Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 31, 2014 11:40:50 GMT -5
"Once, all living things worshipped Jhebbal Sag!" "Who?""That was long ago, when beasts and men spoke one language. Men have forgotten him... and even the beasts forget. But, the few men who remember Jhebbal Sag and the beasts who remember are brothers... and speak the same tongue". Now that's a great concept, typical of Howard's amazing creativity. It's simple, but also powerful and far-reaching, like many such ideas from ancient myths and folklore tales: you could really believe that there really is such a myth in the real world (and for all I know, there might be, for there is no lack of speaking animals in folk tales from many cultures). The two men interrupt their conversation when the Cimmerian hears another beast approaching. Quickly he draws a certain symbol into the ground with his sword and explains its nature. "I saw it carved in the rock of a cave no human had visited for a million years," (...) "in the uninhabited mountains beyond the Sea of Vilayet, half a world away from this spot. Later I saw a black witch-finder of Kush scratch it in the sand of a nameless river. He told me part of its meaning – it's sacred to Jhebbal Sag and the creatures which worship him. Watch!" Once again, Howard hints at Conan's rich and varied experience, and teases us with past adventures we know nothing about. Roy would of course show us the actual scene with the witch-finder, in CtB #95. (The scene in the cavern east of the Vilayet is however only seen as flashback in that issue; it was not scene "in real time" in the early days of the Conan the barbarian comic. Would it eventually have been seen in a Savage sword issue had not Roy gone to DC comics in the 80s? I guess we'll never know). The newcomer is a black panther, and it is suitably impressed by the sign of Jhebbal Sag. I'll point out here how good John Buscema is at drawing animals: that's one nice-looking cat, right there. (I always remember how funnily bad one of my favourite artists, Steve Dillon, was at drawing cats!)
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 31, 2014 11:45:10 GMT -5
Temporarily safe, the two men realize that there is probably a massive Pictish attack in the offing, because of the reunion of so many different tribes in the village from which they fled; they have to carry the word back to Fort Tuscelan. They make their way back toward the river when they are ambushed by a warring party, and manage to hold their own. They finally steal a canoe and cross the river. Making their way toward the fort they encounter a dog, Slasher, whose master was killed a while before; the mutt is well-known for having killed many Picts in the event and to have gone feral since then. Here he quickly befriends Balthus. The trio arrives too late at the fort, which is already under attack; unable to really help, Conan and Balthus head east, intent on warning as many settlers as possible and get them to run toward Thunder River and the stronger town of Velitrium. On the way, they find a settler's ox-cart which was attacked by a few advanced raiders; foolishly, the Picts wasted time torturing the traveling Aquilonian and set their cart on fire; the light will help warn other settlers, further east, that something is amiss. Conan, Balthus and Slasher, enraged at this sight of wanton cruelty, throw themselves at the raiders and kill them all. Grimly, they resume their journey when they encounter a fork in the road; the way north shows that wagons passed that way not so long ago. Reasoning that those must be settlers going to the licks after salt, Conan decides that they have to split: he wil go after those wagons while Balthus continues east to alert the people along the road. In the first house Balthus encounters, the young man finds a woman who's quite ready to barricade the place and show the Picts what's what; she intends to wait for her man who's gone away looking for salt. Hearing that Conan will look after her husband, she's reassured (the Cimmerian is well-known in those parts) ans she and her children make off with the family's horse. Balthus soon realizes that they're not making good enough time and he remains behind to slow the Picts down. He and Slasher give a good account of themselves and their last stand is truly an epic moment.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 31, 2014 11:52:15 GMT -5
Meanwhile, Conan finds the missing men and sends them toward Velitrium, reassuring them that his partner has already warned their families of the coming Pictish invasion. He is however kept back by a voice coming from the woods: it seems to be Balthus calling for help! It turns out to be the forest devil from last issue. The devil is Zogar Sag's mystical brother, for the Pict was born of a woman who slept in a grove sacred to Jhebbal Sag (explaining where Zogar Sag's powers came from). The devil claims that he was summoned by the Pict and that they are now one, tied by invisible bonds. In the ensuing fights, the creature's talons rip through Conan's mail short as if it were cloth, but luckily its body proves to be quite decapitatable. The story ends as Conan and another soldier discuss in a Velitrium tavern: the Picts have taken Fort Tuscelan, and although they retreated back beyond Black River it looks as if Conajohara is lost to the Aquilonians. What stopped the Picts, it turns out, was the sudden death of the wizard Zogar Sag; as describes the soldier, who witnessed the scene: "Strange! He took no wounds, and was dancing among the slain, coming at me with his red axe... when he suddenly screamed... and fell into the fire! No weapon had touched him... yet there were red marks on his leg and belly, and his head had been almost severed from his body!" The mystical link between the wizard and the forest devil proved to be his doom. The story concludes with one of Howard's most famous, and most-often quoted lines about civilization and barbarism. Truly a superior tale, and the adaptation here was quite well-done. There is a great depth to this yarn, both in pseudo-historical and pseudo-mythical terms; really world-building at its best, making the tale atemporal and always fresh. Notes: - During a conversation, Conan mentions he's been a mercenary captain, a corsair, a kozak, a penniless thief. This gives a few ideas as to where in the chronology this adventure takes place. (Conan also mentions his eventual desire to become king of a civilized country)! Conan is about 39 in this story, according to the Marvel chronology. - Jhebbal Sag's sign must be drawn in a certain order if it is to work; so don't rely on it if you go hiking in the Rockies. - It's dangerous for women to fall asleep in a Robert E. Howard story. As you'll recall, the mother of Tsotha-Lanti (and his brother Laza-Lanti) fell asleep on Dagoth Hill and mothered two demon-spawned kids, as seen in SSoC #30 and CtB #45. - A sequel to this story would see print in SSoC #46; a few more tales of Conan as a scout in the Westermark would be seen in later years. A recurrent Pictish opponent named Shooz Dinj would also eventually be introduced.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 31, 2014 12:01:03 GMT -5
Conan the syndicatedArticle on the Conan syndicated newspaper strip, which was to be scripted by Roy Thomas and drawn by John Buscema. A noble attempt, but the era of daily adventure strips was definitely waning. The great Tarzan daily had ceased being produced in 1972; could Conan succeed where the lord of the jungle failed? The Conan movie, already being rumoured, might have given the strip more visibility; and certainly quality was not an issue (Roy and John being great creators). This particular attempt came after the creation of syndicated strips featuring Spider-man (still ongoing!) and Howard the duck (1977-1978). These strips have been reprinted by Dark Horse in a hardcover edition.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 31, 2014 12:06:17 GMT -5
Shadow of the white wolfarticle by Fred Blosser Review of the hardcover book Son of the white wolf, from FAX Collectors Edition in Oregon. This is an El Borak book, abundantly illustrated. It looks good, but after the book "Swords of Shahrazar" this reader can only think (perhaps a little unfairly) "this isn't Kaluta..." The readers' Robert E. HowardA portfolio of unsolicited art sent by fans to the magazine. Some of these look pretty darn good! One of the contributors is Jeff Easley, who I think did a lot of work for Dungeon & Dragons guide, but my personal favborite is this one, by Ixan Saxby from Florida. Really nice work, and an original vision.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2014 15:03:49 GMT -5
I have that Dark Horse collection of the strips, but haven't read it. I was a bit miffed when the copy I ordered from Amazon came misbound (the cover is upside down and backwards compared to the pages within, so it opens to the last page not the first and the page is upside down if the cover is rightside up). I've flipped through it, and it looks interesting, but sometimes reading daily strips can be a trying experience, so I haven't dove into that one yet.
-M
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 31, 2014 15:29:59 GMT -5
I have that Dark Horse collection of the strips, but haven't read it. I was a bit miffed when the copy I ordered from Amazon came misbound (the cover is upside down and backwards compared to the pages within, so it opens to the last page not the first and the page is upside down if the cover is rightside up). I've flipped through it, and it looks interesting, but sometimes reading daily strips can be a trying experience, so I haven't dove into that one yet. -M I heard there were several of those mis-bound books. My own copy is bound the proper way but is missing one strip between pages 32 and 33; Dark Horse made it available on their website for chagrined readers to print. The stories are all right, although only the first adventure is drawn by John Buscema (pencils and inks). Ernie Chan follows, and if I recall correctly later on it was Alfredo Alcala who handled the art (but that's not seen in the Dark Horse book, which is titled "volume 1"). They agreed with the Marvel continuity at the time, and had a guest appearance by Red Sonja and a cameo of Bêlit. And naturally, since Roy wrote them, the geography and history of the Hyborian age was used properly. Not the best Conan comics available, but far better than the inter-regnum stuff typical of the '80s Conan. The strip as reprinted by Dark Horse notably adapts a story that had previously been seen in the Power Records book/record combos ("Crawler in the mists") and a Robert Howard non-Conan yarn, "the voice of El-Il". In the first case, replacing the Buscema-Neal Adams art by that of Ernie Chan is not an improvement. In the latter, I preferred the other Conan adaptation of the same tale that we eventually saw in CtB #263. A later stroyline adapts "Wolfshead", which had been a Kull story in Kull the conqueror #8, in 1973 (and was a non-Conan, non-Kull story by Howard long before that).
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Post by benday-dot on Aug 31, 2014 18:02:27 GMT -5
The children of Jhebbal SagScript by Roy Thomas Art by John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga Concluding the adaptation of the Conan story Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard. What a terrific splash that is. It really captures well the scenario of primeval battle in which Conan oft finds himself. I also always liked that sort of stipple effect with which DeZuniga used to embellish his work. I think Howard himself had a special affinity for stories featuring the Picts. As Celtic aboriginals he signaled out the Pict foe being that elemental man of wilderness and purity. But what a fate of indignity and wretchedness awaited them! The image of the Pictish nation was now one of a great and roiling tribe of sub-humans, savage and beastly in all respects. There is a melancholy to their story, a once proud and powerful race, which only the misfortune of history cast back into the shadow worlds, a vile demi-monde to make even a course barbarian recoil in loathing.
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Post by benday-dot on Aug 31, 2014 18:23:10 GMT -5
Once again, Howard hints at Conan's rich and varied experience, and teases us with past adventures we know nothing about. Roy would of course show us the actual scene with the witch-finder, in CtB #95. (The scene in the cavern east of the Vilayet is however only seen as flashback in that issue; it was not scene "in real time" in the early days of the Conan the barbarian comic. Would it eventually have been seen in a Savage sword issue had not Roy gone to DC comics in the 80s? I guess we'll never know). Seeing that image again really brings me, rather embarrassingly, back to a time when I was much younger and very taken with the lore and richness of ancient symbol, arcane sign and secret device. Hieroglyphics used to be a great fascination with me. Thus, I recall how much I just loved that panel in CtB #95 when that esoteric design was shown in all it's particulars. How cool it was that Roy and John didn't just mention the symbol, but took care to illustrate it in all all occult mystery. I was, and still am, an avid hiker of the forests and woods, (nothing too extreme, just local ambles), and I confess that after having first read that Conan story, and perfectly committed to memory the intricacies of that symbol, I, during the course of my next forest stroll and imagining myself in possession of great and ancient secrets, etched the pattern several times upon the earth and onto the face of several great rocks along the way. Who knows, maybe there are remnants of some of those drawings still to be discerned to this day?
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 31, 2014 18:35:35 GMT -5
That's very cool, b-d! I wonder how I would have reacted upon encountering Jhebbal Sag's symbol in the Canadian wilderness!
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Post by berkley on Aug 31, 2014 23:57:13 GMT -5
I don't remember this issue of SSoC at all, so either it never made its way onto the shelves of the local drugstores or I decided not to buy it for some reason. The latter is possible, since I was never a huge fan of Tony DeZuniga's inks and actively disliked Bob Larkin's covers, but my memory tells me that it was a year or so later when I began to see some deterioration in the quality of SSoC in general and became a little more choosy in which issues I bought. Also, I don't recognise this Larkin cover at all, so I think I probably never saw it in the stores at the time. I might have to look for the back issue - DeZuniga's inks look a little better to me now after all these years, though I still wouldn't count myself a fan, and the story sounds like a good one.
I agree with RR and benday-dot about how appropriate the grittiness of DeZuniga's style was to Conan stories, but at the same time it always looked a little sketchy and sort of half-finished to me, at least in SSoC. That and a certain lack of depth and contrast always took me out of the story a bit, in contrats to the richness of detail and texture in a BWS or an Alcala story that made me feel I was immersed in a strange new world.
I wonder how John Buscema felt about DeZuniga's inks? Still not all that close to Buscema's own style but much more so than Alcala, and I wonder if he preferred him or any other of his regular inkers over the others.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 6, 2014 10:37:02 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #28, april 1978The cover by Earl Norem, basically depicting a scene from this issue's story, inserts a lady who's nowhere to be seen inside the covers. I'm not complaining, mind you! She just seems particularly tall in this image, considering that she's in the background: that's one lady who could put Conan in his place, I'm sure. This issue's tale is so long (59 pages!!!) that there is no need for a table of contents, since there's only that story, a single page advertising some Moondance Productions products and a one-page article about how a Red Sonja cosplayer was asked to leave the Boston Globe Book Festival unless she put some more clothes on. Savage sword of Conan had, for its first 27 issues, been a stellar success as far as I'm concerned. The stories were of different lengths, the artists changed from time to time, the back-up features were quite varied, and altogether you could never call an issue boring. This time? Welllllllll... Any run must have a low point somewhere, right? Not that the recipe wasn't good: Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala adapting a modern-world Robert E. Howard story into a Conan adventure? That should have worked! Especially since so much space was allowed to develop the plot! But alas, Howard himself sometimes wrote for a paycheck. This is a very minor effort, a straightfowrad and very unmemorable adventure yarn. Furthermore, it's entirely located in the desert and in rocky hills; there's very little there for the artists to make the backgrounds exciting! We also get a variation of the Alcala fine line method of inking: here he also uses zip-tones. Sometimes it works (as with this splash page), sometimes no so much. The plot goes like this: a man named Alwazir, a friend of Conan's who has apparently found spiritual enlightenment, has left his worldly riches behind and retired to the life of a hermit in the desert. With him disappeared fabulous jewels called the Blood of the Gods, and a few bandits believe that Alwazir has kept them with him in his desert retreat. They manage to extract the location of Alwazir's hiding place from a desert guide, but Conan learns of their endeavour and rides to warn his friend. He has a brush with desert raiders, loses his horse and has to walk a good part of the way, almost dying of thirst before he reaches the stony hills where the old man has found refuge. Conan does find a cavren that's clearly been occupied until recently, but Alwazir is nowhere to be seen. The Cimmerian intends to spend the night in the cavern, but in the dark is attacked by some kind of wild man. The creature turns out to be Alwazir himself, grown much taller and stronger, and apparently quite mad. Conan manages to subdue him and to attach him to a stone pillar, wondering if it's possible to get the man to recover his wits. The duo is joined by one of the bandits from the story's beginning (he apparently disposed of his accomplices!) but before he and Conan can come to blows, they have to face an attack by desert raiders: friends of the ones Conan faced earlier. A siege ensues with several attacks, and during a nightly assault the raiders come face to face with an unfettered Alwazir who scares the hell away from them, sending the whole gang running back toward the desert. Conan and his temporary ally then attack one another, leading to the latter's demise. The giant Alwazir, who was hit on the head during these shenanigans, then comes back to his senses; he explains that it is probably the local water that turned him into a crazy giant. He also sadly notes that all these people died for nothing for he does not have the blood of the gods: considering these jewels cursed because of the greed they generated, he threw them into the sea months before. Nothing much to say about the art; it's all right, but neither John's nor Alfredo's best effort. Here's a page where we can see how the zip-tone sometimes makes the art look muddier. (It also features a funny-looking, exasperated desert chief! Notes: - This is a desert story set shortly after the disbanding of the Zuagirs that Conan led for a while; the Cimmerian is around 31 at this time.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 6, 2014 10:43:57 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #29, May 1978Cover by Ernie Chan. This issue has a special theme: " the fabulous females of swords-and-sorcery!"Table of contents: Child of sorcery, an original Conan tale Conan's ladies, a portfolio by Bruce Patterson and several inkers The Bullpen's Robert E. Howard, another portfolio The Red Sonja show, a comic about the play featuring Frank Thorne and several versions of Red Sonja Gil Kane provides a great frontispiece with Conan and Sonja, which he inked himself. It's classic Kane Conan.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 6, 2014 11:26:45 GMT -5
Child of sorceryScript by Roy Thomas, from a storyline by Christy Marx Art by Ernie Chan This is a very interesting concept for a story. Dixit Roy in his introduction: This is pretty cool. We had had a few Conan adventures where the main point-of-view character wasn't Conan himself for most of the action (Amalric from "the horror from the red tower" and Balthus from "beyond the Black River") but never had it been the love interest of the tale, never had it to such an extent, and never had the narrator had to deal with... *ahem*... a certain type of repercussions. Because yes, in this tale we meet for the very first time a child of Conan's. Congratulations, Cimmerian! It's a girl! Pretty lass, isn't she? The tale is told in flashback. Our heroine is at the head of a monastery, and she's the mother of a young woman whom she is said to have conceived with a god during a trance. As the tale begins, the daughter has been caught seeing a man, an outsider, with whom she would like to go away; the sisters of the Order are aghast. The mother talks to her daughter privately, and realizing that the young one is clearly in love she decides to reveal to her her true heritage. Twenty years before, our heroine was headstrong a bit arrogant, and a magician of some talent. One night, a visitor arrived at the monastery and asked for the sisters' hospitality. Finding her desirable, the man (who turned out to be a powerful wizard himself), abducted her and took her to his distant tower, astride a magical creature. Sending an ectoplasmic version of herself for help, the lady found a lone Cimmerian wanderer within running distance of the tower; she persuaded him to come to her aid. The wizard realized that a smelly brute was coming to take his prize away, so he summoned monster after monster, who all got chopped to pieces. As he was busy with this task, he didn't see his captive pull out three strands of her long hair and turning them magically into a strong rope that she, Rapunzell-like, hoped Conan could climb to the top of the tower. It took some more monster-slaying, but Conan did show himself equal to the task and he finally skewered the enemy. A bit later, as Conan and the girl were resting near a fire in the mountains, they found that all this excitement has stirred their young blood and went all Desdemona and Othello on each other. In the morning, nearing the monastery, Conan declined the lady's offer of rich rewards. He wanted her to forget the stultifying life of a nun that awaited her, and invited her instead to roam the world with him. She was tempted but asked if, come what may, she would always find him by her side for as long as they lived, to which Conan answered that he couldn't promise that. And so they parted, and it is only later that our heroine found out she was with child. She made up some story about how she had destroyed the wizard on her own using her sorcery and about how, a few weeks later and back at the monastery, a god had lain with her in a vision (explaining her daughter's eventual birth). The daughter is allowed to go away with her young lover, and her mother remains at the monastery, thinking that one day she will leave and travel north, hoping to see her one-time lover again. The story was unusual, and it was pretty cool to see how Conan affects the life of the ladies he meets. Clearly, he's not one to readily form long-term relationships. I personally find his little justification speech just plain wrong, but then not everyone shares the same opinions on everything: "You asked me "forever" and "always". What man can promise you that? If he does, he's a liar". What's wrong with forever and always? Those words should not be used lightly, I agree, but to claim that they cannot be used truthfully is pretty cynical... and untrue. Conan would have been more honest had he said "look, girl, I like you and the sex was great, but I don't know you all that well. I don't think we're ready for a committed relationship after a one-night thing, y'know"? Certainly not chivalrous, perhaps, but honest. And I would have understood her turning the offer down, because I don't think she was ready for the world outside -and certainly not on her own, should the Cimmerian decide that he'd had enough of the relationship. Oh, we never learn the lady's name. The daughter is Râ Morgana, though, and I would have like her to be reused in a later tale... over the years, Conan had several children; it would have been fun to have an adventure where a sorceror manages to abduct them all for his own nefarious reasons. There's Râ Morgana, there's another daughter (unnamed) he had with a warrior-lady named Tanya the fox (SSoC #77), there's his son Conobar whom he had with Ursla the bear priestess (CtB #145), there's Kang-Sho he had with a Khitan woman he rescued from a dragon (CtK #25-26), there's the kids he had from Queen Zenobia (Conn, Taurus and Radegund), and in the pastiche novel "Conan the great" we learn he's also had a son by princess Yasmela, Armiro, although that story was not adapted in SSoC.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 6, 2014 11:31:37 GMT -5
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