Conan the Barbarian: Marvel Treasury Edition #4 by various artists and authors

 

(oversized pb; 1975: Marvel Comics graphic novel. Based on two of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories: “Rogues in the House,” originally published in January 1934, and “Red Nails,” originally published in July-October 1933. . . This oversized graphic novel is a collected reprint of several Marvel Comic comic book issues: Conan the Barbarian #11 [1971: “Rogues in the House”] and Savage Tales #2 and 3 [October and December 1973: “Red Nails”].)

 

Review, story by story

“Rogues in the House”: Betrayed by one of his many women (Jenna) after he “revenged” himself on “that priest of Anu,” Conan finds himself chained in a dungeon. An opportunity presents itself in the form of Murilo, a nobleman who offers to free Conan in exchange for the Cimmerian’s services as an assassin. Murilo’s stated target: Nabonidus, “red priest” and “master” of the unspecified city they’re in.

Conan accepts the offer, unaware that his liberator (Murilo) also has snuck into Nabonidus’s castle to make sure the targeted “man of science” meets a violent end—a mission further soured with a just-discovered horrific twist: Nabonidus is also a “wereman,” a giant ape creature calling itself Thak. Conan and Murilo immediately decide it’s best to flee the castle, as dealings with the supernatural rarely result in a survivable, positive outcome, something Conan knows all too well. They quickly find out escape is not an option for them.

Further twists in this illustrated tale make themselves known, making this fun, tightly penned and fast frame-paced comic, based on Robert E. Howard’s tale of the same name, originally published in Weird Tales magazine, January 1934.

Fans of Howard’s oeuvre might especially appreciate “Rogues”’s explicit reference to another Howard-penned Conan story, “The Tower of the Elephant,” originally published in Weird Tales in March 1933.

The artwork, perhaps because it was blown up for the oversized edition, has linework that is hazy, not solidly defined as well as slightly washed-out colors. This is not a complaint; I note this so readers of The Savage Sword of Conan magazine, which sports stellar, highly defined black and white artwork, don’t compare Savage to this more mainstream, less adult Marvel Treasury version.

 

“Red Nails [henceforth referred to as “Red”]”: Conan, trying to get into the loin cloth of a loath “Aquilonian she-pirate” (Valeria) he met in Sukmet, stalks her—he’s beguiled by her sword skills as much as he is by her wild beauty.

Just as she becomes aware of Conan’s creepy attentions, they sight a walled city in a barren plain. About the same time, Conan and Valeria fend off a horse-eating “dragon” (which looks like an uncommonly aggressive stegosaurus), compelling them to enter the mysterious, fortress-like city.

Upon entering the city-fort, Conan and Valeria encounter complicated dangers: they get caught in an intrametropolitan conflict between two feuding factions: the superstitious Xuchotl and the magick-wielding Xotalancs, whose long-term, internecine warfare is rooted in a broken brotherhood (Tecuhltli and Xotalanc’s), further betrayals and a seemingly ageless “witch,” Tascela.

“Red” is one of Howard’s most ambitious and character-complex Conan stories, even with its basic Hatfield/McCoys feud structure. Its original, print 1933 version, while impressive in intention, felt “weak. . . part of the reason for its disappointing delivery is because of its extended length—it’s a novelette, not a short story” (so I thought on 8/23/11, in my review of the print/story collection, Red Nails).

This Marvel Treasury Edition comic book version trims “Red”’s print-only excessive verbiage and length to its core, between its storytelling (if line-hazy and color faded) artwork and concise descriptions and dialogue. This makes the Marvel version of “Red” a better, more fun read, one that makes me appreciate Howard’s expansion of Conan’s world, along with his more fully realized characters, namely Valeria, whom even Conan recognizes as more than a beddable conquest by tale’s upbeat end.

(Valeria appears in director/co-screenwriter John Milius’s 1982 classic, Conan the Barbarian. Sandahl Bergman played the fierce “Aquilonian she-pirate.”)

This is a good, worth-owning read if you’re a Conan and/or early-1970s comic book fan.

“Red Nails” originally appeared in Weird Tales (July – October 1933, published in three serial parts).