Roy Thomas's CONAN THE BARBARIAN: CONAN #250 for America's 250th

I don't know anyone who's read Conan the Barbarian #250, from November 1991. Everyone rightfully loves Roy Thomas's first 115 issues on the title, but most bounce off by the end of that run, and some stick it through to Christopher Priest's excellent tenure. Even though Roy returns to the book with issue #241 (actually it's issue #240, just written under a pseudonym), there's not a lot of chatter about his final 35 issues before Conan was cancelled for the first time.

Roy's goal was to right the ship and return the title to its Bronze Age glory. He quickly wrapped up the previous writer's altogether-pretty-garbage teenage Conan storyline and zipped us right to where he left off at issue #115 in 1980. Seriously, Roy puts us in the same physical place with the same supporting cast, 10 years later.

More than that, he even decides to imply that the previous 125 issues were actually all probably just a dream.

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As Roy gets rolling again, we get some fun with Red Sonja and Zula, two Thomas creations that are always welcome to return, and then a riff on, rather than an adaptation of, "Black Colossus." As is his skill set, Conan #250 is an adaptation of a Robert E. Howard story: "Gates of Empire."

Robert E. Howard was born just slightly closer to tomorrow, America's semiquincentennial, than its founding (ten years exactly), and "Gates of Empire" is a more unique story in his oeuvre. It's a comedy-adventure story set in 1167 during the Crusades, starring a decidedly un-Howardian lead named Giles Hobson. Instead of the do-it-yourself, hard-as-nails adventurers that populate so many Howard tales, Giles is a fat, selfish, chronic liar who bumbles his way through his narrative, always looking to claim as much credit for his wins and distance himself from his failures as he can. The backdrop of the story revolves around Giles's adventures in Cairo during a conflict between the Muslim Egyptians and the Christian Norman Franks. As the two empires war, Giles plays a double agent, mostly accidentally.

REH readers will recognize a lot of names in this one. We have an Amalric (perhaps Howard's favorite name to re-use other than Steve Costigan) and a de Chastillon household with a character named Agnes (but her last name isn't de Chastillon).

It is far from the best Howard story that I've read, but it's serviceable, and it's fun to get a story full of sight gags from an author not known for them. Originally to be published in a 1934 issue of Magic Carpet, the magazine folded before publication and the story was originally published in Golden Fleece in 1939, three years after Howard died.

Roy takes Giles and re-christens him "Hobb" for the Hyborian Age, still a drunk, manipulative loser who once tricked Conan into fighting his allies in the middle of the night. Only one other element of "Gates of Empire" really makes it into Conan #250, and that's the visual of being pulled up by a rope through a giant hole in the floor. We'll get there.

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Hobb is kidnapped and taken to the ruins of Kuthchemes, famous residence of Thugra Khotan from "Black Colossus," where he's intercepted by Conan, Sonja, and Zula. Within Kuthchemes, there's a poisonous underground river called the River of Darkness (essentially the River Styx in our mythology, but that name's taken by Howard's Nile analogue in the Hyborian Age). While sailing on that river, Zula and the Cimmerian see visions of dead friends and family, as well as both a young and elderly Conan figure to fight. It's the kind of thing you expect in a "landmark" anniversary issue.

As our intrepid adventurers (plus Hobb) finally leave the river's cave, they're pulled up through a pit opening in the floor as it's revealed that the cave is actually the flesh of a many-eyed eldritch beast. This echoes one scene toward the end of "Gates of Empire" in which Hobb has been lowered into a trap-door pit and must climb his way out. Right as his fingers and hands are about to give way, he's pulled up over the lip. In this version, Conan dives back into the pit to save Hobb from the monster, himself rescued when the rest of the crew dumps all the heavy treasure of gold coins and chests onto the tentacled thing, causing it to release its grip on the Cimmerian.

The issue ends with Red Sonja and Zula deciding to go their separate ways from Conan after nearly ten issues together again, but Conan is stuck with Hobb by his side for quite a few more.

This is one of Roy Thomas's Howard adaptions that feels like it should have scare quotes around the word "adaptation," plucking just a few identifiable markers from the original and otherwise writing his own story around them. As a big anniversary issue, it's certainly smaller scale than the other big climax books on the title like Conan the Barbarian #100, #115, or #200, written by Thomas, Thomas, and Priest, respectively. But Mike Docherty's art is vastly improved-upon by Ernie Chan's inks and the various colorists on the book give the title some spark, especially the sickly green hues in the River of Darkness.

Roy had only 25 more issues left before the stories of the bronzed barbarian were cancelled, destined to have no more big anniversary issues (unless you count the 50th anniversary retrospective King-Size Conan in 2020 which Roy contributed to).

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Pax vobiscum, fellow Americans. Happy 4th.