Welllllllll... I look forward to reading Iron Shadows in the Moon, but it looks as if Red nails will definitely not bear comparison to the Marvel version.

Les clous rouges (Red Nails)



Adapted from R. E. Howard's short story by Régis Hautière (script), Olivier Vatine (storyboards) and Didier Cassegrain (art).

An excerpt can be found here . 

This was an impossibly tall order, perhaps. Red Nails is considered one of the best Conan stories of them all, and its adaptation in the pages of Savage Tales #2 and 3 is considered one of the best works Barry Windsor-Smith ever did in comics. How do you top that? How do you even compete?

This book does not manage the impossible, but it is still a pretty good effort. The art is a little on the cartoony side, but the rendition of a time-lost city with an ancient Pre-Columbian feel is particularly well handled; this is a place that looks ancient, creepy, but most of all real. Very good job.





The sense of design of the artist is to be lauded; from clothes to headdresses, everything looks suitably and intriguingly exotic. The action scenes are also beautifully choreographed and executed.





The one misstep I find in this work is its attempt to, shall we say, modernize the tone of the original when it comes to relations between Conan and Valeria, the main female character. Valeria was created by Howard as a free spirit, a person who didn't accept the age-old definition of how a woman should lead her life. She wanted to lead the life she chose, that of a pirate and mercenary soldier. Nevertheless, she was adamant in preserving her virginity, not turning her back on her society's morality views on such matters; sort of like a Hyborian Joan of Arc, she wanted to make war, not love. (Another of Howard's sword women, Agnes de Chastillon, had pretty much the same attitude, and Red Sonya of Rogatino was cut from the same cloth, with an added love of strong drink and merrymaking). So far so good.

In Howard's Red Nails, such a character can't leave Conan indifferent, and when after some off-screen shenanigans Valeria must run away from mercenary barracks after having slain an officer with long fingers and a lecherous attitude, the Cimmerian follows her... with the clear intention of convincing her of bedding him. From their initial meeting in the prose tale and throughout the story, there is a strong sexual tension between the two, because the lady is not completely insensitive to the barbarian's rough gallantry, but intends to remain her own woman. Said sexual tension is one of the major points that make Red Nails the work it is, in my opinion.

Here, the adaptation simply turns Valeria into a modern woman. She's a pirate and a warrior and nobody bats an eye, as if it was as normal in the Hyborian age as it would be today. Conan does politely mention his interest in her as the story opens, but instead of hitting on her so unsubtly that she almost stabs him for it (as happened in the original), he maintains a PC attitude.

Her statement that she prefers to choose her own lovers, and his acceptance of the fact, might be a proper exchange nowadays... but it just kills the sexual tension between the two. Due to that fact, the story's end has a completely different tone despite using the same dialog as the original: instead of getting Valeria and Conan to finally break the tension and getting it on, this adaptation suggests they're just forming a business partnership, like so many Laurels and Hardys. Yes, it's less offensive than James Bond changing someone's sexuality... but it's also rather bland. More appropriate for a PG-13 movie than for Weird Tales.

The book also skips a few scenes and alters others; Valeria whipping a slave girl (too close to S&M?) or the killing of the humanoid monster known as The Reptile are simply dropped. One friendly character is also turned into a traitor, so that the adaptation can conflate two scenes and save time. (It works, actually).

No big deal, but the overall story feels a bit too short; it's as if we go straight from the setting-up part to the climax with nothing in the middle. I doubt I'd have noticed had I not been familiar with the original (this book stands really well on its own, my comments notwithstanding), but old Red Nails readers might wonder why they don't get the story they know.



All in all, and considering the very high standards that this adaptation had to meet, it's quite a successful attempt. People reading this tale here for the first time will have a great time and this this is a beautiful book. 

I preorderd it through my shop (it was listed int he Diamond catalog), but it was not listed among the books arriving for me this week in the e-mail from my shop, so who knows what's happening with physical copies.

-M

I loved the conclusion, the slightly cartoony look worked really well with the flying monkey monster.

Le peuple du cercle noir (The People of the Black Circle)



Adapted from R.E. Howard’s story by Sylvain Runberg (script), Park Jae Kwang (line art) and Ooshima Hiroyuki with Alessia Nocera and Éloïse de la Maison (colors).

Eighth volume in this collection, this one is written by Sylvain Runberg, whose series Conquests was the closest I’ve read to a proper Robert E. Howard story in more than a decade, for all that it was not based on Howard’s work. This new Conan book therefore starts under good auspices.

By and large, it succeeds as a fantasy-adventure story. As with the previous volumes, production quality is high (large format, great colours)… but just as with most previous volumes, I remained somewhat underwhelmed as a Conan fan.

It should be pointed out again: the aim of this series is to present different creators’ interpretation of Conan; as such, it may be unfair on my part to expect them to stick more closely to the Howardian tales. At the same time, Howard was truly a master storyteller; any change should be motivated by more than just a lark. The Frost Giant’s Daughter adaptation, which was published last year, took the Howard story and recreated it from the ground up, providing a truly unique vision. Here, The People of the Black Circle is just a straight adaptation with several unnecessary (and sometimes superfluous, or even wrong) changes. I guess the writer thought these changes would enhance the story somehow, but as far as I'm concerned they don't.

Case in point, the opening sequence here is a battle scene that is not included in the original yarn. I suppose it is meant to establish Conan as a powerful warrior, and to provide information about a later plot point; but both are superfluous, since Conan will be established as a powerful warrior later on (and how!), and the later plot point does not need to be introduced early. Why the scene is detrimental is that it puts Conan right in the centre of things (once again), making his world look that much smaller.

Several characters refer to Conan as a Cimmerian... which they don't in Howard's tale. They don't, because people back then didn't have Google Earth and in distant places like Vendhya, nobody had ever heard of Cimmeria. Just like Indians in the XII century would not have recognized a Welshman on sight. 

Conan claims at one point that Cimmerians don't fear wizards and magic. Oy, vey... We don't need Conan's people to be a race of supermen. They're tough enough as is. And in the original stories, Conan was very wary of tangling with magic; such a trait made him more human.

Oh, well.

The art by Park Jae Wang has a very strong animé flavour to it. I personally don’t care for that type of art, but there’s no doubt that the man is quite an accomplished artist.



It’s just that when it comes to Conan, I’m not partial to characters jumping twenty feet into the air to shoot an arrow, or to sword strokes that cut six people at once, or to shoulders six feet wide. One of the things that make Conan’s adventures work, in my opinion, is how grounded in reality Howard made them; for all that they involve wizards and demons, they feel like they happen in a real, prehistorical world. People never jumped twenty feet into the air, no matter at what point in history. (I have the same problem with fantasy swords and armor, of which this book is thankfully devoid).

As in a typical animé feature, most characters look very European, even if the story is set in Vendhya (the Hyborian Age equivalent of India). The Devi Yasmina, the main female character in the tale, looked more the part in Savage Sword of Conan #16; here; while definitely beautiful, she looks like a British lady. That's her below on the bottom left corner.



Some designs in the book look very good indeed; here, for example, are the fours acolytes of the Master of Yimsha. A classic and elegant look.



Here’s their boss, below right, and I like that mandarin-like look far better than the traditional hooded robe worn by countless wizards in Conan stories).



More nice designs below, as far as temples go: this book sure looks nice even if I'm not much into Naruto.



Storytelling-wise, the art can sometimes be a little confusing… it can be hard to figure out just what is going on, despite the heavy overuse of captions. Wait, is Conan ripping out the eye of a giant serpent or is he handling a magical globe? Is that particular hooded character the master of Yimsha himself, or a mummy that took his place? Is that flying stuff supposed to be stylized snow or stylized fog? It’s not hard to figure out, mind you, but the reader shouldn’t have to in the first place; both Buscema’s and Olivetti’s earlier adaptations of the same tale were very clear.

As with the previous titles, we are also treated to a text piece by Patrice Louinet and to a handful of pin-ups by assorted artists. One is particularly ugly (Conan the barbarian goth emo dude), but hey... It's a different take, I suppose.)

All in all, it remains a good book, and a first-time reader of The People of the Black Circle would doubtless be very with it. I do not regret my purchase, which is kind of damning with faint praise, but I can't help thinking that most books in this series would have benefitted from a slightly stronger editorial hand.

Wow, I loved the art here! The dinosaur look to the dragon was really fantastic and the scope of the city was stunning. I can't wait to get the second half.

Was The Frost Giant's Daughter translated already? As far as I'm concerned that's an absolute masterpiece.