Tucking her in, Conan notices that there is the pelt of an extinct golden leopard on the bed -that cat has not been seen for a thousand years or more. 

Continuing his exploration of the silent city, he ends up in a room occupied by a giant snake on a pillar, apparently a jade statue. Touching it, he realizes that this is an actual reptile! Yes, you guessed it: it's the same snake that was featured on the Weird Tales cover, and the one seen in this French translation of this very issue:



(I bought that book in France in 1978. Éditions Lug used to translate SSoC issues into softcover graphic novels with very nice new covers).

Behind the sleeping snake are more rooms, and from behind a closed door a sepulchral voice conveniently explains the plot: eons ago, a primordial creature from the abyss rose up from the depths (like Dagon from Lovecraft's tale) and took on human shape, taking the name Khosatral Khel; it was worshipped by the local people who built for him the city of Dagonia. Much later the primitive people of the Yuetshi showed up, and during their war against the Dagonians they were beaten by the sorcery of Khosatral Khel; for a generation, they were then used as sacrifical altar fodder. One of their priests then went into the forest, where a shooting star had fallen down, and came back with a knife forged from the star's metal. Against that knife, the magics of Khosatral were impotent, and in the ensuing Yuetshi revolt Dagonia fell. The priest had however not killed their demonic oppressor; he had bound him into a deep sleep, so as to preserve some leverage over his own people. In later ages, the city was abandoned by the Yuetshi and slowly fell into disrepair, until a certain fisherman would be driven there by chance. A revived Khosatral Khel had then magically rebuild his city and reanimated its citizens.

The eavesdropping Conan is then discovered by the storyteller (Khel himself) and the two start fighting. Things doN,t go too well for the Cimmerian, as Khel's skin, like Luke Cage's, is like iron: his sword won't make a dent in it. A drape thrown over his opponent's face allows Conan to make a hasty retreat. Lady Luck being on his side, the very room he ducks into is the one where Octavia is kept; he runs away with her on his shoulder. Another room with a steel door offers momentary respite, but the pummeling it receives at Khel's hands threatens to see it buckle and fall. Is all then lost?

Meanwhile, Jehungir Agha and his Turanians have gotten tired of waiting for Conan's return and they decided to follow him, discovering the incongruous city of Dagonia. 

The noise at the door ceases, and Conan and Octavia see that Khel has gone away. Just to make sure, Conan suggests that the girls stay back while he makes sure the coast is clear; he passes in front of the sleeping snake and goes to the main room's door, when Octavia stumbles upon the scene, all stereotypical useless eye-candy in need to be rescued, and wakes the serpent! The reader can share in Conan's irritation.



(No, Octavia can't really compare to Bêlit, Zenobia, Valeria and Yasmina. Nor even to Yasmela and Natala).

Catching his breath, Conan then sees that this building is also the one where the devil in iron had slumbered for centuries, for on an altar can be seen in it with the famous magical knife on it. The Cimmerian takes the blade and the pair make it out of Dagonia, only to happen upon Jehungir Agha whose troops have been brutally killed by Khostral Khel (that's where he had gone after stopping to pound at the door). The Kozak and the Turanian fight, a clash with a foregone conclusion. But then Khostral Khel jumps upon the scene again, all fiery eyes and iron skin! Conan stabs him with the Yuetshi knife, and Khel falls dead immediately, reverting to his natural form.



All's well that ends well, and Octavia finally finds some nerve by calling Conan an "ale-guzzling, meat gorging barbarian"! 


Notes:

- In this adaptation, Roy does specify that Yezdigerd succeeded Yildiz: "Strange! Since King Yildiz' death, Yezdigerd has extended our borders… and made the Vilayet virtually a Turanian lake. Yet these Kozaks pluck his beard at our very gates!" This is not mentioned in Howard's story. Far from being a slight to Howard, I view this as Roy's great attention to detail and his fascination with continuity: thanks to his efforts, the Howardian pseudo-historical feel of the Hyborian world was maintained and enhanced. 

- I seem to remember seeing Jehungir Agha making a cameo in another story, but can't seem to replace it. The web is silent on that subject… I'll have to dig a little.

*edit* it was in SSoC 233; Jehungir Aga is seen in one picture when Shah Amurath mentions that he's making an inspection.

Conan in the city of blood
A review by Fred Blosser.

Donald M. Grant is the publisher of this new hardcover, re-presenting Howard's novella Red nails. Collectors be warned!


The beginning of the end
The Hyborian Age, part 4
Script by Rou Thomas, adapting the essay by Robert E. Howard
Art by Walt Simonson



Five hundred years have elapsed since the reign of King Conan of Aquilonia, and history marches on. The Hyborian civilization was about to collapse before having reached decadence, mostly because of Aquilonia's greed. Imperial overreach would be its doom. Zingara, Argos, Ophir and western Shem were now all part of the Aquilonian empire; Koth paid it tribute. Nemedia, allied with Brythunia and Zamora, meant to resist it; but before things couild come to a boil the Turanians swept in from the east. The two great empires saw their army clash in Brythunia, and the undisputed supremacy of Aquilonia was established as the Turanians were sent back east and the Nemedian alliance broken. 

Arus, priest of Mitra, then went west to try and teach the Picts about the gentle ways of the Hyborian god. Unfortunately, he found a willing ear in the person of Gorm, a chief who was less interested in the salvation of his soul than in the priest's tales about the wealth of the Hyborian nations. This would lead the Picts to act more and more often as mercenaries to the overgrown Aquilonian empire, and...


An interview with Conan artist John Buscema

John's implication with Conan has since then been explored in several Alter Ago and Comics Journal articles, but in 1976 I'm sure this "behind the scenes" interview was both intriguing and welcome!

I remember reading this tale for the first time and being confused as anything after reading how Octavia escaped but still ends up just as planned by her tormentors.

I figured I was missing something. I always supposed in the end her captors must have secretly let her effect her escape, or otherwise that she ended up just where expected in the scheme can be attributed to Octavia having known of the place on the island, herself being in on the original plan, and so after all ending up in that very place because, well, she knew of no other place... the details of a fake escape became in effect self-fulfilled in the real escape.

Hmmm... maybe not, but as you say REH writes the hell out of this story, and even if not his best work ever, I for one was carried along with plenty of excitement by the brisk winds of this yarn.

The people of the Black circle

Script by Roy Thomas
Art by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala

This is the adaptation of one of Robert E. Howard's greatest Conan tales; it will be spread over four issues (the original prose publication in Weird Tales had also required multiple issues, Sep to Nov 1934). The paradox of John Buscema's well-known dislike of Alfredo Alcala's inks over his pencils is never more apparent than here: Alfredo's very rich and Gustave Doré-like brushwork is nothing at all like Big John's clean and Foster-like solo work, but the combination of the two men's efforts give something delightful to this reader's eyes. John's complianing that Alfredo mde his women look like silent movie actresses is accurate, but may Crom curse me if that isn't very well-suited to this particular tale of exotic adventure redolent of pomegranates and sandalwood! (Don't take my word for it… there's an actual pomegranate in the story).

Conan is about 34 at this point in his career, and he's left his Kozaks to travel farther east to Afghulistan (Afghanistan in Hyborian Age clothing) where he became a war-chief among savage hillmen. As is his wont, he's intent on building a small local empire by uniting several tribes and leading them against both the Vendhyan crown (to the south) and the Turanian empire (to the west). His old enemy Yezdigerd is ruling the latter, but won't appear personally in this tale. 

As our story begins, the young king of Vendhya is dying. He's been cursed by the Black Seers of Yimsha, wizards of great power who dwell on a remote mountain peak and seldom interfere in human affairs. This time, we'll learn that for reasons of their own they've decided to help Yezdigerd get rid of the Vendhyan monarch, the Turanian leader having the intention to move against the southeastern kingdom. (Oh, and for the new Conan readers among us: Vendhya is pretty much India. The king's sister, the princess Yasmina, is one of the few ladies in Conan stories who show actual character. Although she's not actually the sword-wiedling type, she has a strong personality, and it is all the more appropriate that instead of looking like a standard Buscema woman, she's based on a real-world and pretty interesting person: one Maureen Wise, presented in the letters section.



This opening scene sends the tale on its way: the king is dying, is soul is to be taken by the Black Seers and bound to some grotesque demon, and only his quick death can prevent such a grisly fate to be his. His sister has to dispatch him with a knife, and she swears revenge on the wizards.



There's a funny anecdote about the scene, too: in the original story, Yasmina goes: "The priests and their clamor!" she exclaimed. "They are no wiser than the leeches who are helpless! Nay, he dies and none can say why. He is dying now- and I stand here helpless, who would burn the whole city and spill the blood of thousands to save him". The term "leeches" here is naturally the archaic name for doctors. However, when People of the Black Circle was recently re-adapted by Dark Horse comics (great work, by the way), writer Fred van Lente seems to have had a bit of fun by turning the doctors into actual leeches:



(Although that wasn't Howard's original intention, I think it works quite well here! First it's gross as hell, second it makes sense because leeches have always been used in traditional medicine, and third because it's unexpected!) Note also the lovely work of Ariel Olivetti on the backgrounds. 

A probable outline of Conan's career, by P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark, with vintage illustrations from Weird Tales.

This article was first published in 1938, in a small fanzine titled "The Hyborian Age". It is based on a letter that Miller wrote to Howard (and to which Howard responded facorably), a letter in which Miller had tried to set the different Conan stories having seen print up to then in chronological order. This outline of Conan's career is the one that was used by the pastiche writers and by Marvel comics. 

Later Conan fans would come up with their own timelines, and it is one of those that Dark Horse is currently following (with minor alterations) for its own ongoing Conan series; however, I must emphasize that Howard himself said that Miller's outline was pretty much as he had envisioned it, the only differences being minor (placing "the slithering shadow" before "the devil in iron" would account for that, I believe).

We should also never forget that Howard never wrote a timeline himself; he saw the Conan stories as ones told around a campfire by a grizzled veteran of many adventures, told out of order. There is also the very big problem of the existence of several drafts (not always agreeing with each other) and of unpublished stories that may not have been considered canon by the writer himself. I personally have a hard time reconciling the true ending of The black stranger (it was rewritten by deCamp to fit his "Conan saga" outline) with the two versions of the unfinished Wolves beyond the border.

See, Wolves is the only Hyborian Age adventure that doesn't feature Conan. It is set in the Westermark, that frontier region where the Picts and the Hyborians face each other with hostility, between Aquilonia and the Pictish wilderness. It is set during the days where Conan is leading the civil war against the Aquilonian king that will land him on the throne, and so we expect the Cimmerian to be about 40 or so. But the tale's main character (named Gault), a strong young man, remembers how when he was five the Cimmerian helped save the settlers from Beyond the Black River. So supposing Gault is 18 or so, Beyond the Black River would be an early Conan story, and he'd have been 27 or so in it. But right after Beyond the Black River, Conan crosses the Pictish Wilderness and walks into the events of The Black Stranger. The problem is that in that tale, Conan is already famous as a barachan pirate (even little children know of him). That means that by 27, Conan had had a successful career as a pirate. This is all well and nice, but then we have to place the events of The pool of the black one even earlier, as in that story Conan is an unfamous pirate (other pirates have no idea who he is). But then we also have to fit Queen of the Black Coast before it, since Beyond the Black River establishes that Conan has already been to Kush, and that in Queen there is no indication whatsoever that Conan has ever set foot on a ship before. All of which requires to fit an amazingly large number of sea careers during a very short period, leaving no room for the Kozak and Zuagir periods.

Oh, my head.

An error brings a page from the planet of the apes magazine in between the portfolio and the next feature, chapter 5 in the adaptation of Robert E. Howard's

The Hyborian Age

script by Roy Thomas
Art by Walt Simonson



This is where things come to a boil in the last days of the Hyborian Age, doomed to collapse before the Hyborian civilization had reached the stage of decadence. Arus, priest of Mitra, had tried to convert the Picts to the gentle cult of his god; but the Pictish chief Gorm had mostly been impressed by his description of the Hyborian lands' riches. And so the Picts started interacting more peacefully with the Aquilonians, acting more and more as mercenaries in their armies. And… bringing back home more tales of their neighbours' lands, plus the knowledge of iron smithing. Picts would no longer use crude copper axes. Years later, Gorm, become the Picts's chief of chiefs, would lead an invasion force to the east. Only the Bossonians would keep them at bay for a while. Meanwhile, the overgrown Aquilonian empire was trying to annex defiant Nemedia; but hearing of the Picts' attack of their home, the Bossonian contingents left the Nemedian battlefield to go defend their turf. This contributed to the failure of the Aquilonians' plans, and their leader blindly took revenge on  the Bossonians by massacring their population. A very stupid move this turned out to be, since the Bossonians were the only thing keeping the Picts away. The western warriors swarmed over Aquilonia before her armies could come back from the Nemedian front, and several subject nations took that oppotrunity to shake the Aquilonian yoke.

But that wasn't all! The Cimmerians decided to come south, plundering all the way, and that was pretty much it for the Aquilonian empire and the Hyborian civilization.

No sir it does not. Conrad, Windsor-Smith and Thomas: the holy trinity in the presentation Conan in the comic book. If we remove Red Nails from the equation we really do arrive at the pinnacle of things with this adaptation of the Worms of the Earth. It may have have only a funny book, but this was transcendent stuff.