Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 15:46:26 GMT -5
Why would the ingrate have his new employee killed? Well, it has to do with Valeria, the object of all desires in this story. The king wants her as his new queen (or at least his plaything), while the current queen wants to steal her youth to renew her own. See, the queen is the actual woman that Xotalanc and Techultli originally fought over centuries before; she's a sorceress who treats the current king like a puppet. Conan returns in time to find the treacherous king strapped to a Rube Goldberg torture device and Valeria about to be sacrificed in some nasty ritual that involves being tied naked to a slab of stone, this being a non-code publication. ("Yay!" thought 12 year old me back in '76). The Cimmerian is about to butcher the whole lot of degenerates, when he steps on a wolf-trap cleverly (and oh so conveniently) hidden within the floor tiles. As the queen is about to slay Valeria, who should then appear but old Tolkemec, the slave who had initially opened the doors of the city to the invading Stygians. He, too, managed to survive the centuries and has spent his time in the catacombs looking for some means of revenge, which he now has found: a sceptre that shoots lightning. So while Conan is busy chewing his leg free from the trap (or at least working on its hinges with his knife), Tolkemec proceeds with the annihilation of the last few citizens of Xuchotl. All save the queen, that is, who frees Conan from the trap so he can stop Tolkemec, which he does with a thrown dagger. The queen shows little gratitude and grabs the sceptre, with which she intends to make sure she'll be the last character alive in this tale rivalling Hamlet with its immense body count. However, Valeria then decides that enough is enough and, having freed herself from the restraining ropes that tied her to the altar, she stabs the witch in the back. She and Conan walk off into the sunrise, foreswearing whatever haunted jewels might be found in this gruesome city. Death! Mayem! Sex! Ancient civilizations! Sorcery! It doesn't get better than this! Savage Tales #3 also presents the first Marvel Comics appearance of Red Sonja in her famous steel bikini (or at least a precursor thereto), in a double page spread by Spanish artist Esteban Maroto. This is not the image usually presented as the first "iron bikini" appearance, but I'll let you be the judge:  (As explained by foxley in the previous incarnation of this thread, a more famous early Red Sonja illo drawn by Maroto, first submitted (unsollicited) to Roy and later published in Savage Sword of Conan #1, pre-dated this one when it first saw print in Jim Steranko's magazine Comixscene #5).  |
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 21, 2014 15:51:39 GMT -5
Savage Tales #3 has a painted cover by Pablo Marcos, also something I haven't seen that often. (I am not, generally speaking, a big fan of Mr. Marcos pencil work; but this cover does the job. It has an almost Romita-like quality to it, despite the trademarked Marcos posture of the main character). Stan often had Romita touch up the faces on covers. He liked the way John drew and wanted the Marvel line to look consistent. IIRC, Frank Kelly Freas was rather annoyed when one of his covers was altered; that may be why he didn't do very many covers for Marvel. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 15:53:31 GMT -5
Savage Tales #3 has a painted cover by Pablo Marcos, also something I haven't seen that often. (I am not, generally speaking, a big fan of Mr. Marcos pencil work; but this cover does the job. It has an almost Romita-like quality to it, despite the trademarked Marcos posture of the main character). Stan often had Romita touch up the faces on covers. He liked the way John drew and wanted the Marvel line to look consistent. IIRC, Frank Kelly Freas was rather annoyed when one of his covers was altered; that may be why he didn't do very many covers for Marvel. That's a good point; even Jack Kirby's one and only Conan cover (for Giant-size Conan #5) was redrawn by Romita: Conan's face was changed. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 15:55:48 GMT -5
The rest of the issue presents a prose tale by Ray Capella, featuring a new character called Arquel of Argos. It is a "tale of the Hyborian age", for lack of a better term, and is highlighted by bits of art by Frank Brunner and Al Williamson. It's basically fan fiction, and not a feature I'd have liked to see on a regular basis. We then have a re-presentation of "Fury of the Femizons", which had been published in Savage Tales #1. Sure, it was only two issues earlier... but it had been a few years, so why not? The same Femizons would be reused in Fantastic Four, as they're the people who gave us Tundra, the seven foot tall red-haired lady with a thing for Ben Grimm. A new article by Roy Thomas presents the art that originally graced the prose publication of Red nails in Weird tales: the cover by the peerless Margaret Brundage, of course (and a book on Ms. Brundage's Weird Tales covers has now been available for a while; good stuff) as well as black and white illustrations by H. D. Delay.  Notice that both Smith and Delay stuck to the description of Valeria's outfit. And there's MORE!!! |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 15:57:58 GMT -5
Jim Steranko once played with the idea of a sword and sorcery character named Talon, whom he presents here. Had the project been continued, Talon would have preceded Marvel's Conan in the field. Despite the skill of Steranko, I don't see how this Talon guy would have been all that different from so many Conan clones, though... it's hard to judge from just one image, but he doesn't have the otherworldly quality of an Elric nor the quirckiness of a Fafhrd or of a Gray Mouser. Would Talon have taken comicdom by storm? We'll never know. The issue rounds up with a full page (each!) biography of Roy Thomas and Barry Smith. Another grand slam for Marvel, here. I mean, how can you go wrong when even your table of contents looks like this?  |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 16:05:42 GMT -5
So... cancelled? Not cancelled? On page26 of Savage Tales #4, a two-page editorial tells us about how the mag had been resurrected again, this time (hopefully) to stay. Letters had been written, some encouraging, others insulting; rumours had been spread; but the most important part is that ST#3 had sold better than the other Marvel B&W mags, so Stan Lee had green-lighted renewed publication... on a bi-monthly, not quarterly basis. But no Barry Smith. After defining the character for an entire generation, the artist had left comics to focus on fine art; he'd only return a decade later (and not to Conan, except for a few exceptions: the early covers of Conan saga reprinting the stories he had worked on, a few stand-alone illustrations for Epic, and the Conan vs Rune one-shot). There would be no dearth of great talent, though, as the cover so aptly demonstrated:  Neal Adams himself painted the cover for issue 4, as he would for at least one more. He also contributed to the first story of this issue (which I assumed he inked over Gil Kane's breakdowns or pencils). Pablo Marcos provided the grey tones. <br><br>And what a story that is! Another true Conan classic, and very likely to most successful non-Conan Howard story to be adapted into the Marvel Conan canon. The original prose story, "The dark man", featured Turlogh Dubh O'Brien, an Irish swordsman who starred in two stories (this one and "Gods of Bal-Saggoth"), one fragment ("Shadow of the Hun"), and was mentioned in another tale "Spears of Clontarf". Turlogh is physically very close to Conan, and although his character is noticeably more melancholy (he lacks the "gigantic mirth" bit), he could easily pass for Conan on one of his bad days. And sadly, that would be the case in this tragic story. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 16:08:20 GMT -5
 It is well known that Conan comes from the land of Cimmeria, cold, bleak and quite gloomy. He left to explore the world and was quite successful in his choice of careers, but at the start of our tale he's grown a bit weary of the artificial pleasures of the south; he's grown homesick and thinks of the girl he left behind when he first journeyed away from home. This allows Kane and Adams to give us a glimpse of the life of Conan as a youth.  I particularly like the look on Conan's face, in the third panel; this is a seamless fusion of Kane and Adams. The intensity is there, the emotion is there, it's quite powerful. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 16:09:29 GMT -5
I am not (oh, the heresy!) the world's biggest fan of Neal's pencils... (merely a standard fan). But his inking? It's magical. It's beautiful. It's slick and smooth and three-dimensional and gorgeous. I love every Adams-inked comic I own, no matter who pencilled it; he just crank everything to eleven. Lovely stuff when it's over the pencils of a Gil Kane, of course! So... Conan journeys back to Cimmeria, dreams of married bliss perhaps tempting him as he travels... but when he arrives, it is to find that his village has been attacked by Vanir raiders (The Vanir live in the country immediately to the west, and have been more or less at war with the Cimmerians for basically ever). Conan's girlfriend, Mara, has been abducted! Her mother tells Conan that she spoke often of him (as if he needed that to go and get her). Conan pursues the Vanir all the way to Vanaheim, and learns they've travelled to an island in the middle of a very wide lake. He borrows the fishing boat of a man who pointed him in the right direction, and steers the small skiff in the rough and freezing waters. A while later, he sights a boat full of dead people: big red-headed Vanirmen and short, darker men. The latter apparently died defending a black statue that was on board, representing a warrior of their race. Conan takes the statue with him, finding it surprisingly light even if it feels like metal. He later reaches the island where Mara has been taken, and makes his way to the raiders' longhouse. As he lays hiding, he witnesses two of the Vanir (who have found his fishing boat) struggling to bring the statue indoors, and it now seems very heavy indeed. Inside the longhouse it's a party: the raiders' leader, Thorfel, is about to force Mara into marrying him; he even managed to bring a priest of Mitra to celebrate the nuptials! Mara will have none of this, and as she sees there is no hope to escape dishonor, she makes her quietus with a bare bodkin.  |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 16:13:51 GMT -5
(Now that was a lady who could have handled Conan, I'm sure). The Cimmerian, who was right outside and was just about to barge in and rescue her, goes berserk. He slaughters a great many Vanir, but numbers would have beaten him in the end... if a crowd of newly-arrived short dark men hadn't attacked at that very moment! The newcomers, with arrows and blades, finish off the last Vanirmen (although it is Conan who kill Thorfel after Mara expires in his arms, recognizing him for a brief moment). The leader of the dark men then explains that they are Picts, and have come to rescue their god: the dark statue representing Brule the spear slayer, who used to be best buddies with King Kull. The statue had been stolen from Pictland by Pict renegades, who had in turn fallen under the swords of the Vanir on the lake's waters. Conan leaves with Mara's body, so she can rest in her own land. The story was reprinted (in colored form) in Marvel Treasury Edition #15, where a little continuity fixing occurred. In the Savage Tales story, as in the Turlogh Dubh story it was adapted from, our hero didn't know who the Picts were. Of course, Roy later rememberedthat Picts and Cimmerians are well aware of the others' existence: they even hate each other with a vengeance! Conan really should have recognized them on sight! And so in ST#4, we have this caption: "What manner of them were these, who slew twice their number of fierce lake-dwellers?" which is replaced in the Treasury edition by ""The smaller men are Picts... fierce enemies of Conan's own hillborn people... yet many leagues from the wilderness they call home". And later, when Conan addresses the chief of the Picts, he knows whom he's addressing:   (By the way, while the metal statue in this Hyborian Age version is one representing Brule, the one in the Turlogh story was that of another Howard character: Bran Mak Morn, king of the Picts. Nice substitution of famous Picts, here). |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 16:15:29 GMT -5
I love that about Roy... How he'd take pains to make sure even a small error was corrected if possible. The story is moving, and is one of the most personal featuring the character. Mara was briefly seen again in the latter days of "Savage sword of Conan", in at least one story featuring young Conan, but she was drawn differently. I wish we had known her better, but the several writers who tried to tell us about Conan the youth usually started everything from scratch and would never get their stories straight. (Sometimes Conan's an orphan, sometimes not; the names of his childhood friends would change, etc.) The almost complete lack of a supernatural element, if one forgets about the weight-shifting statue, also helps anchor the tale in a more realistic and relatable context. After this momentous story, the mag has an article on the film Jason and the argonauts, and then a reprint featuring Joe Maneely's Crusader. Maneely is one fine artist, and the script is also pretty good; it emphasizes the nobility of the two opponents in a duel between Saladin and the hero.  |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 16:22:06 GMT -5
Another article follows, this one talking about the famous and classic Gnome Press edition of the Conan prose stories. Would you believe that one of them had a cover by Frank Kelly Freas?  The following feature is another reprint, this time from Conan the barbarian #11. I had always figured that it had seen print in Savage Tales first and in CtB 11 second, because of some art correction that covered exposed flesh, but no; it was actually more than a year before it was reprinted here. Comic Book Artist #2 gave us a look at the unedited artwork, which was provided (and inked) by the artist):  The right panel is an uncensored version of the leftmost one. The towel has been added, so you can imagine what the middle panel actually should have looked like. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 21, 2014 16:24:55 GMT -5
The story of "The dweller in the dark" is a pretty good one, and its few pages deliver the action with no wasted space. Conan becomes the new captain of a desert city because he caught the fancy of the place's queen, who however intends to treat him like a pet; as a slave explains that the queen consumes guard captains like others do chocolate truffles,he decides that it's no life for him. But being caught talking to the slave (who happens to be a pretty girl, and in her bath to boot), he's accused of being faithless and is thrown in the humid dungeons that underline the palace; there, he and the slave are to be devoured by some "dweller in darkness" who turns out to be a hideous octopus-like thing. Much grunting, swearing and fighting later, our heroes escape through a hole in the ceiling and into the throne room, and Conan drops the capricious queen to her pet monster. The slave becomes the new queen, and Conan leaves because he's not sure he would survive another queen in such a short time.  The book finally features a two-page spread by P. Craig Russell, still young and in a style reminiscent more of Tim Conrad's than of Russell's own. The high point of this issue is definitely The Dark Man adaptation; it's really a must-read item. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 22, 2014 9:15:01 GMT -5
Savage Tales #5 At last, an issue of Savage Tales that came out at the expected date, with no report of imminent cancellation! And one that sported a rare team-up of sort between Conan and Ka-Zar on the cover, drawn and painted by no less than Neal Adams! (Adams draws a mean Conan. Each instance of an Adams-drawn Cimmerian is a cause for joy). However!!! This would also be the last Savage Tales issue featuring Conan, who was ready to segue into a new black-and-white mag, Savage Sword of Conan. All these changes would be explained in a two-page editorial; Conan had proven so successful with the adaptation of Red Nails that it was felt he could hold his own in a dedicated mag, and for the remainder of its run, Savage Tales would focus on Ka-Zar. The editorial was accompanied by an illo by the great Roy G. Krenkel.  Just before the main story starts, we have the usual excerpt from the Nemedian Chronicles (well, it's not really an excerpt since that's all the Nemedian Chronicles material that was ever written), "Know, o prince (...)", with, instead of a map of the Hyborian world, a still taken from some exotic adventure movie. We'd frequently see such photos in the 70s; they'd be from adventure flicks, swords and sandals movies, and assorted historical epics. I quite liked them, and this particular one looks both cheesy and amusing. What could it be? "Curse of the Aztecs"? "The Jade Terror"? I've no idea, but I understand why it would be used here, as it looks like something Margaret Brundage might have come up with for a Weird Tales cover. (Well... the lady would need to be more skimpily dressed, I suppose).  (Note: berk informed us, in the previous incarnation of this thread, that tis still is taken from the Canadian movie " The Mask" from 1961).
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 22, 2014 9:17:01 GMT -5
 The Conan story that opens the book is, for once, not what I'd consider a classic. It's good enough, but also pretty generic in the "wandering barbarian kills a magician and a mean baron" kind of way. The plot is from John Jakes, who had previously provided the same service for an issue of Conan the barbarian (#13 to be precise). Jakes is a famous author, albeit in the historical fiction field more than for his S&S efforts, and his character Brak the barbarian is one of the well-known names from the sword-swinging 70s, alongside the likes of Thongor, Kothar or Imaro. Still, I've never cared overmuch about Brak (who'll appear later in this very issue), and the plot here is enjoyable but little more. What makes this story stand out is that it's a very rare instance of Jim Starlin drawing a Conan story. "Rare" as in "the only one I can really think of". It looks exactly like what a Conan story drawn by Starlin in the 70s would be expected to look like: dynamic scenes, shiny metal ornaments, beautiful mosaics on castle walls. (I was a big fan of Starlin's Warlock, so I liked this take on Conan, although it seemed a little too "polished", so to speak, to be the real Hyborian world). Starlin also had Conan do something I hadn't seen him do before: fight with two swords at once!  Another unusual aspect here is that for once the "magician" is actually an alchemist. He and his employer try to find the secret the philosophical stone (or in any case they're trying to make gold), and the runoff from the alchemical lab is slowly poisoning the villagers who live downstream from the bad guy's castle: they're turning into leprous beings or, in the case of two particular brothers, mean-looking giants. Conan is hired by the village's mayor to dispose of the polluters, which he'll do after a few pages of derring-do. The story was reprinted in color in Conan the barbarian #64, with two thirds of a page removed: it featured a scene that the comics code would have frowned upon, and one with which Starlin seemed to have had a little fun (he mentioned it in a later interview). That particular reprint seemed to have been a last-minute decision, as its cover didn't fit with the story; a blurb stated that inker Steve Gan had missed the deadline. The tale was not in its proper chronological place (which could have been pretty much anytime but during Conan's stay with the Black Corsairs!), but nobody complained! It was always good to see B&W stories in a colored version, if only for comparison purposes. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 22, 2014 9:17:56 GMT -5
After this opening salvo, we have something of a first: a house ad for Marvel B&W mags, where we might just see the first time Alfredo Alcala drew the Cimmerian for the House of Ideas! (Don't forget that the famous Buscema-Alcala team, which would delight the readers of Savage sword of Conan for a few years, still had to publish "Black colossus".  |
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