A few months pass, and a Nemedian scholar writing a letter to a colleague is a good story device for some plot points exposure. The evil queen of Khauran is now an absolute tyrant who behaves shamelessly in public, murders and plunders at will, practices human sacrifice and has even (so they say) summoned a demon who now dwells in the caves of her palace.



Some Khaurani knights have fled, trying to organize some form of revolutionary movement, but they need allies if they are to take on Constantius' soldiers. Such allies might be found in the Zuagirs, who have become bolder and bolder in recent months; it is said that their leader, Olgerd Vladislav, now has a second in command who has really stirred things up: a fellow named Conan. Could this be the same man who was supposedly killed months ago?



The scholar has also met Marcios, who is now convinced that the erstwhile captain Conan was right: the true queen must have been replaced by some double, as it is impossible for her to have changed so much in so little time. Marcios is doing his best to prove the point, and to try and free the real queen, wherever she might be (if, that is, she is still alive).

Marcios will get confirmation one night as, posing as a deaf-mute beggar, he overhears Salomé and one of her generals discussing Taramis' fate. (Tyrants and their hirelings should really not discuss matters of state in the streets after dark!!!)

We come back to Conan, whom we last saw months and months ago. His wounds have healed, but he is now much more Nietzshean than before. Second in command to Olgerd Vladislav, he now means to become sole chief and to join the 11,000 Zuagirs to the 3,000-strong Khaurani rebels to topple Khauran's queen and take his revenge on Constantius. Olgerd is furious that Conan would have made such moves without telling him, and the two fight it out; Conan breaks Olgerd's arm by just squeezing it, and send him off to the desrt, warning him about not being seen by the men; for Zuagirs have little sympathy for deposed leaders. As the wounded Olgerd rides away, Conan taunts him: "Are you fit to live, Olgerd Vladislav"?

The Zuagirs approach the city with siege engines, prompting Constantius' mercenaries right to intercept them. They charge the desrt men who then part in two groups, opening the way for a countercharge by 3000 armoured Khaurani knights! The siege engines were fake, a tempting lure that drew the mercenaries away from the protection of the city walls.

As Constantius' men are crushed between the two attacking forces, Conan and a few men slip into the city and search the dungeons for the true queen Taramis, whom they find in a sorry state.



But the poor queen's ordeal is not over, as Salomé and her henchmen use magic to attack the rescuers, and make off with tarmacs! Only Conan survives the onslaught, and he pursues the witch, catching up just as she's about to drag Taramis into her unholy temple to sacrifice her to whatever devil she's got in there. As Conan dispatches the witch's huge acolyte, Marcios appears and plunges his sword in Salomé's heart, from which comes not only blood but an eldritch fume.

Conan, Marcios and Taramis make it out of the temple, but then a still-living Salomé follows, calling the name "Thaug" before finally collapsing. Thaug turns out to be the devil in the temple, a huge monster who then walks out the brazen doors; Conan takes a few stabs at it with his sword, until the Zuagirs ride into town and shot the thing down with arrows.

Taramis is restored as queen, Marcios is made captain of the guard, and Conan decides he'd rather go on as chief of the Zuagirs. One last item of business remains, though, since Constantius has survived: the business of a much-delayed justice.




Notes:

- Conan is about 30 in this story; it occurs after his days as a pirate on the Vilayet andshows the start of his career as a Zuagir desert raider.

- Roy explained how he made Conan a more active character in this story. In the original, Marcios/Valerius does a lot more. The change was quite justified for a comic-book adaptation, methinks, and works very well indeed.

- Olgerd Vladislav will be seen a few more times, notably in SSoC #6, SSoC #31, SSoC #32 and SSoC #58.

Re-orienting is the way I'd call it rather than outright retconning, since Kraar didn't actually undo things that had happened before, but you're right: there was indeed a drastic (and at the time unwelcome) change in tone and in direction. It was however done in a plausible way: the Black Dragons subplot was dropped by having them all massacred by the Picts, the queen simply stopped seeing her would-be paramour, all the political intrigue was dropped by the sudden occurrence of a world war, and the "son of Conan becoming a wizard" plot was dropped when it was revealed that he had been a magical imp all along. (Only to replace him by Conan's real son, who... had been raised as a wizard. Strange plotting decision, here).

In hindsight the Kraar issues do read like one long and almost uninterrupted battle, but they had their moment (I thought).

 

Exactly! And for once, that was a retcon I didn't mind because the Owsley/Zelenetz plot was pretty darn good!

My only small gripe is that those final issues did invalidate some of Kraar's run. But I suspect that part of the problem is that Conan the King was being cancelled, and that a lot of story had to be resolved in very few pages.

Savage sword of Conan #6, June 1975 issue

I somehow remembered this issue as a minor one… but upon re-reading it, I can't understand why. Not only does it present two Conan stories of significant importance, but it also has two very good text pieces.



It is also something of an Alex Niño-fest: not only is one of the stories drawn by the stupendous Filipino artist, but we're also treated to a cool-looking pin-up and to a cover! (Well, all right, I suspect that Niño provided the initial art for the cover which was then painted by co-artist Frank Magsino. Both gentlemen signed the work).The cover depicts an actual scene from the second story presented in the issue.

This issue's table of contents:

The sleeper beneath the sands, an original Conan story by Roy Thomas drawn by Sonny Trinidad.

The gods of the Hyborian age, the first of a series of article by Robert Yaple on the subject of ancient gods and religions. Had this been required readings for future writers of Conan, maybe we'd have been spared Turanians swearing by Ymir and Nemedians swearing by Erlik. It is awesome to see that this article is fully referenced (using the Conan paperbacks as its source).

Can any good thing come out of Cimmeria? the continuing essay in which Lin Carter covers the origin of the S&S genre, here telling us about the literary origin of Conan.

People of the dark, a REH adaptation by Roy Thomas and super star Alex Niño.

People of the dark and the Alex Niño pinup accompanying the Lin Carter piece were reprinted (in colour!) in Marvel Treasury Edition # 19 and #23, respectively.

This issue starts a tradition that was welcome at the time and that agrees with future editor in chief Jim Shooter's philosophy that "every issue is someone's first issue": the presentation of a map of Conan's world, as adapted from Robert Howard's own map. Each issue, this map would come with a short blurb describing how the first story fit in the chronology of Conan's career. (Under Thomas, this would actually make sense and make references to actual Conan stories; later on, in the 80s, it would just often be made up on the spot and refer to sweet f%&k all).

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The sleeper beneath the sand, story by Roy Thomas, art by Sonny Trinidad.

This is a direct sequel to the previous issue "A witch shall be born". Conan has been chief of the desert-dwelling Zuagirs for just a few weeks. He is roughly 30 at the time.

The tale has strong Lovecraftian overtones that obliquely refer to the C'thulhu mythos, but it was a common thing among the Weird Tales stars (Lovecraft, Howard, Smith) to cross-reference their tales, and Howard had quite a few stories about "ancient ones sleeping until some day they wake up to doom us all". It's a pretty good yarn, with strong character clashes, action and a pretty spooky supernatural element. Sonny Trinidad is an artist I mostly knew through his work on Son of Satan; here he provides solid and dynamic artwork in the Buscema tradition.

We start with Olgerd Vladislav, the deposed leader of the Zuagirs, who's now lost in the desert after his ouster by Conan. His right arm is broken and twisted, and he's on the verge of death. Lucky for him, he's rescued by a group of pilgrims on their way to a desert temple; they are led by kindly Ahmed Mullah and his daughter, the firebrand Dhira. These pilgrims, paradoxically enough, are bound for the spot where dwells "the sleeper beneath the sands", an antediluvian demon; as they must every 50 years, they are about to engage in a ritual that will cause the creature to keep sleeping. Unlike the usual cults in this kind of stories, these ones actually are there to defend the rest of the world and not try to rule it through the reappearance of a supernatural creature.

Posing as a lost Zuagir, Olgerd learns from Ahmed that the Zuagir chief, Conan, is rumoured to also be heading to the temple in order to meet with his lieutenant Jebal. (This convenient coincidence is explained in a pretty elegant way: there aren't that many recognizable meeting spots in a desert)! Olgerd plots his revenge against his erstwhile comrade turned enemy.

At the temple, everybody prepares for the ritual. If the sleeper were to awaken, the only way to send him back to sleep would be for someone to speak certain words of power and agree to go back with the creature to its hellish world. But Olgerd cares nothing for the fate of the world: as soon as Jebal shows up, he kills him, then kills Ahmed, then takes Dhira hostage to force the rest of the group to aid him in capturing Conan.

The Cimmerian shows up, is captured, and is tied between two columns in the temple (like Samson in the Bible, a reference to which is made. That's two biblical references in two issues, what with the John the Baptist one from issue #5)!

Olgerd starts slicing Conan up (intending to enjoy every second of his opponent's demise), when he's distracted by two near-simultaneous events: a group of Turanian soldiers, hot on Jebal's trail, are arriving; and worse, the sleeper is awakening (since the ritual has not been performed). From then, pandemonium reigns; columns are cast down, walls fall apart, the ground cracks, and a huge eye can be visible from deep in the earth, rising to the surface. His bonds now loose, Conan manages to run away from the temple, carrying Dhira over his shoulder, just as the huge sleeper erupts from the ground. (And now it's time for a Dune reference: "…the sleeper has indeed awakened!")



Olgerd is caught by one of the Sleeper's tentacles, and screams for help. Conan grabs a bow and is tempted to put the Zaporoskan out of his misery, then reflects that Olgerd never did anything for him… and leaves him to the Sleeper's tender care.

Deciding that now would be a good time to get the hell away, Conan turns to Dhira… to find her gone! She went back to the ruins of the temple, and is busy reading the "words of power" from a scroll to send back the monster to its underground dwelling! The brave girl succeeds, but is carried back to the netherworld with the Sleeper.

Conan muses that in fifty years, when the Sleeper starts waking again, there won't be anyone left to soothe it back to sleep… and he intends to be leagues away when that happens.


Notes:

- Jebal was mentioned in A witch shall be born, SSoC#5.
- Olgerd Vladislav was supposed to be dead at the end of this story, because Marvel didn't have the right to adapt the L. Sprague de Camp/Lin carter Conanization of a REH story (Country of the knife = the flame knife) in which the two men had used Olgerd again. When those rights were obtained and the story adapted in SSoC 31-32, the man's return from death (and his recovering a functional right hand) had to be explained, something which was done in a rare Hyborian age tale featuring neither Conan nor Red Sonja, in SSoC#58.
- This might have been a minor story, serving to tie up some loose ends from a witch shall be born, but it's actually quite powerful. The girl Dhira turns out to be quite a heroine!

I suppose I don't have to emphasize the fact that the art looks gorgeous. It is nothing like what we'd seen before in this title, but is all the more welcome for it, emphasizing the variety of material found in SSoC.

We start with Jim O'Brien, a modern man whose passion for one Eleanor Rand gives him murderous urges: O'Brien intends to kill his rival, Englishman Richard Brent. O'Brien has overheard that Brent intends to go explore the ages-old, deep and spooky Dagon cave; his dark passion prompts him to get there first and get rid of Dent (believing that with Dent gone, Eleanor would turn to him).

As he gets deeper in the cave, O'Brien reflects on the ancient legends surrounding it; the place is associated with the little people, supposed to be the historical forerunners of trolls, elves, fairies and goblins; these little people would have been an indigenous mongoloid race pushed back by the invading Celts. They'd have found refuge underground, first in caverns, and then in tunnels, where they'd have devolved into a reptilian-looking, thoroughly revolting branch of humanity. The REH story "the children of the night" (Weird tales, Apr-May 1931) had also featured the Little People; they were the same as the worms of the earth from the most famous of the Bran Mak Morn stories (Weird Tales, Nov 1932).

In the dark, O'Brien slips and falls; he bangs his head and loses consciousness. As he wakes up, he is Jim O'Brien no longer, but Conan the Cimmerian. A young Conan, one who just took part in the battle of Venarium, depicted here as a gorgeous double-page spread. (Unfortunately, this double-page spread would be split between an odd- and an even-numbered page in Marvel Treasury Edition #19). We learn that Conan stayed behind after the fight, hoping to find an Aquilonian girl he had earlier taken a fancy to; the girl, Tamera, is indeed still alive… but accompanied by her lover, the Gunderman Gaeric (Vertorix in the REH original).



Sweet continuity time: when the sack of Venarium was presented, decades later, in Conan the adventurer #1, we got a glimpse of Tamera and Gaeric:



Now this scene is interesting, coming right after our recent discussion on Conan's behaviour in "the frost giant's daughter". Conan is once again chasing an unwilling girl; one who already has a lover, to boot! And unlike what happened with Atali, here he can't pretend he's been goaded into behaving dishonorably: he's just a hormone-laden teenager chasing a girl running away from him. Luckily for him, events will make it so that he doesn't look so bad later on.

Savage sword of Conan #7, Aug 1975 issue



Another Boris Vallejo cover, in full Frazetta mode. I am surprised that this particular image was not reused more often; it is really stunning. (Other SSoC were often used again and again for paperback books and whatnot).

Contents:

- a frontispiece image by Vicente Alcazar, which will be seen again (in color!) in Marvel Treasury edition # 23
- The citadel at the center of time, a Conan story
- Crom and Mitra: the gods of Conan, part 2 of an article on religion in the Hyborian age
- The king is dead, part 4 of the Lin Carter article begun in earlier issues
- A poem by Robert E. Howard
- The Hyborian Age (part I), an illustrated adaptation of the essay by REH.

The citadel at the center of time

Script by Roy Thomas, art by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala.

This is an original story from Roy's typewriter, but it is so good that Howard himself could have written it. It tells of the encounter between the Cimmerian and one Shamash Shum Ukin, who was king of Babylon around 650 BC. Conan is still chief of the Zuagirs, as he was in issues 5 and 6; he is 30-31 around that time.

The tale starts with the Zuagir raiders attacking a caravan in the desert; said caravan comes from the Shemite city of Akbitana (often mentioned in regard of its steel products). This time it carries something unusual: a strange animal bound for some rich lord's zoo in the north. Unfortunately, during the attack, the animal escapes. It is something never seen: a saber-toothed tiger. Conan and his zuagirs dispatch the beats with lance and arrow, saving a veiled woman in the process. (It is not clear whether she's in charge of the caravan or not, but she certainly seems to be among its higher-ups). With little profit to show for the day's efforts, the Zuagirs return to camp and Conan entertains the lady. She tells him of the beast's origin.

A few months prior, during the night, a great ziggurat suddenly appeared in Akbitana. It is said to be inhabited by a powerful wizard, who remains ever unseen; only a manservant sometimes comes out to exchange strange and exotic things for food and the like. Sometimes he brings jewels, sometimes strange tools, sometime exotic animals (like the tiger). It is also said that people disappear from time to time from the streets of Akbitana, and it is suspected that the wizard must be involved… but no one dares do anything about it.

Conan is intrigued, and decides to go investigate… after all, as chief, he must find something for his Zuagirs to plunder. Before he goes, though, the lady has a request no full-blooded Cimemrian would refuse to grant; she also says that she wants to keep her veil so that if she ever marries some fat merchant and meets Conan again, she won't have to blush. Excellent writing, here!

In Akbitana (a city whose name probbaly comes from historical Ecbatane, which is more or less located in the same region according to the excellent map by Trent Thompson) Conan finds a talkative butcher who explains that the great crossbow in the center of town was another gift from the wizard. (He also comically mentions that business is hard with that devil Conan roaming the desert, and may Ishtar grant him to have Conan one day come within reach of his cleaver! "May Ishtar grant", agrees the Cimmerian.

More fact-finding in a local tavern leads to Conan being offered a job (someone wants to hire him to kill the wizard) and to meet the dabcer Alhambra. The latter drugs his drink, and he wakes up in the ziggurat, all tied up. There he meets his host, Shamash Shum Ukin, who states he was once king of Babylon. Shamash proudly displays his treasures, items from the distant past and future: a man-ape, a pharaoh, and a caged T-rex. Shamash also tells of what we recognize as the XXth century, and Conan interprets his words as he can:



Shamash then explains his secret. He owns a certain well whose waters are a doorway to other times. He found that by lowering offerings down the well, he is paid back by receiving objects or animals (or men!) from other eras. Something of a hunter for knowledge, he thus explores the history of our planet. He, himself, was indeed once the king of Babylon (a city Conan knows not, as it won't exist for a few thousand years yet); it is upon the conquest of the city by his brother Asshurbanipal that Shamash used his magic to send his ziggurat back in time.



Naturally, Conan is meant to be an offering to the well, which he doesn't take to enthusiastically. Breaking his bonds, he tries to escape but is set upon by a horde of Neanderthals under Shamash's orders. Recaptured, he is bound again and about to be lowered in the well… alongside with Alhambra, who has begun to bore Shamash!