CONAN THE BARBARIAN: THE HORN OF AZOTH

In 1982, the same year Conan the Barbarian hit theaters, Edward R. Pressman, a producer for the movie, approached comic writers Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway that same year to begin working on a script for the sequel. Roy had quit writing the Marvel Conan comics two years prior, and was currently working at DC, reviving Golden Age heroes like the Justice Society and All-Star Squadron. Roy had been a consultant on the first movie, and was probably the only living person to have written more Conan material than Robert E. Howard himself, so who on Earth could have been a better pick?

Gerry Conway, an accomplished and celebrated comic writer in his own right, had joined Roy to write the upcoming 1983 Ralph Bakshi-directed, rotoscoped sword-and-sorcery movie Fire & Ice, which everyone compares to Conan with its dark fantasy and Frank Frazetta posters. The talent behind this thing was solid.

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Dino De Laurentiis

John Milius (who directed the first film and is so, so good at what he does) was out, so Kiwi director Roger Donaldson was picked to direct the as-of-yet-untitled Conan sequel and with his playwright partner Ian Mune, came to Hollywood and started working on a script. They even brought in fan-favorite Barry Windsor-Smith to do some concept art. What the created was title Conan, King of Thieves, and it sounds like Roy and Gerry were pretty proud of it.

It was then that Edward R. Pressman sold his interest in the Conan property to Dino De Laurentiis, an Italian producer. Even if you don't know that name, I bet you've seen a Dino De Laurentiis movie; about half of the 70s and 80s movies I watch begin with me thinking, "Oh shit, Dino De Laurentiis produced this too?" That's not to say he was great, he was just everywhere. He produced Barbarella, Danger: Diabolik, Serpico, Death Wish, Three Days of the Condor, Blue Velvet, the King Kong remake, Flash Gordon, Dune, The Dead Zone, Maximum Overdrive, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, Manhunter, and obviously, the Conan and Red Sonja movies. If it was a genre picture and it was kind of stupid (complimentary), it was probably produced by Dino.

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Concept art for "Conan II" from William Stout

De Laurentiis wanted them to tone down the violence of the first movie- it did numbers, but he thought it could have made more money as a PG film. They reworked scenes and cut things like Conan climbing through a temple using holes in the wall which are occupied by gross, giant leeches. "No bloodsuckers!" is what Roy remembers De Laurentiis shouting through a translator between soccer games on TV.

Eventually, Richard Fleisher replaced Roger Donaldson as director and they hired another screenwriter to do another pass on the script. Roy and Gerry were gone, Barry's concept art wasn't used. While the major story beats are pretty similar to Conan, King of Thieves, the dialogue for the now-titled Conan the Destroyer was totally rewritten.

Roy and Gerry got a "story" credit while Stanley Mann, acclaimed writer of- uh, Damien - Omen II, got the "screenplay" credit. Cool.

Roy said that they originally left his and Gerry's names off the opening credits, telling them that the credit sequence was done and it would have cost them a bunch to go back and re-edit it. They offered the pair a bunch of money to let them leave their names out of the credits, but Roy and Gerry said no, they wanted their names up there. That pretty much made them persona non grata in the Conan movie biz from there on out.

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On the opening page of Conan the Barbarian: The Horn of Azoth, Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway claim that everybody they showed their Conan script to thought it was better than the finished movie, a claim which, sure, I guess we'll have to take their word on. When an editor at Marvel got ahold of it, he apparently suggested they turn it into a graphic novel, so here we are: the script for Conan, King of Thieves became Conan the Barbarian: The Horn of Azoth. This comic seems to have taken on almost legendary status among Conan fans, partially due to the "what-might-have-been" nature of the movie and the fact that it's kind of rare. I paid $40 to get my hands on it, and it's just barely longer than your average issue of Savage Sword.

We get a bit of a prologue set long before the age of humans in a war between gods, resulting in the evil god Azoth getting his horn ripped off. Then, back in the Hyborian Age, Conan is painting Shadizar red while brawling in a pit for cash when he's identified for a dangerous mission by a magical father/daughter pair: followers of the "dreaming god." They break him out of prison in exchange for helping him, so the whole setup is a little "Rogues in the House." 

Because Conan is in Shadizar, seemingly young and penniless, the story seems to be set firmly in his thief period, probably between "The Tower of the Elephant" and the Nestor synopsis, but since Roy usually considers the L. Sprague de Camp stories canon, we can assume it's the full "The Hall of the Dead" version.

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Conan then travels with Azoth cultists to retrieve a gem, with the gem they can then acquire Azoth's horn as an artifact, and they get trailed by some enemies who soon become tenuous allies. He's in the dark the whole time about the true motivations of the followers of the "dreaming god," and of course they betray him soon enough. Like the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, they pass through a few "trials" to prove their worthiness. There are some fights, some deaths, and Conan ends up riding out of Shadizar without a dollar in his pocket.

​If you've seen Conan the Destroyer, it is pretty much the same sequence of events with different names. I prefer the baddies of the comic to the Dollar General Thoth-Amon of the movie, but Grace Jones added a lot of gravitas to a character (Zula in the movie, Shumballa in the comic) who's kind of a nothingburger on the page. Am I regretting that I paid $40 for this? Well, I'm not thrilled about it.

Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway have remarked that when adapting a 130-page screenplay into a 62-page comic, some material had to be cut, and I think that's The Horn of Azoth's biggest problem. We're introduced to cool locations which the story seems eager to rush right out of. I want to see Conan explore the mysterious Crypt of Shadows, guarded by tribesmen in the Kezankian Mountains... but 11 panels after the crypt is introduced, we're done with what the story needs to do there and we rush along.

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I think some of the pacing issues might be illustrator Mike Docherty's issue rather than the writers. His drawings can be kind of stilted, quiet, and disjointed. One scene in which this little dude "Rammon, son of Rammon" throws a knife features an oddly-assembled throwing motion, followed by a couple of remarkably empty panels as we watch the knife fly (magically?). The last two pages of the story could have been cut entirely as they feature no dialogue, no narration, no new revelations, and kind of just watch Conan as he goes back to Shadizar. If they were short on pages, they don't seem to have allocated them very well.

The Horn of Azoth is alright, but it probably doesn't deserve the hype as this lost Conan story that finally made it to the page and is now a collector's item. There are some bright spots like the prologue war between gods, the frozen stone Azoth lurching out the side of a mountain, some of the supporting characters. But it oddly feels stretched between two worlds. The visual design of many of the locations and costumes feels more like the first film than any other Conan media, which leaves it feeling a little empty a less lived-in. The art is lackluster and and the pacing is off.

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This is the type of comic book that I think you might find at an estate sale or in a used bookstore for cheap, and if you do, you should pick it up if you get a good deal. However, I wouldn't suggest picking one up from online (stop saying I'm bitter about how much I paid for it) for its full price. If you can't find one, just watch Destroyer again and pretend the names are different. There are cooler Conan rarities out there.

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