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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 21, 2014 11:40:24 GMT -5
Uncle Crom wants you
An article by Don and Maggie Thompson, who tell us of The Hyborian Legion, a fan club/literary association that meant to be to Conan what the Baker Street Irregulars were to Sherlock Holmes. Important members included people like Martin Greenberg, owner of Gnome Press; John D. Clark, he of "An Outline of Conan's Career" fame; L. Sprague de Campand Poul Anderson. The article is illustrated by the John Buscema pic seen above, and by the covers of the books The Conan Reader, The Conan Swordbook and The Conan Grimoire, which collected articles from the fan publication Amra.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 21, 2014 11:44:53 GMT -5
A chronology of the Conan comicsAn article by Jim Neal, who does to the Marvel Conan series what Clark and Miller did for the Weird Tales stories. And in the exact same format too, which is a very nice touch! Roy Thomas would do the same thing again, more than a decade later, in the pages of Conan Saga (and a heartfelt thank you to fellow poster jbruel, who very kindly forwarded Roy's chronology to me!) This feature contains a Conan sketch by John Buscema, a sketch that, for no particular reason I can identify, always struck me as an excellent interpretation. This having been published in 1978, the chronology perforce ends a bit early; around CtB #75 in fact.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 21, 2014 12:19:27 GMT -5
Day of the red judgementScript by Roy Thomas and Christy Marx Artwork by Howard Chaykin This Red Sonja story has an unusual look, a very artistic feel; the colours are very much in the same tones and the whole thing is quite distinct from a typical American comic-book from the 70s. I don't think it was all that well-received, but it was really ahead of its time. The story is a welcome correction to Sonja's backstory. As you'll recall, Red Sonja was introduced in the Conan universe when Roy adapted the historical story "The shadow of the vulture" into a Conan story, in CtB #23. Red Sonya of Rogatino, a hard-drinking, hard-fighting and loudly-swearing warrior woman from Russia, was turned into the Hyrkanian she-devil we know. Initially, she was a woman who wanted to live the life of a soldier; she had no particular "origin" story. Unfortunately (as far as I'm concerned), that would later change and we would learn how Sonja had been a helpless farm girl whose family was murdered by ruffians, and who herself was raped and left to die in a burning house. (Why, oh why did every heroine in comics have to go through a similar ordeal in those days?) Then, a red goddess had appeared and granted her special martial skills and strength which would be hers as long as she didn't take a man as her lover unless he had managed to defeat her in battle. Ugh. Her well-known line about "no man's lips shall touch mine..." used to be a playful quip, a kind of challenge to the randy boys whom she liked to tease and then embarrass thanks to her actual prowess. I liked that kind of bravado in a female character, because we rarely (if ever!) saw the like. But with the origin story, it became an actual binding vow, part of a magical trick that artificially gave Sonja her "super-powers". Even worse: the vow was often presented as some kind of binding clause, according to which she had to have sex with the first dude who could beat her. I thought it was pretty childish (not to mention pretty sexist) compared to the simpler version of a tough girl who wanted the same things that the boys took for granted: freedom, respect and the right to decide who would eventually deserve her affections. Here the origin story, although not unmade, gets an added layer of complexity that restores some dignity to Sonja as an individual. Revisiting the ruins of her old home, she wanders off into a mountainous country where she finds a hidden cavern as easily as if she had always known it was there. Hidden away beyond a series of vast tunnels, she finds a city peopled by red haired warriors who capture her. She is accused of being "the pale-skinned destroyer", whose birth in their midst had been foretold by their red goddess a long time ago, and who is supposed to lead them to glory and utter destruction. Sonja is told that when she was born, she was taken away from the city, to be eaten by the carnivorous great apes who haunt these mountains and with whom these people are in a constant state of war. Apparently, due to the unclear intervention of one of their number (named Zora), baby Sonja survived and was raised by a family of brown-haired Hyrkanian farmers. Sonja would call bullshit on those stories, except that when she sees the red goddess of these people, she realizes that it is the very same one who gave her her "Red Sonja powers". As the Red haired people get ready to slay Sonja, Zora jumps to her side. Just then, the great apes attack the place, and everyone (save Sonja) run to protect the city. The She-devil with a sword remains with the statue of the red goddess, in her great temple; she demands to know the truth about her roots. The voice of the goddess resounds in her head, and hers is a dreadful message indeed: Speak not to me, Red Sonja, lest I grind you beneath my sacred heel!
Do you refuse to understand the call that brought you here? It was my voice... calling you home!
Know this: you have always been what you are. I did not give you power: I merely removed your shackles. It was my will that kept you weak and weaponless in the land of humans... My will that kept the native skill from your hands... My will that you should see those you loved die, and feel your body abused by rough men.
You are my weapon, tempered with waiting, anger and denial... and at last forged with fire and pain. Go to your people! Lead them to glory! Smite your enemies!So, the red goddess is another divine sick bastard. Understandably outraged, Sonja smashes the statue with a heavy ball and chain. Surprise! The temple wall on which the statue was resting collapses, revealing another temple beyond; a black one instead of red, and hosting an apish version of the goddess. The two-faced, two-timing divinity was playing both the red haired warriors and the great apes against one another! Sonja goes all ninja on the apes, leading the red-haired ones to their version of Götterdämmerung, and she barely escapes the collapse of the entire mountainscape with a wounded Zora, many of her questions still unresolved. That story would be continued in what should have been a Marvel Super Special starring Red Sonja, but ended up as a limited series (where she at last traded her iron bikini for something more practical). Much to my chagrin, the revelations in this tale did not have repercussions down the line: as I read it, Sonja's vow should now have been seen as worthless as far as her skills are involved. She might still have decided never to get close to a guy who hadn't defeated her in battle, if that was her choice, but it shouldn't have had any impact on her prowess either way. That's however not how future writers decided to proceed (nor even Roy himself, in CtB #115).
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Post by berkley on Sept 23, 2014 19:42:27 GMT -5
SSoC 28 is another cover I don't recognise and I would have bought any issue with Alcala, even if he wasn't using my favourite of his various inking styles, so I'm pretty sure that this too didn't make it to our local stands. Story sounds interesting again - I agree that Conan's daughter sounds like a good character that I would have liked to see more of.
Speaking of Conan's attitude to women and general behaviour, I just finished reading War and Peace for the first time and there's a supporting character (one of many - a cast of hundreds!) in there named Dolokhov who struck me while I was reading the book as a good example of how a Conan-type character might appear to us if he appeared in modern times - in this case, of course, the Napoleonic era, which is removed from our times by more than a hundred years, but is still much closer to us in mentality than a Conan would be. He's described in the editor's list of characters as a "[Russian] officer and desperado". I won't give any specifics but the reader - and the other characters within the book generally regard him with fascination, even admiration at times, but also with fear and some horror.
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Post by berkley on Sept 23, 2014 21:01:52 GMT -5
As in every King Conan story, the Cimmerian faces an attempted coup; You know, it occurs to me that if Conan and Kull had been actual historical figures, historians would probably have to describe their reigns as remarkably unstable for this very reason - and hence might possibly regard them as weak rulers. Then again, of course, most historical rulers never had to contend with conspiracies fomented by evil wizards or secret races of lizard-men!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 24, 2014 6:17:50 GMT -5
As in every King Conan story, the Cimmerian faces an attempted coup; You know, it occurs to me that if Conan and Kull had been actual historical figures, historians would probably have to describe their reigns as remarkably unstable for this very reason - and hence might possibly regard them as weak rulers. Conan's main problem when it comes to legitimacy is that he was himself a usurper, and remained unmarried and without an heir for quite a few years. Let's add to that that his main support appears to have been from the people (and elite) of Poitain, a fairly recent addition to Aquilonia, with an independent streak... Conan might have been seen by his subjects as the king of a minority, and one who could be suitably replaced by a proper Aquilonian. The mood changes in the course of the three King Conan stories: the popular unrest and resentment seen in The Phoenix On The Sword has abated in The Scarlet Citadel, wherein Conan's rough charm seems to be preferable to Arpello's foreign-backed tyranny, and in The Hour Of The Dragon it looks as if Conan's status as a legendary warrior king is well on its way to be accepted by all his subjects. Your mention of Dostoyevsky is very interesting and reminds me of how much Gogol's Taras Bulba is also pretty Conan-like in some aspects: more in the gigantic mirth than in the gigantic melancholies field, but still.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 27, 2014 8:22:25 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #31, July 1978
A painted cover by Howard Chaykin! The cover features an infamous typo: fiends of the flame knife somehow became friends of the flame knife! It still works, however, even if it "friends" is not quite as bloodthirsty as some other terms might have been. The contents of this issue are quickly listed: the first part of a two-part Conan story, and the second part of the gazetteer of the Hyborian age.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 27, 2014 9:39:20 GMT -5
The flame knife
Script by Roy Thomas Art by John Buscema and Tony deZuniga
Adapting the novella The Flame Knife, which saw print in the classic Lancer paperback Conan the wanderer. It is the conanization, by L. Sprague deCamp, of a Robert E. Howard story starring his desert adventurer El Borak: Three-bladed doom.
When I first read the Conan paperbacks, I didn't notice the difference between what was a "real" Conan story and what was a conanized tale or even a pastiche. I didn't quite get the hostility that some fans felt toward anything but "pure" Howard stories; at the most, I didn't understand why de Camp had felt it necessary to edit Howard's prose. With the passage of time and having now read pretty much every Howard story (the good as well as the bad) that ever saw print, I understand the purists' views much better. And I'm not just saying that because it's trendy to dislike deCamp; I think the man's Lest darkness fall and the gnarly man are very good indeed. But when it comes to Conan, something is clear: deCamp's meddling was rarely, if ever, successful. Furthermore, it smacked of a deep disrespect for Howard as an author and as an individual. (deCamp never shied from giving his amateurish psychoanalytic opinion of Howard, describing him as an emotionally and mentally imbalanced individual, an opinion which is not borne out by the fact. Sure, Howard had his quirks, as can be deduced from reading his extensive correspondence. But he was no more imbalanced than any other strong-opinioned person with a romantic soul).
The conanized stories often share two aspects: the introduction of a female character and that of some supernatural element that usually sticks out like a sore thumb. I find that they also present a Conan with a slightly altered personality (even if I'm willing to grant that this is a pretty subjective point on my part). The Conan written by Howard is a guy who can be brutal and self-serving, up to the point of committing cold-blooded murder, but in all circumstances he's someone you'd still want to be friends with. The Conan from the pastiches or the conanized tales can be that, but he also shows an unpleasant trait: he's pretentious. The Howard Conan never is. When he says things like "civilized men are crazy!" it's a bit like Obelix saying the same about the Romans, and is a frank statement of fact; it's not a devious way of saying "look at me, I'm so much superior to those feeble city men". That arrogance is what made Thongor, a sword-and-sorcery hero created by Lin Carter, so insufferable to me. I think (perhaps unfairly) that the sophisticated deCamp, who allowed himself to psychoanalyze Howard post-mortem and call him imbalanced (and who saw fit to "correct" the man's prose) put a little of himself in his version of Conan the Arrogant.
Some pastiches and conanization worked, especially the ones adapting crusader tales; but in my humble opinion, the adaptations done by Roy Thomas were far superior to the ones done by deCamp. (And Roy would never have written an abomination like "Conan and the spider-god"!)
But still, the flame knife is part of the extended Conan canon, and so... let's get to it!
The original story, three-bladed doom, is a variation on the theme of the Old Man of the Mountain, master of the assassins. Back during the days of the crusades, there was an ambitious man named Rashid ad-Din Sinan who gained control over the Hashshashin sect in Syria. Sinan relied on his fanatical followers to kill key political figures. It is said that in their impregnable mountain retreat, Alamut, the Hashshashins would spend time in magnificent gardens where they'd take dope and enjoy the company of beautiful women, to get a taste of paradise. Then they'd be sent out to murder someone, and they'd do so without holding back in order to gain the right to return to paradise. (The term hashshashinhas sometimes been described as deriving from hashish, and to be the origin of the word assassin, but as I understand it some linguists disagree. It's not my field of expertise anyway).
Howard knew about Sinan from the works of Harold Lamb, who mentioned him in the flame of Islam and used a more modern version in one of his Cossack tales. Howard himself introduced the same concept, in a modern setting, in his El Borak story. Here, in the conanized version, we get a Hyborian age equivalent of the Old Man of the Mountain, leading a sect of assassins with the goal of shaping the world via political assassination. (The garden of heaven is in there, too).
As the story begins, Conan is in Iranistan (the Hyborian age equivalent of, you guessed it, Iran). He leads the survivors of his Kozaki, who were a little while earlier beaten by Yezdigerd, king of Turan; they all currently serve as light cavalry for the king of Iranistan, Kobad Shah. Conan has just been ordered by the king to go and arrest a mountain chieftain, Balash, who happens to be one of the Cimmerian's friends; the king and the Kozak quarrel and part on bad terms. As he returns to the barracks of the Kozaki, Conan is attacked in the benighted streets of the capital but manages to escape.
The Cimmerian is explaining the situation to his second-in-command when the two men are interrupted by the arrival of Nanaia, a willful girl from the king's seraglio (deCamp steals a page from "the hour of the dragon", here) and one who's admired Conan from afar. She tells him how Kobad Shah ordered his murder, and since the Cimmerian must now leave the capital, she wants him to take her along. (It hardly seems safe to take one pretty girl along 300 rogues with a reputation for rapine and pillage, but hey). The Kozaki leave Iranistan's capital, intent on warning Balash about the king's plans.
Meanwhile, Kobad Shah is himself the victim of a murder attempt: a member of the sect of the flame knife (also called "the hidden ones") tries to stab him in his own chambers. The king is saved in extremis by a bodyguard, but is nicked by the assassin's blade. Learning of Conan's recent departure, he becomes convinced that the Cimmerian was in league with the Hidden Ones and dispatches 500 men after the Kozaki.
Up in the mountains, Conan tries to convince his friend Balash to abandon his village and and hide from Kobad Shah's impending military strike. Balash stubbornly refuses, and the discussion veers toward the strange case of a "demon" whose body has recently been discovered not too far away. Conan is shown the body, which is not a a demon's but rather a Khitan's, whose oriental features seemed alien to the hillmen. The Khitan wears the sign of the flame knife sewn on his tunic. Sensing an opportunity, Conan asks Balash to have a man lead him and a few companions to the spot the Khitan was found.
The journey leads them higher up in the mountains, where the guide abandons them after being scared by the sound of bronze trumpets that he mistakes for the voice of demons. Conan, Nanaia and their two companions make camp in a canyon. During the night they are attacked by a small troupe; one man is slain and Nanaia is abducted, leaving only Conan and his second-in-command Tubal. The two men are hard pressed to find where Nanaia has been taken, for the attackers seem to have vanished into thin air; blood stains show that they actually made use of a secret tunnel. Following it, they happen upon a hidden city! Conan sends Tubal back for help and casually surprises sentries who were playing with dice; he demands to be taken to their leader. (Luckily for him, the sentries were Zuagirs he knew from his desert days). He is taken to the city's ruler, the Magus, and tells him that he'd like to join the Hidden Ones since he's just lost his job in Iranistan.
The Magus tells Conan of how he reformed the ancient secret society of the sons of Yezm, the hidden ones. He then discovered the ruins of this city of Yanaidar and had it rebuilt to serve as the basis for his campaign of world domination. He shows Conan the "gardens of paradise" where his assassins are motivated, and concludes by stating that Conan's fate will be decided by one of the Magus's most trusted men, nicknamed "the tiger", as soon as he returns to Yanaidar.
During the night, Conan is joined by a servant girl who was supposed to find out if he was a spy but who decides to help him instead. She confirms that Nanaia was indeed captured earlier and brought to Yanaidar, and can even lead Conan to her by making use of secret passages. Conan has to kill a guard to do so, but he frees Nanaia from her cell and has her wait in the secret passage while he returns to his room and pretends to be asleep, waiting to be summoned to meet "the tiger".
The summon comes in the morning, and in the Magus's throne room he faces the so-called tiger... who is none other than his old partner-in-crime turned mortal enemy, Olgerd Vladislav. To be continued!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 27, 2014 9:45:52 GMT -5
This issue is mostly setting things up for the more action-packed finale, so it's a bit quiet. Nanaia is an interesting female character, and it's too bad we never got to see her except in this two-parter. Artwise, deZuniga's inks are very strong over John Buscema's breakdowns. Tony's gritty style fits the mountain setting, although I still think that he makes Conan look pretty old. There is a lot of zip-tones used, sometimes to excess: Conan has polka-dot hair at one point, and sometimes overlaid tones create a strange effect. Mostly the zip-tone does help give the heavily rocky backgrounds depth, though. Apart from rocks, there isn't much as far as scenery goes; the Magus's chambers do have a bit of an exotic decor, but we're far from Barry Smith's gorgeous palaces. Notes: - The Magus leads an organization that includes people from all over. He claims to be more than a mere power-hungry cult leader, but a revolutionary. - The cult uses a flame-shaped knife as its main weapon. - The flame knife cultists are said to have struck the king of Vendhya and the king of Turan. King Yildiz of Turan did die a short while ago, in the story "the road of the eagles", from undisclosed clauses; maybe he was indeed murdered by the hidden ones. It could also be that the cult murdered a previous king, a long time before this story. The king of Vendhya, whom we met in "the people of the black circle", had apparently been in place for many years; in that case, too, the assassination might have happened generations ago. It's hard to tell with a cult that goes back to the pre-cataclysmic days, according to the Magus's story. - This story takes place some time after the events from SSoC #15, adapting the devil in iron. Conan must be around 33. My guess is that after this adventure, he will travel further east into Afghulistan and Vendhya.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 27, 2014 9:52:42 GMT -5
A gazetteer of the Hyborian Age, part II by Lee Falconer.
Great resource; much more useful than the mostly wasted Official Handbook of the Conan Universebthat would see print years later. Here we go from Bahari to Frozen River, and actually learn things.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 27, 2014 14:29:48 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #32, August 1978This is the first SSoC issue I bought at the newsstand, and so it holds a special place in my heart! The cover is by Val Mayerik. The table of contents is a simple one, since all the issue is devoted to the second part of the flame knife adaptation. The story is in fact so long that the table of contents had to be placed on the inside of the front cover! The ghouls of Yanaidar is the title of this second part. Script by Roy Thomas Art by John Buscema and Tony deZuniga. While part 1 took its sweet time to set up the pieces on the chessboard, part 2 is almost all action! It starts with a staring match between Conan and Olgerd Vladislav, now known as the tiger. As you'll recall from issue #5, Olgerd Vladislav is the desert leader who "rescued" Conan from the cross he had been nailed to in the story a witch shall be born, and whom Conan had replaced as chief of the Zuagirs a few months later, crushing his sword-arm in the process. Olgerd had been sent packing, but had tried to get even with his erstwhile ally a while later in SSoC #6, in the story " the sleeper beneath the sands". Olgerd had seemingly died at the end of that particular tale, being buried alive under tons of sand and stones while being crushed by a gigantic demon's tentacles. Here he reappears alive, and with his sword hand perfectly functional; the tale of how he managed to escape his earlier grisly fate would be told in SSoC #58, in the short story " mirror of the manticore". His appearance here gives the story a lot more impact, for Olgerd is one of the few recurring enemies of Conan. The splash page is very good: Conan does look like a giant, here (unlike when someone like, say, Ernie Chan draws him), and he looks damn grim. Perhaps too old for a man of 33, but hey... he's led a tough life. As you'll recall, Conan's petition to join the Magus's forces was to be approved by the tiger... and we can now imagine how that turns out! "This man desires to join us, Olgerd" says the Magus. To which Olgerd replies: "As soon bed with a leopard! I know Conan of old. Sooner or later, he'd turn your own men against you!" In all honesty, that's probably exactly what Conan had in mind. Olgerd orders his men to grab the Cimmerian, who steals a weapon and starts slaughtering all comers. Escaping the throne room, he jumps through various windows and over several walls until he ends up outside the city wall (his fall from the great height being cushioned by the body of a Hyrkanian guard, who then protects him from arrows in pincushion fashion). Froma top the walls, Olgerd then taunts the Cimmerian: "Do you think you've escaped, fool? Go on! You will soon wish you had stayed in Yanaidar with my slayers! Farewell, dead man!" Conan quickly realizes that the ravines around the walls of Yanaidar form a maze framed by high cliffs which cannot be climbed. Coarse grey hair clinging to a few stones, giant footprints and the remains of bones that were opened for their marrow further suggest that some dangerous beast is in the maze with him. Inspecting the city wall at the foot of which he finds himself, Conan notes thin cracks that must signal the presence of a hidden door; a door that, unfortunately resists his attempts to open it. The door must be activated from inside the city, and it is likely from there that the unseen beast is fed fruit and vegetables (the scraps of which Conan also finds). As night falls, the beast shows up, and here we see a good use of the zip-a-tone: the image on the left looks almost photographic! The beast is a giant man-ape, a Hyborian abominable snowman. And just as in the story " iron shadows in the moon" (adapted in SSoC #4), Conan first damages one of its arms and then kills it with a knife.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 27, 2014 15:04:22 GMT -5
The beast now dead, Conan has no choice but to wait for someone to open the hidden door. Hours later he hears the sound of chains and bolts from inside the wall, and sees the door open a bit as a hand pushes out a platter full of vegetables (the beast's caretaker clearly has not witnessed the fight). Conan grabs the wrist of the man, decapitates him and enters the city again. I like how deZuniga uses a high contrast approach for the night scenes. This issue is one of my favorites among the ones he inked. Capturing the first isolated man he encounters, he questions him about the whereabouts of Nanaia. The fellow has no idea where the Iranistani girl might be; he was only charged to keep watch over the Zuagirs whom Conan surprised playing dice the day before, as they were supposed to stand guard, and who have been condemned to death for their negligence. Seeing an opportunity to gain allies, Conan has the guard lead him to the Zuagirs' cell. In exchange for their freedom, they agree to follow Conan against the Magus. With his new men in tow, Conan reaches the secret passage where he last saw Nanaia. She's gone, however, and since she was not in a cell next to the Zuagirs, the Cimmerian wonders where to look for her. But one of the Zuagirs points out that the Magus likes to "chastize" girls who commit faults, from time to time (because he's a dirty old bastard, but that is left unsaid). ***We interrupt the story to introduce an unrelated deCamp sub-plot*** Just then, slow drumming is heard... slow drumming that seems to come from nowhere or from the centre of the earth. Someone states that this sound is heard from time to time; it started months ago and has grown stronger over time. ***We now return to our story*** Conan and his small group sneak around the city until they reach the Magus' palace. Conan climbs an outer wall until he finds an open window, and eventually reaches the throne room where the Magus is, indeed, having Nanaia tortured. Note that this is the first time SSoC shows a bare-breasted woman so openly; this would happen from time to time for a few years until the Reagan years put a stop to it. Since SSoC was not code-approved and was marketed to a more mature audience, this was not such a big deal; nudity in SSoC was rarely inappropriate. Even if it was sometimes a bit gratuitous, it never reached the levels found in, say, Heavy Metal. As a 14 year old male reader, I didn't object one bit. (and for female readers, never fear... we would see Conan's butt a few issues down the line). Conan rescues Nanaia, slays the Magus and jumps back with her in the city's garden where he rejoins his Zuagirs; the group then retreats in a tower that turns out to be an arsenal. The Magus's men, now under the command of Olgerd, attack the tower. They are for a time kept in check by an impromptu archery exercise, but it is clear that the handful of defenders won't be able to last very long. Things get worse when a siege tower is brought in, but as Olgerd's men are about to give the final assault, they are attacked from the back by Conan's Kozaki, whom his friend Tubal had gone to get in the previous issue. A massive battle ensues! Conan faces Olgerd in single battle and finally slays him. But things get worse again as the 500 Iranistani soldiers sent by King Kobad Shah also burst upon the scene! (Remember how the king had sent them last issue to kill Conan?) Everyone fights everyone until the drumming heard earlier starts again, and signals the eruption of ghouls from the very ground! These zombie-like creatures are said to be the original residents of Yanaidar, who apparently are finding the new tenants entirely too noisy and proceed to murder them. All mortals present (sons of Yezm, Zuagirs, Kozaki and Iranistani) flee the city. Good thing that the ghouls stop at the city's limits. Catching their breath, Conan and the leader of the Iranistani agree to settle their feud by single combat, when a messenger from the capital arrives: Kobad Shah has died from the poison on the flame knife's blade, and his son has lifted the charges on Conan and Balash! No need for anyone to die anymore! Conan then remembers that he hasn't seen Nanaia in a while, and he worries that she's still trapped atop the arsenal tower, surrounded by hungry ghouls. But no! The girl reveals that she took part in the battle, disguised as a Hyrkanian soldier. Time for a little gigantic mirth! This second part had a lot more action that SSoC #31 had seen. The supernatural element feels really tacked on, but here in the comic it works better than in the conanized prose story. (Naturally, in the El Borak original, there was no supernatural element at all. There was no Nanaia either, though, which is a pity!)
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Post by benday-dot on Sept 27, 2014 18:02:13 GMT -5
If Fredric Wertham were ever to be flung back across time and space and find himself in the Hyborian world I'd like to think that in place of the shrieking girl he would find himself clad in naught but a diaper, clinging to Conan's leg in mortal terror as some giant phallic snake moves to swallow him whole.
[PS... that is some sweet DeZuniga art you posted there RR]
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Post by berkley on Sept 27, 2014 23:47:16 GMT -5
Nice cover by Mayerik. From the few painted covers I can recall seeing from him, I think he might have developed into a truly outstanding fantasy painter if he'd decided to make that his focus.
There was never much nudity in SSoC that I can recall, unless I happened to miss all those issues.
I can't remember if I saw this issue on the stands - I think I'd remember that cover if I had, but it's very possible that I refrained from buying it because of DeZuniga's artwork, which I'm afraid I continue to dislike, from the samples given here.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 28, 2014 9:51:21 GMT -5
I really enjoyed Mayerik's art back in the days of Thongor and Monster of Frankenstein (a little less on Man-Thing); later works in the Conan mags gave me the impression that he had peaked early. I did like a SSoC story set in the Pictish wilderness where the artist experimented with a very scratchy and rough style, but his Simon Bisley-like approach in an issue of Conan the savage did nothing for me.
I seem to remember that his website had some good paintings; not fantasy stuff, but Native Americans and scenes from the western part of the U.S.
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