Conan Reviews: Conan the Barbarian 31, Conan the Barbarian 32

Conan the Barbarian #31 – “The Shadow in the Tomb” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan

This one starts with Conan serving as a mercenary with a cohort of Turanian soldiers. They’re looking for rebel hill tribes and find them soon enough, when the hill-men ambush them near some rocky cliffs. Conan is in the middle of the fight (naturally), but the Turanians are badly outnumbered so their captain (Malthuz) orders a retreat into the rocky hills. They find a cave and shelter there, wondering if the hill tribes will attack or just wait for them to starve. But the hill-men’s leader (Hobar) suggests they settle their differences by each choosing a champion to fight one-on-one. If the Turanian champion wins, the hill-men will let them leave peacefully, but if he loses … Malthuz figures it’s better than starving in the cave and elects himself the Turanian champion, even though the hill-men’s champion is a giant of a man called Toruk. Conan overhears Malthuz wishing he had a magic sword to fight with and Conan has a flashback to something that happened to him a few years ago, soon after he’d left Cimmeria. He was fleeing some Vanir hunters when he ran into a bear and had to fight for his life. Conan killed the bear but broke his sword and ended up in a cavern, half frozen. He kindled fire and saw the cavern wasn’t empty; there was a tomb with some strange writing on it and a skeletal arm emerging from the tomb holding a sword. Conan was wary of the tomb, but needed a new sword so he tried to take it. His misgivings proved true when his own shadow came to life and attacked him. He fought it and realized a shadow couldn’t exist without light, so he fed the fire until it burnt bright enough to chase away all the shadows. As the fire raged and began to consume everything, Conan dove outside with the sword. Thinking it cursed, he threw it back into the fire and got as far away from that place as he could. Back in the present, the time for the duel approaches and Conan knocks Malthuz out so he can take his place as champion. Conan fights Toruk, who’s too strong even for the mighty barbarian. But Conan lures him close to a teetering rock outcropping and dumps it on the giant’s head. The hill-men leave and Conan contemplates the battle, wondering if he’d have had an advantage if he still had that enchanted blade from the tomb. As Conan walks away, we see a sword slip from Toruk’s lifeless hand … the same enchanted sword that featured in Conan’s flashback. This is a decent story that gives us a flashback to Conan’s younger years. It was originally supposed to be based on a story by L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter called “The Thing in the Crypt”, but De Camp was apparently hesitating about letting Roy adapt his work, so Roy had to make up his own flashback tale out of whole cloth. Later, De Camp relented and Roy did end up adapting “The Thing in the Crypt”, which is a little weird since he considered both stories to be canon, despite being rather similar. There’s a scene in the first Conan movie where Conan finds a sword in the clutches of a skeleton and takes it. Naturally, anyone familiar with this story (Or the De Camp/Carter version) was expecting the skeleton to come to life, but nothing happened … which was kind of a cool way to screw with the audience’s expectations. I liked the ending of this story, where we see that a magic sword doesn’t necessarily bring victory.

Conan the Barbarian #32 – “Flame Winds of Lost Khitai” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan

This one starts with Conan hiding in a cart full of wool that’s being taken to the city of Wan Tengri, in the eastern kingdom of Khitai. Everyone is hastening to get inside the city before the “flame winds” blow from out of the desert, but a city guard doesn’t trust the peasant (Kassar) who’s helping Conan and decides to stick his spear into the bundles of wool. Despite being cut by the spear, Conan remains silent and the cart is allowed into the city. Conan reflects on why he’s here and we get a quick flashback to a garrison commander named Narim-Bey assigning him to check out Wan Tengri, a city that lies near the border with Turan and was taken over by a coterie of wizards a few months back. King Yildiz wants to know if this new regime will prevent Turan from conquering Wan Tengri. Conan gives Kassar a pouch full of gold and heads into the city, disturbed to see the flames the people fear are shooting from the top of a tower inside the city. Conan jumps a merchant to take his money but a disembodied voice commands him to say where he is, just as the flames dip down towards him. City guards converge on him, led by the voice, but Conan ignores his fear of wizardry and takes off, eluding the guards by climbing. He makes his way to the house of a fence named Tsien Hui to sell some of the gems he took from the merchant. But the gems vanish and Tsien Hui says Conan must’ve robbed one of Wan Tengri’s seven ruling wizards in disguise. (The fact that the wizards like to go forth disguised as ordinary citizens keeps crime rates low, since everyone is afraid they might accidentally rob a wizard … as Conan apparently has done.) Conan suspects Tsien Hui of robbing him, but finds no gems on his person. The city guards show up and Conan fights them, giving Tsien Hui time to run away. Conan tries to follow him and ends up in a harem full of beautiful women. One offers him gems (supposedly from Tsien Hui) and another says she can lead him to safety. Since the guards are still after him, Conan agrees to follow the woman, although it seems she might have some sort of hypnotic influence on him. She dives into the pool and leads him along an underwater passage, but stops and starts kissing him partway through. She soon turns into an octopus woman and tries to strangle him. Conan fights back, closing his eyes to keep her hypnotic power from affecting him and finally killing her. He swims for the end of the passage, just making it before running out of breath. Conan crawls out of a pool outside and collapses, not seeing a strange figure climbing down from the roof and approaching him. This is the first Conan story not based on a tale by Robert E. Howard or a pastiche by De Camp and Carter. This story is based on a novel (which was originally published in three parts in Unknown Magazine) called “Flame Winds” by Norvell Page about a heroic character named Prester John and his adventures in the Far East. The novel is so long that Roy split the story into three parts, so we’ll see those next week. Roy stuck fairly closely to the novel’s plot, but changed a few of the details (apparently Prester John really liked cutting people’s hands off, so I guess he wasn’t based on the mythological Christian hero by the same name … or maybe he was!) and added the fight with the octopus woman since he figured a sword & sorcery tale needed some sorcery. We’re not supposed to know for sure whether the woman really did turn into an octopus or if it was just an illusion; apparently Roy doesn’t even recall which version is true, so I guess it’s whatever the reader thinks. I’m leaning toward the transformation being real, but others may disagree.