|
Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories. As Robert E. Howard's career progressed, diversifying his writing into other markets to make more money became a larger and larger concern. As Weird Tales would not be published in the UK until 1942, putting a book together and selling it in England was part of Howard's plan to break into a new, untapped market. He submitted a short story collection in 1933 which was rejected, and then had several false starts on original novels before crafting The Hour of the Dragon in 1934. According to Willard Oliver, he began the novel on St. Patrick's Day and wrote furiously for two months. Howard essentially cannibalized many of his best Conan of Cimmeria stories (a practice that wasn't unique to him), especially "The Scarlet Citadel," to create his only novel-length Conan adventure, but as I've said before, it reads more like a victory lap than an annoying retread.  "Despite having two stories to draw upon, Howard still spent long days writing and rewriting the novel, for in the end, according to [author Patrice] Louinet, 'Howard wrote five versions of his story, with several parts of these rewritten two or three times.' Although Howard liked to lay claim to the Conan stories coming so easily to him, that was a tall tale unto itself, for Howard worked incredibly hard on his stories, this novel especially." The UK publisher of the book went bankrupt before it could publish the story, so it was serialized in Weird Tales across five issues from December 1935 to April 1936, a mere three months before Howard died. It would later be published in book form in 1950, acquiring the secondary title Conan the Conqueror, which it would be attached to on and off for the next seventy-five years.  Usually, I use this column to explore all the chronological markers in a story to place it in timeline order, but seeing as this story is much longer than all others and I don't want to bore you to death, I think it would be more expedient to do one thing: place it within relation to the other King Conan stories. The Hour of the Dragon obviously takes place during his kingship, so does it take place before, in-between, or after "The Phoenix on the Sword" and "The Scarlet Citadel?" Surprisingly, this is a tough question! Let's take a look:
Seeing as Conan seems to wield the full power of his kingdom and even seems to be the equivalent of a Hyborian Age superpower, I'm going to have to settle on the idea that The Hour of the Dragon is the last story. It seems most likely to me that Conan does bring Zenobia back and continues his powerful reign with her at his side. It's an all-around happy ending. Here's our updated chronology.
0 Comments
I've been playing Minecraft on and off since Beta. I understand if this admission causes you to close this tab. My friends and I were there from when the world was still just a flat expanse, and I remember realizing that it was five in the morning and my eyes were bloodshot because I'd stayed up all night at my friend Mitch's house in college. This was before Minecraft was forever claimed by nine year-olds; for a while, it seemed to be almost exclusively engineering majors playing it and making complicated redstone circuits. Every few years my friends and I will make a server and play on it for a few weeks before we get bored. There's this moment that happens inevitably when you're playing Minecraft. Someone's going to turn on the cheats to allow themselves flight, or infinite building materials, or invincibility or whatever. And that's the death-knell for a Minecraft game. Suddenly, the work to build something cool isn't there anymore. The fun dries up (for me, anyway) almost instantaneously.  I think that might be how Kane feels in the short story "Misericorde." I'm pretty confident I'm the first person (and probably the last) to talk about the dark sword-and-sorcery anti-hero Kane and Minecraft in the same blog post, but I promise I'm going somewhere. "Misericorde" is maybe going to end up being a lesser Kane story for me. It's got some interesting suspense going for it as Kane operates as an assassin. A well-to-do woman approaches him with four lives she needs snuffed out, and the coin to pay for it. She remarks about criminals having their own code, and Kane replies with this: "Certain rules of the game are essential," Kane replied. "Otherwise it isn't a game. For the true adept, wealth is not the object. If I am offered a fee to perform a certain assignment, I will not accept that fee until I have accomplished it. Taking a fee by force - or accepting an assignment without the certainty that it will be carried out - would be pointless, a bore." There's that old enemy of Kane: boredom. I feel like this makes a lot of sense for someone who is immortal. When there are no stakes in your life, you must invent stakes and establish boundaries for it to have meaning. Kane, being physically imposing and nigh-invincible, wouldn't have a very fun or interesting time just shooting someone with an arrow from far away or killing someone to take their money. When you have infinite smooth cobblestone, building a gigantic pagoda isn't as fun anymore. You simply must mine. As Kane completes his contracts, he does so in an interesting way each time. Instead of a brutal kill scene, he ends each one by telling his mark to "come with" him. There's some sorcery involved that keeps it interesting.
It's compelling to me that when Kane is doing normal things like having a girlfriend or conversing with a poet, he can be incredibly cruel. But when killing people and stealing their souls, he's remarkably civilized about it. The word "misericorde" means "compassion," so I supposed that makes sense. I don't think I liked "Misericorde" as much as some other Kane stories, but it still has some good, horror-themed adventure in it. It's just a bit more tropey and predictable than most. Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories.  "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula," published under the revised title "Shadows in Zamboula" in the November 1935 issue of Weird Tales, was the third-to-last Conan story that would see publication during Robert E. Howard's lifetime. In-between "Beyond the Black River" and "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula," he'd penned "The Black Stranger," but the public wouldn't see that story for some time, and not until L. Sprague de Camp had heavily edited it and re-titled it "The Treasure of Tranicos." By mid-1935, Howard was noticeably tiring of Conan the Cimmerian. He said so in letters and to friends, and he in particular grew resentful of the fact that WT editor Farnsworth Wright owed him about $860 (multiple thousands of dollars in today's cash) because the magazine had had financial troubles. He was ready to move on. But letter-writers in "The Eyrie" liked the story, and it did grace the cover of the November issue.  There are not a ton of chronological clues in this story, but there are enough that you can place in pretty firmly on one side of "A Witch Shall Be Born:"
Because Conan is in the deserts between Shem and Turan and is familiar with the Zuagirs, this story seems to need to take place either right before "A Witch Shall Be Born," or right after it. Since Conan begins the story with the group but seems to be leaving them behind without word at the end, it makes more sense to me to place it afterword. This brings our updated chronology to this:
 Jirel of Joiry, one of the most stunningly original sword & sorcery characters I've ever read, seems to have come about by a series of accidents. Accident the first: author Catherine Lucille Moore, eventually known under her pen name C.L. Moore, was sick a lot as a kid. Without really knowing how she came into contact with them, the magazine Weird Tales became her hospital reading companion. Moore remembers that, like most literate people of her day, her family thought Weird Tales was trash, the absolute bottom of the barrel when it came to literary quality. But she loved them. And as she got older, she continued to read in that vein, if not WT itself, as her father would sneak her Barsoom and Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, away from her mother's disapproving eye. Accident the second: Moore was working on her typing speed at work one day when a proto-Jirel came dashing out of her imagination to her. After having to quit college after three semesters and find a job, most likely due to the Great Depression, Moore was lucky to find work at a bank, for jobs were hard to come by. One afternoon, when she had nothing to do but desperately wanted to look busy, she began practicing some typing exercises. She quickly grew bored with quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs, so she started to type up fragments of poetry she remembered from class. And then, she typed a few sentences about a "red, running woman," imagining a figure from 13th century France. It amused her. Why's she running?, she asked herself. Accident the third is more of just an unintentional product. Moore began typing up a couple of stories, stating with one about Northwest Smith, a Han Solo-type (or wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that Han Solo is a Northwest Smith-type?) of space ranger she began like this: Northwest Smith was a hard-boiled guy  That's the dorkiest shit ever and I'm so here for it. But, back to the accident. Moore shopped around her first Northwest Smith story, "Shambleau," and a story called "Were-Woman." "Were-Woman" was flatly rejected by Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales, but "Shambleau" was accepted. In her kitchen in Indiana, she opened a letter from Wright, complete with the information that the story had been accepted and she would be paid $100 for it. Moore screamed her head off, causing her dad to rush into the kitchen, thinking that his daughter might be the victim of some attack. But no, just $100 dollars richer, which Moore says felt like ten thousand dollars to her. The accident here is that "Shambleau" was accepted because it was so different than the rest of what Weird Tales was printing. It pulses with sexual tension between Smith and then gorgon he comes into contact with. A lot of pulp stories are sexual or salacious, but "Shambleau" approaches the erotic, which Moore wasn't trying to do. She always maintained that she wasn't really trying to imbue theme or specific philosophy into her stories, nor did she seem them as pure escapism, but that she just wrote what she wanted to read. That unique fingerprint of hers, found in "Shambleau" first, would be present for the rest of her career. That brings us to the lady of Joiry. In the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales, "The Black God's Kiss" appeared as the lead and cover story. It's the same issue featuring the second part of Robert E. Howard's "The People of the Black Circle" and Clark Ashton Smith's story "The Seven Geases." In this story, we meet Jirel, lady of Joiry, which is a fictional hegemon in France, some time in the 13th to 15th century. Jirel is a capable leader and fighter, opening the story having been captured at the end of a battle, her helmet ripped off by the enemy to reveal her curly mop of red hair and her blazing yellow eyes. Joiry has been invaded, and it looks like they've lost.  Guilluame, the leader of the conquering force, has taken control of her throne room. After ripping off her helmet ("Unshell me this lobster" should be used more often), he kisses her right there in her own hall. As has been reported many times over the years, this was essentially as far as Weird Tales was willing to go with the salacious content, but that the kiss should essentially be read as a sexual assault. That's what it would be in real life, too. Interestingly, the text of the story is somewhat infatuated with Guilluame and Jirel clearly thinks he's hot, but because of this violation, Jirel burns with a hatred for Guilluame and vows revenge. She goes to a priest friend of hers named Father Gervase to be blessed before essentially venturing down into Hell through the depths of her castle so that she can find an appropriate weapon with which to kill Guilluame. This is one of my favorite "weird" elements of this story: the passage through which Jirel goes is a round tunnel that she and Father Gervase discovered some time ago. It winds deep into the earth, and whatever created it seems to have not done so for human feet. After an indeterminable amount of time in which gravity itself seems to flip-flop on her, Jirel appears in a dark land of horror and mystery shrouded in eternal night.  After a few jaunts this way and that, she finds a strange temple-like structure containing a black god statue. As Jirel kisses the statue, an upsetting evil seems to worm its way into her body. Both physically and spiritually uncomfortable, she hauls ass back up to the world of the living in order to get the toxin out of her. As she clamors into her throne room, the story characterizes Guilluame as "magnificent" in his armor, on her throne. It repeats his name several times, unclear if it's done in an astounded or hateful way. Jirel then collapses into his arms in a way that isn't not intimate, while kissing him for a second time. This kiss passes the evil from her into Guilluame, who writhes and wretches for a moment before dying horrifyingly. The very thing that Guilluame sought from her- her sexuality- is the very weapon that she uses to turn on Guilluame to end his life. And after all of that, Jirel bows her head to hide her own tears. The Jirel that Moore creates is such a human character that she stands head and shoulders above most other S&S protagonists. She's remarkably remorseful of some things, like Guilluame's death. There's this old Jack Stauber YouTube video where a kid asks his mom, "Why do I miss people who hurt me?" Jirel was blazing with hatred and revenge, but in the end doesn't find any satisfaction and even seems to think that she might've gone too far (when you read the sequel, "Black God's Shadow," Moore doubles down on this idea). It doesn't give you any easy themes like telling you Jirel absolutely was wrong for venturing into Hell to acquire a vile weapon and get revenge on her rapist. Instead, it lets you sit in her uncertainty with Jirel. I think this is what makes Jirel so compelling to me. She's powerful, brave, a sick fighter, but she's also frequently afraid, uncertain, confused, and very realistic. Jirel cries four different times in this story, each time having been moved to tears by something horrifically sad in Hell. And maybe Guilluame wasn't such a bad guy if we'd gotten to know him; maybe he was exactly the piece of shit he starts this story as. I'm not sure. Characters like Conan and Kane sometimes experience overwhelming, tough emotions (like Conan's loss of his lover Bêlit and Kane's overwhelming loneliness) but they're never nearly as realistic as Jirel. She's incredibly true-to-life and it makes her one of the best sword & sorcery characters I've ever read.  Fantastic Jirel art by Clade Mirya  I am running out of applicable Kane images for these articles. So today I'm just going to repeatedly regale you with covers for "Death Angel's Shadow." Oooh. Ahh. "Cold Light" unfurls itself like it's sledding down a mountain: slowly at first, gaining speed until it becomes one of the most action-packed, epic Kane stories I've read yet. I say that now, but it is so hard to pick favorites among these things. Genuinely, it does start a little slowly. Kane is experiencing one of his bouts of lethargy. Boredom has just about defeated him and he lazily escapes to a desolate part of the world, clopping his horse into an all but dead town in the region of Demornte. Demornte's an odd little setting: bordered by inhospitable desert on all sides, it's a stretch of lush, green country that's seemingly inhabited by one city, called Sebbei. It would be a great little place to visit except for the fact that everyone here walks around like the living dead. That is to say, some time ago, a plague swept through Sebbei, killing all but a few hundred of its residents, and now the city is calcified in its misery. Every reaction from the townspeople is no stronger than a shrug of the shoulders.  Kane finds respite here for a while, and even companionship in the character of Rehhaile, a young blind woman with a "second sight" that allows her to tap into the minds of nearby people and see through them. Hot on Kane's trail is a band of self-styled crusaders and avengers, ready to bring the "cold light of good" and justice to our evil wanderer. Each of them has an understandable bone to pick with the red-headed immortal as he's done them all wrong at some point or another in the past. There are nine of them against Kane's one (two if you count Rehhaile), so they're confident they can take him out. The story paces itself well as we watch Kane dwindle the numbers against him one by one until he's got a more manageable load that he can fight with just his sword. There's a lot going on in "Cold Light," thematically speaking. The crusaders are confident that they are arbiters of justice and uncomplicated good while they kidnap, rape, and attempt to burn the entire city of Sebbei down in pursuit of Kane. By contrast, Kane seems like the good guy here as he's done nothing but lounge by a lake and drink wine since he's arrived. He's befriended Rehhaile and they seem to have a good thing going on. Does that absolve him of his crimes? Of course not; if Putin or Netanyahu or Trump decided to spend the rest of their days sitting by a lake, not hurting anyone else, it doesn't erase the evil that they've already wrought. Still, it inverts the usual order. It's interesting contrasting the toxic, all-consuming revenge-driven action of the "crusaders" against the toxic, do-nothing attitude of the people of Sebbei. In one climactic moment of the story, the gang closes in on Kane in an old warehouse filled with unused medicines covered in dust, symbolic of their ability to do nothing about their problems. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: both are doomed in their own ways! "Cold Light" was incredible. It clearly takes place later in Kane's timeline as he's wondering Lartroxia West. But because other characters mention Carsultyal, I wonder if it takes place a little earlier than some of the stories where Carsultyal is so ancient it's seemingly only remembered by Kane... I read on a very old Dale Rippke blog post that Wagner said all the short stories appear in chronological order in each collection, so that helps me out a bit.  Part IIt’s January, 1933 in Cross Plains, Texas. Though most of the town is asleep, Robert E. Howard is banging away at his typewriter, working on a new story. January of ‘33 has been abnormally warm and dry for a Texas winter, so perhaps he still has the window open to his neighbors’ chagrin, as he sits in his bedroom which faces the sleeping porch, nearly shouting the words as he writes them. Howard, Bob to his friends, is working on “Rogues in the House.” It’s a new Conan of Cimmeria story that he’s hoping to sell to editor Farnsworth Wright at the magazine Weird Tales. “Rogues in the House” will sell, becoming the seventh Conan story to hit the pages of “The Unique Magazine” in January of the following year. It will net him a tidy $100.  But while “Rogues” is the seventh story accepted, it’s the twelfth one Bob’s written, and to make matters worse, Weird Tales doesn’t pay him on story acceptance, but rather upon publication. The depression is bearing down on his family, and he needs money, which has mostly eluded him, like literary fame. Literary success is a persimmon that remains out of his reach, Bob says later. Additionally, Conan, who’s his bestselling character to date, seems to have become a bit of a chore for the writer. The three stories he’s written prior to “Rogues:” "Iron Shadows in the Moon," "Xuthal of the Dusk" and "The Pool of the Black One," have fallen into a rather predictable pattern. They’re not his best work. Bob pens one more Conan story, “The Vale of Lost Women,” and there’s no evidence he ever even submitted it to Weird Tales. He won’t write another Conan story for around nine months. Part II“Rogues in the House” is an eternally underrated Conan of Cimmeria story, not only for breaking out of the slump that comprises the stories written around it, but because of how unique it is in the canon. Conan, imprisoned at the start of the narrative, is broken out by a young noble so that Conan can do the dirty work of killing Nabonidus, the Red Priest, who is the center of power in the unnamed city. When Nabonidus’s human / ape experiment / pet Thak runs amok in his manor, it forces Conan, his young employer, and the Red Priest to spend some quality time while figuring out how to defeat Thak. According to Howard, “Rogues in the House” arrived in his mind essentially fully-formed and the only editing he had to do on it was to erase and re-write one single word before he stuffed it in the mailbox for his agent. I’m not sure how much I believe that, but it makes for a great anecdote. One reason why I appreciate “Rogues” so much is for its comedy beats throughout. While Howard always maintained that Conan was a man of both gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, the scales always seemed to tip a little more toward the melancholy side. Except for in “Rogues.” Conan dryly domes a guard with a beef bone while robbing him of his knife and keys before leisurely strolling out of prison. That’s a great image! Before proceeding to Nabonidus to make good on his contract kill, Conan returns to the slum area of town, The Maze, the take out some frustrations on an ex-lover of his. This unnamed woman got Conan imprisoned and his partner killed, so when Conan bursts back into her room, eyes blazing with fury, it hits all the harder when Howard pulls the rug out from under us and we watch Conan drop her into a cesspool instead of killing her. This scene has apparently upset people over the years, but I find it honestly hilarious. Like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, his lover is swearing, covered in shit, while Conan lets out a full-throated laugh. Nobody’s actually hurt, and Conan’s reaped his revenge. L. Sprague de Camp makes the odd suggestion that this scene may have been inspired by Robert E. Howard getting bullied by others in school, specifically an act we called getting a “swirly” when I was a kid. Even the last action of the story has always struck me as ironically funny. The Red Priest, for all his scheming and scientific accomplishments, is done in by taking a fucking chair to the skull. No trickery needed, just a throw too quick to dodge. The other thing I love so much about this story is its character work. As much as I love Howard’s writing, his characters are sometimes pretty flat. The wizards are scheming and evil. The young ladies are supple and need help. You know the score. But “Rogues” takes the time to draw memorable, fun characters unlike most of Conan’s supporting cast. It’s so seldom that Conan spends extended amounts of time with people, especially those who are at odds with his own goals. Murilo is young, foppish, and a bit of a wimp, but he’s ultimately likable, while Nabonidus is smarmy, arrogant, and occasionally charming. Thak, while certainly not fully human, has enough soul that you almost want to root for him the same way you would Frankenstein’s Creature. I’ve always loved in particular the way Nabonidus talks about Thak to Conan and Murilo, kind of proud of Thak’s abilities while at the same time, being threatened with his life by them. Both Nabonidus and Murilo play into Howard’s politics about the evils of civilization so well. The pair stands in for civilization’s part: Murilo is part of existing power structures and Nabonidus is the shadow government that holds the real cards. Murilo realizes this an an outburst: “You exploit a whole kingdom for your personal greed; and, under the guise of disinterested statesmanship, you swindle the king, beggar the rich, oppress the poor, and sacrifice the whole future of the nation for your ruthless ambition… You are a greater thief than I am. This Cimmerian is the most honest man of the three of us, because he steals and murders openly.” Conan stands on the opposite side of the conflict. Uncomplicated, at least to himself, and occasionally like a simpleton in comparison to the Red Priest’s plans and inventions, he’s the only one of the three with any sort of grit to match his drive. There’s a lot to love here in this story. It’s brief and not a word is wasted. It’s philosophically interesting and unique in its author’s body of work. It’s got a phenomenal fight scene at the end. It’s probably not quite as good as the REH favorites: “Tower of the Elephant,” “Red Nails,” “People of the Black Circle,” but that’s not exactly slouchy company. It deserves its mention toward the top of the list. Part IIIIt’s Spring, 1971 in New York City. The Marvel office at 635 Madison Avenue is abuzz like usual, and in the middle of it is Roy Thomas. It’s a time of flux for Marvel Comics: many of the old guard who helped the comic company rise to prominence have left in the last several years. Some of Marvel’s superhero characters are now 40 years old, but the average age of writers in the bullpen is 23 years old. Roy himself is only 30, but already has risen through the ranks to be Stan Lee’s right-hand man.  Roy has a thing for old characters- like, 1930s and 40s Golden Age of Comics characters. The Invaders, All-Star Squadron, the Justice Society of America, that sort of thing. And there’s this one character from 1930s pulp magazines that he’s revived: Conan the Barbarian. Stan Lee’s not sure about it because he’s not a superhero, nobody’s in a colorful costume, and honestly, he’s not even really sure what “sword & sorcery” is. But they’ve got the rights for $200 an issue, and they’ve got this super cheap but talented new British artist on the book, a 21 year-old kid named Barry Smith. So far, this book has been really up-and-down. Roy’s had to switch the order of issues a couple of times, like pushing issue three back to issue five, while scrambling to fill the gaps for three and four. Since Roy only has the Conan character and not the rights to all the Conan stories, he’s doing what he can to play in the small sandbox he has. He bases issue #2 sort of off one paragraph in Howard’s “The Hyborian Age” essay. He adapts some non-Conan stories like “Twilight of the Grey Gods” and “The Garden of Fear,” but he’s also making stuff up out of whole cloth. He got to adapt one of the best whiz-bang Conan stories, “The Tower of the Elephant,” a few issues ago in number 4. Unfortunately, none of that stuff has really been selling. Marvel even canceled the book a few months ago, but thought better of it and it was back on the next day. But sales have gradually been ticking up, starting with issue #7. Roy sometimes jokes that he’s just an embellisher for Howard’s stories on this title, and for the next two issues, Conan the Barbarian #10 and 11, embellish he will. Part IVThe writers in the bullpen weren’t the only things changing at Marvel. The comic company was about to change their interior page counts from 36 pages to 52 pages in response to DC doing the same thing. But that came with a price increase, too. They made the jump from 15 cents to 25 cents a comic. Editorial was also messing with the covers a bit- giving a uniform design to them for the Bronze Age, with a band at the top reading “MARVEL COMICS GROUP” and they’re putting all the cover art into an isolated box. The page count and price thing would last only two issues- enough for Roy to adapt “Rogues in the House,” but no longer. They’d return to 36 pages with Conan issue #12, and the price would come down, but only to 20 cents. But for a short time, with those extra pages, the story was allowed breathing room for character beats and story that it otherwise wouldn’t have been afforded. “Rogues in the House” opens in medias res, using a super economical word count to set up the bones of the story. But for Roy, this is free real estate. He has the job of connecting the fairly independent narrative to his comic continuity, and he always did so very creatively. There are three paragraphs that open the story as prologue and they’re ripe for Roy’s taking:
This is where it becomes really fun if you know the original story prior to reading its comic adaptation. Roy begins setting this stuff up in previous issues.
The cover for issue #10 promises “ALL NEW STORIES,” and that’s mostly true. Issue 10 fills in our backstory about how Conan would end up in prison for the real start of “Rogues.” It’s all rendered beautifully in Barry’s pencils topped with inks by Sal Buscema. No colorist is listed, so I’m assuming it’s Barry, but the blues and golds of the city at night give it this mythical quality that looks great. By this point, Barry’s art has begun its trajectory to its uniquely ornate style that he will eventually settle on, but you can still see plenty of Jack Kirby influence in these issues. After a thief job, Conan and Burgun are hunted by the guards, with only Conan able to get away. He watches Burgun get hanged, drenched in pale blues and rain, before going back to the corrupt priest of Anu for revenge. Roy adds the fantastical element of this giant bull avatar of Anu which almost destroys the whole temple. In order for Conan to exact revenge on the priest, the team was going to have to get creative. Howard explicitly says that he cut the priest’s head off, but that was never going to fly under the restrictive Comics Code Authority. Instead, we see five panels in which Conan approaches, each background growing darker until the last is a blood red, and Conan strikes out of the panel. We then see the priest’s head conveniently relieved of his body in the last panel. In the end, it doesn’t feel at all like a workaround. Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite good enough for the comics code and three caption boxes were hastily added to the final panels to ensure readers that Conan would be punished for killing a priest, no matter how evil. Issue #11 follows the prose narrative to “Rogues in the House” pretty faithfully, with the added bonus that we actually get to see the moment when Conan is captured thanks to Jenna selling him out. We meet Murilo in the prison making me sad once again that we don’t have a colorist to thank- the shadows and the reds, purples, and blues are gorgeous. Murilo has big, 70s Barry Manilow hair, perfect for his character. A raging Conan drops Jenna into the cesspool and makes his way to the estate of Nabonidus, who seethes evil, but isn’t quite as charming as Howard’s version. In one of the only times I can remember, the regular Conan book is split into parts like they would usually do with Savage Sword. Barry’s Thak is much more simian than, for example, Frank Frazetta’s, and the Thak fight here is basically Conan v. gorilla. And instead of tossing a stool at Nabonidus, Conan impales him with a knife throw to end this version of the story. Spread across two king-sized issues, “Rogues in the House” is one of the most meticulously-adapted Conan stories in the Bronze Age comic. As Bob Byrne points out in Hither Came Conan, about 79 pages are dedicated to adapting the short story, which means it has about 30 more pages than even some of the more epic adaptations done in Savage Sword. Issue #11 was also the longest Conan the Barbarian issue until the super-sized issue #100 which concluded "Queen of the Black Coast." Letter-writers to "The Hyborian Page" in issue #14 praised the adaptation and Marvel noted that Conan gets as much overwhelmingly favorable mail as any mag which Marvel had ever published, but noted that it would be a while before they directly adapted any other Conan stories. He even said years later that he thinks it’s nobody’s favorite. “Rogues in the House” is a classic though- one of my favorite Conan stories. And its comic adaptation, also a banger. The story is small in scope despite the oversized nature of the comic version, but every aspect of it works for a memorable product. For Robert E. Howard, it was the last story published of his first Conan period, for Roy Thomas, it showed what he could do, but he was just getting started. Hey folks, this is a bit of an experiment for me. Usually, my YouTube videos start as blog posts and then get adapted for video, but this one began as a video and I decided to share the script here as well. I hope you enjoyed. It's been really fun to do this for two years now and I appreciate all the support and comments people have left!
With The Unsung Sword of Conan, I'm trying to highlight under-appreciated works in the Conan canon. Do me a favor: take a look at the two comic pages down below. Compare them for a second. How do they feel to you? Which one do you like better?  The left page is taken from Conan the Barbarian #172. It was written by Christopher Priest, penciled by John Buscema, inked by Bob Camp, and colored by George Roussos. The page on the right is from Conan the Barbarian #175. It was once again crafted by Priest, Buscema, and Roussos, but with Ernie Chan doing the inks. If you're like me, you probably think the page from issue #175 is a better final product. It might even be hard to nail down why it's better, but I'll propose a few ideas. The content isn't too dissimilar: there are some action packed panels at the top (and both have an open panel in the upper-right), as well as a few dialogue-focused panels, with a mix of close-up and wide shots. They have the same number of panels and even a similar flow. But there's something about the one on the right that is leagues better than the one on the left. While I like that the panel in #172's upper-right is an open panel, helping it feel less moored to time, it seems to come out of nowhere. It's not exactly clear what happens next. Do the two Picts get hit by the flying axe? How? They don't look like they're standing close enough together. They drop their weapons, and then there's a beat, and then they fall over dead? The action is just not clear, making it hard to follow. Plus, the backgrounds are extremely basic. some green grass, some blue sky. It looks generic and boring. Even Conan's face looks empty and generic, with pupils that seem to be crying out to be filled in black. The page on the right does so much better at all these things. The action takes place between different skirmishes on a battlefield, but the unified backgrounds and poses helps them feel tied together. The faces are more detailed and unique. Even though the red-headed Delmurio is a rugged rapscallion like Conan, they both have totally different vibes and face shapes. The inking feels darker in the shadows and more complete. Everything is more competently done here.  I chose these panels to illustrate the difference between the first few issues of Christopher Priest's run on Conan the Barbarian and how it eventually comes together. Priest, writing then under the name Jim Owsley, has a rough couple of first issues, and it's really not his fault. He picks up from the previous writer at #172, and the first three books he writes just feel terrible. Instead, I feel the need to lay the blame at comic legend John Buscema. Perhaps the crew was still figuring out how to work together. Priest has said that he didn't really like Conan all that much. Buscema very famously didn't even like comic books that much... maybe they needed some time to gel. When Buscema pencils a page that doesn't turn out ideal, most people lay the blame at the foot of the inker, including Buscema himself. While there were some sub-par inkers that really change John's work for the worse, and this was even a time in which he did more "breakdowns" while an inker provided the "finishes," he's got to bare some of the blame here. The breakdowns in these first few books just suck. They have unclear action and a lack of backgrounds, rendering the action inert and the stories somewhat lifeless. The covers (mostly also by Buscema) seem phoned-in as well. Conan's fighting someone in an empty space. Ish #174 is a small step up from the first two, with an improvement to the story but still sub-par art. When the team gets to issue #175, suddenly things just lock into place. Buscema bounces back and Priest's writing takes a huge step forward. Conan's been on the western side of the continent for a couple of issues, fighting some Picts, occasionally aiding some Zingaran armed forces, gathering companions. One of Christopher Priest's foremost goals was to "Marvelize" Conan by giving him a supporting cast and maybe even some Clint Eastwood-style line reads. Issue #175 represents the first time that would really work out.   From the first page of the issue, things feel different. Our splash page is more lush and detailed than anything the past several issues. By this point, Conan is with his longer-term travel buddies, Tetra and Delmurio. Not only is there brief exposition, but we get to see some comedy and fun character bits. Giving Conan a regular cast allowed Priest the chance to do more character work than other Conan writers. Our three protagonists are looking to charter a ship from the Zingaran coast; they end up aboard a dinky little vessel headed by a cloaked captain with a creepy aura about him. If you've already guessed that he's secretly the villain, congratulations, you win nothing since everyone else saw it coming too. But that's not the fun part! Conan and co. are sail into a creepy rock face inlaid with a human maw at which point Conan is apparently back home in Cimmeria. Howard purists might bristle at this depiction of Cimmeria, which seems more akin to the snowy wastes of Vanaheim than the leaden clouds and rolling hills of Conan's youth, it's not exactly paramount to the story. Conan gets "the Line" in a way that really works for the first time: "I am a son of Cimmeria. For me, there is no other way."  Warned of "the Scarlet Personage" by other trapped Cimmerians, Conan fights a ninja-like dude with a great design. He rips off his mask, revealing the Scarlet Personage underneath. Conan takes his enemy down, of course. Priest saw Conan as not quite a hero, but more of a problem-solver, and Conan's no-nonsense, let's-get-this-shit-over-with attitude here represents Priest's version of the character perfectly.
Eventually, Priest's track record on Conan would even out a little bit. He actually figures himself out even faster than Roy Thomas had in 1970 and 1971. As Conan fights Imhotep the Ravager of Worlds, Wrarrl the Devourer of Souls, and even his companion Tetra, fun times were to be had by all. By the time Conan arrives in the Shemetish city of El Shah Maddoc in issue #179, Conan the Barbarian was on a serious upswing. One thing I really admire about Karl Edward Wagner is his restraint. The man is patient. I wonder if this turns some people off of his work; there are long, long scenes in most of the Kane stories I've read so far where people sit in a tavern or by a fire and discuss history, religion, and philosophy. If you wanted nothing but whiz-bang swordplay, you'd be out of luck. We spend most of "Sing a Last Song of Valdese" sitting in a tavern while two priests and a professor debate the above-mentioned subjects. Surrounded by a bounty hunter and a criminal, a drunk and a rich man, they're in pretty motley company. We get a little bit more about the lore of Kane here during the mens' conversation: “Actually the legend of Kane has far darker implications. His name, I have observed, reappears in all ages and all lands. The literature of the occult recurrently alludes to him. In fact, there is an ancient compendium of pre-human glyphics that Kane is said to have authored… Some occult authors contend that Kane was one of the first true men, damned to eternal wandering for some dark act of rebellion against mankind’s creator.” That's so dope. Well, it turns out that not all these men are here by accident and a stunning act of revenge takes place while Kane says little more than a few lines. This narrative is entirely a slow-burn, but it's engaging and eyebrow-raising throughout. Interestingly, there's a character named Mad Hef in this story, and there was a character named Hef in "The Dark Muse," so I spent some time trying to figure out if they're the same Hef. However, Hef dies in "Dark Muse" and this Mad Hef dies in this story, so it couldn't be. Perhaps Hef is a common name bajillions of years ago. As far as I can tell, these Kane stories thus far ("Undertow," "Two Suns Setting," "The Dark Muse," and this) are sort of generally taking place in timeline order.  Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories. After the April 1935 issue of Weird Tales went to print with no Howard stories included (though it did have an Otis Kline and a Clark Ashton Smith), Robert E. Howard's most popular character came back in the May and June issues with one of his best stories ever. "Beyond the Black River" was serialized over those two early-summer editions. Willard Oliver says in his biography Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author that Howard told Novalyne Price around this time that he tries to bang out an adventure story or a western every now and then, but "mostly" goes along with Conan. "Beyond the Black River" is firmly Howard's most western Conan story; much has already been written about that.  The chronological clues in this story firmly place it toward the end of Conan's wanderings and even foreshadow his king stories pretty hard, which would pick up very soon after this one:
Here's our updated chronology as we reach the final stories that would be published within Robert E. Howard's lifetime:
The Kane of "The Dark Muse" is a very different Kane than the one we see in either "Undertow" or "Two Suns Setting." In "Undertow," he was an absolute bastard. All menace, all the time to his city and to the captive he probably thinks of as a girlfriend, or maybe more accurately, a pet. In "Two Suns Setting," he was remarkably more neutral. He assists another character on a short quest, but not out of altruism, and at least once considers ways that he could steal the spoils of the quest for himself. "The Dark Muse" presents a Kane that is much milder and more intellectual, even though there are flashes of his brutality.  Much to my surprise, most of "The Dark Muse" consists of Kane and an entourage of men sitting in a tavern, having a few drinks and discussing poetry. Kane's poet friend Opyros has been having some writer's block when it comes to his most recent verses, but Kane's eager to hear the next lines he's been drumming up, and is even willing to help him shake off his block. It's oddly tender for Kane to be almost patient and understanding with Opyros because, honestly, Opyros seems kind of hard to be around. I play in punk bands and I'm a bit of a barfly, so I've known lots of his "tortured artist" types. People with obvious talent, some charm, and a hell of a good night on offer, but you know that if you lend them five bucks, you're not going to see it back. Opyros strikes me like a lot of guys who've offered me keys with stuff on them and one day have a breakdown where they quit all their bands but actually end up doing much better for themselves eventually. It makes me wonder why Kane would spend time with the obvious hot-mess addict; it doesn't seem like he would suffer tomfoolery. Perhaps Wagner saw a bit of himself in Opyros. From what I gather, Wagner was a hard drinker and died of alcoholism at the young age of 48. I wonder if he saw a little bit of his own future in Opyros- someone who burns really brightly and then overdoes it while still wickedly productive. Who knows. Ultimately, Kane leads Opyros to some great risk with possible great reward in the dream realm and fights off a giant shadow bat. Since he's left Carsultyal and refers to its declining years as something in the past, it must take place after "Undertow" and "Two Suns." This story's not quite as incredible as the first two I read, though don't get me wrong, it's still a great time. I'd say that its main draw is seeing such a different side of Kane, who still feels like the same character, which is clearly another testament to Karl Edward Wagner's immense talent as a writer.  Roy Thomas's CONAN THE BARBARIAN: A "QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST" Retrospective, Part Three of Three3/14/2026  From issue #84 through #100, Roy Thomas and John Buscema told the final stretch of their Conan & Bêlit saga. In some ways, it was the best run of those 43 issues of Conan the Barbarian, and in others, it was the worst. It was a revelation when Roy began adapting "Queen of the Black Coast" because he could unlock another side of Conan. The Cimmerian now had someone more consistent to talk to, to save, to be saved by, to fall in love with, and just generally interact with. In the final third of his Conan & Bêlit saga, he would do it again by introducing Zula, the last of the Zamballahs.  Zula, the last of his tribe, is a lot like Conan in a few ways. He's strong, shrewd, and, when the story calls for it, heroic. He's a little more suspicious and untrusting than the Cimmerian, but he's a match for the big guy in all the right ways. Interestingly, Zula's coloring in the book goes through one wild transition. In his first appearance in issue #84, Zula has extremely dark skin, as in it's pure black ink highlighted in blue, the exact same way Conan and Bêlit's hair is. They wanted to distinguish him from other Black characters in the book, who usually appeared with their skin colored brown. Apparently, there's an old, racist phrase I'd never heard before levied against Black men about being so dark-skinned they're "almost purple." Like a lot of phrases employed by dumbass racists, that doesn't even really make sense. But Roy wanted to turn that phrase on its head, I guess, by making the capable, likable Zula almost purple, which is not a decision I support. Outside of the ill-advised reasons, Zula just looks a little strange in that first issue, and kind of sinks into the page with the rest of the inking. It's fixed in his following appearance, and Zula would appear dark-skinned (colored gray, essentially) but not literally black after that. It looks much better. Of course, this is mostly bunk since to the vast majority of people, Zula looks like Grace Jones.  For how many of the next several issues are told in flashback, with characters catching one another up on their recent whereabouts, you might think these issues would suck, but they surprisingly don't. Issues #84 - 86 would be a great time to jump on the title, had you dropped it somewhere prior, as Conan and Zula relate their general histories to one another and it's clear that they have unique, but compatible backgrounds. They later meet up with Bêlit, who recalls her own recent happenings and everyone's up to speed for the final race to #100. "Southern California was definitely hazardous to my work ethic." - Roy Thomas The unfortunate thing is that this stretch of comics begins to get bogged down by reprints and diversions, and it's generally writer Roy Thomas's fault. He says that when he moved to LA in 1976, Marvel Comics felt really far away and he began to see it as just a job rather than his passion. He was lured by the glitz of TV and movies and it became a little harder to pick up his comic book pen. You probably wouldn't notice unless you were paying close attention, but there was a reprint in issue #87 (the second time in less than a year, this time reprinting Savage Sword #3) and several flashback or adaptation issues that slow the roll of the title. When the book is focused on Bêlit's return to Asgalun's throne or putting Conan, Zula, and the Black Corsairs up against a Stygian threat, it's generally phenomenal. But it wasn't that every month. Like, I really like issue #92. It's a fun adaptation of "The Thing in the Crypt" that I dug so much I wrote an Unsung Sword of Conan column about it. But it appears in the issue immediately preceding Bêlit's taking of the throne of Asgalun, which feels so whack. In the moment where we should be winding up to a triumph, we're looking back to a completely unrelated story.  In the moment we'd all been waiting for, Bêlit claims the throne of Asgalun, finally avenging her deposed father. But in a twist you probably saw coming, she would never be happy leaving the pirate life behind, so she abdicates the throne a third of a second after receiving it. It makes sense; Roy says he based this on his own experiences. He was offered the Editor-In-Chief role at Marvel a second time and turned it down. He didn't actually want the job, he just wanted to be a offered it, he says. Thoth-Amon continues to meddle in Conan's affairs from afar (with Roy being very careful that the two don't actually meet yet so as to not step on Robert E. Howard's toes). Zula parts ways with the rest of the cast in issue #93 before Roy begins his "Sack of Abombi" storyline, based on a throwaway line from "The Scarlet Citadel." It's fun to see the homages contained in here, like the cover of issue #97 reflecting Frank Frazetta's "Sacrifice (Conan the Avenger)" painting. The issues between #93 and #100 are all good times, but you get the point. Let's waste no more ink.  Conan the Barbarian #100 is probably the last time the title was great under Roy's stewardship. Nearly fifty issues had been building up to the death of Bêlit on the River Zarkheba, and he handles it with aplomb. We finally see Conan and Bêlit's "I would not tread on their shadow" conversation from "Queen of the Black Coast," which hits much harder this time as we've seen the two grow together for the last three years in real-time. One of the most interesting and debatable things about "Queen of the Black Coast" is how long-term Conan and Bêlit would have been. How long do they travel together? To me, it doesn't seem like long. How long would they have traveled together for? Well, I think they were always doomed to tragedy by one method or another. Roy, who always saw his role as an "embellisher" for Howard, has embellished one of REH's best stories in the best way. For all my complaints about the general pacing of the title at this time, they dry up in this issue. Roy Thomas and John Buscema unlock their best work here. From Bêlit's mournful hanging on the ship to the methodical killing spree Conan goes on in the immediate aftermath, to the final battle with the bat creature who "slew his mate," the king-sized issue is one of the best issues of Conan ever. Buscema goes hard in the final panels, particularly the splash page filled with Conan's stoic figure and George Roussos's blues, magentas, and greens. The true Bronze Age greatness of Conan the Barbarian was pretty much over after that. Roy was here for another 15 issues, but none of them are really essential. Conan the Barbarian Annual #5 and 6 are both fantastic, retelling The Hour of the Dragon, but the regular title under Roy's stewardship went gently into that good night, where it was handed off to J.M. DeMatteis, and, unfortunately, a slightly less-promising future.   Kane has left the city of Carsultyal. Perhaps it's more appropriate to say that he's abandoned it. The vibrant growth and vigor that he saw in the city for about a century has seemingly died, and mankind's first great city has apparently atrophied in the eyes of Kane and now he's running away from his greatest enemy: boredom. This story seems to take place after the events of "Undertow," with Kane having firmly set up shop in Carsultyal in that story. As Kane wanders through an inhospitable desert, he meets the agreeable giant Dwassllir. Around fifteen feet in height, Dwassllir's cloak is more like a tent to Kane.  The first half of this narrative is eaten up by a discussion between the comparatively diminutive Kane and his temporary friend, and this was some of the shit that drew me to Kane in the first place. Dwassllir reminisces about a "heroic age," an age when his race of giants were young, vital, and dominant. That age is long past, and few giants remain. Kane represents a very different epoch. Immortal as he is, Kane argues for the new civilization of man. With the young civilizations of man growing aggressively, he marvels at his own people's accomplishments. He's careful not to push back too hard against Dwassllir seeing as the giant could probably rend him in two. I can't help but feel as though this conversation holds more weight than ever today. Dwassllir laments that humanity refuses to live in harmony with nature and instead reshapes the world to itself; while its creations are impressive, it seems like that's what humanity cares for above all else, at the expense of the natural world. It turns out that Dwassllir longs so much for the glory days of his people that he's actually looking for an ancient king's tomb. Once there, Wagner's descriptive prose kicks into high gear. This unassuming break in a wall of rock represents the highest point of Dwassllir's dying civilization, and it does indeed contain the body of the ancient king he was looking for. Multiple mishaps and cave-ins stand in the way between the dual-ruby-encrusted crown and our protagonist pair, but they manage to have a page-turning adventure. As an old enemy takes Dwassllir's life, Kane places the crown gingerly on his head: we see a much kinder side of Kane in this story as opposed to "Undertow." Perhaps this brings the story's title into play. Kane's race is obviously built in a way that will destroy itself- Dwassllir says as much when he notes that we are nothing without our "crutches" of horses and houses and weapons. But at the same time, his ancient race of giants was strong, harmonious with nature, and prosperous, they have died a slow but inexorable death, ending here with Dwassllir's life. I think Robert E. Howard would be proud at Karl's conclusions here. The suns of both civilizations are setting, no matter how hard you try. "Mankind will be master of this world. In only a few centuries I've seen our civilization grow from a sterile paradise, from scattered barbaric tribes to a vast and expanding empire of cities; villages, and farms. Ours is the fastest rising civilization ever to burst upon the world." Dwassllir is looking terminally (and somewhat pathetically) backward. Kane is looking endlessly forward. Both are doomed in their own ways.
No, this isn't Conan, but perhaps you'll indulge me. Because I'm a sucker to rule all suckers, I recently spent $182 on a copy of Midnight Sun: the Complete Stories of Kane. That was the cheapest copy out there! Kane has recently become fascinating to me from afar. Every Frazetta painting I've seen and every short article I've read about him has made me realize that I have to read about Wagner's quasi-Biblical sorcerer. His Conan novel The Road of Kings was pretty great, so why not?  Midnight Sun opens with the short story "Undertow," which is an interesting first blush with this redheaded, left-handed, immortal Kane. It's really more of the story of Dessylyn, a young woman who's somehow ended up in Kane's sphere of influence, desperate to leave it. Kane is a powerful figure in the city of Carsultyal, but it's not like he's an elected official or influential businessman; he sort of looms from his tower and his specter infects the city with fear. Everyone seems to shudder at mere mention of the name Kane. The narrative is constructed interestingly out-of-order, folding back on itself to slowly reveal what takes place when. It creates a circle at the end when it reveals that its contextless first scene takes place a few hours after the end of the book. Ultimately, it's set in two time periods, perhaps months or years apart, in which Dessylyn tries her best to escape Kane, but her inability to do so hints at the story's title. She first tries to woo a young barbarian named Dragar to save her via his strength and naïve sense of purpose, but Dragar ends up spitting out his last word along with a mouthful of blood. The other time period at hand is some undetermined while later, where it seems like Dessylyn has tried her luck with other would-be saviors. In this instance, it's the much less-impressive Mavrsal, captain of a rickety-ass ship with no crew. He makes Dragar look like Superman in comparison. As Dessylyn attempts to get both men to rescue her, it's surprising that Kane doesn't really appear in the story until the final third. He mostly exists as this creeping darkness at the edges for the rest of it. When Kane finally appears, he's in full villain mode. I frequently hear people describe Kane as an anti-hero, but that would be a serious stretch, at least in the context of this story. In two brutal fight scenes, Kane shows off his power, complete with mirthless smiles.  While Dessylyn, Dragar, and Mavrsal are all well-drawn for the limited screen time they have and the temporal construction of the story is inventive, my favorite part was what Wagner does to us once Kane actually enters the picture. He's in the middle of working necromancy, seemingly crafting something like a youth potion for Dessylyn so that she won't age - as he doesn't - listening to her beg him to let her go. What Kane responds with was a great piece of character writing. Despite how despicable Kane is (and he is despicable), I suddenly sympathize with Kane in this moment. "You'll stay with me because I love you, and your beauty will not fade, Dessylyn. In time you may understand. Did you ever wonder at the loneliness of immortality? Have you ever wondered what must be the thoughts of a man cursed to wander through the centuries? A man doomed to a desolate, un-ending existence - feared and hated wherever men speak his name. A man who can never know peace, whose shadow leaves ruin wherever he passes. A man who has learned that every triumph is fleeting, that every joy is transient. All that he seeks to possess is stolen away from him by the years. His empires will fall, his songs will be forgotten, his loves will turn to dust. Only the emptiness of eternity will remain with him, a laughing skeleton cloaked in memories to haunt his days and nights. Now, of course I don't think Kane's right to keep Dessylyn locked away with him forever. I'm actively rooting for her to leave him. But, for a moment, I kind of get where Kane's coming from. Wagner is able to distill in that passage how a god might feel toward his subjects. Do you and I feel bad when we cut a rose from the garden to put it into a vase? Do you even have a second thought when you step on a bug outside? It's an interesting thought experiment that's tempting you to empathize with both sides.
It's a fantastic short story. It's a great way to start my Kane journey. Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories.  "The Servants of Bit-Yakin," also known as "Jewels of Gwahlur," was the thirteenth Conan of Cimmeria story to be published. First seeing print in the March 1935 issue of Weird Tales, there had been a three-month gap between "A Witch Shall Be Born" and this one. In preceding months, Howard had a Conan story, or at least part of one, published in August, September, October, November, and December of 1934. He'd recently been experimenting with new characters and different genres, like El Borak and Kirby O'Donnell, so it seems like he was probably a little burnt out on the Cimmerian again. He might have come back to the Hyborian Age for "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" since it was easily his best-selling series and characters like El Borak and O'Donnell hadn't been as reliable. Because Robert E. Howard's original title for this story was "The Servants of Bit-Yakin," that's the one I'm going to use to refer to it throughout this post, but it's much better-known under it's published title of "Jewels of Gwahlur." Both titles present interesting opportunities to put your own spin on the pronunciation and I've heard many variations in how to say both "Bit-Yakin" ("Bit-YAY-kin?" "Bit-Yah-keen?") and "Gwahlur" (Rhymes with "squalor?" Rhymes with "allure?")  Sword & sorcery author Fritz Leiber wasn't a huge fan of this one, rating it as one of the three worst Conan stories. I would rate it a little higher; the adventure is a good time. I would agree that the prose suffers, though. Weirdly enough, there's one point where Conan balks at the character Muriela by saying "Goddess! Ha!" or "Goddess! Bah!" It comes across as repetitive in a useless way, like he didn't know what else to have Conan say or he didn't realized he'd had Conan say almost the same thing three times in a row. It's kind of grating, not poetic. While the writing probably isn't Two-Gun Bob's best, it's a pretty fun story that's easy to place in the timeline. It has lots of chronological markers!
It's the characterization that really dominates where this story belongs. Even without saying Conan has already lived through his Barachan pirate days, this is a much older, wiser, worldly Conan. "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" is without a doubt a lesser Conan story for me, but it's still a pretty fun one. I love the opening during which Conan is doing a death-defying climb. The whole setting is one I want to delve much deeper into. His interplay with Muriela is endearing. The scene where he finds Zargheba's decapitated head staring at him is a certified chiller. And there's just enough magic and politicking to add a few more layers to it. Its prose isn't always top-notch and leans more heavily on Howard's racism than some other stories, but it's far from one that should be discounted. This updates our chronology to the following:
The annual REH Awards have been announced by the Robert E. Howard Foundation down in Texas! There are some incredible people on this list: Liam Sharp has been nominated for his Savage Sword issue "Tattered Wings," Jeff Shanks for his Scourge of the Serpent series of essays, Jim Zub et al. for the Scourge of the Serpent mini-series, Molly Tanzer for her new Jirel of Joiry work, a truckload of the Heroic Legends series authors, and even Roy Thomas! It's like a who's-who of online creators as well, with names like Stygian Dogs, Michael K. Vaughn, and Sword & Sorcery Book Club! Someone even nominated me for my blog and YouTube channel, so thanks so much! Awards are handed out at Howard Days in Texas this year, and I'll be going!  |
AuthorHey, I'm Dan. This is my project reading through the career of everyone's favorite sword-and-sorcery character, Conan the Cimmerian, in chronological order. 
Archives
April 2026
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed