SSoC #172
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Swarm of the bog witch
Script by Charles Dixon
Art by Michael Docherty, Ian Akin and Brian Garvey

(I wonder if there were many groan-inducing “Ian Akin Skywalker” jokes in the early 2000s…)

Akin and Garvey are inkers I mostly associate with Marvel’s Rom: spaceknight. Their crisp approach is a welcome match to Mike Docherty’s pencils, which I feel are not well served by Vince Colletta as seen in a recent issue. Their collaboration here is a high point in this issue.



The story opens up in the aftermath of a great battle during some civil war in Aquilonia that I would be hard pressed to fit in the chronology. Once again, writer Charles Dixon makes Aquilonia the equivalent of Rome, calling it an empire and giving many of its denizens Roman names. A general Ledipus has tried to declare himself imperator in the northwestern part of the country, and has seen his legion destroyed by the loyalists. The name of the Aquilonian king is not given, and perhaps it is better for my peace of mind. It should be Numedides, who was mentioned back in CtB #6 (when Conan was in his late teens) and stayed in post until he was toppled by the Cimmerian in SSoC #52).

When could such a revolt occur, with Conan working as a mercenary for the forces of Ledipus? It’s really hard to say, because as years go by writers pile more and more adventures on the Cimmerian’s résumé. The original Outline of Conan’s Career, the one used by Marvel, makes no mention of Conan having been a mercenary in Aquilonia before starting to work as a scout in Conajohara when he was 39 or so. But anyway, we’ve long ago established that Dixon seems to follow his own outline of Conan’s career, so it's all good.

Conan has been taken prisoner along with a young comrade, and a small group of five loyalist soldiers are taking them back to the garrison of Amelius, likely to be tortured to death during a post-victory party. The leader of the group is a bully named Harnesh, who enjoys taunting and threatening his captives. Ready to kill the younger rebel, wounded and slow, he refrains from doing so only when Conan agrees to carry the lad.

The group finds it impossible to cross the Alimane river because of its recent swelling. and a route through a local bog is selected. The young wounded soldier is forced to take the lead through treacherous ground, and is lost when the bog swallows him.

The soldiers are starting to get nervous, as the swamp is much biggger than they expected. They also hear the disquieting screams of unknown animals, which we readers learn are apish-looking bog creatures.

Right in the middle of the swamp, the Aquilonians happen upon the house of a cool-looking old witch who warns them of the wrath of the Breerodhi who dwell in these parts.



The brutal Harnesh slays the woman without provocation, and decides the group will spend the night in her cabin. The soldiers get more nervous when they realize the body of the witch has vanished, and when they see the Breerodhi approaching.



The siege of the cabin begins, with a horde of monsters on the outside and the handful of soldiers trapped inside. Conan is freed so he can help against the creatures, selecting a sledge hammer as a weapon.

The initial wave of Breerodhi is pushed back, but the monsters are back a bit later, their blood stirred up by this unusual and very welcome resistance; they see it as good sport.



The final assault results in the cabin catching fire and collapsing. The Breerodhi retreat, “knowing when to defer to one more savage”. Only Conan and Harnesh emerge from the smoldering ruins, and their business concludes fairly quickly as seen below.



Who would show up at that point but the witch, not dead after all, and turning into a beautiful young woman! She thanks Conan for having acted as her avenger, and gives him a talisman that will see him through the swamp unharmed.




Notes:

- The Alimane river is not in Northwestern Aquilonia : it is far in the south, forming part of the border with Zingara. I guess the title of the chapter “Across the Alimane”, from “Conan the liberator”, stuck in the writer’s mind.

SSoC #172
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A groaning in the Earth
Script by Alan Rowlands
Art by Ovi

King Kull is often seen as a more philosophical hero than Conan, mostly due to tales like "The mirrors of Tuzun Thune" and "The striking of the gong", in which Robert Howard waxed philosophical. I am not convinced that Kull was meant to be any more of a thinking man's barbarian than Conan, and in other stories like "By this axe I rule" he is presented as something of a boor. But I really enjoy this distinct personality developed in his Marvel comics adaptation. Here we are treated to a tale resembling "The striking of the gong" : one in which Kull engages in a battle that may or may not be a real one, emerging from it as one emerges from a dream with some new insight. It's actually quite good! The prose by Rowlands is also very elegant : "Phantoms play a shadowshow in the seething mist of Memory. Sweat-slick titans caper in a scarlet spray and dying eyes trace the crimson arc of descending steel. There is a groaning in the Earth... Nature's lament... the merriment of cruel gods".

The art by Ovi is quite good, starkly contrasted and moody, very well suited to this story.

King Kull is brooding over a battlefield after a great victory, in the midst of the fallen bodies of his enemies. But then hideous figures emerge from the ground : ghouls who dwell below, war-gods from hell, who come to devour the flesh and souls of the vanquished.

Kull will not let such an unholy feast proceed, and he defends the dead with his great axe in a battle lasting all night. He falls once, but is helped back to his feet by the arrival of a tall figure in a horned helmet. 



Dawn finally comes, and Kull's fight is won. His friend Brule arrives, surprised to still see him there, and points to the King's dagger lost the day before during the battle. The dagger served to kill the enemy king, and is still stuck in the man's tall body, adorned by a familiar horned helmet. Kull asks the kingly body to be left in peace, for his rest has been well-earned.

Savage sword of Conan #173, May 1990



Eye-catching cover by Nick Jainshigg, the only one he painted for this mag (and more’s the pity).


Table of contents:

A tomb for the living, a full length story
Fred Carrillo portfolio


This issue has a circulation statement informing us that in 1990, SSoC had an average print run of 247 000 copies. Not bad at all for those days, and mind-boggling by today’s standards.

There’s also an add for a catalog that comes with e free poster by Bart Sears, who was on his way to become a fan favourite.




The Fred Carrillo portfolio is all right. I was sorry to hear the artist passed away in 2005.

Savage sword of Conan #174, June 1990

Cover by Earl Norem, with characters from this month’s sole story.





Red stones
Script by Gerry Conway
Art by Mike Clark, Brad Vancata, Joe Rosas, Mickey Ritter and Alfredo Alcala.

Unlike what happens when an issue is pencilled by one penciller and inked by someone for the most of the issue with the last pages completed in extremis by Vince Colletta (it happened a few times, yeah?) the powerful inks of Alcala give a uniform look to this issue’s art. One really can’t tell when a penciller is replaced by another.

Conan is very young in this issue, which is set immediately right before The tower of the elephant (CtB #4 and SSoC #24). He’s so young, in fact, that we see him perform his very first act of thievery in Zamora’s city of thieves!

Hired to steal a certain snake-shaped jewel (far bigger than any gem could ever be) and having to fight an even bigger magically-animated serpent, Conan barely escapes with his life and is captured by the personal guard of the gem’s owner.



Lucky for him, the gig was only a test! Conan’s captor is a rich woman who has been looking for a resourceful agent who could undertake a certain mission for her, and the whole thing about the animated snake was merely a way to determine how good he was. Not overly shy, the lady tells Conan of her plans after taking him to bed (maybe explaining why the young barbarian wears such a goofy expression in this panel).



She explains that she’s after a set of magical stones that came from a dead dragon, killed long ago by an Aquilonian soldier named Ramtha Karn (a very oriental name for an Aquilonian, if you ask me). These stones are worth more than gold and money for they have the power to heal! She has one in her possession, but hopes to get her hands on all seven. (The lady doesn’t tell Conan, but we readers learn that she’s probably much older than she appears and needs the stones to preserve her youth. Her own jewel, usually a bright red color, is growing increasingly colourless as she uses its power up).



Accompanying Conan will be the experienced Turanian warrior Paulus (now he has an Aquilonian-sounding name! “Ramtha Karn” would have suited him better). Paulus is clearly devoted to his mistress, and we’ll later learn that he was her lover long ago, forsaking king and country for her.

Paulus, Conan and a handful of companions travel to the castle of Ramtha Karn and find it surrounded by an immense maze (good art, here : there certainly was no laziness in drawing this labyrinth).



The maze is not just a work of masonry; it hides deadly booby traps. Among these are sets of pistons that can crush any unwary traveller. All of Conan and Paulus end up pulped by the device, and their blood is collected by a trough running along the maze’s floor.



To avoid further surprises, the two surviving men climb atop the maze’s walls and make their way to Ramtha Karn’s stronghold in such a way. In the image below they reach the thorn-studded wall of the castle, a beautiful example of Alcala’s signature representation of stone surfaces.



No guard awaits them, but the castle is home to two-headed wolves -just the kind of unnecessary fantasy beast that I absolutely hate in Conan stories. Normal wolves or just watchdogs would have been perfectly fine here!



The two thieves dispatch the beasts and make their way into Ramtha Karn’s domain, where they discover the end point of all the troughs running along the maze : the blood they collect eventually flows to a bowl-shaped chamber, dripping from a hole at its center right on top of… one of the magical jewels they are looking for! It comes as no surprise whatsoever that the jewel drinks blood.

Conan and Paulus are soon attacked by Ramtha Karn, about whom it should be mentioned that he’s a towering ten feet tall giant with a girth to match! The Hyborian hulk easily clobbers Paulus and Conan.

When the Cimmerian comes to, he’s hanging by his feet in Ramtha Karn’s torture chamber; the master of the castle has already been busy with the hapless Paulus.



Ramtha Karn taunts his prisoners and brags about his being invincible thanks to the jewel he wears at all times on his person. Demonstrating his badassery, he does not hesitate
to burn his own skin with a red-hot poker. He also explains that of the seven original stones, one has been stolen long ago by Paulus’s mistress and that of the six remaining only two still retain some measure of their power… even blood is no longer sufficient to replenish them. But no matter, the last two will have to make do for the time being!

Taking advantage of the villain’s traditional expository speech, Conan swings at the end of his chains and topples a brazier on Ramtha Karn. Despite being mostly coated by chainmail, the giant sees his clothes erupt into fire! (Yes, even the chainmail seems to burn… for in as short while the man is all but naked. Chainmail will burn in these stories, but not loincloths).

Grabbing a steel rod, the Cimmerian has the smarts to hit not Ramtha Karn himself but rather the jewel he wears as a pendant. The gem is shattered and Rmatha Karn starts aging at an accelerated speed until he is dust. Phew!



Conan frees the dying form of Paulus, who despite his sorry state insists that the Cimmerian carry the last remaining stone to his mistress. He just asks him to tell her that her faithful servant and erstwhile lover did not fail her in the end.

When next we see Conan, he is back at his employer’s house where she turns out to now be an old crone, her own jewel having run out of steam after her last rejuvenation. Conan gives her a bag containing one of the magical jewels, but… it is now powerless. The lady is infuriating and curses Conan, who leaves to rejoin a magically-healed Paulus, on whom the barbarian expanded the last of the gem’s strength… for he’d rather save the life of a brave comrade than that of his vain and selfish employer.



Paulus leaves the city, quite cured of his one-way love for his mistress and intent on returning to Turan. As for Conan, he decides to go to a local tavern, and as he nears the door we hear someone speak familiar lines : “By Bel, god of all thieves, I’ll show them how to steal wenches! I’ll have her over the Zamorian border before dawn, and there’ll be a caravan waiting to receive her. I know lords in Shem who would trade the secrets of the elephant tower for her…”

These are of course the first words spoken in The tower of the elephant, although Conan should really be already in the tavern and not outside the establishment!


Notes:

- Good bits of continuity include the mention of Conan’s escaping from Hyperborean slavers and from wolves a short time before this adventure, as seen in CtB#3 and CtB#92.

- The Nemedian prince of thieves Taurus is mentioned by Paulus, and that’s how Conan can say that he’s heard of the man a bit later in The tower of the elephant. (To me that’s a bit too much continuity, though; at some point one must stop linking every little detail in the saga).

- Conan shoots a rabbit with a bow early in the story. This is unlikely, as the bow is not a Cimmerian weapon; these barbarians use swords and lances but consider bows unmanly. Conan would later to use one later, as a member of the Turanian military in CtB#36.

Blade of the demon slayer
Story by John Arcudi
Art by Armando Gil

A little foray into the field of high fantasy, this tale has giant magic swords, potions of invincibility and references to ancient demonic wars with leagues of wizards, horned giants and stuff.

Conan is at the head of a band of bounty hunters on the western border of Khitai, another career in foreign lands that is difficult to fit in his increasingly large résumé. Busy man, this Conan!

The small town of Shar-Pei is suffering from the depredations of a local bandit, the bloated Dai-Ling, who keeps up a facade of law-abiding honourability. Conan and Dai-Ling clearly see each other as a natural enemy, as the Cimmerian’s men have been capturing or killing a lot of Dai-Ling’s underlings.



Meanwhile, an unassuming adventurer named Isham of Iranistan makes a chance discovery : on what seems to be an old battlefield covered with the bones of monsters and giants, he finds a handful of ancient scrolls and a big fantasy sword (which looks more like an elaborate saw, as far as I am concerned). The sword is apparently so powerful that it can cleave rock with no effort at all.



A old soothsayer in Shar-Pei, La-Fei, explains to Isham that the scrolls are magical and tell of an ancient war between a brotherhood of wizards and an army of demons. The sword Isham found was created by these wizards as the ultimate weapon, and it was used to rout the demons during their last incursion in our world.



Isham sells the scrolls to La-Fei but retains the weapon, drunk on the feeling of power it gives him. Just a short while later, when one of Dai-Ling’s bodyguards tries to manhandle the diminutive Isham, the magical sword allows him to easily cut his assaillant to pieces under the stunned eyes of both Dai-Ling and Conan.

Both men are very interested in having a closer look at that impressive if misshapen weapon, but a pair of local ruffians immediately pretend to be business associates of Isham and, playing on his growing sense of importance, walk away with him to discuss his future.

The next night, Conan tracks Isham to his hostel room, intent on getting his hands on the sword. He finds that Isham has been murdered in his bed, and that the weapon is gone.

Dai-Ling, who had also sent men to get the sword, is dismayed that he won’t be able to obtain such a valuable asset… but his spirits are soon buoyed when old La-Fei comes to him to make him a seemingly even better offer : from the old scrolls, she got a recipe to make a person invincible. She prepares a potion for the big bandit, and Dai-Ling does indeed become impervious to fire or to any blow. Only the magic sword could potentitally hurt him now.



Dai-Ling leads a band of his men to intercept Conan, who is tracking Isham’s killers (his erstwhile “business associates”). Conan and the brigand lord meet on a narrow mountain road overlooking a precipice, and although Conan fares poorly in an initial exchange of blows, he finally manages to push Dai-Ling off the road’s edge and down the cliff. That isn’t enough to hurt the invulnerable man, but he is understandably delayed and swears revenge on the Cimmerian.

A little later, Conan finds Isham’s murderers : the two petty thugs are running a scam in which they travel from village to village, challenging all comers to face them in a sword fight. Naturally, with the magical weapon in their hands, they are impossible to defeat.

Conan takes up the challenge, and using his superior skill simply avoids the devastating blade, striking down his opponent without having been hit once. He finally gets his hands on the sword.

Back in Shar-Pei, Dai-Ling has decided to punish the villagers for hiring Conan’s bounty hunters in the first place to chase down brigands. His men go on a rampage. The town drunk, barely escaping, makes his way to the inn where Conan and his band are celebrating the obtention of the sword. Although Conan doesn’t accept any responsibility in the tragedy at Shar-Pei, he agrees that killing Dai-Ling would open the way to the man’s treasure coffers.

When the Cimmerian arrives in the decimated village, Dai-Ling is waiting for him in full magical armor.



Unstoppable force meets immovable object : the sword cannot hurt Dai-Ling after all. However, the old La-Fei is running the show from the aisles : using her magical scrolls, she undoes the magical protection that keeps Dai-Ling from harm. Conan skewers him but good.



As you’d expect, the sword behaves exactly like Elric’s demonic Stormbringer and quickly pushes Conan to kill anything that annoys him. Going to La-Fei for counsel, he learns of the old woman’s plotting to obtain the weapon from him and using it to reopen the door that gives the demons access to our world, with the purpose of reshaping it according to her views. (Her plot of using Dai-Ling and Conan to eventually obtain the sword seems a bit complicated; it would have been easier to just hire someone to steal the weapon from Isham right at the start of the story). The old woman sees the errors of her way and gives the scrolls to Conan, but the Cimmerian realizes that magical swords and scrolls are too dangerous to be handled by mere mortals and he throws them all into a deep lake.

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The story didn’t work all that well for me. It wasn’t bad but felt like a Chinese fantsay adventure in the tradition of Crouching tiger, hidden dragon more than like a proper Conan adventure. The art by Armando Gil also disappointed me somewhat : I loved Armando’s inking on many books, and liked his Ka-Zar art; here, however, his fine line work and high contrast inking often obscures the scene, making it hard to understand what’s going on. I'm still very envious of his control of the quill and brush.

Quite correct, it's one of those generic covers that have nothing to do with the issue itself. Neither the girl nor the monster shows up in the story.