Marvel Comics Vol. 1, Issue 116, of “Conan The Barbarian,” contains
the story “Crawler in the Mist,” written by Len Wein (along with some help from
J. M. DeMatteis). Conan falls off his
horse, is bitten by a snake, and manages to suck out most of the venom before
he passes out. When he awakens, he finds
himself shackled to a scrawny, old trader named Rasto, who intends to take him
to the market, where he will sell him as a slave. Conan quickly reverses Rasto’s perspective as
to who holds the power over whom in the situation. It’s an example of one of the things Conan does so well, by showing how the laws and customs we so carefully construct
often fail to protect us, distort our concept of justice, and dull our sense of
compassion.
There’s another aspect of Conan I love, and that’s how the
Hyborian Age often combines Fantasy and Science Fiction elements in a weird yet
compelling way. The two men arrive at a
city haunted by “a hideous creature that prowls its streets by night.” This creature, beautifully drawn by John
Buscema and Neal Adams, and colored by George Roussos, knocks Conan down, grabs
Rasto, and carries him off. True to his
sense of justice and responsibility for others, Conan takes off after the
creature, to free his would-be captor from its clutches. He discovers that the creature is not a
mindless beast, but a sentient being from another world, who has traveled to
Earth for a complex and noble purpose.
The monster even reveals that it is more humane than the majority of
humans, when Conan discovers how it cares for the aging and infirm people in
the city.
This willingness to confront complex issues, and combine
different literary genres, is not original to Wein, but can be traced
back to Conan’s creator, Robert E. Howard.
In “The Tower of the Elephant,” (one of the first handful of Conan
stories Howard wrote), Conan is a young man visiting the city of Zamora. Taurus of Nemedia convinces Conan to partner
with him, sneak inside the tower, and steal some of the tower’s fabled
jewels. Conan fights off the expected,
normal dangers, as well as ones familiar to traditional Fantasy. But when he reaches the heart of the complex,
he discovers a humanoid biped with a head, ears, and trunk like that of an
elephant. The monster tells Conan he
hails “from the green planet Yag, which circles for ever in the outer fringe of
this universe. We swept through space on
mighty wings that drove us through the cosmos quicker than light…but we could
never return, for on earth our wings withered.”
The creature describes his former civilization, relates the history of
his people on earth, and tells how he has been captured and tortured by the
human wizard Yara to secure his own power.
Leave it to Conan to restore justice to the situation, even if he must
flee the tower no richer than when he arrived.
Just like good Fiction, people are often more complex than
they appear. Individuals that look plain
and ordinary often hide a wealth of complexity.
Sometimes, others seem so alien that they might as well hail from
another planet. The refined view is that
it’s safer and better to leave them to their own kind, and not “get
involved.” But Conan is simple, and
because he is simple, he sees through the web of deceits that often obscure a
situation. He may not be an angel, but
unlike many more complex people, he usually acts to resolve the problem,
prompted by his notion of justice, and his sense of compassion.
Maybe that’s why Conan, for all his rough edges, has
become such a beloved character in books, comic books, on TV, and in the cinema.
Dragon Dave
P.S. The Coming of
Conan the Cimmerian, a collection of Robert E. Howard’s early Conan stories,
was edited by Patrice Louinet, and contains beautiful illustrations by Mark
Schultz. If you’re new to Conan, have
only encountered him through comic books, have only read the stories written by
others, or read the stories edited (and in some cases finished) by L. Sprague
de Camp, you owe it to yourself to check out this volume and discover the pure,
unadulterated Robert E. Howard. I think
you’ll like him.
