Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,181 
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Post by Confessor on Oct 11, 2015 9:19:21 GMT -5
I hope nobody takes this the wrong way, but I'm amazed that the Marvel Conan comics/magazines went on for as long as they did. I'm clearly in a minority, but I don't really see the appeal of the character myself, although I'll admit that the artwork in some of these books that Roquefort has been reviewing is drop dead gorgeous. I guess it just surprises me that the character had such legs, so to speak, in comic book format.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 11, 2015 14:04:27 GMT -5
I hope nobody takes this the wrong way, but I'm amazed that the Marvel Conan comics/magazines went on for as long as they did. I'm clearly in a minority, but I don't really see the appeal of the character myself, although I'll admit that the artwork in some of these books that Roquefort has been reviewing is drop dead gorgeous. I guess it just surprises me that the character had such legs, so to speak, in comic book format. That strikes me as a very worthy discussion point, Confessor. What makes some characters last and last while others are forgotten after a few decades? Part of the appeal of characters like Conan, Tarzan, Dracula or Fu Manchu, I think, is that they were there first. Tarzan was the first jungle lord (even if he wasn't the first baby raised by animals), Dracula was the first vampire to really strike our imagination, Fu Manchu was the first striking "Yellow menace" super-scientist, and Conan was the first heroic fantasy character to define the genre (if we neglect the two Kull published Kull stories). Of course, simply being there first doesn't mean you'll strike gold; a character must also provide something that will keep people comig back. And to do so, I think nothing beats a concept that is as simple as possible even as it opens plenty of story opportunities. Conan is a character easily defined. He's a strong and cunning barbarian. His world is like our own antiquity, and is connected to it with just enough historical names to make it believable. Magic works in Conan's world, but it is a rare thing, thus maintaining our willing auspension of disbelief. Oh, and naturally, thanks to his creator's imagination, we know that Conan had several careers rife with possibilities: he was a thief in exotic eastern cities, he was a kozak like the characters of Harold Lamb, he was a pirate, he was a scout à la James Fennimore Cooper, he was a king... that's a lot of material! No need to find convoluted ways to get rid of his marriage, to make him lose his company, to deprive him of his powers or to break his back to keep him fresh... From the get go, it was understood that the characters had decades of adventures in him, wearing different hats. Simplicity, simplicity. For the comic-book readers of the 80s, I think Conan's appeal relied a lot on his strength, his no-nonsense attitude and his fatalistic artitude. He was like Rambo, like Wolverine, like the Punisher, all characters that resonated with that generation. He was also one of the few non-superhero characters still active in those days... That might explain some of his appeal. Apparently, judging from the letters page, Conan readers in the 80s also like books like Savage Tales, the 'Nam, Se,per Fi and the like. The movies helped too, I'm sure. Even if I loathed what they did with the character!!M |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 12, 2015 9:27:49 GMT -5
Savage Sword of Conan #144, January 1988  Cover by Joe Jusko. Table of contentsThe waiting doom, featuring the return of Red Sonja Pinups by several artists ----------------------------------------------------------------- The waiting doomScript by Chuck Dixon Art by Gary Kwapisz and Ernie Chan This tale reintroduces everyone’s favourite she-devil with a sword, Red Sonja. Dixon has a good handle on the character and I think his depiction of her relation with Conan is spot-on: there is some sexual tension and some teasing, as in the old days of CtB #23 and 24, but also deep friendship and mutual respect. Both characters seem to be comfortable around each other and to accept the way things are between them even if they appear to acknowledge that perhaps, maybe, someday, things might change in their relationship. This leads to interesting exchanges and a few amusing scenes. In the bath:  And come bedtime:  Conan and Sonja meet in the Graaskal mountains between Hyperborea and Brythunia. The Cimmerian is looking for a magical idol on behalf of a magician, while she is looking for the abducted children of a Hyrkanian warlord. Sonja finds the children’s abductors in a country inn where Conan is trying to recover from an infected wound on his leg. The sword woman learns that the kids were sold as slaves to an iron mine down south, and as she disposes of the kidnappers the Cimmerian has an opportunity to lend a hand. With Sonja’s ministrations, Conan’s wound heals and the two of them travel south, toward the iron mines and toward the idol the Cimmerian is looking for. (Seeing as they're going the same way, Sonja accepts to accompany Conan for a while). The sought-after trinket is different from such objects seen in the mag in the past: it carries a special curse that rapidly kills anyone near it, unless it is kept in a special heavy lead box (we modern readers understand that it is probably highly radioactive). The mage who hired Conan gave him a medallion that reacts to the idol and leads him in the right direction. Also looking for the idol are a band of miscreants led by the villainous Hain. To track the Cimmerian, they rely on the giant, masked and silent Rhuk. The strange bloodhound-like hulk is scaring even his comrades.  Conan and Sonja reach a mountain village where they are told the sinister tale of an adulterous couple who fled to a strange cavern where the woman gave birth to a monstrous child. The father wanted to kill it, but the mother turned on her lover instead and raised the baby on her own in the cavern. She returned to her village eventually, where she died from a disease that caused her to bleed from every part of her body. The child's fate is unknown. Still following the pull of their medallion, the two adventurers travel further up the mountains and (as we would expect!) encounter the now-grown monster child. It has two heads and six arms, is clearly foul-tempered and given to cannibalistic tendencies. Conan and Sonja escape it by slipping into a narrow crevice that leads into the cavern where it was born.  The place is more than a mere natural hole: it has been altered with masonry and contains a shrine to an alien-looking god (“alien” as in “space alien”). In its hand seems to be the radioactive idol.  Meanwhile, Hain and his gang have reached the same point. They attack Conan and Sonja on a bridge spanning a lake of lava, right in front of the alien statue. Complicating matters, the monster erupts as well and engages Rhuk. The two giants eventually fall with the collapsing stone bridge into the lava, as Hain makes good his escape with the idol. Unable to reach him, Conan and Sonja must accept defeat.The Cimmerian drops the now useless lead box into the lava, and then offers his companion to go with her after the missing children. The story ends as a severely decaying Hain, still carrying the lethal idol, finally collapses and dies. Notes: - Conan is in the north, as he was in the previous Dixon-written tale. However, this story could be set at many points in Conan’s career. Sonja isn’t wearing her ridiculous iron bikini anymore, so this happens after Conan’s 27th year. Conan mentions that his partings with Sonja usually come when she knocks him on the head and rides off with their booty. As far as I can tell, she caused him to fall off a tower in CtB #24 and did ride off with the loot, and knocked him on the head with a rock in CtB# 44 with no loot involved. If he’s conflating the two events and all their adventures since were of a more friendly nature, perhaps today's tale isn’t set that long after Conan’s 27th year. Also, in next month’s issue (a direct sequel to this one), an officer questions Conan’s playing the general and his ability to lead troops. Conan asserts his position thus: “I was born on a battlefield, you strutting idiot! Save your pretty marching and trotting for the ladies! This battle won’t be war, it will be slaughter. And who better to lead a slaughter than a barbarian”? Now this is a fine speech, but had this story occurred after “Black colossus”, Conan could simply have answered “I was general of the entire Khorajan army, you strutting idiot”. On the other hand, in that same issue, Conan states that his mother has been dead for many years. That places this story years after SSoC #119, in which Conan must have been in his early '30s (my reasoning for that in that in The star of Khorala (SSoC#44, Conan means to visit "an old woman in Cimmeria", and that when he finds out his family is dead in SSoC #119, he mentions having led the Kozaki). This would then place SSoC#144 pretty much in the same period as the previous Dixon issues after all, an interlude between Conan's stints as a scout in Aquilonia. Oh, what a tangled continuity web we weave... - This is not the first time radioactivity has been used in a Conan tale; three strangers from the stars apparently detonated a nuclear bomb in SSoC #11. This issue’s pin-ups are by several artists: Aremando Gil, Dale Eaglesham, Fraja Bator, Alfredo Alcala and Tom Grindberg.  
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,181
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Post by Confessor on Oct 12, 2015 10:33:58 GMT -5
Part of the appeal of characters like Conan, Tarzan, Dracula or Fu Manchu, I think, is that they were there first. Tarzan was the first jungle lord (even if he wasn't the first baby raised by animals), Dracula was the first vampire to really strike our imagination, Fu Manchu was the first striking "Yellow menace" super-scientist, and Conan was the first heroic fantasy character to define the genre (if we neglect the two Kull published Kull stories). Of course, simply being there first doesn't mean you'll strike gold; a character must also provide something that will keep people comig back. And to do so, I think nothing beats a concept that is as simple as possible even as it opens plenty of story opportunities. Conan is a character easily defined. He's a strong and cunning barbarian. His world is like our own antiquity, and is connected to it with just enough historical names to make it believable. Magic works in Conan's world, but it is a rare thing, thus maintaining our willing auspension of disbelief. Oh, and naturally, thanks to his creator's imagination, we know that Conan had several careers rife with possibilities: he was a thief in exotic eastern cities, he was a kozak like the characters of Harold Lamb, he was a pirate, he was a scout à la James Fennimore Cooper, he was a king... that's a lot of material! No need to find convoluted ways to get rid of his marriage, to make him lose his company, to deprive him of his powers or to break his back to keep him fresh... From the get go, it was understood that the characters had decades of adventures in him, wearing different hats. Simplicity, simplicity. For the comic-book readers of the 80s, I think Conan's appeal relied a lot on his strength, his no-nonsense attitude and his fatalistic artitude. He was like Rambo, like Wolverine, like the Punisher, all characters that resonated with that generation. He was also one of the few non-superhero characters still active in those days... That might explain some of his appeal. Apparently, judging from the letters page, Conan readers in the 80s also like books like Savage Tales, the 'Nam, Se,per Fi and the like. Interesting that you mention Rambo because, yes, I'd agree that Conan and Rambo were probably attracting much the same sort of audience back in the mid-80s. Mind you, I never liked Rambo either -- then or now. I think generally speaking I dislike huge, muscle bound heroes because I can never really see the appeal of the Hulk either. I do take your point though that the sheer scope for storytelling with a character like Conan must surely be part of the reason for the character's longevity. Also, I'm a big fan of The 'Nam too, but Conan is an altogether different beast in my opinion. |
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Post by benday-dot on Oct 12, 2015 10:44:45 GMT -5
I hope nobody takes this the wrong way, but I'm amazed that the Marvel Conan comics/magazines went on for as long as they did. I'm clearly in a minority, but I don't really see the appeal of the character myself, although I'll admit that the artwork in some of these books that Roquefort has been reviewing is drop dead gorgeous. I guess it just surprises me that the character had such legs, so to speak, in comic book format. That strikes me as a very worthy discussion point, Confessor. What makes some characters last and last while others are forgotten after a few decades? Part of the appeal of characters like Conan, Tarzan, Dracula or Fu Manchu, I think, is that they were there first. Tarzan was the first jungle lord (even if he wasn't the first baby raised by animals), Dracula was the first vampire to really strike our imagination, Fu Manchu was the first striking "Yellow menace" super-scientist, and Conan was the first heroic fantasy character to define the genre (if we neglect the two Kull published Kull stories). Of course, simply being there first doesn't mean you'll strike gold; a character must also provide something that will keep people comig back. And to do so, I think nothing beats a concept that is as simple as possible even as it opens plenty of story opportunities. Conan is a character easily defined. He's a strong and cunning barbarian. His world is like our own antiquity, and is connected to it with just enough historical names to make it believable. Magic works in Conan's world, but it is a rare thing, thus maintaining our willing auspension of disbelief. Oh, and naturally, thanks to his creator's imagination, we know that Conan had several careers rife with possibilities: he was a thief in exotic eastern cities, he was a kozak like the characters of Harold Lamb, he was a pirate, he was a scout à la James Fennimore Cooper, he was a king... that's a lot of material! No need to find convoluted ways to get rid of his marriage, to make him lose his company, to deprive him of his powers or to break his back to keep him fresh... From the get go, it was understood that the characters had decades of adventures in him, wearing different hats. Simplicity, simplicity. For the comic-book readers of the 80s, I think Conan's appeal relied a lot on his strength, his no-nonsense attitude and his fatalistic artitude. He was like Rambo, like Wolverine, like the Punisher, all characters that resonated with that generation. He was also one of the few non-superhero characters still active in those days... That might explain some of his appeal. Apparently, judging from the letters page, Conan readers in the 80s also like books like Savage Tales, the 'Nam, Se,per Fi and the like. The movies helped too, I'm sure. Even if I loathed what they did with the character!!M This is an excellent response to Confessor's basic and just question. I'll also add that we ought not forget that Conan also possessed (or possessed him) wonderful source material. The Conan yarns by Robert E. Howard are gripping and exciting tales. Even when they get to be a bit repetitive or the prose a bit to pulpish or purplish REH writes with such fury and ferocity that he draws you into his world and transports out of the modern drear, quickening the reader with something elemental and primal, something that we may have forgotten was buried within us. And so even if we comic readers have not ever read REH I think Conan (of course Paul there are great exceptions such as yourself) catches the submerged dreams, moods and memories of many. It itches something that modernity, even if we know it is naught but fantasy, debases. At their heart the stories, as Robert E. Howard suggests, are a means to freedom. It is, it must be admitted, mostly a male avenue of escape, and it must further be admitted to lean toward the juvenile, but is not even the boy in the man something in it itself we feel at times to be suppressed? |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 12, 2015 16:36:58 GMT -5
Part of the appeal of characters like Conan, Tarzan, Dracula or Fu Manchu, I think, is that they were there first. Tarzan was the first jungle lord (even if he wasn't the first baby raised by animals), Dracula was the first vampire to really strike our imagination, Fu Manchu was the first striking "Yellow menace" super-scientist, and Conan was the first heroic fantasy character to define the genre (if we neglect the two Kull published Kull stories). Of course, simply being there first doesn't mean you'll strike gold; a character must also provide something that will keep people comig back. And to do so, I think nothing beats a concept that is as simple as possible even as it opens plenty of story opportunities. Conan is a character easily defined. He's a strong and cunning barbarian. His world is like our own antiquity, and is connected to it with just enough historical names to make it believable. Magic works in Conan's world, but it is a rare thing, thus maintaining our willing auspension of disbelief. Oh, and naturally, thanks to his creator's imagination, we know that Conan had several careers rife with possibilities: he was a thief in exotic eastern cities, he was a kozak like the characters of Harold Lamb, he was a pirate, he was a scout à la James Fennimore Cooper, he was a king... that's a lot of material! No need to find convoluted ways to get rid of his marriage, to make him lose his company, to deprive him of his powers or to break his back to keep him fresh... From the get go, it was understood that the characters had decades of adventures in him, wearing different hats. Simplicity, simplicity. For the comic-book readers of the 80s, I think Conan's appeal relied a lot on his strength, his no-nonsense attitude and his fatalistic artitude. He was like Rambo, like Wolverine, like the Punisher, all characters that resonated with that generation. He was also one of the few non-superhero characters still active in those days... That might explain some of his appeal. Apparently, judging from the letters page, Conan readers in the 80s also like books like Savage Tales, the 'Nam, Semper Fi and the like. Interesting that you mention Rambo because, yes, I'd agree that Conan and Rambo were probably attracting much the same sort of audience back in the mid-80s. Mind you, I never liked Rambo either -- then or now. I think generally speaking I dislike huge, muscle bound heroes because I can never really see the appeal of the Hulk either. I do take your point though that the sheer scope for storytelling with a character like Conan must surely be part of the reason for the character's longevity. Also, I'm a big fan of The 'Nam too, but Conan is an altogether different beast in my opinion. What the 'Nam and Conan have in common is a lack of superheroes; their characters, as different as they are (and they definitely are!) remain human beings. Both titles deal with armed conflict, too. I think that's why both mags had a somewhat overlapping readership. On the Rambo front: The Conan character from the '80s has a lot in common with Rambo because he was made into what the public expected: the movie Conan. I'll never emphasize it enough: the Schwarzenegger barbarian is not Conan of Cimmeria, no matter what he's called and no matter how well he was received by moviegoers and the general public. He's really what Johnny Weissmuller's jungle lord was to Burroughs' Tarzan of the apes. The Weird Tales Conan is a direct and practical man, but also a shrewdly intelligent one. He is driven by curiosity, ambition and an intense need for freedom. He was the kind of guy to leave home in his teens to see the world, something very few of his people were prone to do. The movie Conan, meanwhile, was a kid who was enslaved as a boy and remained chained to an effin' millstone for a decade. Far from trying to escape, he allowed himself to be turned into a pit fighter, a fate he meekly accepted (never mind that "meek pit fighter" has a strange ring to it). It took his master actually kicking him out of the slave pens for the movie Conan to finally leave his indentured state, and even then his only goal in life was to avenge his mother (something he took long enough to undertake, getting to it only when nobody was there anymore to tell him what to do). In short, the movie Conan only reacts to events; he shows no initiative, no ambition, and is emotionally crippled to boot. What made him sympathetic to the public was that he was a brutalized boy-child out to get revenge, and everyone likes an underdog. Rambo is in the same vein: like kid Conan, he has lost everything and is at one point freed from previous obligations to face a life where nobody's there to give him orders anymore. Like kid Conan, Rambo reacts to events from then on: a nasty cop tries to humiliate him and becomes the focus for his revenge; then someone guilts him into taking on the entire Vietnamese army; then it is the Soviet Union. (What was it in the latest one, some drug lord in southeast Asia?) In all these cases, Rambo isn't pursuing his own goals: he's just doing what he's told even as he'd probably much rather do something else. The underdog again, but as in the Conan movies case, an underdog with great fighting skills and humongous biceps. The Howard Conan would never have been a slave. He'd have freed himself or would have died trying within a few days!!! |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 12, 2015 16:41:44 GMT -5
That strikes me as a very worthy discussion point, Confessor. What makes some characters last and last while others are forgotten after a few decades? Part of the appeal of characters like Conan, Tarzan, Dracula or Fu Manchu, I think, is that they were there first. Tarzan was the first jungle lord (even if he wasn't the first baby raised by animals), Dracula was the first vampire to really strike our imagination, Fu Manchu was the first striking "Yellow menace" super-scientist, and Conan was the first heroic fantasy character to define the genre (if we neglect the two Kull published Kull stories). Of course, simply being there first doesn't mean you'll strike gold; a character must also provide something that will keep people comig back. And to do so, I think nothing beats a concept that is as simple as possible even as it opens plenty of story opportunities. Conan is a character easily defined. He's a strong and cunning barbarian. His world is like our own antiquity, and is connected to it with just enough historical names to make it believable. Magic works in Conan's world, but it is a rare thing, thus maintaining our willing auspension of disbelief. Oh, and naturally, thanks to his creator's imagination, we know that Conan had several careers rife with possibilities: he was a thief in exotic eastern cities, he was a kozak like the characters of Harold Lamb, he was a pirate, he was a scout à la James Fennimore Cooper, he was a king... that's a lot of material! No need to find convoluted ways to get rid of his marriage, to make him lose his company, to deprive him of his powers or to break his back to keep him fresh... From the get go, it was understood that the characters had decades of adventures in him, wearing different hats. Simplicity, simplicity. For the comic-book readers of the 80s, I think Conan's appeal relied a lot on his strength, his no-nonsense attitude and his fatalistic artitude. He was like Rambo, like Wolverine, like the Punisher, all characters that resonated with that generation. He was also one of the few non-superhero characters still active in those days... That might explain some of his appeal. Apparently, judging from the letters page, Conan readers in the 80s also like books like Savage Tales, the 'Nam, Se,per Fi and the like. The movies helped too, I'm sure. Even if I loathed what they did with the character!!M This is an excellent response to Confessor's basic and just question. I'll also add that we ought not forget that Conan also possessed (or possessed him) wonderful source material. The Conan yarns by Robert E. Howard are gripping and exciting tales. Even when they get to be a bit repetitive or the prose a bit to pulpish or purplish REH writes with such fury and ferocity that he draws you into his world and transports out of the modern drear, quickening the reader with something elemental and primal, something that we may have forgotten was buried within us. And so even if we comic readers have not ever read REH I think Conan (of course Paul there are great exceptions such as yourself) catches the submerged dreams, moods and memories of many. It itches something that modernity, even if we know it is naught but fantasy, debases. At their heart the stories, as Robert E. Howard suggests, are a means to freedom. It is, it must be admitted, mostly a male avenue of escape, and it must further be admitted to lean toward the juvenile, but is not even the boy in the man something in it itself we feel at times to be suppressed? I guiltily agree about the juvenile enjoyment of these tales! The little boy in me is indeed the target for the Howard tales, and I don't mind it one bit!  I like your point about the primal and elemental aspect of Conan's appeal. I think this aspect also holds for Tarzan. Both characters eventually let slip the trappings of civilizations to solve problems in a most direct way, the way our animal nature would push us to do. It's no wonder that both men are also very comfortable in the forest, since they are far closer to nature than our more civilized upbringings would allow us to be. I admit I envied Tarzan sleeping in the jungle canopy as a kid, just as I admired Conan's ability to simply sleep on the ground wherever he was. (Wasn't thinking of mosquitoes, of course). Such primeval strength was something to be admired! |
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Post by benday-dot on Oct 12, 2015 21:31:25 GMT -5
I like your point about the primal and elemental aspect of Conan's appeal. I think this aspect also holds for Tarzan. Both characters eventually let slip the trappings of civilizations to solve problems in a most direct way, the way our animal nature would push us to do. It's no wonder that both men are also very comfortable in the forest, since they are far closer to nature than our more civilized upbringings would allow us to be. I admit I envied Tarzan sleeping in the jungle canopy as a kid, just as I admired Conan's ability to simply sleep on the ground wherever he was. (Wasn't thinking of mosquitoes, of course). Such primeval strength was something to be admired! Ah, I shared your Tarzan envy. And certainly so did the readers who would first have read ERB's most famous creation. Civilization and its trappings came as all too stifling in the books Victorian setting, and the call of "Into the Primitive", that was the heart of the book, came as that of liberation. On a more universal level there abides within most of I think something of an imaging of the First Man. I shall be skewered for this but one of the joys of reading the final unfinished novel of Camus Le Premier Homme (indeed the First Man) are the scenes he evokes of a boy in Algiers, the absoluteness of it. It is, under that naked Algerian sun, an exultation of physicality, sensuality and the purest freedom. It is despite the crushing poverty and the life struggle an elegy of the raw being that is the stuff of not only youth but of the the dreams of first things that keep within all of us. There... I scandalously managed to connect Conan and Camus! Two things I love! |
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Post by berkley on Oct 13, 2015 4:19:43 GMT -5
If I understand what benday-dot is saying, I experienced something related when, after a few years of trying various post-Tolkien fantasy books, I read the Lattimore translation of the Iliad. It hadn't made much impression on me when we'd read an abridged prose version in school a few years earlier but this time it hit me like a ton of bricks, I think partly because of the contrast with the ostensibly similar things I'd been reading previously. For a long time afterwards almost anything modern, not only fantasy but hard-boiled thrillers and so on felt somehow trite and posturing.
Everything in the Iliad felt so incredibly intense. The blazing sun (is this a common factor with Camus's First Man, which I haven't read?) beat down on a scene comforted by no illusions. There was life and there was death, there was stark fear and desperate courage, there was intelligence and there was blindness, there was sickeningly brutal and yet hypnotic violence, there was even human bonding and love - and subtle variations on all of these - always presented in all their starkness, with no comfort.
On the contrary, you never knew which of them would be visited upon you: because all these things were personified in the form of gods that were an embodiment of the deeply unsettling idea that they were so random and unpredictable that the only way to make sense of them was to ascribe them to the whim of unapproachable beings with minds and agendas of their own. The bravest hero can be seized with terror, the fastest runner can stumble and fall, the surest archer can miss his mark, the wisest hero can make a stupid decision - because the will of the gods is ultimately unfathomable.
Anyway, I think a character like Conan might have tapped into a faint echo of something like that for some people, depending on when, in relation to their other reading, they first got into it. I admit that for me, after the Iliad, REH (I was already a fan) didn't seem much different from Tolkien to me. But this was just in the immediate aftershock. I was eventually able to regain my ability to enjoy REH and Tolkien (if not his imitators) and hard-boiled, etc. But I've never forgotten that experience.
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Post by benday-dot on Oct 13, 2015 20:25:26 GMT -5
Very good berk. I quite agree The Iliad is a work of unparalleled potency. The Epic of Gilgamesh is another of the ancient poems the primal nature of which I find myself enthralled to.
The work of REH is hardly in the league of the Iliad or Gilgamesh, but what sets it apart is its chief character's indifference, indeed contempt,of the gods. Even his own god Crom, Conan acknowledges is a cruel and uncaring being, the supplication of which is much of a waste of time. For all his melancholy and often stoicism Conan finds fatalism as false as zeal. It's all useless. A man only has himself in the end.The ancient Greeks never were able to muster such contempt of the supernal forces that would hold humanity at their whims. In this sense Conan was a much more modern creation in his envisioning, almost Nietzschean, in his self-prescription.
I do find that part of the appeal... this character at odds with modernity, but at the same time so much a product of it.
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Post by berkley on Oct 14, 2015 4:48:30 GMT -5
Very good berk. I quite agree The Iliad is a work of unparalleled potency. The Epic of Gilgamesh is another of the ancient poems the primal nature of which I find myself enthralled to. The work of REH is hardly in the league of the Iliad or Gilgamesh, but what sets it apart is its chief character's indifference, indeed contempt,of the gods. Even his own god Crom, Conan acknowledges is a cruel and uncaring being, the supplication of which is much of a waste of time. For all his melancholy and often stoicism Conan finds fatalism as false as zeal. It's all useless. A man only has himself in the end.The ancient Greeks never were able to muster such contempt of the supernal forces that would hold humanity at their whims. In this sense Conan was a much more modern creation in his envisioning, almost Nietzschean, in his self-prescription. I do find that part of the appeal... this character at odds with modernity, but at the same time so much a product of it. This is a misreading of the Iliad and of the ancient Greeks, I feel - that is, if you're equating REH's Crom with the gods of Hesiod and Homer. I see REH's Crom as more of a stand-in for the only god Howard had ever really experienced - in the sense of having been born and brought up in that religious environment - the Judaeo-Christian god, or "God", notwithstanding the obvious but (IMO) superficial differences between REH's fictional polytheism and monotheistic Judaeo-Christianity. REH's system replicates Biblical theology in ascribing to each "race" its own representative deity, though they don't as far as I recall take part in the battles between the nations. It's difficult for us moderns, we Christians, to get our heads around this basic difference, but think back to the Iliad: are there separate pantheons of Trojan and Achaean gods who wage a parallel war on behalf of the nations who worship only them and deny all foreign divinities? No. There's just the gods. Some might be on your side and some mght be against you, but it's the same gods, no matter which side of the fight you're on. Try to step outside our Judaeo-Christian world-view and think about that. I agree that Conan's "contempt of the supernal forces that would hold humanity at their whims" is one of the attractive aspects of the character but the word "would" in your phrase gives the game away: they would if they could, they will if they can (treat people like playthings). This can only refer to human, political or socio-economic power, for which God or the gods are only a convenient symbol. Yes, it is right to have contempt for such contingent, ultimately human power, even if we have no practical escape from it - because it is an imposition But you cannot rationally have contempt for the basic facts of reality: you cannot rationally have contempt for the law of gravity that will kill you if you don't pay attention to where you place your next step as you walk along the edge of a cliff. That, in a crude way, is what the Homeric gods have always seemed to me to represent: the most basic, unavoidable aspects of the universe, of reality itself, which must always be distinguished from man-made "laws", much as their makers would have us believe they are as eternal and unbreakable as the laws of physics. |
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Post by benday-dot on Oct 16, 2015 22:11:30 GMT -5
I made my point poorly I guess. I was definitely not equating Crom with the classical gods of antiquity, and I don't think REH was either, Neither do I think Conan's (or Howard's) conception of "the creator" in his fiction is in any way "a stand-in" for the Christian god. If anything Crom is much anterior to classical Greece-roman notions of the divine (or even of the period of the Iliad which depending on your definition of classical in any event predates the Greece of Hellenistic Athens or Pax Romana) . The stories of Conan, or its religious elements, have more in common with Gilgamesh or archaic eras than they do the classical period. This is a world which oddly enough, the point I was making, also has more in common with the modern condition than does either the classical or the Judaeo-christian tradition, which are of a relation.
Conan was much more of an agnostic. Sure Crom or the other gods lurk somewhere, but they don't give a damn about us and neither should we them. This strikes me as exceedingly modern in its implications and certainly post-christian. And of course nothing to do with the rather vexatious relationship the Homeric gods had with humankind.
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Post by benday-dot on Oct 16, 2015 22:22:10 GMT -5
But you cannot rationally have contempt for the basic facts of reality: you cannot rationally have contempt for the law of gravity that will kill you if you don't pay attention to where you place your next step as you walk along the edge of a cliff. That, in a crude way, is what the Homeric gods have always seemed to me to represent: the most basic, unavoidable aspects of the universe, of reality itself, which must always be distinguished from man-made "laws", much as their makers would have us believe they are as eternal and unbreakable as the laws of physics. But of course you can, and poets and visionaries have had, much contempt for the basic facts of reality (Newtonian gravity not excluded). This is at the heart of the existential, indeed modern, condition. The Romantics were not immune either. Perhaps too the mystic pursuit. It is of the exaltation of the irrational and the whimisical that we see modern man in revolt of both natural and scientific law. If you haven't ever yet check out the works of Dostoevsky or even Kierkegaard for an attempt (whether they succeed or not is up to the reader)to legitimize the irrational in human affairs. But by Crom we are straying afield from Roquefort's kingdom! |
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Oct 17, 2015 6:10:49 GMT -5
Hmmm... I'm not sure I see the First Blood connexion. Maybe with Rambo II, though, but First Blood is as much a social drama as it is an action flick. The first Conan flick is pure entertainment. Also, up until the end of the whell of pain scene, I'd argue that that is indeed the real Conan (and maybe some of the best ever opening 30 mn of any action/adventure movie).
I'm with Confessor there, anyways. I too often fail to see Conan as anything but a one dimensional character with repetitive adventures. Yet, as many of us, I crave the anomaly, Conan stories that would defy that general observation, because on some level, you just want good original barbarian stories (difficult task if there is!), and he's the most recognized barbarian. So all in all, I guess he's mostly the vessel of our expectations and cravings. Almost every 10 year old boy (especially the ones into comics) would love them some good heroic fantasy and would try out almost anything. Heck, I even bought a swedish monthly Conan magazine in the late 80ies, fascinated with its potential on my imagination, yet finding almost every single story within quite bland.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 17, 2015 8:17:28 GMT -5
Hmmm... I'm not sure I see the First Blood connexion. Maybe with Rambo II, though, but First Blood is as much a social drama as it is an action flick. The first Conan flick is pure entertainment. Also, up until the end of the whell of pain scene, I'd argue that that is indeed the real Conan (and maybe some of the best ever opening 30 mn of any action/adventure movie). I liked the attack on the village, too, which was really helped by Pouledoris' amazing score. But the concept that Cimmerians know how to make steel while southern countries didn't makes no sense to me. Conan's tameness at the wheel of pain was also a major no-no for me, and I think that's why young Conan in the recent movie kicked so much ass when facing the Picts (and then the Vanir): it was almost a reaction the the Milius movie! |
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