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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 16, 2014 11:25:58 GMT -5
Portfolio of Robert E. Howard by Rudy Nebres Six pages of artwork by Nebres. Quite good if you're into Nebres, although his Kull looks like he's played by Gérard Depardieu. A gazetteer of the Hyborian age, part VII, compiled by Lee Falconer From Qirlata a zuagir tribe dwelling near fort Walka in the desrt of Turan, to Sword of the cave, a cavern deep in the Graaskal Mountains of northeastern Bryhtunia, where Conan found a mummy holding a sword. Hey! Where did we hear about that recently? Moon of SkullsScript by Don Glut Art by David Wenzel Concluding the adaptation of the Solomon Kane story by Robert E. Howard. Excellent Wenzel art, here. The generously-bosomed queen Nakari tempts Solomon Kane by offering to make him her consort, but the stout Puritan resists. Later, he tricks a pair of guards and makes his way to the secret passages he has discovered earlier in this ancient Atlantean city of Negari. In a deep dungeon, he encounters a man who has been tortured nearly unto death. The man tells the story of the city: how Atlenatean legions swept over the world, worshipping Valka, Hotah, Honen and Melkor (that's the same Atlantis than Kull's, then) until the sea rose to claim the world's thrones. Only the faraway colony of Negari survived, in what would become Africa one day. Most colonists interbred with the natives, although certain lines remained "pure" (that would be Howard's word; as a biologist, I would have said "inbred"); however, these lines petered out (no wonder there!) and the dying fellow is the last true Atlantean. Nakari, slave and daughter of a slave, overthrew a king and took his place, ridding herself of the last few Atlantean priests. Now that the Moon of Skulls is approaching, the priest tells Kane that a virgin must be sacrificed to the skull of Nakura, the last great wizard of Atlantis who is apparently now worshipped by the city's people. The priest also tells Kane of a passage that leads right next to the altar where the sacrifice must occur; naturally, the Englishman knows that it is Marylin who is to be slain. Arriving in the nick of time, the Puritan shoots Nakura's skull right before Marylin could be killed by a native priest. Pandemonium erupts, and as Kane fights the city's entire population an earthquake brings the place down. Kane and Marylin manage to escape the falling walls, and are apparently the only ones to do so. A small puzzle before we leave this issue: This is the second issue in a row where a small sketch signed JB + WW is used to make an article or a house ad more appealing. JB is obviously John Buscema, but do you think WW might be Wally Wood? The image is not typical Wood, but I have a hard time thinking of someone else with the initials WW. (Wood was still active at the time, although not particularly associated with Marvel. His last inking job was, as far as I know, Wonder Woman #269. In any case, nice little image.
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Post by berkley on Nov 17, 2014 3:13:18 GMT -5
I know this is an SSoC thread, but the image in the last couple pages that most impressed me was the page frm CtB 254: looks like Ernie Chan, though I wouldn't venture to say if he was inking someone else or it was his own pencils and inks.
Looks like I'll have to start looking for some of those late CtB as well as SSoC issues - "late" meaning after I stopped following them in the late 70s.
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Post by jbruel0 on Nov 17, 2014 4:48:54 GMT -5
Conan has still his chains at the end of CtB #3 which is not the case at the end of CtB #92, so I would leave CtB #3 before #92 in the chronology? Jb
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 17, 2014 6:36:33 GMT -5
I know this is an SSoC thread, but the image in the last couple pages that most impressed me was the page frm CtB 254: looks like Ernie Chan, though I wouldn't venture to say if he was inking someone else or it was his own pencils and inks. Looks like I'll have to start looking for some of those late CtB as well as SSoC issues - "late" meaning after I stopped following them in the late 70s. That's Ernie, yes, inking Mike Docherty who pencilled most of the final years of CtB. Docherty did a very good job, and when inked by Vicente Villagran deserved a place in my "best penciller/inker team" for a recent 12 days of Christmas thread. The 90s Roy Thomas-written SSoC comics are well worth looking for. CtB had many good runs during the same period, and it was so much better than what preceded it that the only criticism I can make about it is that Roy revisited too many of his 70s characters. But I'd take that any day over a Bruce Jones or Michael Fleisher Conan.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 17, 2014 6:48:55 GMT -5
Conan has still his chains at the end of CtB #3 which is not the case at the end of CtB #92, so I would leave CtB #3 before #92 in the chronology? Jb Well, the blurb at the end of issue 92 says that Conan was captured by another band of Hyperborean slavers and escaped once more before CtB#3. That would be where he got another chain just like the one he had worn before. As that stretches credibility and since issue 92 had the same plot as issue 31, my guess is that either Roy forgot about #92 when he wrote #254 or decided to consider it an "out of continuity" issue. (it could also be that Sal simply didn't draw the chain in issue 92, not knowing there should be one). It's a bit like the helmet: although every story set between CtB #1 and CtB #6 should have Conan wearing it, there are many SSoC books set in that period that don't. Artistic license and all that! Putting CtB #3 after #92 would also make sense, but by the end of issue 3 Conan is no longer in the snowy region separating Hyperborea and Brythunia; he's in a much warmer part of the latter and well on his way to Zamora.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 22, 2014 11:13:46 GMT -5
The savage sword of Conan #40, May 1979 This issue has a treat for us Conan fans: a painted cover by John Buscema! Big John also painted the covers to Savage Tales #1 and #2 and to Marvel super special #9. Table of contents:A dream of blood, a Conan adventure A gazetteer of the Hyborian Age, part VIII The almost forgotten tales of Conan, an article about Conan books/records,
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 22, 2014 11:57:34 GMT -5
A dream of bloodScript by Roy Thomas Art by John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga Adapting the novel "Conan the buccaneer" by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. First a word about the novel: Conan the buccaneer was published in 1971 as a new title in the popular Lancer Conan series. Just like other pastiches and conanizations of the era, it is meant to fill the gap between certain Conan stories; in this case, we see what happens to the Cimmerian after he gains the captaincy of the Wastrel at the end of REH's story the pool of the Black One.It is generally considered a rather poor Conan story, and artist Frank Frazetta said in an interview that the only good thing about it was the cover. I personally think it uninspired rather than really bad, and it is certainly not as disappointing as Conan the liberator or the god-awful Conan and the spider god. Here, as a comic-book story, it even works pretty well; comic readers are ready to accept certain coincidences and logical short-cuts that don't work as well in a novel. Its main interest, in my opinion, is that the wizard Thoth-Amon plays a major role in the story and that we learn a few things about the secretive arch-fiend. (Unlike Dr. Doom, Marvel's version of Thoth-Amon retained his aura of genuine menace for a very, very long time, because he was used extremely scarcely. The unknown is always more frightening than the familiar). Oh, who am I kidding. The main interest of the story is Princess Chabela of Zingara, who is drawn in several states of undress all though the story!!! The story starts with the princess awaking from a dream of blood and destruction. Praying the god Mitra for advice on how to thwart what she sees as a premonition, she receives an oracle advising her to pay a visit to Tovarro, her uncle, currently acting as a roving ambassador in Shem. The determined princess promptly summons one of the king's sea captains and begins her journey. Meanwhile, three of our tales' villains have a meeting. One of them is Duke Villagro, an ambitious politician. Another is Menkara, a Stygian priest and wizard. The third is Black Zarono, a Zingaran buccaneer (meaning a pirate who, like a corsair, solely plunders ships not belonging to his government). Villagro means to marry young princess Chabela and become heir apparent to the Zingaran crown, and to reach his goal he wants the wizard to use his skills to influence old king Ferdrugo's mind. Unfortunately, while Ferdrugo's great age does make him more susceptible to the talents of Menkara, Chabela has a stronger will and she dislikes Villagro. Menkara tried to forcibly change her mind during her sleep, but that led to the nightmares that caused her to leave the capital city of Kordava! Menkara suggests that they should get stronger magical help, in the person of the chief of his order, Thoth-Amon of the ring. The arch-wizard can not be bribed with gold, but should Villagro swear to destroy the temples of Mitra and replace them with shrines to Set once his plans put him on the throne of Zingara, perhaps the Stygian might consider lending a hand. Villagro immediately accepts and charges Menkara and Zarono with a double mission: first pursue Chabela's ship and capture the princess, and then proceed to Stygia and the oasis of Khajar where Thoth-Amon dwells. They should then bring back both wizard and princess so that Thoth-Amon can work his magic on the king and his daughter, so that Duke Villagro can become king. Conan gets involved in the plot thanks to a coincidence, as is often the case. A little priest named Ninus (former jewel thief, now retired... mostly) means to sell a certain treasure map to captain Conan of the Wastrel, an old friend. Ninus bumps into Menkara in an alley as the Stygian and Zarono hurry to their ship, recognizes him as a priest of Set and starts screaming for the city watch, because the cult of Set is forbidden and its priests are to be arrested on sight. Ninus is stabbed, and seraching his clothes for anything of value (no small profits for bad guys, eh?) the two villains find the map. Worried because is friend is late for their meeting, Conan seraches for him and finds his inanimate form. He brings the badly wounded Ninus back to a tavern so that a leech can tend to his wounds. Ninus will survive, but is in a bad way; before fainting he has time to tell Conan about what happened, and mentions that Menkara is in the company of Black Zarono. Conan knows Zarono (we even learn that the two of them had a drunken fight before the story started) and sets sail with the Wastrel to settle accounts.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 22, 2014 12:26:29 GMT -5
On the western ocean, Zarono's ship has caught up with Chabela's. Using magical fumes, Menkara renders the crew unconscious; after the princess is abducted, her ship is burned and sunk with all hands on board. As Balck Zarono celebrates by getting drunk, Menkara reports that he's had time to study the map they got from Ninus: its script is very ancient, pre-cataclysmic, even, and unreadable by modern scholars; however, Menkara is convinced that the position it indicates is the famous "nameless isle" of legend, "a remnant of elder Valusia, wherein a mouldering ruin survives to attest the powers of the pre-human serpent-men". Menkara expects that in this place they can find a proceless magical item: a copy of the Book of Skelos. I quite like the rendering by DeZuniga on this page; it's very gritty. Zarono and his crew reach the Nameless Isle without realizing that Conan's Wastrel is in hot pursuit. They come ashore and make their way to the interior, where they find a very ancient temple. Menkara senses that an ancient spell protects the place: without the proper counterspell, an intruder would waken a terrifying guardian. He performs the appropriate magic, and the pirates enter the building. Within its massive walls, they find a toad-like statue, a few bags of jewels and the famous copy of the book of skelos (its pages undamaged even after thousands of years). As this is going on, Chabela has decided to escape her abductors. Cutting her bonds with a small knife all Zingaran noble born ladies carry to protect their virtue, she plunges in the ocean and swims to the island. Her decision to dry her clothes allow us to see a few gratuitous shots of her lovely derrière, and then she has a chance encounter with a castaway: a bearded and friendly Vanirman named Sigurd. Meanwhile, Conan's ship has reached the island; he approaches it from the opposite side of Zarono's own vessel and means to attack his opponent on the ground rather than at sea. Conan and his men find the temple, which Zarno has already left, but since they do not know of the spell they awaken the place's guardian, which turns out to be the ugly toad statue. Conan draws the monster to him and runs like hell through the jungle, making for the island's cliffs. As he runs, he meets Sigurd and Chabela who have to join him in a desperate dash. At the edge of a precipice, Conan shoves his companions aside and throws rocks at the monster to get its attention, and jumps into the sea far below. The stone creature just topples over the edge after him and smashes itself to bits at the bottom of the cliff. Presentations are then made, and Conan makes it clear that things aren't over between him and Zarono and Menkara. Notes: - Conan is about 37 years old - The Book of Skelos is one of those made-up magical tomes that pepper weird literature from the glory days of Weird Tales; it would be found on the same shelf as the books of Vathelos the blind, the Pnakotic manuscripts, the necronomicon and unaussprechlichen Kulten. A mere page from the book of Skelos was worth a fortune in CtB #66. - King Ferdrugo is the aging king of Zingara; however, in SSoC #73 (which happens roughly one year prior to SS0C#40) we see another king of Zingara who is not Ferdrugo. As SSoC goes on under the guidance of people other than Roy Thomas, many rulers of this or that Hyborian country will be replaced at random with no consideration of continuity. - Princess Chabela will be seen again, in King Conan #2, set more than a decade later. By then she has become queen of Zingara and has gained a little weight.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 22, 2014 12:39:35 GMT -5
Part VIII of Lee Falconer's A gazetteer of the Hyborian world of Conan takes us from Talakma mountains to the Vilayet Sea. I can't believe that this resource was available for $4.95 (including a 28" x 42" map) in 1979 and that I didn't jump on it. *Sigh*. The almost forgotten tales of Conan the barbarianarticle by Fred Blosser Maybe you're old enough to remember those vinyl albums that came with a booklet, which would let you hear the voices just as you read. Conan starred in one of these things. Here Fred Blosser tells us of a Power Record LP produced by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano starring everyone's favorite Cimmerian. Conan the barbarian contains four audio stories; two written by Len Wein, two by Roy Thomas. Some of these stories were later adapted in the Conan syndicated comic strip. The record's cover is drawn by Adams. (apparently it didn't sell all that well although I'm sure it's quite the collector's item today). One of the stories was reissued as a 45 rpm record/book thing with art by John Buscema and Neal Adams. That tale was re-presented, in a slightly modified form, in Conan the barbarian #116.
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Post by jbruel0 on Nov 23, 2014 8:56:37 GMT -5
Rêve de Sang was my first sight of Conan in when published in French Artima Color Marvel Géant. Then I ordered to the publisher all that was available from them. And then I never left Conan, recovered all the comics stuff and now questioning on maps in REH forum to better understand all that termendous adventure
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 23, 2014 9:59:59 GMT -5
Rêve de Sang was my first sight of Conan in when published in French Artima Color Marvel Géant. Then I ordered to the publisher all that was available from them. And then I never left Conan, recovered all the comics stuff and now questioning on maps in REH forum to better understand all that termendous adventure Wow, so Artima published SSoC stories in color? That is so cool! Artima's digest-sized comics were my main source for Old Conan comics in the late 70s; the early Thomas-Smith stories were reprinted in L'Inattendu and Eclipso. (Conan would later get his own digest, which started with the Thomas-Kane tale the gods of Bal-saggoth. Those digests were paradise for a comics reader: nearly 200 pages of the best Marvel had to offer, issue after issue, with storylines usually presented in one go. Etranges aventures would, for example, give you the entire Warlock-Magus saga in one issue, then the next month you'd get the Ka-Zar /Man-Thing storyline, while in Vengeur you'd have the complete overkill horn saga where Jim Steranko first started working on Nick Fury. (DC had a few titles too, with Kamandi, Omac and the Demon providing hours of fun). And they all cost a mere dollar! Unfortunately, their distribution in Quebec was very unreliable and after 1978 I never saw another one. But back to Conan... éditions Lug also did good by the Cimmerian, right? I bought a translation of SsoC #15, La forteresse de Xapur, while in France in 78. It was in B&W but had a new painted cover. In fact, I'd argue that French REH fans and editors did a lot to ensure the popularity of the man's work. In the 70s and 80s, François Truchaud did an excellent job of finding and translating even the most obscure works of Howard for publication under the classy-looking NeO imprint; I'm sure this paved the way for today's scholarly approach to Howardian studies to which several French scholars now contribute.
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Post by jbruel0 on Nov 24, 2014 3:27:22 GMT -5
The first adventures published were in Eclipso #42 June 74 then in l'Inattendu in 1976. LUG did effectively very good in publishing SSoC with original covers but some sensorship in the content when too "violent", see jlusetti.free.fr/comics/topos/conan/cantho.htm and jlusetti.free.fr/comics/comics.htmHumanoide associés published 2 books also in B/W (Les Clous Rouges and Les Faucons des Mers). Artima Géant published a dozen of colorized SSoC then King Conan. Details on comics content can be found at www.comicsvf.com/
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 24, 2014 6:30:17 GMT -5
Fascinating, J!
The new printing by Editions Soleil is indeed disappointing, as observed by the author of the first article. I'm surprised at such a shoddy product from an otherwise good publisher.
Thanks for mentioning Eclipso; it's in that title that I read my first Artima Conan (a reprint of CtB 11). The cover feature was Man-Thing, as I recall. (Ploog's Man-Thing and BWS's Conan in the same book... Now THAT's comics!)
I don't have Les faucons des mers from Les humanoïdes associés, but Les clous rouges is a prized possession. Its presentation of the colored version of Red Nails from the first Conan Marvel Treasury demonstrates the impeccable taste of the publisher! The oversized format was also much more satisfying that Dark Horse's teeny-tiny (and recolored) version from a few years ago in its Chronicles of Conan series. One must wonder why recoloring is required when BWS himself oversaw the coloring of the treasury edition...
I believe there were original Conan comics made in Italy at one point, but I regret that the character was never licensed to Dargaud or Lombard... I would have loved to see Conan drawn by the likes of Franz or Rosinski (whose Jugurtha and Thorgal were at least partly influenced by the Cimmerian, I'm sure).
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Post by jbruel0 on Nov 24, 2014 7:32:52 GMT -5
Italian ones are Conan il Conquistatore (La Forza del Destino, Le Spade degli Amanti) and a Speciale Made in Italy (C'era una volte in Thiaras and La Spada e la Rosa). Conan e la Creatura dei Bochi and Il Signore dei Ragni miniseries were translated in Stalker of the Woods and Lord of the Spiders.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 24, 2014 8:56:14 GMT -5
Wait, Lord of the spiders was initially produced for the Italian market? I knew the artists had Italian names, but since Roy Thomas wrote it I assumed it was made in the US. (And what a bad miniseries that was… a sequel to one of the arguably worst Conan stories ever).
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