I recently completed my collection of the Dark Horse reprints of The Savage Sword of Conan. I've always loved these things: they're where I started my Conan journey and they have always looked great on a shelf. Due to the insane price gouging (they're out of print), it took a long time to complete my collection. I'd only allow myself to buy one every few months. But now I have them all! And I dove into what they're like in the video above. I hope you enjoy.

We have before us quite the head-scratcher.

​The Yaralet fragment, also known by the monikers "Unititled draft (The battle stretched silent...)" and "The Hand of Nergal," is an extremely small blip in the Conan mythos. Even the Lin Carter edit (which I argue is the only thing people should be calling "The Hand of Nergal," seeing as Howard's short fragment doesn't mention Nergal at all) seems to be nobody's favorite. They're almost too different to really be considered related. All the "Nergal" version carries over is the image of Conan on a battlefield and an oppressive city named Yaralet.

According to Patrice Louinet in his Hyborian Genesis essay, this fragment was probably written in early 1933, though Louinet also says he has a hard time placing it.

The Carter version appeared in 1968, with the Howard fragment not being made public until it appeared in the "Miscellanea" section of 1976's The Last Celt, where it appears with some other drafts and materials. And because it's so short, there's also not a ton to take from it chronologically.

Those are the only clues given as to when this story might take place; that's not a whole lot to go on.

Conan is dressed nearly identically to his appearances in other early mercenary stories, like "Xuthal of the Dusk" and "Iron Shadows in the Moon." "Xuthal" is one of his first mercenary stories within the chronology I've laid out here, and seeing as Conan appears here as a savage, somewhat inexperienced mercenary here, I think it stands to reason that the two may be close in time to one another. I don't want to give the clothes too much weight, because Conan appears to be a somewhat experienced mercenary at the start of "Queen of the Black Coast," when he's wearing much more ornate armor.

I wondered for quite some time how much to make of the fact that the unnamed woman we see briefly is white (she has "white limbs"), seeing as Howard's attitudes toward race usually caused him to note people's skin colors. "Xuthal" takes place near to Stygia and does it make more sense for this story to take place further north if the woman were white? Or would Howard make her darker-skinned by terming her "dusky" or black? Ultimately, I decided not to make too much of this. Conan comes across people who are non-native to regions all the time. 

Interestingly enough, this story is usually placed as Conan's Turanian mercenary episode, but it does not mention Turan at all, nor is the city of Yaralet ever placed in any country on the map (on many maps, people place Yaralet in the northern part of Turan, close to the Vilayet Sea). If it does not take place in Turan, then Conan's Turanian mercenary period is essentially confined in the entire canon to just a line or two in which he says that he learned archery from the Hyrkanians. 

I've left these wonderings in above so that you can see my thought process and check me if you think I'm incorrect. This story doesn't honestly have a very good placement anywhere in the timeline. What I've decided to go with is the idea that it's probably the first first mercenary story. I think it makes somewhat thematic sense to have Conan be struggling to loot in one story and then have become much better at it for the beginning of "Queen of the Black Coast," when his outfit seems to be entirely looted, before losing it all aboard the Tigress down south. This isn't exactly a revolutionary placement, but I think I've put it here for different reasons than most chronologizers.

​I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also, thank you to Bobby Derie from Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein for some help with this one.  

If you ask people about the comic book history of Conan the Cimmerian, it seems like there are three major eras folks think of. There's the original 70s glory days, with the first volumes of Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword of Conan ending in 1993 and 1995, respectively (and to a slightly lesser extent, Conan the King). There's the second peak with Dark Horse's mid-2000s Conan series led by Kurt Busiek, Cary Nord, and Tim Truman. Then there's the current Titan line which shares the same titles as the original Marvel series.

That means that there are two somewhat neglected little periods in there that don't get much attention. One of them is Marvel's second volume of Conan the Barbarian in the 90s, which Tennessee Fats recently did a good video on. The other is this little three-year stint right before Titan picked up the license where Conan was back at Marvel. For how much talent was in the creative pool, it almost makes it weird that this tenure isn't talked about more.

From 2019 to 2021, Marvel gave the reigns to Jason Aaron who took over the eponymous title for a dozen issues before handing it to future barbarian stalwart Jim Zub, where it ended on legacy issue #300. Ron Garney, Patch Zircher, Mike Deodato Jr., Esad Ribic, and Greg Smallwood were all handling art at some point, so it's not exactly a slouchy team!

The curiosity for me is the Savage Sword title itself. Conan the Barbarian by Jason Aaron makes sense to me. Savage Avengers is new, and extremely cool. But Savage Sword is kind of the odd duck. The original Savage Sword was born out of necessity- skirting the Comics Code Authority to tell more brutal, bloody stories than a monthly comic book could. It was instantly, obviously different: oversized magazine format, double or triple the length of a monthly issue, painted covers, black and white newsprint pages, backup stories or essays or prose. 2019's Savage Sword of Conan by Gerry Duggan is (almost) none of those things, which just makes it odd they gave it that title. It's a standard comic format and it's not any bloodier than the Jason Aaron title, seeing as the Comics Code is long-dead. The most obvious thing it does have in common with the original is painted covers, this time done by GOAT Alex Ross. Marvel did apparently issue a black-and-white version of the story in trade paperback, but I've only ever come across the color version. Additionally, they print part of Scott Oden's story "The Shadow of Vengeance" in the back of the issues, which is cool.

Luckily enough for us, all of the hand-wringing I'm doing about inconsistencies above is extremely secondary. Duggan and artist Ron Garney do a great job with a fun, Stygia-set adventure.

Conan has been captured at sea by a pirate crew and is gradually nursed back to health by a fellow prisoner named Suty, who he doesn't realize has asked for his freedom in exchange for keeping Conan alive. Conan, of course, needs no help escaping, but because Suty is shackled to him, Suty ends up going with him. The Cimmerian accidentally catches a magical glance of a map belonging to Koga Thun, Stygian sorcerer of some ill repute. Conan and Suty also cross paths with a librarian who teams up with them and they venture into a labyrinth beneath the city for more hijinks to ensure.

Duggan nods to REH's serpent men for some pleasant surprises that help you feel like he's done his homework on the history of Conan, and there are some really good lines sprinkled throughout.

The thing that feels most notable about their five-issue arc is that it is a perfect case study for how comic book storytelling has changed from Conan's comic heyday in the 70s. The scope of this story isn't too expansive; I can't help but feel that this five-issue story would've occupied a single issue of the original Savage Sword of Conan. A sixty-page adventure broken into a prologue and three or four parts doesn't seem out of place, rather than a 100-plus page treatment it got. I don't necessarily think that would've yielded a better or worse result, but it serves to show how much comic book storytelling has changed in the last fifty years.

A bloody story with hand impalements, head lopping, and lots of venom stings doesn't feel as visceral as it might have when that sort of thing was now. If slotted into Marvel's original SSOC volume, it would be somewhere in the middle of the pack.

The incredible Alex Ross covers seem to heighten this comparison. Explicit send-ups to the classic Marvel era abound in Ross's gorgeous photorealistic paintings. In one, Conan fights alongside the Black Corsairs and clearly the Marvel Comics version of Bêlit (the furry britches give it away). In another, Ross riffs on Barry Windsor-Smith's iconic cover for Marvel Treasure Edition #4. In another, he literally has Conan stand in front of a slew of old SSOC covers.

It's very much different from the thing it's throwing back to. It's a little odd having this low-level pulse when it doesn't really evoke what it's gesturing at. But Duggan and Garney's Savage Sword of Conan is still worth your time.