Barbarians of the Border

Unbelievable! The school holidays are almost over again and I didn't manage to fit in a second getaway. But, in the tradition of the Bronze Age summer comic crossover, here's the second post  this month on Savage Sword of Conan: this time, we're looking at the title when Roy Thomas returned to scripting the Cimmerian.

As I've stated several times, I fell out of love with the UK SSOC monthly reprint mag in early 1981. In fact, I didn't buy another issue of the title for nearly ten years. Did I grow out of Sword-and-Sorcery? To an extent, certainly, yes since it seemed linked to role-playing games, Heavy Metal music and other pop culture phenomena I eschewed as uncool and nerdy - before those terms were part of the argot.

Funnily enough, another of my great loves which had flared and died in the eighties had a renaissance in 1991: the Doctor Who New Adventures from Virgin Publishing. I suspect the Previews magazine alerted me to Thomas on Conan again- first in the colour monthly and then on the b/w magazine. I got my first issue, cover -dated October 1991, in Neil Craig's Futureshock in its Byres Road incarnation. I bought the next issue and then - no more. I'm not sure why. It was the whole "Desert Shield" era of the X-Men - Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio- and my money went there.

Frustratingly, that first part of The Skull On the Seas is not included in vol. 19 of the Dark Horse reprints- especially because it contains an extended visual chronicle of Conan's career to date, many elements of which are revisited in this first story-arc. But I was able to read the conclusion of the saga after twenty-five years!

Conan teams up with a Khitan (Chinese) pirate and his daughter in a power struggle between Conan's shadowy nemesis Thoth-Amon and Thulsa Doom , a skull-faced sorceror from the Kull canon.
The two wizards are vying for power over the Serpent-Men of Valusia. Conan  re-encounters the Black Corsairs, the man-serpents of Khemi and fights a great white shark.. The battle reaches its climax in the Hyborian version of Australia, where the indigenous people are enslaved by tailed hominids out of Tarzan the Terrible's Pal-Ul-Don.

Conan's quest into the heart of Ayers Rock/Uluru unleashes the Snake of Many Colours, the creator-god of Australian myth. The barbarian's germs, meanwhile, kill off the enslaved humans' tailed captors. A giant kangaroo and the talking serpent-god are bizarre and hard-to-swallow elements in an otherwise rambunctious adventure.

The second story arc The Witch Queen of Yamatai is an improvement as it takes Conan and his allies to Hyborian Age Japan. There's a flavour of You Only Live Twice as the Cimmerian beards the volcano lair of Nojinjo, the eponymous queen. She's kidnapped the young Emperor of Khitai and Conan faces storm demons, female samurai and the World-Tortoise itself in his rescue attempt.

In an epilogue, the witch-queen's magician-father drops Conan back in the Baracha Isles for the Treachery in Tortage arc. This storyline sets up The Treasure of Tranicos and introduces the rivalry of Strombanni and Black Zarono, who also features in Conan the Buccaneer ( see  https://materioptikon.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/isle-of-pirates-doom/)

After a fantastically debauched two-page spread of a tavern scene, Conan returns to the Temple of 1000 Gods in Messantia  (from CTB # 66-67) to fight a giant spider-statue. He gains two new supporting cast members also- the abducted lady Morganis and the teenaged Valeria ( who'll star in Red Nails). The Red Brotherhood of pirates is then tested by three "sirens"- votaries of a demon god and by a Zingaran invasion by the traitor Zarono and Morganis' husband. The adventure ends on a tragic note with the story of the death of a pirate's daughter. This story arc is surreal. frequently comic and melancholy.

The highlight of the volume is the reprint of SSOC 200. Barbarians of the Border counterpoints an exploit of Conan's with Robert E, Howard's youthful adventures in San Antonio. The flashbacks for Conan function as flash-forwards for Bob, who then feverishly types up The Phoenix on the Sword. It's a respectful and charming tribute to Conan's creator.

For most of this reprint collection, I felt I was reading the adventures of a character I knew well, expressed in a comfortingly familiar style.  The combination of Buscema and Ernie Chan, while not conveying the opulence and exoticism of the SSOC Buscema/Alacala team I fell in love with, is in tune with the Belit saga in the colour monthly of the mid-70s.

The collection ends, however, on a disappointing note with The Man in The Iron Tower. Conan is rescued from imprisonment by the adult Valeria in a set-up for the Aquilonian Rebellion that climaxes in the aforementioned  Phoenix on the Sword. It's a typically 90s story by MC Wyman with grisly, eye-popping strangulation, blinding and beheading. Happily, though, we're in for more classic Marvel barbarism in volume 20.


Upcoming posts in August will follow Conan into the City of Magicians and the Empire of the Undead. Watch for them, plus: Teen Titans; Vigilante and the Dummy; Classic Doctors and New Monsters.

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