La fille du géant du gel (The Frost Giant's Daughter)

Adapted from R. E. Howard's short story by Robin Recht


The book opens with a foreword by none less than Michael Moorcock, who says “This is an intense Conan, out of the ordinary, a Conan as Bob Howard, dead too young, would have wanted him to be. The best to date. I love it!”



This is it. This is the book that fulfills the series' mandate, that of allowing different creators to give us their personal take on the original Conan stories and to make them something unique (as comic-book stories).

There's no other way to say it: this book is magnificent!

I'm a little at a loss for words here; this book succeeds on so many levels that any review is bound to short-change it one way or the other. It is a graphic tour de force, with beautiful and realistic art (a little in the tradition of great Argentinian cartoonists, gritty yet very life-like) and gorgeous colour work. The reader is treated to many, many double-page spreads worthy of being framed, many showing the splendour of northern mountains at night, at twilight, or bathed by the harsh glare of the sun.



Yet while the pages are sometimes so true to nature as to be almost photorealistic, sometimes they also distill information to its most basic form; there are gorgeous battles scenes depicted as shadow plays, with figurative rivers of blood drenching the scene. How many times did I go "NO WAY!!!" when turning a page? Beautiful, beautiful material.



And yet! And yet, despite the beauty of the art, it is how The Frost giant’s Daughter is adapted that is the most impressive. Recht expands upon the original tale, but not simply by adding material. He's not padding the plot to have a very short story fit a 60+ pages book. No, what he does is far more impressive: he adds depth to it… making Conan truly bigger than life, making Atali (the eponymous Frost Giant's Daughter) more of a true mythical figure than a plot device, and giving their encounter a profound philosophical meaning.

While Howard's original tale was about a troubling (and fascinating!) brush between a mortal and the supernatural, here the story is a clash between a mortal and the primal forces at the core of all existence; a true glimpse into the unfathomable depth of the abyss upon which our fragile lives are built. It's all about sex and death, and the will to survive. How more primal could we get?

Recht also masterfully handles the tale's most disturbing aspect: that of Conan trying to rape the goddess Atali. That's in the original story, gentle readers, and most people can't help but feel a little nauseous at Conan's behaviour. Sure, Atali's modus operandi is to drive warriors mad with desire so they will pursue her all the way to her gigantic and murderous divine brothers, but that is no excuse: even when he’s being teased, we expect our hero Conan to master his nastier impulses. Here, Recht shows great ingenuity in treating this core aspect of the tale. He makes it acceptable without changing Atali's behaviour nor Conan's response, and without diluting the rawness of it either. More on that below.

I have seen a few online reviews that complain about the the pace being too slow. Balderdash. The pace is just perfect. Unlike the previous three volumes that went over the material a little too fast for my taste, this one takes the time to do the text justice. The story develops like the swell of the northern sea as it builds towards its cataclysmic climax, and the book would have been poorer for lack of those splendid double pages silently depicting the mountains and forests of Nordheim.



A major change to Howard's text is that our point of view character is Atali herself, not Conan. That was, I think, an extremely risky move on Recht’s part; familiarity breeds contempt, and nothing can bring a supernatural being down to Earth faster than knowing what they're thinking, or knowing them as individuals. But Recht knows what he's doing, and Atali loses none of her aloofness; she ultimately remains, as much as in Howard's text, a force of nature… well beyond mortal ken. Her motivations might be put into words for our benefit, but we understand that they do not reflect rational thought or guile but rather raw passion and primordial power.


The story

Atali is the Frost Giant's Daughter, the daughter of the god Ymir, from whom our world was made.







Each year there is war in Nordheim. The Aesir meet the Vanir on the frozen waters of a great lake, and try to distinguish themselves by feats of arms to be judged worthy of Valhalla, to be remembered as heroes rather than forgotten like so much carrion. A great chief among the Vanir, Heimdul, has caught the fancy of Atali, the Frost Giant's Daughter. For many seasons, Heimdul has proven himself mighty, canny, and worthy of being brought to the attention of the gods.

This interest is not really intellectual; it is sensual, animal, primal (that word again). The gods need great and mighty warriors the same way creatures in rut seek a worthy mate; 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To Atali, seeing candidates rise to the challenge seems to be akin to an amorous, carnal passion.

In a prequel scene to the original story, we get a little bit of exposition by an Aesir jarl, Niord, and an old warrior, Gorm. They and their men are busy torturing a Vanir prisoner who reveals that Heimdul has tricked them; Niord’s allies, who went ahead to get to the lake before everyone, fell into a trap.



As the Aesir march to rejoin their allies, they discuss their hatred of the red-haired Vanir and mention the Frost Giant’s Daughter, the goddess Atali, who chooses the bravest warriors on the battlefield. Gorm still bitterly remembers that time, years and years earlier, when he got a glimpse of her and heard her crystalline laugh as he lay wounded on the battlefield, unable to pursue her.

Atali is not far… in the company of her brothers, two gigantic bears. (In the original story, they were just giants. Making them animals gives this version a more mythical nature, as in the old legends of the Inuit).



(I had to cut this image, and several others as well, because Atali’s sole garment is a loincloth made of Saran Wrap. She looks positively divine, with pale freckled skin, but her appearances are almost all not safe for work!)

As Aesir and Vanir clash, the goddess follows the exploits of her champion Heimdul… but then she is troubled by something she hadn't noticed before: a heartbeat stronger and slower than the others, belonging to a stranger. Black- instead of gold- or red-headed, the stranger is cutting through the Vanir with grim determination. His strength is noteworthy, perhaps greater even than Heimdul's. A bear among wolves, a true lord of war.

Eventually, the stranger and Heimdul are the only survivors and they face each other. Atali is thrilled; she loves the will to power found in those she might choose as worthy of being brought to her father Ymir..

The goddess scampers down her mountaintop to witness the duel firsthand. She sees how crafty Heimdul gets the stranger to remove his helmet and announce his name (he is Conan, a Cimmerian), and to position him with the sun in his eyes. The youth might be strong, but he doesn't have the experience of the old wolf... who manages to land the first blow, sending his opponent to the ground. Atali is then sure that her champion will be the one chosen today, but the now-unarmed youth proves that his will to prevail won't be dammed, as he suddenly reaches for Heimdul's face and rips out his jaw with his bare hand!!! Picking up a sword, he then hacks the Vanir to pieces. What was his name, again? It doesn’t matter anymore… he won’t be chosen after all.

The goddess then shows herself to Conan, who mistakes her for a Vanirwoman on account of her lush red hair.

She starts to tease him mercilessly, er… “flaunting her charms” would be a good way to put it. She taunts him to follow her (among other things by throwing him snowballs), and scampers off in the snow, with the hot-blooded Cimmerian in tow.

Here is where Recht differs from Howard in tone; Atali's behaviour is absolutely meant to trigger Conan's desire, as in the original, but it is done is a more playful way... a way that suggests this is a game of seduction that the man agrees to play a part in rather than a rape attempt by a hot and bothered teen. It appears to be consensual and, in fact, after the sun sets, the pursuer and the pursued agree to a temporary truce.




See? This is a chase, but not a rape attempt. Phew!

As the two spend the night on each side of their shelter, Atali teases Conan some more even as he warns her that she shouldn’t play with men’s nerves.

The next morning, the pursuit resumes!



Once again, it looks rather playful.

Atali leads the Cimmerian all the way to Odroerir, a mountain sacred to Yimir. There she stops, and Conan finally catches up, asking if she concedes defeat. (Again, he’s behaving in a hot-blooded, but still decent way).



Then comes the final test for Conan, the moment he will finally prove himself worthy of Ymir. A great crevasse opens, as Atali asks Conan if he would go through Hell for her. He barely has time to call her (a) crazy, then (b) “wiiiiiiiiiiitch” (as he falls down the crevasse), which she corrects as “Goddess”.



The Cimmerian falls straight into a gloomy and icy-cold lake filled with the shades (or the actual corpses) of other warriors who failed the final test. They flock to Conan, meaning to kill him before he can succeed where they failed. The Cimmerian fights back, and his titanic struggle is witnessed with great interest, nay, with great passion, by Atali. Her burning and passionate nature even brings her to WOAH! Are you allowed to do that in a comic-book??? In any case, let’s say that the twin engines of carnal passion and the will to survive are superposed, and that as Conan finally defeats the wights, the goddess climaxes.



She is satisfied that she has found a proper warrior, but now Conan is extremely pissed. He climbs back to the summit, “naked, covered in his own blood, just the way he came into this world”. He is pure, unadulterated fury, and that is just what Atali is hunting for.

Reaching the summit once more, he faces the triumphant goddess and her ursine brothers. She announces that he has shown himself worthy to be chosen by the gods, and that he should be proud that it is only before a goddess that he finally lowered his head. (With a simple gesture, she begins to stop his heart from beating).



As Conan essentially lays dying, she tells him what she told to all those she brought to Odroerir in the past: how before there was a world, a sky, or ice, there was only an infinite void. How at the very bottom of the void was born the first of the giants, Ymir. How it was very hot in the void and how Ymir’s drops of sweat turned into more giants, who became jealous for being neither the first nor the mightiest. How they turned on their father (all except two), just as Ymir’s first daughter was born. How they ripped his head off, causing a great flood of blood to kill them all; a flood only the two fathful brothers and their sister escaped, because Ymir put them inside a hollow tree. The blood of Ymir then created the world and the men who dwell on it.



Atali calls upon her brothers to take Conan’s heart and to put in on the table of Ymir, so he could feed on that rare treat, the will of a great warrior.

But then things don’t go the way they were supposed to. Conan’s heart, that mighty heart she noticed at the beginning of the story, refuses to stop. Atali is quite cross as he even struggles to get back on his feet, insisting that he has to obey the will of the gods, but Conan will not submit! Faced with such indomitable will, she sics her brothers on him, but there’s no stopping the Cimmerian, who kills the two ursine gods.



This blasphemy is just not possible, and the goddess finally knows fear! as a furious Conan grabs her, she calls upon her father Ymir… and things go Ka-boom!!!



Pandemonium reigns as lightning bolts repeatedly strike Odroerir, and Ymir rises! Headless, with a neck spreading fiery blood everywhere, he stands, gigantic, dwarfing the mountain.



And what does Conan do? THE MADMAN ATTACKS YMIR!!!



Fade to red, then to black.

Conan wakes up when Niord and his men finally find him, having followed his tracks through the snow, wondering why he wandered off the battlefield like that. Conan tells his story, which would be dismissed as a dream if he didn’t still hold Atali’s garment in his clenched fist.



So, what happened? How is Conan still alive after pulling a "Doctor Doom vs the Beyonder" stunt?

I believe that Ymir and Atali, being primordial beings, represent the forces of Nature. Conan’s refusal to surrender no matter what, his refusal to go gently into that good night, shows how it is man’s will that allows him to survive everything that nature throws at him. By refusing to accept the rules of Ymir’s game, by refusing the god himself, he proved himself stronger than those old forces… and was therefore left as he was: that little but unstoppable creature that is a human being.

The story concludes with a quote from Schopenhauer: “Each breath pushes back the death that enters us continuously; and so at every moment we struggle with death”.

That is quite appropriate.

The book has a two page analysis of The Frost Giant’s Daughter by Howard scholar Patrice Louinet, and there I learned that this story was the first specific Conan tale that Howard wrote! (If I ever knew that, I had forgotten. I knew The Phoenix on the Sword was a re-write of a Kull story, but I thought The Scarlet Citadel and The Tower of the Elephant were the first Conan-Conan tales). The Frost Giant’s Daughter failed to sell, even when re-written as The Frost King’s Daughter, with Conan changed to one Amra of Akbitana. It was finally given to a fanzine (The Fantasy Fan) in 1933, where it was published under the title Gods of the North. Much to my surprise, Gods of the North was adapted in comic-book form in Star-Studded Comics #14 in 1968!


This book is amazing. It is right there with my Humanoïdes Associés edition of Thomas and Smith's Red Nails as one of my favourite Conan comics! Well done, Mr. Robin Recht!