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: 

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!

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!

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.

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.

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).

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!

"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.

• The story takes place over the course of about seven months: "Seven months have passed since then, during which time it seems as though the devil himself had been loosed in this unfortunate realm. Taramis seems to have gone quite mad."
• Conan has evidently become captain of the guard in Khauran: "But when the palace guard was ordered to disarm likewise and disband, the captain of the guard, Conan, interrupted." 
  • This hints at a slightly later placement in the timeline. Conan does command various military and paramilitary units over the course of his life, but many of them appear in the second half of his life.
• Conan recognizes Olgerd Vladislav as a hetman of the kozaki along the Zaporoskan River, which is east of Khauran and south of the Vilayet Sea, near where Conan spent time in "The Devil in Iron" and "Iron Shadows in the Moon." This implies that "A Witch Shall Be Born" takes place after those eastern-set stories: "'If I could come down from this beam I'd make a dying dog out of you, you Zaporoskan thief!' he rasped through blackened lips. 'Mitra, the knave knows me!' exclaimed the other. 'How, knave, do you know me?' 'There's only one of your breed in these parts,' muttered Conan. 'You are Olgerd Vladislav, the outlaw chief.' 'Aye! and once a hetman of the kozaki of the Zaporoskan River, as you have guessed.'"
• This is the story that introduces us to the Zuagir raiders: "The mercenaries of Constantius are men from the Shemitish cities of the west, Pelishtim, Anakim, Akkharim, and are ardently hated by the Zuagirs and other wandering tribes."
  • On a side note, how do you pronounce the word "Zuagir?" I've kind of settled on "zwah-GEAR," but I'm never quite sure.
• Like several other stories, Conan is wearing a broad gold belt buckle: "He was clad in black mesh-mail, and the only glitter about him was the broad gold buckle of the belt which supported his sword in its worn leather scabbard." He also wears lots of black in this story.
• Conan displays some of the tactician mindset that we see in later stories, further pushing this story later in his life. The Conan of "A Witch Shall Be Born" is more similar to the Conan of "Black Colossus" or "The Phoenix on the Sword" than that of "Queen of the Black Coast" or "Rogues in the House." Notably, he has more control over his men than he did in "The People of the Black Circle." They even follow Conan when he deposes Vladislav.
• Conan ends the story as chief of the Zuagirs and decides to stay with them to harry the Turanian borders: "No, lass, that's over with. I'm chief of the Zuagirs now, and must lead them to plunder the Turanians, as I promised. This lad, Valerius, will make you a better captain than I. I wasn't made to dwell among marble walls, anyway."

Because of everything listed above, I'm inclined to believe that this story takes place in the second half of Conan's life, after his other eastern adventures in "Iron Shadows in the Moon," "The Devil in Iron," and "The People of the Black Circle." He's worked his way a little bit back westward by the end of this one.

I recognize that this is much, much later than some of the other popular chronologies, especially the Miller / Clark one. 

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:

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!

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. 

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!

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:

• "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket" by Jack Finney
• "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
• "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor
• "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe
• "Weight" by Dhonielle Clayton
• and the reason why I'm blogging about this, "The Tower of the Elephant" by Robert E. Howard.

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.

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:

• Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text
• Determine a theme or central idea of the text and how it is convened through particular details
• Describe how a particular story's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution
• Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text including figurative and connotative meanings
• Analyze how a particular sentence, chapter, or scene fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of theme, setting, or plot

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.
​
★★★☆☆

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!

The table was probably set by Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" comics in 1971. The New Gods, Mister Miracle, and The Forever People established that DC was ready to do comics outside of the superhero genre. Marvel had recently had success with Conan the Barbarian, The Savage Sword of Conan, and the other characters in Savage Tales like Man-Thing and Ka-Zar the Savage through a loosening of the Comics Code Authority. DC was about to play catch-up.

The 1970s, making up the first two-thirds of the Bronze Age of Comics, was a time of great change for the entire comic book industry, but in retrospect, Marvel Comics certainly was weathering those changes better than DC. In fact, Marvel was surging while DC laggged.

Key talent moved between companies in unexpected ways like Kirby jumping ship from Marvel to DC. Marvel's higher page rates were enticing writers and artists to try their hand there even with Jim Shooter's management style that some staffers considered suffocating.

Royalties agreements and labor disputes changed the entirety of how the backstage world of comic creation worked.

The "DC Explosion" was the name given to the publishing initiative that arrived in the mid-1970s (some people say it really began as early as 1975, but the more agreed-upon date is in 1978). DC began publishing way, way more comics. Between '75 and '78, a whopping thirty new titles would hit shelves, many of which would be published after just a handful of issues, some of which would be cancelled after just a single issue, and even more would be cancelled before they ever even went to print. Many of those were printed in DC's two-issue ashcan book, Cancelled Comic Cavalcade, to maintain the rights. Quickly, as most titles were cancelled (even fucking Detective Comics of all books was on the chopping block), DC laid off almost half of its staff. It went down in history as the "DC Implosion." They kind of walked into that one.

And out of this time, we got a couple of pretty-good sword & sorcery comics that always seemed to be a step or five behind Marvel's.

One of DC's first attempts at an answer to Conan was a series entitled Sword of Sorcery, adapting Fritz Leiber heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It had an absolute murderer's row of talent behind it: Denny O'Neil, Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, and Jim Starlin, but only lasted for five issues before it was canned. Around that time, editor Carmine Infantino demanded, "I need two more sword & sorcery books. One's coming out in Jauary, you're two months late on it and one's out in February. You're only one month late on it." Paul Levitz and Spidey co-creator Steve Ditko ended up with the assignment, turning it into Stalker, a Michael Moorcock pastiche which lasted only four issues.

DC's first moderate success came in 1973 when Mike Grell marched into DC's office with the plan to pitch a sword & sorcery adventure strip called Savage Empire. He'd been working on it for years, and he envisioned it as his answer to Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. DC editorial told him he was about 15 years too late, but had him pitch it to Carmine Infantino anyway. As he was about to open his mouth to make his presentation, he couldn't help but think that DC would own every aspect of Savage Empire if they decided to buy it, so he pivoted.

He, on the spot, completely made up a new series. It had echoes of Savage Empire in it, along with Burroughs's Pellucidar series and even M*A*S*H, and importantly, wasn't signing his long-gestating Savage Empire away. He called it The Warlord.

In The Warlord, Air Force pilot Travis Morgan accidentally discovers the Hollow Earth when returning home from a spying mission, dropping him in Skartaris: the land of eternal sunlight. It distinguishes itself from other sword & sorcery by making heavy use of science fiction themes as wells as S&S; there are ancient Atlantean computers and Morgan wields not only a sword but a pistol usually as well. The Warlord is pretty fucking awesome, and does quite a bit to make sure that it's not mistaken for a Conan clone. DC could now directly compete with Marvel's fantasy books.

Two issues in, Warlord was cancelled and Mike Grell was pissed. "[Infantino] can't do that!" he protested, "He promised me a one-year run!" But shortly thereafter, Jenette Kahn took the role of publisher and asked where Warlord was, for it was one of the books she had liked. When she was told Infantino had cancelled it, she said, "Well, Carmine's not here anymore. Put it back," and The Warlord returned to publication with an eight-month gap between issues #2 and #3. Warlord is mostly fantastic, and it's unique in the world of American comics as being largely a product of just one author and artist, more along the lines of how mangaka draw in Japan.

As an insert in Warlord #48, DC tried their hand at another new sword & sorcery character, this time using Mr. Conan the Barbarian himself, Roy Thomas. Roy had left Marvel in 1980 and now in 1981 was working for DC, so they set him to work trying to recreate some of the magic he made for the competition. The creation was Arak, Son of Thunder, featuring a Native American hero who ends up discovering Europe before European colonists arrive in the Americas.

Arak starts out as painfully similar to Conan, but distinguished himself over time. Roy Thomas claims today that it was hard not to base the adventures in the framework created by Robert E. Howard since he was the godfather of the genre. But ultimately Arak started to sport a mohawk rather than long hair and became less of a rip. It's fun to see Arak meet historical figures like Charlemagne, and people often bring up that he was noticeably well-depicted, at least in comparison to other Native American heroes of his day. His self-titled book ran for fifty issues before getting the axe.

In the same Warlord issue insert that spawned Arak, DC tried their hand at another sword & sorcery hero, this time in a self-titled book called Claw the Unconquered. Claw can be fun, but was certainly less successful than Arak.

Created by eventual Marvel great David Michelinie (have you read his whole Amazing Spider-Man run, not just the Venom stuff? It's fantastic!) and frequent Conan artist/inker Ernie Chan, Claw is almost indistinguishable from the Cimmerian. Yes, he has a demon hand ("The Hand of Nergal," anyone?) that's covered up by a metal gauntlet, but that's about it. Clad in a white loincloth instead of a brown one, Claw spends a few issues wondering about his true origins while having some barbarian adventures in a land nearly identical to the Hyborian Age. Had someone recolored his loincloth and changed a few proper nouns, you wouldn't realize you weren't reading a Marvel book. That's not to say it's a terrible time, on the contrary, it's halfway-decent, but it does almost nothing to allow Claw to make a distinct impression.

At least he doesn't overstay his welcome; DC axed Claw the Unconquered after issue #12.

DC had a few other S&S randos over the years: Starfire (no, not that Starfire) spun off of Claw for eight issues. The adapted the English myth Beowulf for six issues.

Some of these characters have popped up here and there in other versions over the years, but most of them have remained as forgotten as they were short. DC ended up weathering the bronze age and then ushering in the Copper Age of Comics in 1986 where they dominated. Their fantasy characters today don't really have any sword & sorcery traces in them, but they're no longer trying to compete with Conan.

Robert E. Howard had his eyes set on the novel form when he published "The People of the Black Circle." Around the time he began working on an attempt at Almuric and The Hour of the Dragon, he wrote what would become the longest Conan story to date, at about 31,000 words which earned him $250 (about six grand in today's dollars). "The People of the Black Circle" was written in January and February 1934 and since Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright liked it so much, it was published quickly, appearing in the serial in the September, October, and November '34 issues of WT.

"Black Circle" is one of Howard's absolute best, and is rather unique in how it places itself in chronology. There are few references to other stories outside of when Conan literally tells other characters about his life.

Toward the end of the story, the real chronological markers begin to show up as Conan begins mentioning previous life periods.

• "Black Circle" must come after his days with the Free Companions shown or referenced in "Iron Shadows in the Moon" and "The Devil in Iron:" "There is a chief of the Khurakzai who will keep you safely while I bicker with the Afghulis. If they will have none of me, by Crom! I will ride northward with you to the steppes of the kozaki. I was a hetman among the Free Companions before I rode southward. I'll make you a queen on the Zaporoska River!"
  • That line about being a hetman among the Free Companions before he rode southward is the most telling aspect of this speech. This seems to place the three most eastern stories together in the timeline. Conan likely heads east to the Vilayet Sea where he experiences the events of "Iron Shadows in the Moon," then "The Devil in Iron," and afterward rides south to Vendhya where he ingratiates himself to the Afghulis in this story.
• At the very end of the story, Conan lists to Yasmina Devi many of the things he has done in his life: "Listen: I was born in the Cimmerian hills where the people are all barbarians. I have been a mercenary soldier, a corsair, a kozak, and a hundred other things. What king has roamed the countries, fought the battles, loved the women, and won the plunder that I have?" There's a lot going on in this paragraph!
  • We've seen Conan be a mercenary soldier in "Xuthal of the Dusk" and "Black Colossus."
  • We've seen him be a corsair in "Queen of the Black Coast" and we'll see him be one again in "The Pool of the Black One."
  • We've seen his kozak days in "The Devil in Iron" and "Iron Shadows in the Moon," likely immediately preceding this narrative.
  • Conan's "hundred other things" is fun to speculate about. I suppose it would need to encompass his thief days and his early wanderings with the Aesir too. But we haven't actually gotten to that story yet. It leaves the door open for a lot of options.
  • Conan has "roamed the countries" of at least Cimmeria, Zamora, Nemedia, Argos, Kush, Stygia, Turan, Hyrkania, Shem, Afghulistan, and Vendhya.
  • He's "fought the battles" which are too numerous to count.
  • He's "loved the women:" Bêlit, for sure. Is he including Natala? Thalis? Probably Olivia.
  • Funnily enough, most of the plunder Conan wins must be off the page. Most of the time, the treasure he's jonesing for in each story either ends up out of reach. He very frequently ends stories empty-handed, fleeing with just his life.
  • Conan makes an off-hand comment about how kings haven't lived the life he has, so it must be prior to his kingship.

Based on the other aspects of this chronology, grouping the eastern stories together, I think it makes the most sense to place "The People of the Black Circle" before Conan journeys back westward to become a captain of spearmen in "Black Colossus." This solves the "mad dash" issue and is internally consistent with Conan's "riding southward" line.

I find it interesting that "Black Colossus" is so much further back now than many other chronologies place it. I'm not against it, I just didn't really expect it.

It's the season of giving... perhaps you'll consider donating?

The Robert E. Howard House in Cross Plains, Texas requires major repairs to remain standing. Due to its listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the preservation costs increase. I just donated $50; perhaps you could too.

I'm very much looking forward to visiting the museum this June for Howard Days, and maybe I'll see you there!

Here's a link to the donation page.

Okay, I'm kind of cheating a little bit with this one. This issue isn't some diamond in the rough that nobody's read or discussed, but it's got a great story (behind it as well as between the pages).

L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter published "The Thing in the Crypt" in the paperback collection Conan in 1967. Outside of the speculation that it probably originated as a draft of a future Thongor story, it was a wholly original little jaunt published alongside some other excellent early-life Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, and a few acceptable de Camp / Carter pastiches.

"The Thing in the Crypt," is, for my money at least, a seriously top-of-the-pile Conan pastiche. It's brisk, creepy, thematically consistent with Howard, and a whole lot of fun to read.

Six years after it came out, Roy Thomas was writing Conan the Barbarian for Marvel Comics and had convinced Glenn Lord of the Howard estate to let him adapt a couple of REH tales into the comic series. He was working on obtaining the rights of some others- Lin Carter had allowed it for "The Hand of Nergal" a few issues prior, but de Camp wasn't so sure. Thomas wanted to depict "Thing in the Crypt" as a flashback episode to take place between Conan #2 and #3, which is a little odd seeing as he considered the story to be a "lesser" de Camp story. When writing about the story, he didn't even seem that interested in it. As de Camp dragged his feet, Roy said, "Fuck it."

He decided to create his own crypt story that would replace "The Thing in the Crypt" for the Marvel continuity. When wondering what he should have Conan fight in the ancient tomb to differentiate his new version from the de Camp story, his wife Jean suggested, "Why don't you have him fight his own shadow?" Roy ran with that idea and ended up creating "The Shadow on the Tomb!" for Conan the Barbarian #31.

"The Shadow on the Tomb!" is fun, but a little sillier than the original. I think Roy's choice to connect the story to his current continuity via the frame narrative was a great choice- it feels less random and it's more unique than just having Conan fuck up by activating a curse and then run his ass out of there. It helps make it less of an adaptation and more of an original yarn.

And then just five years later, Marvel Comics had a new contract with L. Sprague de Camp that allowed them to adapt any of the Conan pastiches they wanted. For some reason, Roy decided to revisit "The Thing in the Crypt" instead of any of the other pastiches in the library. It worked out from the perspective of the Marvel office- John Buscema was out on vacation, so they needed a "filler" episode as they did from time to time. But instead of reprinting an old story, Roy enlisted Big John's little brother, Sal Buscema, to go back to the crypt. Sal is, at times, indistinguishable from his his brother anyway.

​Within the continuity of the book, it made no sense for them to adapt this story here- the end of Conan and Bêlit's adventures were heating up and they were about to attempt a coup in the city of Asgalun, but instead, we looked backward 7 years and returned to some of Conan's earliest adventures.

Roy and Sal had an entirely self-inflicted problem on their hands now: what to do with the fact that they now had two nearly identical stories in which a young Conan, fleeing enemies in the frozen north, disturbs a cursed tomb by moving a magical sword and then has to do battle with a sentry? They decided to go with the simplest, and probably least-elegant solution. Both stories would be canonical to the Marvel continuity. They added some caption boxes at the beginning noting that issue #92 would take place between Conan #2 and #3, and then added a caption at the end saying that Conan probably lost this magical sword, leaving him open to needing another just a few days later.

​Whatever, man.

Like the prose story it's based on, Conan the Barbarian #92 opens with the young Cimmerian running at full speed from a pack of ravenous wolves. While it's a great opening, I think the most interesting thing about page one is that the credits read that the issue is by "Roy Thomas & Ernie Chan," with a special guest penciller, Sal Buscema. I don't think I've ever seen the inker elevated to the spot next to the writer where the penciller usually is.

Conan quickly dives into the titular crypt where the wolves apparently dare not to tread... instead, they just whimper outside of it. And here's the moment that originally made me think, "Maybe I need to blog about this issue:" the following pages are completely monochrome, with only black outlines and blue coloring, to simulate darkness. Roy, and perhaps the Marvel staff in general, called these "knockout panels." When I first read that, I thought it meant that they were meant to knock the socks off the reader since they're such a departure from usual coloring. But I think it's far more likely that they got that name because they're so quick and easy for the colorist to "knock out." Anyway, colorist George Roussos deserves his flowers.

As Conan's campfire rages, the backgrounds have shifted from blue to magenta, and as Conan flips the sentry into the fire, the panels are filled with a red-orange glow that engulfs the page and I'm hoping that George Roussos got a raise or something. He worked as an inker in addition to a colorist and worked with all the greats like Jack Kirby, so I'm sure he wouldn't even remember this issue if I could ask him about it today (he died in 2000).

In the final panels, Conan is bathed in a red and yellow that looks incredible, like a sunset, as he steps away from the crypt. It's a gorgeous ending to a gorgeous comic.

​Clumsily, Roy's final caption box stutters out, "Yeah, um, I know it's weird, but Conan was soon captured by a second group of Hyperborean slavers and had a very similar experience, but this time with a shadow! Please do not invent trade paperbacks so that these stories are never republished and easily compared." At least, that's how I think it went. I didn't go back and check.

Roy Thomas didn't love "The Thing in the Crypt," but ended up adapting it twice. In terms of pop culture representation, it may be the most-often depicted non-REH Conan story. It also inspired a scene in the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It appeared again in the live action Conan the Adventurer TV show. And just about every sword and sorcery fan noticed the parallels between this and the "mound dweller" scene in Robert Eggers's The Northman.

Because of all of those, I think it's fair to say that there's something about the story that really resonates with readers.

When Conan the Barbarian returned to its regularly-scheduled programming in issue #93, it would be careening toward the end of the Conan & Bêlit saga that he had been writing for 40 issues. It was its last grasp at greatness before Roy left.

There's this remarkable cold open in episode three of animator Genndy Tartakovsky's adult animation show, Primal. A pack of wooly mammoths trudges through a blizzard in a storming tundra; unbeknownst to them, an older mammoth lags behind. The elder is missing a tusk, his fur is raggedy to the point of being threadbare, and his eyes betray an exhaustion not present in the others. He becomes separated from his pack without them noticing.

The mammoth lets out a bellow, but it goes unanswered.

After the blizzard breaks, the mammoth is attacked by the show's wordless odd-couple protagonists: the caveman Spear who wields his namesake, and the T-Rex known as Fang. Robert E. Howard fans will catch the references.

The mammoth fights back, but is overpowered by the two hunters. As his trunk lets out gasps of air, Spear raises a rock above his head. He looks into the mammoth's yellow eye and delivers the killing blow. But after the mammoth goes limp, Spear does something surprising. He places his hand gently on the mammoth's side and sees himself reflected in the eye as it closes. He stands there pensively for a moment before making himself a cloak out of the fur.

I tell you with no shame, I cried. And it was like seven minutes into the episode.

"A Cold Death," the title of this episode, is a very good episode of Primal, but it's not an unusual episode of Primal. This is a fantastic TV show that feels like the antithesis to the current media landscape. It's the kind of show we need right now.

People not so long ago used to use the phrase "the attention economy." Everyone wants your attention: your phone, your television, your radio, your game consoles, and they're all fighting for it. Just ten or so years later, that term feels painfully outdated. These days, it feels like nobody really wants your attention.

Netflix makes "second-screen content" to play idly in the background while you scroll Facebook for the hundredth time today. People are generating AI content that kind of looks like a real thing if you don't glance at it too hard, but the longer you look, the more horrifying it becomes. And the movie theater feels like it is in its final hours as nobody seems to want to give themselves over to the theater experience anymore.

I'm as guilty of this as anybody. My wife will give me a hard time as she sees that even though I'm playing a PS5 game, my laptop is also set up so that I can watch a movie, but my phone magically teleports itself to my hand during loading screens. I'm paying attention to everything, but in actuality, nothing.

Primal is currently part of my cure for what ails. The show is silent, meaning it has a "storyboarder" rather than a writer. Spear and Fang, unlikely partners, traverse a fantastic anachronistic landscape together, with each episode largely being its own story disconnected to other installments.

The fact that it's silent- I mean, it's very loud at times, but has almost no spoken dialogue- is one of its secret weapons. It demands your attention. If you try to watch Instagram reels while it plays in the background, you will miss the entire thing. Once the show has your attention, I promise you that it will hold it. The animation is a gorgeous hand-drawn affair with classic painted backgrounds and thick, sometimes ragged outlines on characters. Those characters, whether they be dinosaurs, monsters, or humans, are all incredibly expressive. I suppose you would have to be if it's the only tool you have to convey emotion. Spear is blocky and bottom-heavy with nothing but screams and his face to express himself. Fang uses her whole, long body and keen nose to interact with the world, creating an entirely different mode from Spear.

Primal is a profoundly human show despite very few of its characters being actual humans. It is very violent, yes, with its crimson blood-splatters and brutal fight scenes, but it is also frequently sweet, sad, funny, and contemplative. You very quickly see the humanity in both Spear's human family and Fang's dinosaur kids as each episode invites you to sit silently and really go somewhere with it.

Later on in that episode, the mammoth kill scene plays back again almost exactly, except this time, it's Spear and his son hunting a primordial deer. Spear's son looks into the deer's eye as it dies, the same way Spear did with the mammoth. Both of them take a moment to feel what they're doing for a second and we see that this event is a common event for the cavemen. It's the way of their world, but that doesn't render it devoid of meaning. It's a lot more than you might expect from a cartoon.

The third season begins premiering in about a month, and I can't wait to watch it. 

When Robert E. Howard sat down to write "The Devil in Iron," the tenth Conan story to reach publication, it was after a period of nine months during which he didn't write anything for his sword-and-sorcery series character. He had been experiencing bouts of burnout, taking a few months between Conan stories and trying out different genres. He did the same thing right before "Queen of the Black Coast." Perhaps this long gap is why this story is so devoid of other connections to the Hyborian world.

"The Devil in Iron" was published in the August 1934 issue of Weird Tales and followed a very similar plot to the previous story Howard had written, "Iron Shadows in the Moon." Both feature islands in the Vilayet Sea, pirates, iron golem enemies, and fairly forgettable one-off companions. "Devil in Iron" was voted the best story of the issue despite how it re-tread earlier subjects and earned Howard $115.

There is very little mooring this to one single place in Conan's life.

• Conan is a new chief to the kozaks: "'That is because of the new chief who has risen among them,' answered Ghaznavi. 'You know whom I mean.' 'Aye!' replied Jehungir feelingly. 'It is that devil Conan; he is even wilder than the kozaks, yet he is crafty as a mountain lion.'
  • As a side note, I wondered in my Chronologically Speaking entry about "Iron Shadows in the Moon," why Conan bristles at the term "kozak." Seeing as this story tells us it means "wastrel," I get the sense that it's sort of a slur.
  • Conan evidently met the kozaks with nothing but the clothes on his back and quickly rose through the ranks: "This was Conan, who had wandered into the armed camps of the kozaks with no other possession than his wits and his sword, and who had carved his way to leadership among them."
• Conan refers to the black lotus of Xuthal, which places this story after "Xuthal of the Dusk:" "Her sleep was too deep to be natural. He decided that she must be an addict of some drug, perhaps like the black lotus of Xuthal." This line has vexed many previous chronologizers, because the general consensus seems to be that Conan should be a little older in "Xuthal," but since I've placed it early, this isn't a problem for me right now.
• Has Conan seen a copy of the Book of Skelos? This story seems to imply that he has: "Conan had seen rude images of them, in miniature, among the idol huts of the Yuetshi, and there was a description of them in the Book of Skelos, which drew on prehistoric sources." But where would he have seen a Book of Skelos? The copies seem to be exclusively in the hands of powerful wizards, who Conan is famously not a fan of. Or is this a strangely-worded sentence that just means that there are pictures in the Book of Skelos of the snake creatures he's looking at?
• Conan evidently understands Nemedian: "There was no door in that wall, but he leaned close and heard distinctly. And an icy chill crawled slowly along his spine. The tongue was Nemedian, but the voice was not human." This makes sense based on the placement of "Rogues in the House" well before this.

Here's the really tricky question about placing this story: Are the Free Companions / kozaks essentially the same group as the pirates of the Red Brotherhood? Consider this line about the kozaks.

If the barriers between the kozaks and the pirates are permeable, which this line seems to imply they are, then when we see Conan "carving" out leadership in the group, perhaps this is the same event we see at the end of "Iron Shadows in the Moon," when Conan meets the Red Brotherhood and immediately starts rising in the ranks. In the previous stories in which Conan is a mercenary, he's apparently just of the rank-and-file members, not in leadership, so those stories would go before this.

Some fellow Conan chronology nerds like Dale Rippke have hypothesized that Conan is younger in "Iron Shadows" because of how he approaches the Red Brotherhood (they would argue he does so naively), but that's not an impression I agree with.

Other timelines place this story chronologically right before "The People of the Black Circle," in which Conan is the hetman of the Afghuli hillpeople. That's possible, but I'm inclined right now to place it right after "Iron Shadows in the Moon." That way, he isn't traipsing back all over the world and spends some time on the Vilayet before going anywhere else. I'm not opposed to changing its placement if that makes more sense in the future, but right now, I think it works best immediately after its twin "iron" story.