Barbarism Begins at Home

 

Today's post is a tie-in special with my Materioptikon blog and features Marvel's Conan the Barbarian. Four weeks ago, I rented the 2011 Conan movie but didn't find much to recommend it. Granted, Jason Mamoa was certainly a more authentic Conan than Arnie ever was but the Hyborian world  was too Goth for me and the sadism in the film was ugly and gratuitous. REH's purple prose was designed to titillate its readers but this film had no interest in that, adding a mawkish and sentimental origin story to its dispiriting Milius remake. However, I would like to see Mamoa in a sequel, one more true to the source material. The sole REH novel, Conan the Conqueror, seems a ready-made movie script, even giving the potential to modishly split it in two.

 Since I'm going to revisit the Thomas/Smith Marvel Treasury Edition on the 'Optikon, I thought I'd whet your appetite with a list of  my Top Ten Marvel Conan comics.

 Glasgow Queen Street Station bookstall, 1972. My first Conan comic. Gil Kane's pantherish hero is shipwrecked and encounters a red-haired "goddess". The combination of exotic names, half-naked characters and a dinosaur is irresistible. I also love those framed covers

Strathaven, Jack Lorimer's newsagent and toyshop (which became John Menzies in the mid-70s). This story was reprinted in b/w in the legendary Marvel annual in 1972. Barry Smith's pencils still have Kirby and Steranko influences and it feels very much like a late Silver Age Marvel comic. In fact, 1969-70 Sub-Mariner looks and reads a little like Conan. This is a melancholy supernatural tale; the conflicted father and daughter pair find their immortality and powers of prophecy a burden:" We have seen the eons pass, floating like burning clouds". Thomas, for my money, is actually less pretentious with his heightened dialogue than later scripters like Moench or McGregor.

Strathaven, Craig's newsagent. This is my introduction to the Art Nouveau flourishes of Barry Smith. The contents, however reprint The Coming of Conan from October 1970 and features the mind-blowing image of Man in space; a suitably Kozmic freak-out for the villainous shaman. The epic scale of this Kirbyesque tale recalls 2001. Cannily, unlike the mature king introduced by Howard, Marvel's Conan is a moody Celtic youth; an alienated wild child.

Strathaven again, read while in the waiting room at Jimmy Gilmour's dental practice, in the days when you used to get gas for extractions. I remember the word "wank" most of all- knowing it was a playground insult but with no idea of what it might mean. By this time, I must have read the King Kull story in Monsters on the Prowl because I recognised the chant "Ka Nama Kaa Lajerama". That charm against the Serpent Men appears in issue 16 from the spring of 1972; it's possible I read it shortly after that very first Conan comic. Red Sonja is a bit sassy but has yet to don her infamous chainmail bikini.

 Sandhead, staying at the Tigh-Na-Mara hotel in the summer of 1973, probably mid-August. This ish was most likely bought in Stranraer.  Aside from the sabre-toothed ape and the skimpily dressed slave girl, this story features a poisonous reptile called a Lakhmu, which seems to have escaped  from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar. This cover conjures up the flavours of Captain Cody and Jelly Terror ice lollies from the Sandhead village store.

Glasgow Airport, in a time when the landward shops sold US Marvel comics. UK Marvel  reprints were only competing with DC fare. This plane-spotting trip to Abbotsinch airport (as we called it then) yielded a Kull comic and my first copies of Werewolf by Night and the disturbing Tomb of Dracula. This issue features a Carter/DeCamp story and a sense that Conan is a champion of cosmic forces. Starlin will later utilise this idea in the Spidey-Thing-Avengers-Thanos epic.

Strathaven, Craig's newsagent. I truly became a devotee of Conan with the previous issue (as colour Conan returned to the shops for the first time in about two years)  and would follow the saga of Belit on a monthly basis for the next couple of years until distribution staggered to a halt again. The amoral pirate queen has a rich backstory of intrigue, horror and jungle adventure. On reading the original REH Queen of The Black Coast a couple of years later, I am surprised to discover that Thomas invented it all.

Strathaven, Baird's newsagent and pet store. This was thrillingly adult material for an adolescent sword-and-sorcery fan. The Cat-Goddess story inside has been rumoured to be a reworking of an Atlas Ironjaw story but I don't buy that. The Kull story wasn't that memorable but the bonus material was. A portfolio of b/w Conan illustrations; a piece on demonic gods of the Hyborian Age and Tim Conrad's revised map. I loved fantasy maps and the decadent Beardsley-esque  imagery added to its allure.

Strathaven, Baird's newsagent. The second of the three SSOC magazines I bought as a schoolboy. The first story was the second chapter of the Thomas/Buscema adaptation of People of the Black Circle. It's a fascinating story that roams from the Hyborian version of India and Afghanistan and features a cabal of politicking inhuman magicians.The lush inking of Alfredo Alcala added exoticism to this tale of Oriental mysticism and adventure. The back-up strip was the atmospheric and morbid Romans- in -Britain horror Worms of the Earth. Tim Conrad's epic adaptation was gorgeous and grisly.

Glasgow, City Centre Comics in Forbidden Planet. As an adult, the busy Kirby cover with its Romita retouching drew me once again to Smith and Thomas' two-part team-up with Michael Moorcock's Elric. I had first read the story in the b/w weekly SSOC and loved its multiversal strife between the forces of Chaos and Order. I even loved Elric's Patrick Troughton hat. That reprint had led me to the Prog Rock fantasies of Mayflower Books in Strathaven Library.

A Sword Called Stormbringer/ The Green Empress of Melnibone ties up the loose ends of the story of Zukala and Zephra from Conan 5 and introduces Kulan Gath, a wizard who will go on to plague Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Avengers.


It was very difficult to narrow this list down. I could have expanded it to include the Grim Grey God, the God in the Bowl, the Amra/Tarzan parody, The Hell-Spawn of Khara-Shehr and the ghastly Garden of Death and Life.But who ever heard of a Top Fifteen?
 In a week or two, I hope to have a copy of the collected Conan newspaper strips to review. In the meantime, check out the 'optikon shortly for more Barry Smith barbarism.

All images presumed copyright of their respective owners