BLACK SPHINX OF NEBTHU

Finally! A Conan story that's as obsessed with Conan continuity as I am! ...but it sucks?

I thought of tempering my criticism in this post to say that, "Black Sphinx of Nebthu" is a seriously minor Conan story, but I've decided that's too kind. In terms of narrative, it's weak. I mentioned last time when we read "The Witch of the Mists" that it felt like the first part of a story rather than the whole thing, and I now see that we're definitely in a four-part arc masterminded by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. Rather than feeling like separate stories, "Mists" was part one, and "Nebthu" feels like part two, and it's a lifeless part two. 

Conan's marching south to take the fight to Thoth-Amon, the villain of the last tale, and parts of the story feel kind of random. Because it's clear that this is just part two to an overarching narrative, there's functionally no inciting incident. There's not much reason for the white priest Diviatix of Pictland to show up other than "the gods told him to be there." Conan's son Conn has literally nothing to do in the story other than make a big entrance and then be useless for the rest of the runtime. There's not really a turning point, either- Conan just kind of manages to evade the hyena beast that Thoth-Amon summons at the climax long enough for it to go away, not through any doing of his own.

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There's one passage in particular that kind of pissed me off in just how divorced from the rest of Conan's stories it felt. In the copy of Conan of Aquilonia on the Internet Archive, it's on page 56. Conan's forces are marching south through Argos, Kush, and Shem toward Stygia.

"A token of tribute of good Aquilonian silver was paid over... the kinglets beamed graciously and waved the Aquilonian host on with their blessings.

The army, of course, had meant to go on anyway. But it is better, Conan had learned, to do these things with official blessing when possible. To be fair, Conan saw that his troops observed his laws against looting and raping. The few of his soldiers who turned aside to chase a dark-eyed Shemitish wench into a thicket or to leaven their field rations with some peasant's fat pig were promptly hanged in view of the their comrades. It went against Conan's grain to deprive the poor fools of their lives, for as a young mercenary, he, too, had done the same offenses many times.

But the law is the law."

I have no bones to pick with the actual events depicted in this passage, just the way it's phrased and justified. "But the law is the law?" What a shitty justification in a Conan story- a collection of stories that are almost entirely about how justifications like "The law is the law" are meaningless and inadequate. Sure, it's advantageous for Conan to enforce laws that are for the betterment of everyone, but phrase it that way, not through trite platitudes that essentially negate the thesis statement of this entire series. 

"Black Sphinx of Nebthu" obviously takes place in Conan's late kingship and after "The Witch of the Mists" in our chronology. Conn is now 13 when he was 12 in "Mists" and mentions the events of that story as having happened "last year," so a year or maybe a little less has elapsed since they fought the witch up in those mists of Hyperborea.

​Now, as far as continuity goes, there are tons of callbacks and references to previous Conan stories throughout this story. Let's see what we've got!

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On page 49, when looking at a map of the territory south of Aquilonia, Conan points out a river and says "I followed it to here when I fled from Xaltotun's sorcery." This is an allusion to when Conan fled by boat out of Aquilonia in The Hour of the Dragon.

On page 54, Conan mentions Princess Chabela from Conan the Buccaneer, which I didn't actually read until I was otherwise done with the chronology. While Buccaneer takes place about 25 years before this story, it had hit the presses only a few real years before this one in 1971, so perhaps de Camp and Carter were hoping to move a few more copies of their new novel off the shelf.

Page 65 contains a pretty detailed account of the sorcerous goings-on of The Hour of the Dragon, including the infighting between the wizard Thutothmes and Thoth. It mentions how the four Khitan magicians attacked as well.

Thoth-Amon makes a long, villain-monologue speech on page 78 that actually mentions tons of moments in Conan's career. Not only do these evoke those stories, they also imply that Thoth-Amon was the antagonist behind many of Conan's adventures.

• Apparently Thoth was aware of Conan when he "venture[d] into these southern lands from your frozen north, forty years ago," which reference Conan's earliest adventures like "Legions of the Dead" and "The Thing in the Crypt."
• Thoth says that he was the one who sent the snake god to kill Kallian Publico way back in "The God in the Bowl." This we already knew.
• He says that it was his plan in Conan the Buccaneer to get the kingdom of Zingara under his control, but really it was other villains' plans and he was brought in as the heavy.
• He mentions when they actually (sort of) met during the events of "The Treasure of Tranicos" up at Count Valenso's stronghold on the western ocean.
• Thoth finishes with mentioning when he was a slave during the events of "The Phoenix on the Sword."

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Conan, too, makes a rather throwaway allusion to his earlier career leading the Zuagir raiders, saying:

"Of course I know how to ride a camel! ... Wasn't I once a chief of the Zuagir nomads of the eastern deserts?"

The Heart of Ahriman is back from Hour of the Dragon, too.

There are a few entertaining moments in this story, like where they're swearing at the beginning. Conan stories have always had colorful moments of taking gods' names in vain. Conan's favorite is just "Crom!" but also sometimes uses variations like "Crom's thunder!" and if he's really in the shit, he might say "Crom and Mitra!"

We see a character named Amric say "Fires of Moloch!" which is fun, but we get a strange description a moment later: "Amric swore heartily, invoking the nether organs of several of the disreputable eastern demon-gods." Is this like the Hyborian equivalent of something like saying "Satan's asshole!" "By Beelzebub's taint!"?

I wish I liked this one more. I just don't think it has anything going on. In terms of both the ideas behind the story and the way the narrative's constructed, it feels totally inert. All of the callbacks to previous Conan material feel like Star Wars since The Mandalorian: empty gesturing at things from the past that we all liked more. Sadly, the more I think about it, the more I think it might be one of my least favorite Conan stories of all time. Even though it hass all these references for me to examine on my blog specifically about the chronology of Conan the Barbarian, I think I have to give this one the lowest-possible marks. 

There's an interesting article over on Black Gate about how the artist for the story in Fantastic, Billy Graham, got fired for his revved-up comic book style (shown below) that appeared in the pages. He would go onto do some great stuff at Marvel. 

I guess we'll see if part three in de Camp and Carter's not-so-epic (thus far) finale fares any better next time in "Red Moon of Zembabwei."

★☆​☆☆​☆

[EDIT: I decided to pick up the King Conan comic version of this story to see if it's any better. I picked it up for $5 at the comic shop today and I'm sad to say it's only marginally better. The fact that it's illustrated by John Buscema and Ernie Chan is always a good sign, and they keep things exciting through their dynamic art. But the plotting isn't changed one iota by Roy Thomas, and a lot of the dialogue is ripped straight from de Camp and Carter's pages, so it ends up with two stars out of five as opposed to a measly one. Did I waste my five bucks? Yeah, probably.]