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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 8, 2015 11:07:29 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #63, April 1981Hey, look who makes his first appearance on a SSoC cover! Artist Joe Jusko, who was still very young at the time but already a fan favourite! (To me, at least... I had been stunned by a Heavy Metal cover he had painted a few years earlier, a cover that happened to be his very first one). Jusko, a really cool fellow who would later have a career as a police officer, provided many colourful covers for this mag. Table of contents:Moat of blood, a Conan adventure set in his Zuagir days Andrax, the last, the first appearance of a new character, Chane of the yellow hair. The issue also has a frontispiece drawn by comic-book legend Alex Toth.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 8, 2015 11:24:28 GMT -5
Moat of bloodScript by Michael Fleisher Art by John BUscema, inked by Ernie Chan (most of the issue), Tom Palmer (6 pages) and Bob McLeod (6 pages). This is one of my favourite Fleisher Conan stories. It forced me to peruse a dictionary to learn how to pronounce the word "moat", to begin with, but it didn't stop at providing linguistic knowledge: it gave me a genuinely excellent Conan adventure. The human elements are engaging and believable, the "gigantic mirth" aspect doesn't degenerate into slapstick, the anger, courage and outrage felt by the several players are all very well handled and make us root for them. Good job! The art is also pretty neat, with Chan providing his usual solid inking, and Palmer and McLeod also doing a great job. Buscema/Palmer is a team that makes it unto many readers' "best artistic combo ever" list, and the two had worked on Conan the barbarian for a few issues in the early 50s. (That's issue numbers... not calendar years!) As for McLeod, I always enjoyed his inking in B&W mags; he always gave the art a very realistic quality. Moat of blood is a story about personal revenge and the toppling of a tyrant, a classic S&S canvas if there is one. It is set during Conan's time as leader of the desert-raiding Zuagirs. Some setting up: that evil and bloated toad of a sultan, Onan Bahk Galeen (and with a name like Onan we are justified in calling him a wanker) rules over the desert city of Bahreen Bel Akif. A truly despicable individual, he's the kind to organize games of chess where the pieces are played by actual people who stab each other. He also gets his own weight in gold each year from his people, and has secret metal plates sewn into his clothes to increase his income. To spite the local people, his less-than-beloved subjects, the degenerate sultan keeps a large moat around his fortified palace; such a large quantity of water, in a desert country, is a slap in the face of the population. The moat is home to an alien aquatic plant that catches and devours whoever gets in the water. The sultan delights in throwing people to his vegetal "pet", using it to dispose of opponents and people who have simply displeased him... as is the case with this hapless desert girl, who failed to properly play the wanton for the decadent ruler.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 8, 2015 11:40:48 GMT -5
Not that far away, Conan and his band of Zuagirs plunder a caravan from Bahreen Bel Akif; one of its guards turns his coat mid-fight, pretending he has long waited for a chance to abandon the service of the city's evil ruler; he would, says he, join the Zuagirs instead. Conan doesn't like the idea to fight alongside a traitor, but his men convince him to give the guy a chance. The newcomer will soon gain more influence over the men when he reveals that the city's wealth is hidden in a secret warehouse, and that he can lead them to it. Conan refuses, smelling a rat, but his men argue with him. Angry, he tells them to go to hell and to do whatever they want; he'll be no part in what he sees as too risky a venture. Still, feeling responsible for his raiders, he follows them from afar and witnesses how they fall into a trap: the defection of the guard had been faked, and he was to lead the Zuagirs into an ambush. Superior forces charge the desrt men, who are slaughtered. Conan would stay out of it, but when he sees a young and eager lad who had joined his band shortly before be cut down, he rushes to his rescue. It is however too late, and the Cimmerian is captured. The few Zuagirs survivors are bound to poles and used for target practice by mounted lancers, until the bound Cimmerian manages to uproot the pole he's attached to and use it to unhorse a rider and steal his mount. Escaping in the desert, he faces thirst and more hostile men, loses his horse, and is finally rescued by the tribe of kindly bedouin B'Har Venek and his beautiful daughter Esmalia (as basically happened in SSoC#35). They are the family of the young girl we saw killed at the start of the issue, and wish to get revenge on the sultan. Conan accepts to join them, wanting revenge himself for the slaughter of his followers. Esmalia proves to be a woman of character, playing the drunken tavern girl in Bahreen Bel Akif so she will attract the attention of the guards who provide women for the sultan's amusement. (We do not know how the younger sister of Esmalia ended up in the sultan's boudoir... I suppose she was simply abducted at one time or another). Esmalia's plan works, and she is herself taken away and brought to the palace. There, she reveals that she is cold sober, and armed to boot! The sultan manages to get his fat hands on a scimitar, forcing Esmalia to retreat; but she races to the palaces's main gate, where she tries to raise the portcullis. Conan and her own kin are on the other side, waiting to storm the place. Unfortunately, guards intervene and slam the gate shut, raising the drawbridge, and forcing several desert men into the perilous moat. Conan manages to escape the tendrils of the lethal aquatic plant, and using a rope he climbs the palace's outer wall. Breaking the mechanisms controlling the door and drawbridge, he allows the survivors among the attackers to enter the palace and races ahead to find where Esmalia might have been taken. The girl has been brought to the dungeons to be tortured, but the Cimmerian arrives in time to stop her ordeal before it begins. And lo and behold! Her would-be torturer is none other than the fake turncoat who brought doom to his Zuagirs! (Tom Palmer inks, here). The turncoat is dispatched, and Conan and Esmalia next turn their attention to the sultan. The fat man succeeds in escaping them by diving into a secret passage, but as he races out of his now-occupied palace on a horse-drawn chariot, his erratic driving causes the vehicle to fall off the drawbridge and into the moat. There, the sultan only has a few moments to consider the wisdom of having clothes laced with metal plates to make them heavier, and of keeping a man-eating aquantic plant around one's home. Conan, Esmalia and the people of Bahreem Bel Akif can then throw a party and practice the fine art of gigantic mirth! (inks by Bob McLeod). A fine desert story! Notes: - Conan is a Zuagir in this tale, and should be about 31 years old. - Continuity error: Conan loses his Zuagirs in this story. However, we already saw how he lost them back in SSoC#9 and SSoC#35. I suppose we could wiggle away from the contradiction by saying that there were many groups of Zuagirs, and that it's only a small group of them that was eliminated here. (Better go this route, in fact, for this isn't the last time the Cimmerian will lose his desert raiders!)
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 8, 2015 11:59:24 GMT -5
Andrax the lastScript and art by Gil Kane A very generic S&S story introducing a new generic S&S character with a generic S&S name: Chane of the yellow hair. Standard Gil Kane art, but a story that would have worked better in a modern context than in a fantasy one: here, Chane saves a woman about to be sacrificed to some local god, and as he berates the officiating priest for hurting innocents in the name of nonexistent deities the real god shows up to claim its prize. Considering that most S&S stories involve a varied and very present pantheon of gods, demi-gods, demons and assorted creatures, the twist ending isn't that surprising.
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Post by berkley on Feb 8, 2015 23:50:39 GMT -5
Andrax the lastScript and art by Gil Kane A very generic S&S story introducing a new generic S&S character with a generic S&S name: Chane of the yellow hair. Standard Gil Kane art, but a story that would have worked better in a modern context than in a fantasy one: here, Chane saves a woman about to be sacrificed to some local god, and as he berates the officiating priest for hurting innocents in the name of non-existant deities the real god shows up to claim its prize. Considering that most S&S stories involve a varied and very present pantheon of gods, demi-gods, demons and assorted creatures, the twist ending isn't that surprising. I love Kane's artwork when he inks himself, though. For me this would be worth reading just for that aspect. I have to admit that several of the last few issues you've reviewed look good enough for me to want to read just for the artwork - the self-inked John Buscema story, the Buscema+Chan/Palmer/Macleod, and this Gil Kane solo piece (I'm guessing "Chane" is a playful reference to Kane himself? No, wait, don't spoil me).
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 9, 2015 6:43:58 GMT -5
Curiosity killed the Katz!
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Post by paulie on Feb 9, 2015 11:13:08 GMT -5
I don't have #63 but I'll be reading #64 tonight and I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on Bruce Jones' first work on the title. The letters pages in coming issues lambaste him for not writing the Conan character correctly at all.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 9, 2015 17:30:42 GMT -5
I don't have #63 but I'll be reading #64 tonight and I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on Bruce Jones' first work on the title. The letters pages in coming issues lambaste him for not writing the Conan character correctly at all. A fair criticism, and Conan indulging in what is clearly pedophilia (with a daughter figure, no less!) is all sorts of icky.
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Post by badwolf on Feb 9, 2015 17:50:58 GMT -5
It was a different time...
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Post by paulie on Feb 12, 2015 10:57:08 GMT -5
Don't mean to hijack the thread but I read Savage Sword #64 two nights ago and it is a god-awful abomination. Not only is Conan written out of character but Bruce Jones geography is way off to the point where the reader gets vertigo.
I won't let Buscema off the hook either... seems the northern reaches of the pictish wilderness on the border of Cimmeria and Vanheim have jungles? Roy would have provided detailed notes to avoid such blunders I'm sure but no matter how good the art looks (and it looks good) this is the start of "This is a John Buscema Landscape Robert E. Howard be Damned period" for both SSOC and CtB. And it ain't good.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 12, 2015 20:52:58 GMT -5
Don't mean to hijack the thread but I read Savage Sword #64 two nights ago and it is a god-awful abomination. Not only is Conan written out of character but Bruce Jones geography is way off to the point where the reader gets vertigo. I won't let Buscema off the hook either... seems the northern reaches of the pictish wilderness on the border of Cimmeria and Vanheim have jungles? Roy would have provided detailed notes to avoid such blunders I'm sure but no matter how good the art looks (and it looks good) this is the start of "This is a John Buscema Landscape Robert E. Howard be Damned period" for both SSOC and CtB. And it ain't good. You make many of the points I was going to raise, paulie! In fact, in preparation of my review, I even scanned the Hyborian Age map to show how wrong Bruce's handling of the geography is. (The same will be true in the following issue, albeit in a less obvious way). Regarding John's art in that period: you're correct, it was pretty much standard and uninspired (quite unlike Gary Kwapisz, who would join the title a while later, and would provide gorgeous lanscapes in every issue). John had a few backgrounds that he used and reused: rocky country, dense foliage country, desert country, village with mud houses, Prince Valiant castles. No matter whether the action was in Vanaheim, Turan, Vendhya or Koth... we'd find the same backgrounds, the same clothes, the same feel. Not that the scripts were that inspiring for an artist, mind you!
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Post by paulie on Feb 12, 2015 21:24:53 GMT -5
Don't mean to hijack the thread but I read Savage Sword #64 two nights ago and it is a god-awful abomination. Not only is Conan written out of character but Bruce Jones geography is way off to the point where the reader gets vertigo. I won't let Buscema off the hook either... seems the northern reaches of the pictish wilderness on the border of Cimmeria and Vanheim have jungles? Roy would have provided detailed notes to avoid such blunders I'm sure but no matter how good the art looks (and it looks good) this is the start of "This is a John Buscema Landscape Robert E. Howard be Damned period" for both SSOC and CtB. And it ain't good. You make many of the points I was going to raise, paulie! In fact, in preparation of my review, I even scanned the Hyborian Age map to show how wrong Bruce's handling of the geography is. (The same will be true in the following issue, albeit in a less obvious way). Regarding John's art in that period: you're correct, it was pretty much standard and uninspired (quite unlike Gary Kwapisz, who would join the title a while later, and would provide gorgeous lanscapes in every issue). John had a few backgrounds that he used and reused: rocky country, dense foliage country, desert country, village with mud houses, Prince Valiant castles. No matter whether the action was in Vanaheim, Turan, Vendhya or Koth... we'd find the same backgrounds, the same clothes, the same feel. Not that the scripts were that inspiring for an artist, mind you! You have been training us well! It'll be interesting to see which issues we agree are good out of the next 30-40.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 14, 2015 15:21:35 GMT -5
Savage sword of Conan #64, May 1981Young Joe Jusko strikes again, with a well-oiled bodybuilding Conan, The monster is seen within this issue. Tables of contents:Children of Rhan, a Conan story Conan the barbarian... by Toth, a portfolio by famed artist Alex Toth The devil's bait, a Chane of the yellow hair tale. The frontispiece is by Toth; putting it there instead of in the portfolio might have saved some money? It's an odd placement, but as lonmg as we can enjoy the master's art, I'm not complaining.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 14, 2015 16:06:50 GMT -5
The children of RhanScript by Bruce Jones Art by John Buscema and Ernie Chan. Oh, boy. I am fairly sure that this issue can be found in most readers' shortlist of the most unloved Savage Sword of Conan stories ever. (I'm not sure it makes my top five because there are a few more turkeys in our future, but it's still one I'm not comfortable re-reading). What this story does well, it does well, I'll give it that. If the intention was to make readers uncomfortable and feel a little dirty inside, then it deserves an A+. However, that's not exactly why I read Conan comics; I'll go see a David Lynch movie if I want to feel a little icky. The sense of guilt felt by Conan in the course of this story is handled very well, and it's easy to believe in it. His sorrow at the end is also palpable, and since many writers can't make readers feel anything, this must be acknowledged as a quality. After the flowers, here comes the pot. The issue is rife with errors; geographical, sociological, geological, and its plot is so full of holes it barely holds together. A heavy-handed editor might have helped the tale a lot, but apparently Louise Jones (the editor at the time) didn't feel like intervening. Bruce Jones is an intelligent writer with a great sense of humour; many of his comics have been a delight (his Pacific Comics work and his Ka-Zar the savage come to mind, as well as some non-Conan stories in SSoC). But when it comes to Conan himnself, the reader constantly gets the impression that Bruce read some paperback Conan book twenty years ago and is working from memory, dropping Hyborian Age names willy-nilly and completely ignoring what that fictional era is all about. (Bruce is the one who invented the infamous "olympic" games held in Cimmeria, where champions from all over the world come to compete against death traps, giant mantises and the like. What... the...HELL???) Here we start with a caption that sets the tone. O.K., storytelling-wise this all makes sense; we learn where Conan is, where he's going, and what his motivation is in only one caption. Excellent form, as Captain Jack Sparrow would say. But the devil is in the details. First, Conan is in Cimmeria, and he's going to a harbour in Vanaheim. As the crow flies, that must be about 1000 km, which in 10 days would require the poor horse to manage 100 km a day... off roads, through mountains (the Eiglophian mountains separate Cimmeria from Vanaheim and Aesgaard). I'm not a rider myself, but that strikes me as a rather long distance without letting the beast rest from time to time. Most Conan writers don't make his world nearly big enough. Second, how is it possible for Conan to have learned about that job as a sailor? Is there a Hyborian Age Maritime Workers Union we never learned about, one that hires sorcerers to magically send job offers to countries located a thousand miles away? I mean, how would people even hear about a sailing job offer all the way in a landlocked country hundreds of miles from the sea? Third, what is that thing about a Vanir merchant boat hiring foreigners? The Vanir are essentially Vikings; they almost certainly do some maritime trading (probably staying close to shore), but that must be at a very local level, with ships handled by the folks from this village or that village; not by foreign sailors hired from far away. Fourth, what is that thing about Conan having stood on the shores of Vanaheim a mere months before? We know he was there in his teens, as a prisoner (CtB #69), and since Cimmerians and Vanir hate each other, any further visit sounds unlikely, e specially since this visit by Conan to his homeland might be the same one in which he lost his childhood love, Mara, slain when she was abducted... by Vanir raiders (ST#4). Conan hated the Vanir so much, early in his life, that he meant to murder the Vanirman Fafnir in CtB#17 only because of his country of origin. Fifth, how can one take a shortcut from Cimmeria to Vanaheim through the Pictish Wilderness? Take a look at the map: Yes, I imagine that if one is at the very end of western Cimmeria, one would have to go through the Pictish wilderness to reach Vanaheim's southernmost shore. But we're told the short-cut saves three days... which means it's barely a dip in Pictish territory, meaning Conan must be much farther north. And if he's there, he might as well avoid the place entirely, as it is incredibly unsafe and peopled by a folk the Cimmerians hate even more than the Vanir. *Sigh*. I realize that such anal retentiveness probably say more about the critic than about the writer, and that since most readers wouldn't notice or care, it doesn't much matter to the publishers. But by damn, Roy Thomas would never have made so many errors in the very first caption of his first SSoC issue!!!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 14, 2015 16:34:06 GMT -5
Anyway, let's get on with the tale. Conan is in a hurry to cross part of the Pictish Wilderness, which at these latitudes (north of Cimmeria; roughly the Orkney islands) erroneously looks like a tropical land with rocky hills. The Cimmerian's horse is killed by a Pictish arrow, and our hero is attacked by a band of the hostile savages. killing a few, he reaches an isolated butte covered by trees. Crossing it on a fragile rope bridge, he is surprised to see the Picts don't follow him, losing interest in their prey as if it was already lost. Suspecting the butte might be a dangerous place, the Cimmerian remains tense and when a lance strikes at him from a thicket, he plunges his sword through the leaves without waiting to see who the attacker is. Oops! The attacker was a beautiful young woman who falls dead at his feet. "All was beauty here before I came", reflects Conan upon the woman's grave. "Mitra, what have I done?" Those regrets honor the Cimmerian, but he bever struck me as the kind to mope like that. When he feels guilty, he usually broods and gets drunk. Then comes a complication... a silent little girl emerges from the forest, looking very much like the slain woman. Conan assumes she's his victim's daughter. After apologizing for his act, the Cimmerian tries to find the rest of her family (if she has one), but fails to find anyone. He decides to take her with him to Vanaheim, where he intends to use his hiring bonus to pay someone to look after her. Of course, his horse is dead and must be replaced... "First, we'll need a fresh mount! I know of a band of Aquilonian ponies that haunt the Bossonian marshes". WAAAAAAIT a minute! First, it's the Bossonian marches, not the Bossonian marshes! Second, be they marches or marshes, they're many hundreds of miles to the south!!! Ah, well. The next day, surprise! The little girl has grown! She now looks ten years old or so! Conan is at first convinced his little friend has been replaced by an older girl, but no: same clothes, same necklace, same face! The girl can't explain what happened, since the only thing she says seems to be "Surhon", which Conan recognizes as the name of a city just east of Vanaheim. He decides to take her there. East of Vanaheim??? Take a look at the map in the previous post; that would be in Aesgaard, again hundreds of miles east from their position!!! What doesn't help is that Surhon looks neither like a Vanaheim nor an Aesgaard town; it's a typical John Buscema desert city with minarets. The journey takes another day (that's one fast horse), and during the night the girl ages into a gorgeous cheerleader! The Cimmerian feels uncharacteristically weak, too, without connecting the two things. I mean, I've felt weak-kneed in front of a beautiful girl before, but Conan is made of sterner stuff! The Cimmerian and the young woman's stay in many-towered Surhon is brief, for after an altercation with a rude local, the two move out into the forest to spend the night. There, the girl starts kissing Conan who takes little prompting to assuage his primal instincts. (Yes, he has sex with someone he knew as a four year old only two days before. Not only is that all kinds of creepy, but a caption adds " never has he felt such a rush of intense emotion. Never was the belief greater in the perfection of unity between man and woman. Eyes closing slowly, he marvels at the sweet purity of it". Purity? Mmmh... that's probably the very last term I'd use to describe this situation! The next day they are awakened by a man named Kalah-Aberth-Khan, a uncommon name for that part of the world. He saw them the day before in Surhon, and is essentially there to explain the plot. The man found a necklace looking like the girl's in a nearby spot, and was curious about its origin. He shows them where that was, and the ground collapses beneath Conan's feet, throwing him into a cavern! Surprise, surprise, the cavern contains an old boat!
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