Right here, my friend.



I’ve only parts of both stories... I’d love to read Almuric in its entirety. You’re right, the main character was a lot like the Mucker in the beginning, although a little more innocent in his brutish ways.

You’re right, it’s almost as if issues 50-55 are a What if..? miniseries. The editor at the time tried to make it sound as if those issues were squeezed in between 28 and 29, but that didn’t quite work: for example, Prince Conn magically returns from Khitai to Aquilonia in time for issue 55, but if we then return to CtK #29, we find that Conn is still missing and His parents are still heartbroken. 

I wonder how well Conan’s empire would have fared. In The Hyborian Age, Howard had Aquilonia acquire such an empire... but many decades after Conan’s time. As for a clash with Turan, it would have been a grand epic that would fit prefectly well with the early years of Conan the barbarian, when Turan was inteoduced as a looming threat and its future king, Yezdigerd, as our hero’s lifelong enemy.

Ahreed on all points. Writers Zelenetz and Kraar both had subplots meant to be used at a later time, but most of these fell in between the floor’s boards and never addressed again. That’s quite a pity, because Kang Sho’s existence would have provided great material... When Conn came back during Kraar’s tenure, I was sure that he was actually Kang Sho, and I enjoyed the ambiguity. But then Kraar just dropped the subject, and it was revealed that it was really Conn who had come back.

Well, I just finished with the entire King Conan series and I have to say that in my mind it ended at issue #49. Issues #50-55 just do not jive with their alleged placement in the continuity. There is so much wrong them that it is best to just disregard them as apocryphal. The biggest thing is the fractured continuity just within these six issues. It is very difficult to place when the Conn solo stories take place, relative to the other depicted events. Taurus’s retreat from evil is completely out of sync with his few appearances after #28 until his death in #35. I wonder if the #50-55 Taurus is even a changeling? I really did not like how underdeveloped the character of Kang Sho was – and then to just have him turned to stone, after Zenobia callously had Lysander abandon an attempt to rescue him? As much as I detest retconning, Kobe being Genjis was an interesting and convenient twist, but it also wasn’t explored very deeply. This story line might have worked, if it had been used in the first place, but for whatever reason, they decided on the direction taken in #29, and so they should have stuck with it. I wonder if the writers knew at issue #50 that the series was being cancelled, and since there was not enough story space to adequately write about a conquest of Turan, they decided to just fill in the blanks between issues #28 and #29? I really wish I still had my original issues, so that I could read the letters of what must have been bewildered readers.

Anyway, when I first noticed the leap in time from issue #28 to #29, I had the following questions regarding these dangling plot threads:

1) In issue #27, Baron Maloric asks Conan to make his foppish and clumsy son, Pepin, a black dragon. Conan reluctantly agrees and Lysander, the last person to see Conn alive, seemed very dismayed. Lysander very much wanted to be promoted to captain of the guard, but was passed up, and he seemed even more insulted when Conan made the egregiously unqualified Pepin a black dragon, a position that only 1 in 1,000 legionnaires is worthy of. Lysander was then made Queen Zenobia’s bodyguard, and it is hinted that he will use this position to engage in an ill-advised quest to seduce the queen, who as of late is disenchanted with Conan. This cannot end well for Lysander.

2) In issue #30, Leonidas, Pepin, and the rest of the Black Dragons are slain in battle with the Picts. How the hell was Pepin ever able to be allowed on the field of battle? I can see him being appointed to the black dragons in a token position, to appease Baron Maloric. However, it seems very unlikely that he ever would have been deemed good enough to be allowed to battle alongside them.

3) In issue #25, Leonidas left the black dragons in disgrace. We never seem him ask to be allowed to rejoin, so why was he fighting his final battle, in issue #30? When did he rejoin the black dragons?

4) In issue #30, just before they are massacred by the Picts, black dragon Tarquin lectures Leonidas about his love affair with Radegund. He does this while Pepin is present. Radegund and Pepin have been in an arranged marriage since birth, so shouldn’t there be some overt animosity from Pepin towards Leonidas, especially since Pepin has likely been getting in shape from his black dragon training?

5) In issue #30, Count Trocero returns to the king’s court. We never again hear of Baron Maloric. Why? What happened to Maloric?

6) Conn took a Khitan wife, name Li-Tan. In issue #26, he leaves her to fight Genjis, with the promise that he’ll return eventually, once the battle is done. This is the last we ever hear of Li-Tan, in either continuity.

7) Kang Sho and Kang Lou-Dze leave from Khitai for Aquilonia in issue #26, but we never hear from or of them again, until issue #50. Since issues #50-55 cannot be part of this continuity, what happened to them?

8) Thoth-Amon….

And these are the answers I came up with:

1A) In either continuity, Queen Zenobia’s complicity with Lysander’s lusts seems unlikely. Lysander’s opportunity to seduce Zenobia is eliminated in either continuity when Prince Conn returns, as it is the prince’s disappearance that made Zenobia hypothetically vulnerable to Lysander’s advances. Lysander most likely continued as her bodyguard, got a new position, retired, or died in the upcoming wars of conquest.

2A) There really isn’t any other mention of Pepin between his father’s request to have him join the black dragons and his death, so we have to just assume that Tarquin worked really hard, off-panel, to get him up to snuff, so that he could be useful in battle.

3A) Again, after his humiliation in issue #25, Leonidas pretty much gets memory-holed up until his death in issue #30. We can only assume that he had an off-panel conversation with Tarquin and was readmitted into the black dragons, before his death. He was also again a black dragon in the #50-55 continuity.

4A) With both Leonidas and Pepin simultaneously serving as black dragons - and with Tarquin lecturing Leonidas to leave Radegund alone, in the presence of Pepin, the idea that Pepin would not confront him on this illicit affair with Pepin’s arranged bride-to-be, can only make sense as an oversight on the writer’s part. Quite simply, the writer forgot about it. It doesn’t matter much, as both men died soon after. Also, Deryck was a much better choice for Radegund’s husband.

5A) Count Trocero’s re-admittance to and Baron Maloric’s departure from Conan’s court are never explained. In the #50-55 continuity, Maloric is turned to stone by Thoth-Amon. I suppose it is possible that Thoth-Amon subjected Maloric to some horrific, off-panel death, without the entire nonsensical storyline of #50-55 transpiring. I don’t think Conan would have had anything to do with Maloric’s death, as Pepin was still in service as a black dragon in issue #30, which seems unlikely if Conan had Maloric put to death.

6A) After Kang Sho and Kang Lou-Dze left for Aquilonia, Conn decided to take leave of Li-Tan, in order to take up arms against the Genjis’s hordes. Conn clearly meant to return to her, but since she is never mentioned again in either continuity, I can only assume that Li-Tan was killed by the Genjis’s hordes. I assume that Conn took some measure of revenge, realized that he had nothing left in Khitan, and decided to try and see if he could catch up with Kang Sho and Kang Lou-Dze, who were already journeying to Aquilonia.

7A) In the main continuity, I think that an ill-fate befell Kang Sho and Kang Lou-Dze and that they never reached Aquilonia. When Conn and Kang Sho parted ways in issue #26, Conn hinted that the journey would be dangerous, when he said: “should the gods grant you safe passage to my father’s court…”I think that after Li-Tan (probably) died and Conn avenged her, that he eventually caught up with Kang Sho and Kang Lou-Dze, and journeyed with them for some time. Eventually they encountered the polymathic jester, Rufio, and some horrible disaster ensued, killing Kang Sho and Kang Lou-Dze. Kang Sho probably asked Conn to promise never to tell Conan of his existence and asked Conn to forgive Conan for his indiscretion with Kang Lou-Dze. Conn made it clear that Rufio helped him reach Aquilonia and Conn never mentioned Kang Sho and Kang Lou-Dze to anyone in the main continuity. It was made clear that the span of time from #29 to #49 was about five years. Eventually, Kang Sho and Kang Lou-Dze would have arrived in Aquilonia, unless some ill-fate had befallen them.

8A) Clearly, some amount of time passed between issues #28 and #29, but not enough to accommodate the #50-55 storyline. I would like to think that poor old Thoth-Amon has been searching vainly for that lost ring of his ever since #27 and that he finds it just in time to aid Yezdigerd III in his conquest of Aquilonia. However, those two will meet their match against the combined might of King Conan and the time traveling magician, Arznarbodonus.

-----

In any case, this is a good series that was well worth the cost to purchase the volumes and the time it took to read them. There are the flaws I just mentioned, but aside from that it was highly addictive and hard to put down.

Conan returns to Marvel!

Or rather... Conan comes to Disney.

I don’t know what to make of it. I would love it it if meant we’ll resume the storylines from 20 years ago, naturally, but for that we’d require reditors who are big fans of the entire old run (and not just the Thomas and Smith issues).

I fear that we’ll get a treatment similar to that Dynamite’s Red Sonja, with no connection to the original run, and a very superficial link to Howard’s works. I also fear that this may herald a cross-platform exploitation of the franchise, with maybe another film or a Hulu TV series, with the comics just serving as a secondary product (pretty much like Marvel comics right now, where characters look more and more like their movie counterpart).

The worst would be for the franchise to be helmed by an Arnold fan. I would die a little inside.

I hope that Disney will go the whole way and get the rights for the entire Howard catalog. That way we could once again have Conan, Kull and Sonja in the same universe. (And Bran Mak Morn! And Solomon Kane! And Cormac Mac Art, who we never saw in a Marvel adventure -being seen only in pin-ups).

I wonder if Roy Thomas would be willing to write a few more tales... or act as a consulting editor. That would be fine. (Although Kurt Busiek would also do a great job. having proven with his Dark Horse run that he "got" Conan and Howard).

How did Marvel lose the rights to red Sonja? Wasn't she a Roy Thomas creation?