Customer Reviews

The Chronicles of Conan, Vol. 5: The Shadow in the Tomb and Other Stories (v. 5)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After reading through the first four books of the Marvel Conan comics saga, I expected the version I grew up loving to start coming to life here, with penciler John Buscema now firmly on board alongside scripter Roy Thomas. New guy Buscema holds up his end of the bargain, but Thomas seems to be a bit lost.

Collecting issues #27 to #34 of the series, published in 1973-1974, the book shows Conan shaking off the dust of doomed Makkalet and taking on new opportunities. This includes somewhat forced duty as a soldier and spy for Turan, the country that crushed Makkalet and gave Conan much of his past grief. Thomas downshifts on his multiple-issue story arcs, with five stand-alone stories in a row, before a trip to distant Khitai is spread out over the final three installments.

First, though, Conan has to survive a fortress full of thieves and cutthroats. Issue #27, "The Blood of Bel-Hissar", taken from a great non-Conan story by Conan creator Robert E. Howard, is masterfully adapted by Thomas, Buscema, and company and represents an early peak for them. Conan must fend for himself in an environment where friends are secret enemies, seeming enemies not as they appear, and all are held together by violent lust for a blood-red ruby with a long trail of death behind it.

The problem with adapting Howard's non-Conan stories for Conan is that not all of them are good fits. That includes the next two stories featured here, "Moon Of Zembabwe" and "Two Against Turan". The first sticks Conan in the jungle to fight a giant gorilla, the second pits him with a wizard wanted by the law. Buscema's pencils are on fire, especially with swampy "Zembabwe", where he depicts the gruesome carcass of a headless snake in brilliant detail. But Thomas seems to be dog-paddling here, with Conan up against boring wizards plotting odd ends. In his Afterword, Thomas himself calls "Two Against Turan" a "fairly minor affair" which served mainly to get Conan in the service of Turan and thus in position for the next big development in the original Conan-Howard canon.

The dichotomy of great art and dishwater scripting continues with the next two installments, "The Hand Of Nergal" and "The Shadow Of The Tomb". "Nergal" is a story Howard wrote about Conan, only didn't finish. (Lin Carter did, years after Howard's death.) "Nergal" lacks the typical polish of a Howard-Thomas adaptation; too much mystical mumbo-jumbo about amulets and ghostly bats that kill without being killable. The art is even a let-down, with the final battle looking like its being fought in a vat of Pepto-Bismol.

"Shadow" is better. Maybe being forced to scramble when L. Sprague de Camp withdrew his permission for Marvel to adapt his Conan story kicked Thomas out of his rut. Here, for the first time, Conan's service for Turan develops into something moderately interesting, as a group of Turanians soldiers he is serving with are cornered into a cave by hill people and the standoff is to be settled by a mano-a-mano fight to the death. Guess who the Turanians pick to represent them? A drawn-out flashback sequence is the major debit here, tied in unconvincingly to the main story at the end.

The final three issues are also an adaptation, but of a non-Howard source, a novel by Norvell W. Page originally set in medieval Asia but here located in the Hyborean China-substitute of Khitai. It's one of Conan's most phantasmagoric adventures, but seems scripted almost entirely with visuals in mind. Seven wizards, color-coded for easy identification, rule the city of Wan Tangri with the help of mysterious flame winds. Conan, sent to spy by Turan, is soon on the run, battling an octopus and a tiger. Again, magic dominates the proceedings to a distracting extent.

I think Thomas was tailoring the stories at this point around his new heavy-hitter Buscema. Big John was delivering, but Conan was starting to get lost.

With Dark Horse securing the rights to turn Robert E. Howard's seminal sword & sorcery hero into a comic book for a new generation of fans, they began reprinting Marvel's original comic books written by Roy Thomas and drawn (mostly) by Barry Windsor-Smith (and Gil Kane). Since my original comic books are all sitting in sealed plastic and backing boards it was great to have these available without touching those classics with my bare hands. I was also impressed with the computerized coloring they came up with, and when Windsor-Smith's run ended with the stories collection in "The Chronicles of Conan, Volume 4" so did my interest in the reprints. But now there is reason to reconsider.

"The Chronicles of Conan, Volume 5: The Shadow in the Tomb and Other Stories" reprints issues #27-34 of Marvel's "Conan the Barbarian" comic book. Thomas is still at the helm, as he would be for the book's entire run, and John Buscema has taken over the penciling duties, with Ernie Chua as the primary inker. With Thomas continuing to adapt Howard's original stories, such as "The Blood of Belshazzar," it was Buscema's vision of a more muscular Conan that became the standard image of the barbarian, especially when Arnold Schwarzenegger played the role in a couple of movies.

What we have here to begin with are a series of one-issue stories. "The Blood of Bel-Hissar" finds Conan making his way across the desert and getting caught up in an effort to get an infamous blood jewel. "Moon of Zembabwei" has Conan fighting an ape-god in the jungle, while "Two Against Turan" takes place in the capital city of Aghrapur where Conan becomes involved in the intrigues of an ambitious wizard named Ormraxes before being "persuaded" to join the Turanian army. But most of "The Hand of Negral" is Conan dealing with palace intrigue in Yaralet rather than fighting with the troops. "The Shadow in the Tomb" has Conan's detachment trapped by hill men and before facing their champion in a duel to decide their fate, Conan recalls fighting his shadow as a lad (giving Buscema a chance to draw Conan with the horned helmet and three medallions of his youth that Windsor-Smith finally made a point of getting rid of).

The cover design here comes from the splash page of "Flame Winds of Lost Khitai," which is actually adapted from a Norvell Page novel. This is good because it finally means a multi-part story. Conan is given a mission to sneak into Khitai and deal with the Wizards of Wan Tengri. "Death and 7 Wizards" contains a nice two-page spread where Buscema gets to take Conan down memory lane again in terms of the Windsor-Smith years, as our hero ends up in the arena fighting for his life again. The story concludes in "The Temptress in the Tower of Flame," where Conan ends up getting out of Khitai alive having once again learned a lesson about why you never trust wizards when it comes to anything.

This (free) adaptation is the best story in the book but it is nothing special. But we know that Thomas and Buscema do not really hit their stride until they get to their epic "Queen of the Black Coast" storyline where they stretch out Howard's original story and flesh it out in detail. At this point they are figuring things out and Thomas is apparently too tightly wedded to adapting everything Robert E. Howard ever wrote in his entire life.

It took me a while to get used to the new digital coloring. It's not bad, just different. As for the artwork....You cannot go wrong with John Buscema(whom I personally prefer over Barry Windsor Smith). Buscema's Conan will always be how I see Conan in my mind's eye. It's how I envision him when I read the original Robert E. Howard stories as well. The stories are always good when Roy Thomas is at the helm, so we're covered there. You should buy all these editions reissued from Dark Horse, they're superb and I bought them all.

Loved Conan comics when I was younger and truly loved John Buscema's art work. Still love getting out the book every once in a while just to get away from reality for a few minutes. This collection of books presents the comics in color exactly the way I remember them.

From vol 5 onwards, these reprints start their inevitable decline due, I suspect, to deadline commitment. Thus every issue comes out in a bite-size format. Now and then, some plots are worked out over several issues and then they use "filler" material to pad out their commitment.

Without doubt, the Buscema/Chua artistic team has firmly fixed their visuals on this comic. This comic reprints various stand-alone single issue stories, culminating in a final 3 issue story, a commercial formula. Earlier, I had raved about these reprints finally giving me the background continuity to Conan's exploits. That continuity is starting to evaporate with this comic.

In the last comic, putting aside the "Red Nails" story which appeared out of context, Conan was last seen dealing with a wizard and his mirrors in the besieged Makkalet. Here, Conan is riding somewhere in a desert-like environment and rescues a soppy woman and encounters brigands in "The Blood of Bel-Hissar". Not a terrific story, there is an ambiguous ending in which the mute rides off in one direction, and Conan in the other direction, leaving the woman to the brigands.

The next story "Moon over Zembabwei" has him in a jungle environment where he encounters a supernatural ape-demon and rescues a soppy woman. Much has been written about the snake scene which is really no big deal.

The next story "Two against Turan" has him in a city battling a wizard. Boring. Even Thomas admitted that this story was a filler.

The "Hand of Nergal" story has a couple of trinkets turning into two demons in a cataclysmic fight of which Conan is merely an observer. Boring too. Naturally there is a soppy woman to succor to him.

The "Shadow in the Tomb" story is an OK story, about Conan being trapped with some Turanian soldiers by a band of brigand, and having to fight his way out of this trap. There is another parallel story about him finding an enchanted sword which ended up in the hand of the giant brigand. This was supposed to be an ironic twist of fate story, but it fell flat.

The last story about Conan going off to a bewitched city Tengri in far-off Khitai is really quite poor and ill-conceived. The colour coded 7 wizards and their colour coded warriors are completely uninteresting. Their costumes are awful. A meaningless sub-plot about disappearing gems stolen from these wizards is also a non-sequitur. The sequence with the woman with a skull is not-fathomable. Initially drawn as if she was a demoness with a skull, a later explanation is that she was the handmaiden of the sorceress wearing a skull mask. But somehow, Buscema drew it as if her face was a skull. If so, how come the handmaiden can cast sorcerous spells? Then the sorceress herself is drawn as a damned good-looking woman but Conan rejects her with the explanation that she must be worse than the seven displaced wizards. Why? Conan was the one who rescued her and restored her to the throne. As I said, this story really is poor and is rated 1 star, giving my overall rating for this comic as 2 star.

The new color wasn't too distracting after the first few pages. Otherwise, it was a treat to be able to re-read the old stories my dad used to bring home for me comic by comic 30 years ago.

I can't stand the computer recoloring of the entire Conan series by Dark Horse. While anything past volume 4 is dubious to be reprinted at best, the slick gloss paper piles the ink up on the page making the art just seem garish, destroying any reason I have to read past Barry Windsor-Smith's run.

Seek the now out of print Essential Conan.