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. 
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 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!  Titan's version of Savage Sword has now been running for two years, and the vast majority of it has been dynamite. I thought I'd take this opportunity to revisit and rank the twelve issues of SSOC that are out there now. If you dig the YouTube stuff, feel free to subscribe to me over there! Thanks for reading and watching, y'all. I really love getting comments from other Conan and sword-and-sorcery fans about how much they love this stuff as well. I really appreciate being part of this community! Roy Thomas's CONAN THE BARBARIAN: A "QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST" Retrospective, Part Two of Three2/10/2026  Now that Bêlit was established in her own right and her relationship with Conan had begun to develop as their love had the power to even destroy a magician's illusion in Conan the Barbarian #68, we could really get this sea-bourne road trip moving. The next fourteen issues, from #70 to #83, would send the crew of the Tigress behind enemy lines for a chance to get to know Stygia, complete with its snake worshippers and Black Ring wizards. What may look like fairly standard fantasy adventure fare from the outside actually offers some of the best of what the Bronze Age of Comics had. The comic thunders with life. It's instantly apparent from the beginning that there's a stark uptick in art quality right at issue #70. "The City in the Storm!" which the first in a two-part free adaptation of Robert E. Howard's "Marchers of Valhalla," sees inker Ernie Chan return to the title to embellish penciller John Buscema's work. Ernie's inks synthesize perfectly with Buscema's art to really earn the title "Embellisher." The full-page illustration at the start of issue #71 as an example, their Conan is powerfully posed and always looks great in motion. This is undeniably the A-Team at play: a Gil Kane cover, Big John B and Ernie Chan on the art, with Roy Thomas scripting an adaptation of a Howard story... 70s comics don't get better than that. These issues play a lot with Conan and Bêlit that further endear the pair to us, and each other. A brief moment between them in #71 starts as a power struggle and ends with a moment of quiet reflection. In the medium of comics, where space equals time, it's incredibly brief, especially that slim last panel where Bêlit is framed alone against the night sky, caught off-guard in a long shot as Conan has disarmed her. Looking back, Roy says that all of this storytelling looks effortless, and you can absolutely tell the team's having fun.  For most of the rest of this period, Bêlit and the Black Corsairs head into Stygia, where Roy Thomas became the first person to really flesh the country out. In REH's original canon, it's seen in Hour of the Dragon, and we see lots of Stygians like Thoth-Amon in "Red Nails," "Xuthal of the Dusk," and "The Phoenix on the Sword." But surprisingly, most of the cities of Stygia are named but unseen. The black walls of Khemi, the capital Luxur, and the magician city Keshatta are mostly out-of-frame. But first, they would return to Shem.  Issue #72's "Vengeance in Asgalun" includes one of Gil Kane's "Conan is mad at you, specifically" covers from this period (they're all fun) and pits our pair against Stygians in Bêlit's home city of Asgalun. Disguised as a humble blacksmith his wife, Conan and Bêlit get to trade comical blows while in character. For this brief episode, Conan the Barbarian becomes part sitcom. Though the reveal is cut short by Stygian sorcerer Ptor-Nubis (tied to Thoth-Amon through the Black Ring), Bêlit learns that her father may still be alive before she escapes with her "husband." Storytelling surprises abound in issue #74, which feels incredibly modern compared to the rest of the series. Conan is asleep aboard the Tigress when an extended dream sequence begins in which Thoth-Amon reaches out to and threatens the Cimmerian, who remembers him from issue #7's adaptation of "The God in the Bowl." It makes some sense for Roy to remind us of who will eventually become Conan's big bad and it adds to the Stygian menace if you keep in mind that, up until and including this point, Conan and Thoth haven't actually met each other in person. Since they don't seem to really have a personal history in REH stories like "The Phoenix on the Sword" and Roy didn't want to upset the original canon, he came up with the excuse that maybe Thoth-Amon didn't realize he was reaching out to Conan in his dreams either. Eh, I guess I'll take it. The rest of the issue feels paced like a Modern Age book, complete with thoughtful character moments and a quick battle at the end on the black walls of Khemi. The Black Corsairs also pick up the recurring character Neftha here. She and Bêlit will in the coming issues do... well, I guess you would call it "grayface," considering how the Stygians are colored in this book. You can't see it right now, but I'm shrugging my shoulders pretty hard and grimacing more out of confusion than distaste.  Issues #75 through 77 take us to the city of Harakht with its hawk riding sentries for a fun three-part adventure that separates Conan from the crew for a time and leaves him "Swordless in Stygia." Ultimately, our heroes end up being part of a crew that helps depose the evil twin ruler Hor-Neb, leaving his more benevolent brother Mer-Ath the sole ruler of the Hawk-City of Harakht. It's nice to see that not all Stygians are snake-worshippers and wizards! As the creative team did from time to time, issue #78 reprints Savage Sword #1. Roy freely admits they were forced to print a rerun because he was being lax with his deadlines. This time, it wasn't just a ploy to catch up with the monthly comic schedule, though, but to print a story that had been used elsewhere out of necessity. SSOC #1 was originally intended to be Conan #43, but had been moved over to Savage Sword since the planned adaptation of "Black Colossus" was taking too long and would be pushed back to issue #2. Roy wasn't too broken up about it; he figured that readers eager to continue the story from issue #42 would hop on over to Savage Sword and maybe get hooked there, cross-pollinating the readership to the new book. But he'd still wanted to see the issue in color, so he finally brought it over about 35 issues later. With Buscema busy on Savage Sword and a few other books, the regular Conan title was going to see an art switch-up for the foreseeable future. Howard Chaykin, who had worked with Roy on his Star Wars comic adaptation in 1977, was brought in to pencil the book. According to Roy, he really only did the layouts, with Ernie's pens finishing the artwork so that it didn't look too different from Buscema's stuff. And Roy's right- they look about 80% the same.  This set of issues, from #79 to 81, adapt one of Robert E. Howard's El Borak stories, "The Lost Valley of Iskander." The original story features only Francis Xavier Gordon, who Roy could reskin to Conan fairly easily, but a tougher issue to deal with was what Conan's companions should be up to during this adventure. Roy employed those very-cool hawk riders from Harakht and simply had Conan help them with a mission that would take them away from the city. That would get him away from the crew of the Tigress for a while and he could get lost, solo, in the Valley of Iskander. This enchanted valley is somehow out of time (and enchanted? Conan can't seem to remember Bêlit...), with Roy explaining in captions that this "Iskander" fellow for whom the valley takes its name is actually our Alexander the Great, who has somehow already been here long ago, despite not yet being born for thousands of years. I'm reminded of an interview of Jason Alexander pushing back against an inconsistent character moment for George Costanza on Seinfeld. Larry David told Jason, "Who cares, as long as it's funny?" Roy seems to be saying to readers, "Who gives a shit, as long as it's adventurous?" I'm with him. Conan becomes embroiled in the power struggles of the city of Attalan in the Valley of Iskander and though he clashes with the gigantic Ptolemy, he chooses to defend the city from invading Stygians and he becomes a hero for it. He marches out of the city at the end, somehow back into the regularly-temporal Hyborian Age where he remembers Bêlit just fine. While Roy admits that Marvel editorial wasn't super happy with him (since "The Valley of Iskander" wasn't a Conan story, they had to pay extra for the rights to adapt it), Roy makes special note of the fact that this issue had the first advertisement for Marvel toys- in this case, dolls- featuring Conan alongside other heroes like Spider-Man, Hulk, and Captain America. He took this as a sign that Conan was not only a sales juggernaut, but a comic cultural one, too. He figured he could get away with the adaptation: "So I had the best of all possible worlds: I got to adapt REH stories, and I got Marvel to pay for the privilege. It seemed only fair. And Stan Lee and Marvel weren't complaining."  From here, Conan trudges into the swamps of Stygia. With a two-parter in issues #82 and 83, Roy dares the extremely tricky task of adapting one of Robert E. Howard's most racist stories: "Black Canaan." Roy usually tiptoed around Howard's racism and qualified it by saying things like only "overly-sensitive" readers found it racist, but we can have intelligent, honest discussions about what we like in 2026; it's horrifically racist. I suspect that Roy somewhat agreed, because he does quite a bit of work to eliminate the racist elements and re-cast them in a less-outmoded way. He gives Conan a line about choosing his friends by something other than skin color, and Conan actively dismisses some robbers' skin colors to the reader. He removes the conflict from the Black Canaanites vs. White Canaanites conflict of the original story and sets Stygians (themselves people of color) and the Black residents of a village called Viper's Head. In Roy's hands, the story still thumps with tension, fear, and sexuality, but in a way that lets you focus on the black magic and sexy siren lady who you know is bad news. Issues #82 and 83 end up being a very cool exercise in what Roy Thomas means when he splashes the banner "Freely adapted from..." across his title page. There's a very clear delineating point between here and the rest of the Conan and Bêlit saga, which had 17 more issues to go. Roy and his team were about to introduce one of the coolest characters of the whole saga. The death of the Queen of the Black Coast draws near!
Read Part Three of this series here! Roy Thomas's CONAN THE BARBARIAN: A "QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST" Retrospective, Part One of Three2/3/2026 "So all the elements, including the basic structure of the story, were there; I simply had to add to it, and then embellish it." -Roy Thomas  For how large Bêlit looms in the Conan canon, it's always been something of an oddity that she and Conan were together for such a short time. If you read Robert E. Howard's "Queen of the Black Coast," there's a gap between Chapters I and II that seems, to me at least, to last a few weeks or a few months while they really fall for one another before Bêlit is killed by the end of the story (spoilers for a story that's approaching 100 years old). I suppose it's appropriate that their romance would be quick: both Conan and Bêlit are strong, fiery people and their relationship probably wouldn't have lasted. I have a hard time picturing them running to Walgreens together because they ran out of milk, or whatever the Hyborian Age equivalent of that would be. Writing comics for Marvel in the 70s, Roy Thomas and co. were using the L. Sprague de Camp timeline, which Roy agreed set Conan and Bêlit's time together aboard the Tigress at about three years, so Roy was gearing up for a serious saga, one that he called the "saga of Conan and Bêlit." The Conan the Barbarian title was more or less passing in real time, so Roy was planning a a corresponding three real years of stories with the the pirates together. His plan was to take that ripe time between Chapters I and II and to expand it into an epic that went from the coast to the jungles, and, eventually, to a throne. From issue #58 to issue #100, Roy Thomas's Conan and Bêlit saga would become one of the definitive peaks of Marvel's Conan the Barbarian.  As he did during his "War of the Tarim" saga, Roy soft-launched the era an issue ahead of time. It helped having "Queen of the Black Coast" to use as a basis for everything moving forward. In the issues prior to #58, Roy had Conan acquire the items he's wearing at the start of the Howard story- a red cloak, a horned helmet, a mail hauberk. There was ripe ground for connecting his comic narrative threads to REH's pirate story in two paragraphs at the beginning in which Conan relates to his captain, Tito, about getting into some legal trouble because of killing a guard over the "sweetheart of a young soldier," who Roy made into Yusef and Tara, two really likable characters that had been travelling with Conan in the comic book for a few issues. Issue #57 shows this incident that separates Conan from the young pair, as he cleaves a magistrate's skull in two with some not-very-Code-approved violence. This issue features a hella Gil Kane cover, but its sub-par pencils by Mike Ploog (what is with the way this dude draws faces?) make me really glad that John Buscema would be back the following issue.  Issue #58 begins on horseback as Conan careens toward the Argossean harbor. He leaps aboard a ship and demands that it take him away with it, officially beginning his adaptation of "Queen of the Black Coast" in the same place Howard did. Weirdly enough, two pages are eaten up by almost entirely recapping the previous issue's story as though Buscema was eager to put his stamp on the story. Conan sails south, past Shem, Stygia, and some classic sea sirens. You know what happens next as the Argus is boarded by Bêlit and her Black Corsairs, who are impressed by Conan's ability with a sword, causing him to be folded into the crew. Roy sparred a little with the Comics Code Authority administrators here as the subtext of the story gets a little steamy. In fact, while much of the dialogue remains in tact from the exact words Howard wrote, many of the changes are simply to appease the Comics Code. At one point, Bêlit's "supple thigh" brushes against Conan's sword (hubba hubba), which Roy didn't even bother including since he knew the Code would throw it out. Bêlit's "mating dance" was changed to her "love dance" at Code request and a panel of Conan and Bêlit kissing was re-drawn because Code administrator Len Darvin thought it looked too much like Bêlit was about to go down on the Cimmerian. The next two issues, #59 and #60, establish a backstory for Bêlit which was noticeably absent in the original story. Roy figured with three years of stories to tell ahead of him, and since the Marvel readership liked origins, he probably needed to provide one, though he thought it was intentional that Howard had never given her one. He decided to base it on a line from Howard in which she says, "Wolves of the blue sea, behold ye now the dance — the mating-dance of Bêlit, whose fathers were kings of Askalon!" As with all things REH, made-up proper nouns changed names every now and then (like Tamar and Tarantia), but "Askalon" is probably Asgalun, Shem. The Conan team titled their origin story "The Ballad of Bêlit" to mirror the earlier issue "The Song of Red Sonja." In Roy's continuity, Bêlit is the daughter of Shemite royalty who is forced to flee as a little girl when a Stygian plot to kill her dad is successful. Roy expands the role of the extremely minor Black Corsair N'Yaga (mentioned just twice in "Queen of the Black Coast") into a trusted advisor of her dad's, and a surrogate father figure for her once they'd been deposed. This also helps explain how she came to command her pirate crew, as N'Yaga spun a tale that she is the daughter of the death goddess Derketa. As such, the Black Corsairs all address her as "Goddess."  Writing in Bêlit's backstory as the wandering daughter of a deposed king ended up being essentially Roy's secret weapon. Whereas he would keep the fire and the bravado of Howard's original character, his Bêlit would have the additional righteous indignation of reclaiming her lost throne. It gives the saga a clear, ultimate end-point and ups the stakes considerably. The relationship between Conan and Bêlit helped the book find a new verve as well: Conan now had a much deeper personal buy-in to the stories. Adding Bêlit to the book feels like finally adding Robin to Batman in that there was now a relationship at the core of the book that could run much deeper than the team-ups Conan usually had. It is made all the sweeter that we knew that partnership has its days numbered. Roy had one other blank to fill in as well. While both "The Scarlet Citadel" and "The Hour of the Dragon" refer to Conan as "Amra" of the Black Corsairs, the name actually isn't used even once in his Black Coast adventure, which meant Roy was pretty free to give him the name however he wanted. He chose to have Conan earn it. Roy essentially turned "Amra" into a transferable title In issues #61-63, Conan goes up against the original Amra, lord of the lions, who is blatantly a Tarzan ripoff that Roy doesn't even deny. He had bad blood with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate from working with them on Tarzan comics, and took out his revenge in the pages of Conan the Barbarian. The original Amra is a red-haired, loincloth-wearing jungle man with a jet-black lion as his companion. While the first issue of the Amra storyline didn't grab me, its ending more than makes up for it. Issue #63 has a few pages showing off what Roy Thomas and John Buscema do best: Roy narrating an intense fight with Buscema's pencils showing the action. It's an incredible close-quarters knife fight that uses perspective tricks to create a cinematic, breathtaking comic book experience.   Issue #64 reprints the Savage Sword story "The Secret of the Skull River." Boo. Roy tells a bizarre story about this one: inker Steve Gan "fell in love" so hard with the Buscema pencils he was sent to ink that he refused to return them. Apparently they didn't get the pages back from the Phillipines in time and just had to reprint an old story. The next set of issues pitted the crew of the Tigress against a slew of fantastic Bronze-Age baddies Ahmaan the Merciless (#65), Dagon the Death God (#66), and an enchanted man-tiger (#67). This type of comic book storytelling doesn't really exist anymore: classic one-and-dones that feature a complete story are all the more charming for it. That last story has the best villain with its anthropomorphic cat villain, but also brings Tara, Yusef, and even Red Sonja back after a 30-issue absence and we get to see Bêlit betray some jealousy for the first time. It's endearing to see the brutal Queen of the Black Coast get cautious about the She-Devil with a Sword, especially since longtime readers know that Sonja isn't about to give it up for Conan. But Bêlit doesn't know that, so it's actually kind of cute.  Sonja sticks around for a few issues and we get an adventure with Kull, Gonar the Pict, and Brule the Spear-Slayer through issue #68, "Of Once and Future Kings!" After nonstop seafaring adventure for ten issues aboard the pirate ship, it was time for a break. Issue #69 adapts the Robert E. Howard story "Out of the Deep" which makes for one of Roy's best issues ever. Roy says in his Barbarian Life book that this kind of story would usually be saved for Savage Sword, but it was likely used here for scheduling reasons. Though it's unclear why Buscema was unable to pencil the story, it became one of Val Mayerik's first Conan credits. The beauty of Mayerik's art, which is like a halfway point between Windsor-Smith and Buscema, is perfect for the issue. Sending us back in time to an episode taking place before Conan #2, the Cimmerian is captured and taken to a seaside village where fuckery is afoot. There appears to be an entity from the ocean that has taken members of the village and either created copies of their bodies or sucked their souls right out. The village isn't sure who to trust, but Conan's natural distrust for magic puts him on edge enough to not rule out sorcery. As he helps defend the village, he demonstrates some of the decency that makes him such a likable character. After this interlude, it was back to the Black Coast and particularly to Stygia, where we would spend a handful of fantastic issues. Perhaps Roy's greatest skill in comics was to adapt, embellish, and flesh out. His "Queen of the Black Coast" saga is my vote for the best example of that. The last time I covered a saga like this, it was a mere seven issues before it was all wrapped up, and even then it felt like an incredible epic. At the end of the first year of the "Queen of the Black Coast" saga, a dozen issues in, Conan's time with Bêlit was just beginning. Read Part Two of this series here!
With The Unsung Sword of Conan, I'm trying to highlight under-appreciated works in the Conan canon.  Los Angeles, California. Circa 1977. Christy Marx is in her mid-20s. She's in L.A. trying to make it in comics. Originally thinking she'd have to draw comics to be a success, she's finally settled on the idea that she can just write, which is where her passion lies anyway. At a fan meetup, she attends a panel with Roy Thomas, who is the current writer of Marvel's Conan the Barbarian and The Savage Sword of Conan. Christy's an avid fantasy fan herself. As the questions are lobbed at Roy one by one, Christy gets the sense that Roy's a little bit bored with this interaction. "Typical fan questions" is how she describes it. As the last question of the panel, she asks him what his future goals and plans are with his comics. He's delighted to be asked something out of the ordinary. A bit later, Christy gets a chance to talk to Roy and he says that it would be interesting to get a Conan story told from the point of view of one of the women that encounters Conan; there are, after all, many such characters to come across him for a short time and maybe even have a whirlwind fling.  Christy goes home and, in a flurry of inspiration, types out a Conan story called "Child of Sorcery." She writes it in prose as a short story rather than a comic script, and submits it to Roy. He buys it. "Child of Sorcery" becomes the lead story in Savage Sword #29, adapted into comic form by Roy with art by Ernie Chan. If I'm not mistaken, it's the very first non-REH or non-Roy Thomas original in the entire title. But that story isn't what this is about. Fast-forward four years. Christy's focus has changed from comic books to animation. She hasn't left the comic game entirely, but she's had quite a bit of success writing scripts for the TV shows Spider-Man and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. She'll very soon write some Red Sonja stories and her own series called Sisterhood of Steel. She will ultimately become a core architect of my childhood media consumption, writing for X-Men: Evolution, ReBoot, Beast Wars, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In early 1981, Roy buys another story from her, this time called "Eye of the Sorcerer." Funnily enough, Christy doesn't remember a single thing about it. She knows in 2026 that she has the issue somewhere, but it's buried in a closet or storage room or something. It ends up being an incredible send-off for Roy.  Christy Marx SSOC #69 hit the newsrack in October of 1981, which means that Roy had fully quit Marvel at least eleven months prior. It's kind of strange to see the little signs that the book was cobbled together with the ghost of Roy Thomas at the center of it. The letters in the "Swords & Scrolls" page were being answered by editor Louise "Weezie" Simonson rather than Roy. The book had introduced Michael Fleisher as the new writer for issues #61-63, but then published four of Roy's remaining stories while Bruce Jones and Fleisher kind of flip-flopped writing for about five issues. The title was clearly in flux, and honestly, I love it. Issue #69 was at the center of all this change, and it's a damn good issue. I noticed a while back that Roy's last several issues on Savage Sword were not entirely original compositions. Issue #67 was based on a Fred Blosser plot. Issue #68 came from an Andrew J. Offutt story. And then #69 is Christy's "Eye of the Sorcerer." I conducted a brief interview with Christy Marx over email while writing this retrospective. I got the sense the Roy knew his time was up and was buying plots from people to make his job a little easier- he seemed to kind of have one foot out the door. When I asked if Christy got the same sense about Roy, while she didn't say she agreed with me, she said she felt it was a reasonable assumption.  Since Christy says she doesn't really recall the issue, I'll have to help us all remember. The full-page opening pits Conan in an arm-wrestling match in a tavern called the Inn of the Black Dragon. Down at the bottom of the page, it credits Ernie Chan and Alfredo Alcala for the "Art" (I'm assuming that means that Ernie penciled and Alcala inked, but I'm not sure. And weirdly enough, it just says "Story: ROY THOMAS;" no mention of Christy anywhere. It wouldn't be until issue #74 when the "Swords and Scrolls" letters page would open with a bold-faced apology reading: "DEPARTMENT OF RED-FACED HYBORIAN APOLOGIES: Well, we goofed again! Remember SSOC #69's titanic tale, "Eye of the Sorcerer?" Well, it was plotted by Christy Marx, whose credit was inadvertently left off both the story and the lettercol on the story. So, herewith, our apologies to Ms. Marx, and a promise never to do it again." Late is better than never, but seeing your name in the back pages of a comic book you didn't write is much less cool than seeing it in the credits on the first page of one you did. The book immediately sets up an adversarial relationship between Conan and an older man named Udelas. Competing for who will captain a traveling caravan's guard, Udelas is chosen as the leader in a way that makes Conan chafe. They're not outright enemies, but it's clear the two don't like one another very much. Much to Udelas's chagrin, his son takes to Conan and we get a little easter egg around a campfire as Conan seems to be finishing telling Udelas's son Dern the story of "The Tower of the Elephant."  In the first of three big setpieces in this story, Conan and Udelas rescue Dern from an underground city populated by bat-winged cave-dwellers. The boy apparently wandered through a portal in a cave while the caravan was stopped and our heroes are temporarily enslaved before escaping. If it sounds like I'm glossing over a lot here, I promise it's not my fault: my only complaint about this story is that it would've been a badass three-parter since it shoves so much into a single issue. In one of the quieter moments that follows their subterranean escape, Conan shares some time with his employer, the beautiful Valiana, in one of the most beautiful full-page illustrations I've seen in Savage Sword. I don't know why this issue is inked so differently than others, but Alcala's shading renders a gorgeous page.  Our second big story beat sends the caravan passing through a wood occupied by a bear god. When Conan attempts to make a small sacrifice to allow safe passage, he buts heads with Udelas again when the old man forbids such heathenistic acts. And wouldn't you know it, a single page later and we get beset by a bear that's apparently sponsored by Target. Though Udelas had initially spurned Conan at the entrance to the wood, he saves him from the bear. Seeing as Conan helped save Dern from the bat-people, the two men are now even, and coming to a bit more of an understanding. In the final stretch of the issue, the caravan passes by the same mountain continually and the peak seems to move by itself each day. Eventually, they arrive. The creative team really ratchet up the sword and sorcery vibes here as the mystery and magic get more and more off-putting by the panel. I don't want to spoil anything for you since I'd love for you to check out the issue for yourself, but it gets weird (complimentary).  Christy Marx today The whole thing sticks the landing well. This imaginative adventure makes for a really fun read. Unfortunately, Christy didn't contribute any more stories to Savage Sword after issue #69, but she did continue to add to the mythos. She worked with Roy Thomas again in the pages of Red Sonja, scripted a later issue of Conan the Barbarian, and ultimately was the head writer on the Conan the Adventurer cartoon in the 90s.
The term "strong female character" comes up a lot when people talk about Christy's work, and I asked her if that was intentional. She told me "Hell yeah." Christy's had a long and very successful career in comics, sword and sorcery media, and Conan specifically. She deserves her place in Conan history! 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.  "A Witch Shall Be Born" is the twelfth Conan story published in Weird Tales, making the page in the December 1934 issue. Release only one month after the conclusion of "The People of the Black Circle," this story is rather unique in REH's canon. Narratively, it has one of the most unique structures, being interrupted by an epistle from a Nemedian scholar about halfway through. This fills in some of the story from a 30,000-foot view and, in my opinion, annihilates the pacing. Additionally, it's one of the stories in which Conan is mostly a secondary character. "Witch" is instead the story of Taramis and Salome: identical twin sisters. It also features one of the most depicted Conan scenes of all time- his crucifixion- that even made it into the 1982 movie. This story is a bit of a disappointment to read after the soaring highs of "People of the Black Circle," but, as I've found often writing this column, doesn't mean that it's any less interesting to mine it for chronological markers. 
I recognize that this is much, much later than some of the other popular chronologies, especially the Miller / Clark one. This leaves our updated chronology here:
 Two of my 7th grade English students reading their short story together. We've now had two days of lessons in which students are reading their choice short story for literature circles, in which a couple of kids are reading "The Tower of the Elephant." I don't have a ton to report, unfortunately, since a lot of our day was eaten up by a district-mandated progress-monitoring exam that used about half of our class. Students were able to get pretty deep into the story (most groups are at least to Conan fighting the giant spider), but they have a little bit of homework since they need to be done with the narrative by the time they see me next. I cannot tell you how awesome audiobooks have been for these students. There are a great many REH audiobooks available for free on YouTube for most Conan stories, and there's probably more for this one than any other. It's helped students approach the vocabulary more easily since they're getting words pronounced for them (usually they'd get that from me if I'm reading aloud).  One students- we'll call him Peter- has had a really tough year. He wants nothing to do with school, he despises most of his teachers, and he tells others that he likes me even though he has a pretty funny way of showing it! He was gone the day we started this unit, so I asked him if he wanted to read a story in which there are fights in a bar, with a lion, with a giant spider, and then against a wizard. He was pretty stoked! Thanks, Bob Howard! I've had some good conversations with students about the conflicts in the story. Many of them laughed or were confused when Conan sheds his tunic after the tavern: "[Conan] had discarded his torn tunic, and walked through the night naked except for a loin-cloth and his high- strapped sandals. He moved with the supple ease of a great tiger, his steely muscles rippling under his brown skin." They were like, "Uhhhhh, he's naked?" Seventh graders find everything not immediately familiar to them to be horrifying or hilarious. But this led us to good conversations! After some leading questions about if they noticed anything different about Conan compared to the other tavern patrons, they were able to notice that he's different, an outlander, a barbarian. We made note of how he doesn't seem to understand what's happening in the tavern, and when he sheds his tunic, he is shedding the trappings of civilization. He's a piece of nature, elemental.
A lot of students got tuned into the class Howard civilization vs. barbarism (or for our terms in this unit, character vs. society!) conflicts. I have a few kids in each class who have already started their body biography projects, but I don't think it's any of my "Tower of the Elephant" students. I can't wait to see what sorts of body biographies they put together!  Why did they have Joe Jusko do the cover for this book? Why not Buscema? Sometimes when I cover comics on here, I get a negative comment that I pretty much agree with. It's that I usually focus a little bit too much on authors: Roy Thomas, Michael Fleisher, Chuck Dixon, Christopher Priest, Jim Zub... and too little on the great illustrators of those comics. I'll try to take a step in the right direction with that here today, because the Marvel Graphic Novel Conan the Rogue is The John Buscema Show. Buscema is an interesting character in the Marvel chapter of Conan the Barbarian. To hear him tell it, he doesn't even really like comics very much, especially not superhero comics. I watched an interview where he said he was assigned to draw Amazing Spider-Man for seven issues and despised it. Hated Spider-Man, hated all the supporting characters. Who doesn't like Spider-Man? Big John B, I guess. The one thing that John liked to draw at Marvel was Conan, and it shows in his body of work. He drew nearly 150 issues of Conan the Barbarian. He drew dozens upon dozens of issues of Savage Sword of Conan, King Conan, and did the daily strip for a while. He preferred the more naturalistic style of the Hyborian Age than drawing rocket ships.  Even when Buscema was doing Conan, he wasn't always satisfied with the results. He was picky about who inked his work and the resulting pages. "I remember the first time [Alfredo] Alcala inked my Conan. I went up to Marvel and ran into one of the editors- Len Wein, or... who's the other guy? Marv Wolfman- in the hallway, and he said, 'Oh, you've got to see it, John. It's beautiful.' Alcala was a good artist, but he destroyed my drawing." Within the comic book creation process, Buscema would sometimes do pencils, which in comic terms meant producing fully-completed pencil sketches with line work and shadows, and could do about three or three and a half pages a day. Other times, he would do just the layouts or "breakdowns," which were only incomplete pencil sketches without blacks or shadows, leaving the rest to his inker. Buscema was adamant that he really only did this out of necessity to keep up with the pace that the books came out. He would've liked to ink his own drawings. Whoever was inking his work- for good or ill- always left their own mark on the image, and I'm sure you can see why John wasn't always a fan. I'm completely ripping this comparison idea off from the book Big John Buscema: Comics & Drawings, where they zeroed-in on several different inks over specifically Conan's eyes. All of the following are penciled by John Buscema.    Buscema's Conan is strong, balanced, and muscular. He draws him with more dynamism than Gil Kane did, though they both draw Conan more like an action figure than the pantherish youth that Barry Windsor-Smith drew. He doesn't really go in for the "square-cut" black mane. While I know it's not the most faithful representation of Howard's Conan, he's kind of become the platonic ideal for the modern Cimmerian. During Roy Thomas's second run on Savage Sword, he crafted, from what I can tell, is the only story credit he ever got on a Conan book. Seeing Buscema's name listed before Roy's feels a little bit like reading "Garfunkel & Simon," "Tails & Sonic," or "Jelly & Peanut Butter." Unfortunately, Marvel didn't seem inclined to push the book. It had a small print run, low sales, and is pretty hard to come by today. I had to buy mine for $115, and even then it's in pretty rough shape. But it was worth it! Conan the Rogue may be Buscema's very best work on the character he's most associated with!  Look at these bad guys! You know exactly what they're all about from the second you lay eyes on them. Classic! Conan the Rogue, which is plotted, drawn, colored, and inked by John Buscema (it's very rare you see the artist credited for "Art & Color by..." in a comic) and then scripted by his longtime collaborator Roy Thomas, is set almost entirely at Fort Ghori south of the Vilayet Sea. Conan gets thrown out of a tavern and somewhat accidentally ends up in the employ of a local governor named Tarsu Khan. Khan's life has been threatened by his brother and a scheming vizier hoping to foment a war between city-states that will ultimately allow them both to move up the chain of command. Too bad the big guy gets in the way. Unlike a lot of political intrigue in comics where you see the twists coming from a mile off, it's densely-plotted and well-scripted enough to obfuscate exactly whose plans will come to fruition while Conan's around. The politicking doesn't become the main focus of the book though, and the ending shifts drastically toward a more traditional Conan adventure.  Take a look at the page below. I think the worst thing you could say about Buscema's art- usually- is that his panel layouts are a little less than elegantly-thought-out and he compensates by adding arrows to let you know which panel should come next. That happens pretty frequently in Conan the Barbarian and it always seems like a cop-out to me, poor panel design if we're being honest, but here, he's doing the same thing, this time to his advantage. Our suspense is held as the door slowly opens to reveal the giant Romm, who we see essentially from his victim's perspective as he ducks his head to slink into the coliseum. Our flow then snakes left on the page to his defiant last words and the reader's eye ends on Romm, towering over him. The long shot from a side perspective makes the size comparison easy. The next thing we get is the weapon snapping our eye back to the right as he cleaves the skull in half, and we get to see all the carnage of it. It's like your eye floats back and forth down the page, like a swinging mace.  In fact, most of Big John's work here is no-holds-barred. Even Savage Sword, despite its freedom from the Comics Code, didn't usually delight in gore and bloodshed. However, check out Lord Nassidren's head here, impaled and caved-in.  Buscema considered Conan the Rogue to be some of his best work, if not the best of his career, and I'm inclined to agree. His poses are perfect and his character designs are immediately striking. As the book moves out of the Fort Ghori outpost's relatively civilized setting into the "Nightmare Swamp" (fuck yeah), we get some disgusting moss zombie creatures and the book finishes really strong. Throughout the title, his line work is rough in a way that makes the book feel ragged at the edges and lived-in, while his colors (watercolors? I'm not exactly an art expert) look much better than the traditionally-colored Conan the Barbarian title. They're more natural and muted than the gaudy pinks and yellows of the monthly book.  I think my favorite panel is Conan diving across a parade, pulling Tarsu Khan out of the way of oncoming arrows. The motion feels so fluid that it momentarily feels like it transcends static images. I could stare at the muted teals, browns, and tans all day.
If you approach Conan the Rogue wanting the best, most unique plot of all Conan stories, I don't think you'll find it here. But if you approach the graphic novel with an appreciation for John Buscema and you want to see what he can do outside of the confines of the usual system, this is a book you need to read. He had a few issues of Savage Sword left to do, but I'd say it's fair to consider the Rogue John's Conan swan song. An aging master who hasn't lost a step, finally being given a chance to really throw his weight around? This is a wonderful example of what comic art can be. I've been an English teacher for more than 12 years. Taught everything from sixth grade to seniors in high school. It's always a nice bonus when you get to teach something that you're personally passionate about, so I'm pretty excited about right now. I have about two weeks that I can play with in my 7th grade classrooms (if you're out of the US, these kids are between 12 and 13 years old) before the end of my quarter, so based on student needs, I decided to try to reinforce some of our literature standards from earlier in the year. They read The Outsiders back in September, but we haven't gotten to read any literature since. And because many middle schoolers in America never want to move past reading Dogman or Captain Underpants or Diary of a Wimpy Kid (or worse, never read anything at all), I want to use this opportunity to introduce them to some great literature, including a Robert E. Howard story. My students are therefore starting literature circles where they pick the short story they'll get to read. I've given them the options of:
 I teach at a PBL (Project-Based Learning) school, so most units are based around a "driving question" that the kids answer over the course of the unit. I'm calling this one "Conflicted" and our DQ is: "Is conflict more likely to make our lives better or worse?" I think "Tower of the Elephant" is fun for this because the conflict in the narrative has almost no effect on Conan at all- he doesn't get what he wants, but he's also not drastically changed by the events. Unlike many of the other stories where the protagonist has a large personal change, it's a little unique. "Tower of the Elephant" is pretty layered in terms of conflict. It's got the character vs. character conflicts (Conan's confrontation with the tavern keeper, the spider, Yara), character vs. society (Conan's outlander nature that keeps him from understanding certain social intricacies, and him against the corrupt city of Zamora, with Yara as its representative), and character vs. environment (the lions, the spider's lair). "Tower" is also a pretty good choice from the Conan canon because it's not as bloody as others. It's a raucous adventure story, but Conan's first kill is just implied, then he fights lions, a spider, Yara, but his final confrontation is entirely bloodless. I'd get complaints from parents if he was hacking and slashing like he is sometimes. Also, I cut just a few lines about drunkenness from the descriptions of The Maul. They wouldn't be worth the parent emails. The project students will create here is a "Body Biography," which is a graphically-represented way to engage with character and conflict. I'm hoping to post some student examples when they're done! They'll ideally be putting Conan in the center, with several narrative aspects around him (which will correspond with body parts) answering the driving question, examining the conflict, and more.  "The Shapes of Stories," based on Kurt Vonnegut's famous lecture We started our unit on Tuesday by discussing story structure, conflict types (character vs. character, vs. self, vs. environment [nature], vs. society, and vs. technology), internal vs. external conflict, and we practiced looking for these in Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day." The kids did great! Today, Thursday (I see 7th graders two days a week and teach 8th grader the other two days a week), the kids chose their stories, got into their literature circle groups, and started reading. I'm pretty happy that I have at least one small group in each class reading "Tower of the Elephant!" Some of them were very intrigued by the little premise or teaser that I wrote for each one, some liked the picture I included. Giving choice and using high-interest texts like the ones I've selected are always pretty good ideas, and students are very engaged right now. Thus far, our biggest hurdle is that students have struggled with some of the vocabulary. Regardless of if you want to derisively call it purple prose, REH's writing style is in sharp contrast to Flannery O'Connor's folksiness or "Flowers for Algernon's" purposefully-misspelled epistles or or Poe's unreliable narrators. My current balancing act is trying to get the kids to not stress too much about the surrounding world (it doesn't matter if you really know what a Brythunian is, kids!) while also not dissuading them from hopefully recognizing Conan as an outsider who's different from the "civilized" people in the city of Zamora.  We have longer class periods, so students got about halfway through their narratives today. I plan on updating you as the unit goes on! If there are any other teachers reading this, here are some of the standards we're covering in this unit:
  I like Roy Thomas and his Conan work. I would bet that you like Roy Thomas and his Conan work. But you know who really likes Roy Thomas's Conan work? Roy Thomas. Actually, that sounds mean. Let me rephrase it. There is a Roy Thomas version of the life of Conan of Cimmeria built through issues of Conan the Barbarian, Savage Sword, and King Conan. As far as I can tell, this timeline consists of the original Robert E. Howard stories, the L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter pastiches (he adapted most of the REH and de Camp stories anyway), as well as the original issues that Roy wrote throughout the 70s. And this timeline is the only one Roy uses. Not only that, but he usually goes out of his way to signal to you that a story is set in the Roy Thomas / Marvel Comics / whatever you want to call it timeline. This timeline largely follows the one de Camp laid out with the Lancer and Ace novels, but features some notable additions that Roy usually mentions. His version frequently makes use of the original characters Red Sonja, Zula, Turgohl, and Fafnir. It expands the role of Juma and Gonar from other stories. He always makes note of his War of the Tarim era and he expanded the "Queen of the Black Coast" era to a years-old epic that included Bêlit regaining the throne of Asgalun. He'll signal that he's using this timeline in a few ways. When he returned to Savage Sword of Conan after ten years away, his whole first issue is essentially a recap of the Roy Thomas version of Conan's life up to that point. It leaves out anything not covered in his original tenure, and Roy claims a profound disinterest in other peoples' versions of Conan, meaning he claims to have never read the other stuff anyway. Check out the panel below that artist John Buscema drew from Savage Sword #190 as a nod to Conan #93.  In that same issue, there's a bit of continuity between when he left the book and when he returned. The last adaptation of a de Camp story he did (in issue #60) was "The Ivory Goddess," and SSOC picks up at #190 soon after, with the Barachan pirate era. Roy did the same thing other times when he returned to the title, like when he wrote a prequel to Conan the Barbarian #1 in King Size Conan #1, fifty years after the original. In 2024, for Titan's Savage Sword #7 (it's not even a Marvel book anymore and he's still referencing his own Marvel timeline) the opening line of his issue lets you know that it takes place shortly after Conan #28, featuring Helgi and the War of the Tarim. I could go on and on.  I tell you all this to set up Roy's Marvel Graphic Novel output from 1992: The Ravagers Out of Time. The final Marvel Graphic Novel that Roy collaborated on, and actually the final MGN featuring Conan, Roy lets you know pretty quickly that we're playing in his sandbox here. Most of the MGN Conan stories aren't tied too directly to any existing Cimmerian stuff. You can assume they take place in the same universe as all the other late-20th-century Marvel comics, but they're largely their own stories. Not The Ravagers Out of Time. Ravagers is a sequel to Conan the Barbarian #37, drawn by Neal Adams for an April 1974 release. In the issue, Conan and Juma are captured by Rotath of Lemuria, a King Kull villain revived in the Hyborian Age. Enslaved, the two heroes are put to work in a mine. This is the reason why the issue is notable: Neal Adams drew a giant, man-eating slug that looked like a vulva (many people say on purpose) and Roy was seriously apprehensive that it would get censored by the Comics Code Authority. It didn't, apparently. Evil Rotath gets absorbed by the slug. This is where Ravagers Out of Time picks up. Chronolgically speaking, this comic takes place during Conan's kozak / Free Companion days some time around "The Devil in Iron" or "Iron Shadows in the Moon." He's clearly pretty eastward, harrying the outskirts of the empire of Turan. Looking for treasure, Conan and co. come across that giant slug again, but it's evident that Rotath's mind has taken over the giant slug. Oh yeah, and it's gold now because of Rotath's golden bones. It flings them back into the Thurian Age to attack King Kull so that Rotath can take Kull's body as his own instead of being stuck in the slug.  It's a real Roy Thomas Special! It's got Red Sonja! It's got Gonar! It adapts a Kull story into a Conan story! It's explicitly tied to an original Conan the Barbarian issue! The only way it could get any more Roy'd-up (Roy'ded? I feel like there's a good pun in there somewhere) is if it used the word "selfsame." Look, I'm afraid I'm being too mean again. The Ravagers Out of Time is good! And it's certainly much better than some of the other Marvel Graphic Novels. Mike Docherty's art never had a chance against the great Neal Adams, but the art in this book is also noticeably better than some of its peers.  In a sense, while this story is as Roy Thomas as they come, it also feels a bit like it's doing the same thing that Jim Zub does from time to time on Conan today. It weaves together Howard characters from both Conan's epoch and Kull's, and it gives each of them a Gonar the Pict who act as mysterious forces uniting different periods in time. Truth be told, it's a pretty similar idea to what Jim is doing with the Scourge of the Serpent mini-series right now (which will release its final issue literally today, 7 January 2026). Do you like Jim Zub's Conan work? Do you like Roy Thomas's Conan work? Then you'll probably like The Ravagers Out of Time. Certainly not a showstopper, but a fun adventure that deepens a little bit when you try to trace all of its roots. It's become almost a running joke when I talk about the MGNs for me to complain that I didn't get my money's worth. Well, of course it happens that one of the good ones was one I didn't buy for myself, but my wife got it for me for Christmas. Gonar the Pict knows how cruel the fates can be. ★★★☆☆  Rotath looks kind of adorable here, don't you think? Last year, I published a piece called "The Fall and Rise (and Fall and Rise) of The Savage Sword of Conan." I was pretty happy with the results and got quite a few comments on it, which I don't get very often, so that was cool.
If you're not already aware, I have a YouTube channel now that I keep as a bit of an offshoot of this blog. Most of the stuff I upload are companion pieces to things written here, but this is a full video adaptation of that aforementioned Savage Sword retrospective. I started this in early November and spent about an hour or two a day on it (not including any of the writing, which had already been done for about a year), so I probably spent between 75 and 100 hours editing here. It takes a lot longer when you don't have a talking head video and you have to have something on the screen at pretty much all times. You have no idea how many SSOC covers I have saved as PNGs on my computer right now. I hope you enjoy it! |
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. 
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