribe has crossed the bridge unto the plateau, where they have attached the captured Val and Rhonk to a tree’s branch. Val remains defiant, until “Otha” shows up just as King Kong did in the ‘30s to take a look at Fay Wray: Otha is a tyrannosaurus, and the god of this tribe! The natives naturally scatter as their hungry god approaches, allowing the Cimmerian and his friends to approach the scene.

The reptile eats Rhonk, but an arrow shot by Conan cuts the rope that binds Valeria’s wrists to the branch she’s hanging from.



She runs away into the forest, Otah in lumbering pursuit.

Conan and his friends follow, and find the she-pirate hiding in a tree. Otah seems to have lost her track.

Later, the lost city is found. It is peculiar in that its high houses don’t seem to have stairs. The treasure it contains is impressive, but escaping with it will prove troublesome as Otah shows up again, eating Njall! Conan blinds one eye of the dinosaur with an arrow, prompting Fox to try and do the same; his own shot is however less accurate, and he ends up squished by one of the monster’s feet.

Hunted down the city’s streets, the three survivors manage to get part of a building to collapse on Otah, crushing him under tons of masonry.



Ymac is however too quick to get close to the vanquished beast, since the tyrannosaurus manages one more movement to bite him in two. Conan jumps on the beast’s head and stabs it through the skull, finally killing it.

The Cimmerian and the she-pirate decide to continue westward, toward the ocean and Valeria’s hip, where Conan will have the opportunity of being a sailor once more… “Amra” being a name he’s not been called in an age.



Notes:

- How did Valeria end up in western Aquilonia to try and enlist Conan in her treasure hunt? How could she have known he was there? A chance meeting would have been a possible (if unlikely) explanation, but since Valeria’s ship is expecting her on the other side of the Pictish Wilderness, it means she purposefully underwent the long journey through Zingara and Aquilonia (or through Vanaheim, Cimmeria and Aquilonia if she took the northern route) to reach the Westermark. (Crossing the Pictish wilderness on foot to get from the ocean to the Westermark is out of the question).

- Conan is naturally 39, since this story is set around the time of Beyond the Black River.

- Continuity headache: We start with Conan in Conajohara, prior to Beyond the Black River (since Fort Tuscelan is still standing) but by the end of the tale Conan is no longer a scout for the Aquilonians as he returns to the life of a pirate. Does that mean he will later give up that life and return to Conajohara to resume his job as a scout, since he needs to be there in time for Beyond the Black River, Moon of Blood, The Black Stranger and immediately thereafter for Conan the liberator?(Actually, that’s pretty much what Dixon is planning, I think).

Paradoxically, this “gives up being a scout to cross the Pictish Wilderness on foot and resume the life of a pirate” idea parallels what Howard himself wrote in the story The Black Stranger, adapted in SSoC #47-48. It is one of the few points where the “official” outline of Conan’s career clearly differs from Howard’s prose. In the Miller and Clark outline, Beyond the Black River is placed right before Conan becomes king. In their pastiche work, Lyon Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter modified the ending of The Black Stranger, a sequel to Beyond the Black River (and edited as “the treasure of Tranicos”) to replace the pirate ship by a boat manned by Aquilonians revolutionaries who want to make the Cimmerian their leader. Miller couldn’t have known that Howard had meant Conan’s stint as Westermark scout to occur earlier in his life, since that is only mentionned in the unfinished fragments of  Wolves beyond the border.

- On the last image, we see a baby tyrannosaurus in the foreground; this shows that the species is endemic to this plateau, à la Conan Doyle's the lost world.