The annotated Conan the Barbarian
Aug 28, 2024 20:39:51 GMT -5
shaxper, kirby101, and 3 more like this
Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 28, 2024 20:39:51 GMT -5
Conan the barbarian #8 (Aug 1971)
There's a detail that's very significant for me in this issue: it's the first time we see Barry Smith's trademark crosspiece on swords: compact, following the blade and not flaring to the sides. I thought such swords looked absolutely cool when I discovered them, and the "Barry Smith sword" is the only model I used in my own juvenile Conan rip-off comics!
The Keepers of the Crypt
Script by Roy Thomas
Art by Barry Smith, Tom Sutton and Tom Palmer
Adapted from this synopsis by Robert E. Howard, first published in Fantasy Crossroads #1, Graceland College Comic Club, and reprinted many times since.
L. Sprague deCamp used the synopsis as a framework for his own version, which was published as The Halls of the Dead in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction vol. 3, n. 2, February 1967 and made its way into the Conan Lancer paperback. Here, Roy ignores deCamp's work and works straight from the Howard synopsis.
The Story:
After the events from last issue, Conan is wanted by Numalia's authorities. This strikes me as poor sport on the part of the Nemedians; even if their agent Demetrio vouched that it was a Stygian monster who killed the governor’s niece, Uncle wants his pound of flesh and insists Conan be hanged for murder and sics people after him! When the Cimmerian crosses the border between Nemedia and Corinthia, the Nemedians ask the Corinthians to apprehend him. As our story opens, a squad of Corinthian soldiers, led by a Gunderman named Burgun, has chased Conan all the way to a rather empty and hilly country.
(That splash page was later turned into a blacklight poster. Weren’t the ‘70s grand?)
In surprisingly cold-blooded fashion, Conan sets a trap for his pursuers; a trip wire that will trigger a rocky avalanche meant to bury them. (Seems to me Conan could have easily escaped the soldiers in such a wild country, but he may just be tired of sleeping with one eye open). The trap works like clockwork and the only survivor is the Gunderman.
Because coincidences are allowed in such stories and because a little exposition is fair play when establishing a character's backstory, the Gunderman recognizes Conan! He saw him two years earlier at the sack of the fortified city of Venarium, a town that the kingdom of Aquilonia had established in southern Cimmeria, just north of Gunderland. Young Conan had been one of the first Cimmerians over the wall.
Burgun means to avenge his Gundermen brethren on top of his own recently lost squad and engages his opponent, but Conan quickly defeats him. Burgun's chain mail saves him from being decapitated but the man loses consciousness and is left for dead.
I really like the simple realism of that scene. Not all sword blows will kill, especially when their force is partly absorbed by armour, but I'm sure that they still hurt like nobody's business and can cause a concussion!
Leaving the scene, Conan eventually reaches an abandoned city. The fact that an entire town can be found like that, left untouched for a very long time, reinforces my opinion (discussed in a post above) that the Hyborian lands aren't heavily populated. Sure, it's in the Corinthian back country, but still… an old city should have been ransacked long ago. However, there may be a reason it’s been left alone… as we’ll soon discover!
Entering the silent city, Conan is surprised by a giant lizard, 30 feet long!!!
Howard, in his synopsis, had just mentions that some monstrosity lived in the deserted city. I much prefer Barry's gorgeous Gila monster to deCamp's giant slug (from “The Halls of the Dead”) or to Mike Mignola's giant frog (from Dark Horse’s adaptation). Look at all those bumpy scales! They must have taken forever to draw!
The Cimmerian runs away all the way up a solitary column, where the dragon can't reach him. However, Conan immediately realizes that he may die of starvation if the beast doesn't relent! (Shades of Red Nails, in which a similar event would occur).
Always resourceful as well as brawny, the Cimmerian lifts a heavy piece of masonry and drops it in the dragon's gullet, causing the beast to topple on its back as it tries to spit out the unpalatable morsel. Before it can do so, Conan jumps on its vulnerable belly and skewers it. That's twice in one day he's solved problems by dropping stones on them!
Reasoning that an old city like this (once civilized and rich by the looks of it) must have had some kind of temple with a potential treasure in it, Conan makes his way to what looks like an important building. As he's about to enter it, he's surprised by Burgun, who woke up and followed him. Burgun has his unsheathed sword in hand and means business.
Conan doesn't look particularly worried (ah, the confidence of youth) and argues that it would make more sense for the two men to work together in finding any treasure than to fight again. Burgun needs a little convincing, but as he probably remembers that he lost his first bout against this naked youth, he decides that it's indeed a reasonable plan. (He's also seen the dragon that Conan killed single-handedly, so there's that as well...)
In the temple, the two men do find a treasure room, containing an insane amount of riches. Around it, six giant warriors long since mummified seem to stand guard in a series of niches. Particularly noticeable, a big jade serpent catches the two thieves’ eyes; jewel-incrusted, it must be worth a fortune. Rather than fight for the prize, Burgun introduces Conan to the game of dice (another thing our young friend is just learning about!) and the Cimmerian wins. "I like this game", he comments. Conan will therefore take the snake, and Burgun will gather as much of the rest of the treasure as he can.
As they prepare to exit with the loot, they are shocked to see the mummies coming back to life! Can nothing ever be simple?
A quick fight ensues and the two mortal warriors choose the best part of valour and run away. When their giant pursuers exit the temple and are touched by the sun's light, they crumble into dust. But the city itself is then shaken by an earthquake, and the two companions are separated! (Incidentally, the rest of the vast treasure seems to have sunk underground and is lost).
When the dust settles, Conan can't find Burgun (whose name he can’t remember. But that’s because he never learned it! (We know he’s called Burgun because one of his men called him that at the start of the story). The Cimmerian makes his way to the next village, where in a tavern he's pleased to his his erstwhile girlfriend, Jenna, from issue #6. The girl used the gold she stole from Conan’s on that occasion to get from Zamora to Corinthia, where she bought this ale house that clearly isn’t the investment she thought it would be.
Conan’s mood is definitely buoyed by the treasure he's just found, and he cheerfully joins the girl, holding no grudge over her previous betrayal. It's time for gigantic mirth, by Crom! (Jenna is of course sorry for what she did, delighted to see Conan, and… did he say he had found treasure? ...Ah, girl, don’t ever change).
Proudly opening one of his two treasure bags, Conan reveals that it contains… dust. The jewels he thought were in there have magically turned to dust! No matter, says he, the real treasure is in the other bag anyway. Jenna picks up the bag but suddenly drops it to the ground, claiming that it moved!
Before Conan can check what she means, a magistrate and a quartet of soldiers enter the tavern. Crom, but these Corinthian cops are way more efficient than the Zamorian or Nemedian ones! They arrest Conan, and the magistrate reaches inside the treasure bag to see what can be found within, figuring it must be something Conan stole from Numalia’s House of Relics.… But his greed shall be punished, as the jade serpent has turned into a real snake, biting his fingers!
As he screams in agony and everybody freaks out over this bit of apparent sorcery, Conan and Jenna take advantage of the confusion to exit the tavern, steal a horse and gallop off into the night. Tavern regulars hinder the guards' pursuit, saying “it’s one of our own who rides the darkling winds this night!”.
Poor Conan... easy come, easy go... but at least he's with Jenna again! She can continue his education in certain matters!
Comments:
I really like that story, even if parts of it are rather predictable. But then so are James Bond movies, and I like most of them. The glimpses of Venarium were very welcome, as is the return of Jenna. Burgun is a sympathetic character too, and it would have been a pity had he died in the earthquake!
Barry's work keeps getting better and better, and Sutton and Palmer are excellent inkers over his pencils. Honestly, I'd never have guessed that Palmer on Smith would work at all, let alone so well!
Geography time! The story is set in Zamora in the original synopsis, but here we're in Corinthia. That's because Roy decided that the Gunderman we meet here and the one whose death Conan avenges in the story Rogues in the House (which will be the basis for CtB #10-11), are one and the same person. This is economical, and provides a good reason for Conan being friendly with the man when they meet again: nothing like shared peril to forge bonds of friendship. Since Roy is paving the way for that particular tale, he moves today's adventure from Zamora to Corinthia, because of something Robert E. Howard told P. Schuyler Miller in his famous letter:
Taking its hint from L. Sprague deCamp, Marvel treated Corinthia not as a unified country but as a collection of city-states. (It did the same to the Border Kingdom, by the way). That practical in the '80s, when writers would be free to play with multiple states, multiple kings and multiple queens without having to consider long-term impacts on Hyborian geopolitics. It's much easier to have the kingdom of Brgz'll Arh D'rrh be destroyed in a war of a demonic invasion than, say, a country like Koth. You don't even have to mention Brgz'll Arh D'rrh again, which is always the way it turned out! Placing Rogues in Corinthia therefore fits Howard's description, although he himself might have seen Corinthia as a proper kingdom, separated from Zamora by a number of city-states not mentioned on his map.
Notes :
- The lost city is assumed to be named Lanjau; Burgun has heard legends about it. It’s said to have been so rich that it made the gods jealous.
- The sack of Venarium used to be something of a sacred cow in Marvel's Conan comics: you referred to it, but you didn't show it. The best we'd get would be a few scenes from the battle, as in this issue, or we'd see the aftermath of it (as in SSoC #6). Then this tradition was dropped. In the "Conan year one" arc from the late '80s, we were shown a silly version of the battle in which Venarium was destroyed by magic (a version retconned away when Roy came back to the book). The battle was later shown in more credible fashion in Conan the Adventurer #1. (Continuity aficionados will ave noticed that while the Venarium characters from SSoC #6 made a cameo appearance in that issue, Burgun did not; Roy himself reported in Barbarian Life that regretted that a little). Personally, I liked the fact that the battle of Venarium was not shown in an actual story... I was sad to see it desecrated at first, then "repaired" but still shown later.
- When Burgun sees Conan, he doesn't recognize him instantly but tentatively identifies him as a Cimmerian. As I said earlier in the thread, I find this lack of familiarity with foreign people and countries very appropriate in a primitive world; most people should be very unfamiliar with anything coming from more than a few days' travel away. In the prose version of The God in the Bowl (adapted in issue #7), the Nemedian Arus fails to recognize Conan for what he is; he says "he is a northern barbarian of some sort-- a Hyperborean or a Bossonian, perhaps". Naturally Burgun would make a better guess, as he's dealt with Cimmerians before.
- The name Nestor from the synopsis isn't used here and is turned into Burgun. I don't mind the change at all, because even if Nestor is a fine and proper heroic name (King of Pylos and all!) to me it'll always be the name of Captain Haddock's butler. Furthermore, the name is seen as rather quaint and a bit ridiculous in French these days, a bit like Ernest.
- Burgun is wearing a headband when he catches up with Conan in the city. Here it seems to be a fashion choice, but in deCamp's adaptation it was a bandage-- because his helmet had been split during their first fight.
- When the two men are picking jewels, they chat a little. Conan means to continue west towards Argos and the sea, while Burgun says the money should help him with a certain woman. He hopes his new found fortune will cause her to look more favourably upon an til-then penniless soldier. That’s a nice character moment, giving extra depth to Burgun.
- A moon god is mentioned early in the issue. No name is given for it but most polytheistic cultures have some god associated with the moon. Here we say he's only got one eye, which is a nice touch.
- Conan has a new set of sandals! They have more straps over his shins than the previous ones. Probably hotter to wear, but offering better protection.
- The mummified warriors will be back in CtB #255-256, in which we return to the ruins of Lanjau. In that occasion we wil learn that while Burgun thought they looked Stygian, they are actually ancient Hyperboreans.
- The jade serpent will also be seen again in CtB #255-256. Jenna’s tavern is still open. After biting the magistrate the magical snake turned back into a jade statue; it is held in a decorative cage hanging from the ceiling, where no one dares touch it. The magistrate died, by the way. That'll teach him!
- There's a secret message Barry incorporated in a pile of coins in the treasure room.
That reminds me of Vicente Alcazar doing a similar thing, a bit later, in Creatures on the Loose #29.
- Although he face undead warriors and a giant lizard, at no time does Conan freeze or feel the hair at the nape of his neck stand up. His unease with the supernatural, oft mentioned in the future, does not seem to be a big part of his personality yet.
- When Conan convinces Burgun not to fight anymore, his winning argument is that there may be more dragons lurking around and that it would be better to be two than just one against such a creature. Which reminds me of the two Inuits discussing how to escape a polar bear by running away: "Naaah..." says one, "you can't outrun a polar bear!" The other replies: " I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you!"
- During the fight with the undead giants, Conan drops his sword to pick up a pike and impale one of them. He has no time to recover it thereafter and ends up losing another sword!
All in all, another brilliant issue. This title was really on a roll.
This is the oldest issue of Conan I own; it was found by a friend in a Quebec city flea market when we were young, around 1978 (I think he paid 10 cents for it, and sold it to me for a buck). It is therefore something of a sacred object for me, down to the ripped piece on the cover. Speaking of the cover... I'm not a big fan of the head John Romita drew and pasted on Jenna's shoulder. It's not that it's ugly, but it fairly shouts ROMITA and not Smith!
Apart from that detail, the cover is very dynamic and has a nice depth to it; the giants really seem to loom over Conan. Maybe Stan was on to something about putting more human enemies on the cover.
There's a detail that's very significant for me in this issue: it's the first time we see Barry Smith's trademark crosspiece on swords: compact, following the blade and not flaring to the sides. I thought such swords looked absolutely cool when I discovered them, and the "Barry Smith sword" is the only model I used in my own juvenile Conan rip-off comics!
The Keepers of the Crypt
Script by Roy Thomas
Art by Barry Smith, Tom Sutton and Tom Palmer
Adapted from this synopsis by Robert E. Howard, first published in Fantasy Crossroads #1, Graceland College Comic Club, and reprinted many times since.
Nestor, a mercenary from Gunderland, is leading a squad of Zamorian soldiers in pursuit of the thief Conan. In a mountain gorge, Nestor trips over a rawhide tripwire set in the high grass of a grove by Conan. The trap activates an avalanche which kills all of Nestor’s men, but only lightly injures Nestor himself. Enraged, Nestor pursues Conan into the ruins of an ancient city and a battle between the two ensues. A hit from the barbarian’s sword renders Nestor temporary senseless and Conan, thinking Nestor is dead, continues deeper into the ruins. As Nestor is recovering, Conan stumbles upon some unspecified monstrosity that he defeats by first hurling rocks upon it from an elevation and then finishing it off with his sword. Nestor eventually catches up with Conan outside a great palace in the middle of the city. Conan convinces Nestor to abandon his mission in favor of joining him in raiding the palace for treasure. Descending into the palace, the duo eventually reaches a treasure vault adorned with the bodies of long-dead warriors. After gathering up some loot of coins and jewels, the two throw dice for a jade serpent idol. Conan eventually wins but, as he lifts up the idol, the dead warriors awaken. The two fight their way out of the palace and are eventually followed by only a single large warrior. As the three of them emerge to the sunlight outside, the undead creature crumbles to dust. The two make for their escape, but an earthquake hits the ruins and separates Conan from Nestor.
Later, Conan is in a tavern with a young woman he rescued. Conan empties his bag of jewels onto their table, but to his amazement they too, like the undead warrior, had turned to dust. The girl lifts up the leather sack with the snake idol in it for Conan to examine, but soon drops it with a scream as she feels something moving inside it. At this very moment, a magistrate enters the tavern with a group of soldiers and has Conan driven up against a wall. It turns out that Nestor, having gotten drunk on the money of his which never turned to dust, had told of his exploits with Conan in their presence and just barely escaped arrest. The magistrate decides to confiscate Conan’s leather bag. However, as he places his hand into it, he immediately retracts it with a shriek revealing a live serpent biting fast onto his finger. The resulting turmoil allows Conan and the girl to escape.
Later, Conan is in a tavern with a young woman he rescued. Conan empties his bag of jewels onto their table, but to his amazement they too, like the undead warrior, had turned to dust. The girl lifts up the leather sack with the snake idol in it for Conan to examine, but soon drops it with a scream as she feels something moving inside it. At this very moment, a magistrate enters the tavern with a group of soldiers and has Conan driven up against a wall. It turns out that Nestor, having gotten drunk on the money of his which never turned to dust, had told of his exploits with Conan in their presence and just barely escaped arrest. The magistrate decides to confiscate Conan’s leather bag. However, as he places his hand into it, he immediately retracts it with a shriek revealing a live serpent biting fast onto his finger. The resulting turmoil allows Conan and the girl to escape.
Note the "with a young woman he rescued". Since this young woman will turn out to be Jenna, we know that the rescue in question was the one featured in issue #6. What kind of rescue did Howard himself have in mind? I don't know... it's almost as if Howard needs a justification for the girl to sit with our hero in that scene!
L. Sprague deCamp used the synopsis as a framework for his own version, which was published as The Halls of the Dead in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction vol. 3, n. 2, February 1967 and made its way into the Conan Lancer paperback. Here, Roy ignores deCamp's work and works straight from the Howard synopsis.
The Story:
After the events from last issue, Conan is wanted by Numalia's authorities. This strikes me as poor sport on the part of the Nemedians; even if their agent Demetrio vouched that it was a Stygian monster who killed the governor’s niece, Uncle wants his pound of flesh and insists Conan be hanged for murder and sics people after him! When the Cimmerian crosses the border between Nemedia and Corinthia, the Nemedians ask the Corinthians to apprehend him. As our story opens, a squad of Corinthian soldiers, led by a Gunderman named Burgun, has chased Conan all the way to a rather empty and hilly country.
(That splash page was later turned into a blacklight poster. Weren’t the ‘70s grand?)
In surprisingly cold-blooded fashion, Conan sets a trap for his pursuers; a trip wire that will trigger a rocky avalanche meant to bury them. (Seems to me Conan could have easily escaped the soldiers in such a wild country, but he may just be tired of sleeping with one eye open). The trap works like clockwork and the only survivor is the Gunderman.
Because coincidences are allowed in such stories and because a little exposition is fair play when establishing a character's backstory, the Gunderman recognizes Conan! He saw him two years earlier at the sack of the fortified city of Venarium, a town that the kingdom of Aquilonia had established in southern Cimmeria, just north of Gunderland. Young Conan had been one of the first Cimmerians over the wall.
Burgun means to avenge his Gundermen brethren on top of his own recently lost squad and engages his opponent, but Conan quickly defeats him. Burgun's chain mail saves him from being decapitated but the man loses consciousness and is left for dead.
I really like the simple realism of that scene. Not all sword blows will kill, especially when their force is partly absorbed by armour, but I'm sure that they still hurt like nobody's business and can cause a concussion!
Leaving the scene, Conan eventually reaches an abandoned city. The fact that an entire town can be found like that, left untouched for a very long time, reinforces my opinion (discussed in a post above) that the Hyborian lands aren't heavily populated. Sure, it's in the Corinthian back country, but still… an old city should have been ransacked long ago. However, there may be a reason it’s been left alone… as we’ll soon discover!
Entering the silent city, Conan is surprised by a giant lizard, 30 feet long!!!
Howard, in his synopsis, had just mentions that some monstrosity lived in the deserted city. I much prefer Barry's gorgeous Gila monster to deCamp's giant slug (from “The Halls of the Dead”) or to Mike Mignola's giant frog (from Dark Horse’s adaptation). Look at all those bumpy scales! They must have taken forever to draw!
The Cimmerian runs away all the way up a solitary column, where the dragon can't reach him. However, Conan immediately realizes that he may die of starvation if the beast doesn't relent! (Shades of Red Nails, in which a similar event would occur).
Always resourceful as well as brawny, the Cimmerian lifts a heavy piece of masonry and drops it in the dragon's gullet, causing the beast to topple on its back as it tries to spit out the unpalatable morsel. Before it can do so, Conan jumps on its vulnerable belly and skewers it. That's twice in one day he's solved problems by dropping stones on them!
Reasoning that an old city like this (once civilized and rich by the looks of it) must have had some kind of temple with a potential treasure in it, Conan makes his way to what looks like an important building. As he's about to enter it, he's surprised by Burgun, who woke up and followed him. Burgun has his unsheathed sword in hand and means business.
Conan doesn't look particularly worried (ah, the confidence of youth) and argues that it would make more sense for the two men to work together in finding any treasure than to fight again. Burgun needs a little convincing, but as he probably remembers that he lost his first bout against this naked youth, he decides that it's indeed a reasonable plan. (He's also seen the dragon that Conan killed single-handedly, so there's that as well...)
In the temple, the two men do find a treasure room, containing an insane amount of riches. Around it, six giant warriors long since mummified seem to stand guard in a series of niches. Particularly noticeable, a big jade serpent catches the two thieves’ eyes; jewel-incrusted, it must be worth a fortune. Rather than fight for the prize, Burgun introduces Conan to the game of dice (another thing our young friend is just learning about!) and the Cimmerian wins. "I like this game", he comments. Conan will therefore take the snake, and Burgun will gather as much of the rest of the treasure as he can.
As they prepare to exit with the loot, they are shocked to see the mummies coming back to life! Can nothing ever be simple?
A quick fight ensues and the two mortal warriors choose the best part of valour and run away. When their giant pursuers exit the temple and are touched by the sun's light, they crumble into dust. But the city itself is then shaken by an earthquake, and the two companions are separated! (Incidentally, the rest of the vast treasure seems to have sunk underground and is lost).
When the dust settles, Conan can't find Burgun (whose name he can’t remember. But that’s because he never learned it! (We know he’s called Burgun because one of his men called him that at the start of the story). The Cimmerian makes his way to the next village, where in a tavern he's pleased to his his erstwhile girlfriend, Jenna, from issue #6. The girl used the gold she stole from Conan’s on that occasion to get from Zamora to Corinthia, where she bought this ale house that clearly isn’t the investment she thought it would be.
Conan’s mood is definitely buoyed by the treasure he's just found, and he cheerfully joins the girl, holding no grudge over her previous betrayal. It's time for gigantic mirth, by Crom! (Jenna is of course sorry for what she did, delighted to see Conan, and… did he say he had found treasure? ...Ah, girl, don’t ever change).
Proudly opening one of his two treasure bags, Conan reveals that it contains… dust. The jewels he thought were in there have magically turned to dust! No matter, says he, the real treasure is in the other bag anyway. Jenna picks up the bag but suddenly drops it to the ground, claiming that it moved!
Before Conan can check what she means, a magistrate and a quartet of soldiers enter the tavern. Crom, but these Corinthian cops are way more efficient than the Zamorian or Nemedian ones! They arrest Conan, and the magistrate reaches inside the treasure bag to see what can be found within, figuring it must be something Conan stole from Numalia’s House of Relics.… But his greed shall be punished, as the jade serpent has turned into a real snake, biting his fingers!
As he screams in agony and everybody freaks out over this bit of apparent sorcery, Conan and Jenna take advantage of the confusion to exit the tavern, steal a horse and gallop off into the night. Tavern regulars hinder the guards' pursuit, saying “it’s one of our own who rides the darkling winds this night!”.
Poor Conan... easy come, easy go... but at least he's with Jenna again! She can continue his education in certain matters!
Comments:
I really like that story, even if parts of it are rather predictable. But then so are James Bond movies, and I like most of them. The glimpses of Venarium were very welcome, as is the return of Jenna. Burgun is a sympathetic character too, and it would have been a pity had he died in the earthquake!
Barry's work keeps getting better and better, and Sutton and Palmer are excellent inkers over his pencils. Honestly, I'd never have guessed that Palmer on Smith would work at all, let alone so well!
Geography time! The story is set in Zamora in the original synopsis, but here we're in Corinthia. That's because Roy decided that the Gunderman we meet here and the one whose death Conan avenges in the story Rogues in the House (which will be the basis for CtB #10-11), are one and the same person. This is economical, and provides a good reason for Conan being friendly with the man when they meet again: nothing like shared peril to forge bonds of friendship. Since Roy is paving the way for that particular tale, he moves today's adventure from Zamora to Corinthia, because of something Robert E. Howard told P. Schuyler Miller in his famous letter:
"I am not sure that the adventure chronicled in "Rogues in the House" occurred in Zamora. The presence of opposing factions of politics would seem to indicate otherwise, since Zamora was an absolute despotism where differing political opinions were not tolerated. I am of the opinion that the city was one of the small city-states lying just west of Zamora, and into which Conan had wandered after leaving Zamora."
Taking its hint from L. Sprague deCamp, Marvel treated Corinthia not as a unified country but as a collection of city-states. (It did the same to the Border Kingdom, by the way). That practical in the '80s, when writers would be free to play with multiple states, multiple kings and multiple queens without having to consider long-term impacts on Hyborian geopolitics. It's much easier to have the kingdom of Brgz'll Arh D'rrh be destroyed in a war of a demonic invasion than, say, a country like Koth. You don't even have to mention Brgz'll Arh D'rrh again, which is always the way it turned out! Placing Rogues in Corinthia therefore fits Howard's description, although he himself might have seen Corinthia as a proper kingdom, separated from Zamora by a number of city-states not mentioned on his map.
Notes :
- The lost city is assumed to be named Lanjau; Burgun has heard legends about it. It’s said to have been so rich that it made the gods jealous.
- The sack of Venarium used to be something of a sacred cow in Marvel's Conan comics: you referred to it, but you didn't show it. The best we'd get would be a few scenes from the battle, as in this issue, or we'd see the aftermath of it (as in SSoC #6). Then this tradition was dropped. In the "Conan year one" arc from the late '80s, we were shown a silly version of the battle in which Venarium was destroyed by magic (a version retconned away when Roy came back to the book). The battle was later shown in more credible fashion in Conan the Adventurer #1. (Continuity aficionados will ave noticed that while the Venarium characters from SSoC #6 made a cameo appearance in that issue, Burgun did not; Roy himself reported in Barbarian Life that regretted that a little). Personally, I liked the fact that the battle of Venarium was not shown in an actual story... I was sad to see it desecrated at first, then "repaired" but still shown later.
- When Burgun sees Conan, he doesn't recognize him instantly but tentatively identifies him as a Cimmerian. As I said earlier in the thread, I find this lack of familiarity with foreign people and countries very appropriate in a primitive world; most people should be very unfamiliar with anything coming from more than a few days' travel away. In the prose version of The God in the Bowl (adapted in issue #7), the Nemedian Arus fails to recognize Conan for what he is; he says "he is a northern barbarian of some sort-- a Hyperborean or a Bossonian, perhaps". Naturally Burgun would make a better guess, as he's dealt with Cimmerians before.
- The name Nestor from the synopsis isn't used here and is turned into Burgun. I don't mind the change at all, because even if Nestor is a fine and proper heroic name (King of Pylos and all!) to me it'll always be the name of Captain Haddock's butler. Furthermore, the name is seen as rather quaint and a bit ridiculous in French these days, a bit like Ernest.
- Burgun is wearing a headband when he catches up with Conan in the city. Here it seems to be a fashion choice, but in deCamp's adaptation it was a bandage-- because his helmet had been split during their first fight.
- When the two men are picking jewels, they chat a little. Conan means to continue west towards Argos and the sea, while Burgun says the money should help him with a certain woman. He hopes his new found fortune will cause her to look more favourably upon an til-then penniless soldier. That’s a nice character moment, giving extra depth to Burgun.
- A moon god is mentioned early in the issue. No name is given for it but most polytheistic cultures have some god associated with the moon. Here we say he's only got one eye, which is a nice touch.
- Conan has a new set of sandals! They have more straps over his shins than the previous ones. Probably hotter to wear, but offering better protection.
- The mummified warriors will be back in CtB #255-256, in which we return to the ruins of Lanjau. In that occasion we wil learn that while Burgun thought they looked Stygian, they are actually ancient Hyperboreans.
- The jade serpent will also be seen again in CtB #255-256. Jenna’s tavern is still open. After biting the magistrate the magical snake turned back into a jade statue; it is held in a decorative cage hanging from the ceiling, where no one dares touch it. The magistrate died, by the way. That'll teach him!
- There's a secret message Barry incorporated in a pile of coins in the treasure room.
That reminds me of Vicente Alcazar doing a similar thing, a bit later, in Creatures on the Loose #29.
- Although he face undead warriors and a giant lizard, at no time does Conan freeze or feel the hair at the nape of his neck stand up. His unease with the supernatural, oft mentioned in the future, does not seem to be a big part of his personality yet.
- When Conan convinces Burgun not to fight anymore, his winning argument is that there may be more dragons lurking around and that it would be better to be two than just one against such a creature. Which reminds me of the two Inuits discussing how to escape a polar bear by running away: "Naaah..." says one, "you can't outrun a polar bear!" The other replies: " I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you!"
- During the fight with the undead giants, Conan drops his sword to pick up a pike and impale one of them. He has no time to recover it thereafter and ends up losing another sword!
All in all, another brilliant issue. This title was really on a roll.
