Artists sometimes are most inspired when the world is caving in around them. The need to make sense of the suffering and chaos, or simply wail against the tide, can manifest itself in outstanding work.
Is that why it seems in writing his stories of Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard saved the best for last? Brilliant as his Conan stories typically are, I don’t know any that holds up as well as “Red Nails,” his final work which caps this third Del-Ray collection of Conan stories.
Yet I still prefer the first volume, The Coming Of Conan, and middle volume The Bloody Crown Of Conan over this. Howard may still offer Conan in all his glory, but the barbarian has shed his familiar world of prior creations for a starker, deeply alien setting. And the yarns Howard spins, while every bit as taut, are more gnarled and knotty.
Howard himself was in rough shape in 1935-36, when these works came into being. According to Patrice Louinet in a postscript to this volume, the writer’s struggles included a dying mother, a faltering romance, and a fading connection to his Conan character. Louinet writes: “…this time the Texan opted for a definitely American setting, at the price of an eviction of the Cimmerian himself from his Hyborian world.”
If you pluck the barbarian out of that world, can he survive? Let us see how Howard did in these final accounts of his most famous creation.
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| A map of the world of Conan, prepared for a 1986 Marvel Comics "Savage Sword Of Conan" feature. The locations of stories featured in this volume are found on the corners rather than in the middle of the vast continent. Image from https://comiccartography.tumblr.com/post/74295844222/the-hyborian-age-of-conan-artist-unknown-someone |
“The Servants Of Bit-Yakin” – The collection begins with a more typical tale. Conan is employed as a mercenary commander of Keshan, where a fabled treasure attracts his thieving interest. To steal it, he journeys to a remote mountain hideout where he is confronted by a reanimated dead woman and the title creatures, foul goblins who live off the bodies of whatever they scavenge from the subterranean waters.
Everything about this story reflects adherence to formula: monsters, magicks, near-naked woman, and a constant blur of action. It is all delivered with assurance, humor, and subtle craft, a solid adventure story. But there is something else here, too: the shards of a lost and broken civilization to ponder:
Crouching in the deep velvet-black shadows of the bushes, he scrutinized the great jet of rock which stood out in bold relief in the moonlight. It was covered with strange, grotesque carvings, depicting men and animals, and half-bestial creatures that might have been gods or devils. The style of art differed so strikingly from that of the rest of the valley, that Conan wondered if it did not represent a different era and race, and was itself a relic of an age lost and forgotten…
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| Conan's journey in "Servants Of Bit-Yakin" begins with Conan discovering and reading an ancient scroll. Howard writes: "Many a sheltered scholar would have been astonished at the Cimmerian’s
linguistic abilities, for he had experienced many adventures where knowledge of
a strange language had meant the difference between life and death." Image by P. Craig Russell from https://www.scifiwright.com/2020/04/conan-jewels-of-gwahlur/ |
According to Louinet, the story was inspired by a visit Howard made to the Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico, which in turn prompted a realization by the author that Conan’s adventures might benefit from an American setting. That was clear enough in his next Conan story.
“Beyond The Black River” – Conan is a “forest-runner” scouting for an army of civilized Aquilonians living on the border of savage Pictdom, and soon becomes aware something bad is about to happen. Once-warring tribes are beginning to unite against the white pioneers. Though ever-conscious of his own savage roots, Conan aligns himself with the settlers and does what he can to staunch an uncontainable foe.
This is widely praised as another first-rate Conan story. I find it darker than most, but very exciting and layered in its construction with brilliant transitions and a philosophical undercurrent of civilization as a pale disguise for mankind’s primal, crueler essence.
The hang-up for me is that it isn’t a Conan story. It’s a western repurposed to the frontiers of Conan’s known world, with Picts shoehorned in as American Indian stand-ins, only wilder:
Beyond the river the primitive still reigned in shadowy forests, brush-thatched huts where hung the grinning skulls of men, and mud-walled enclosures where fires flickered and drums rumbled, and spears were whetted in the hands of dark, silent men with tangled black hair and the eyes of serpents.
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| The men who defend the Black River from the attacking Picts are outnumbered and, Howard suggests, too civilized to hold out. Observes Conan: “Someday they’ll try to sweep the settlers out of Conajohara. And they
may succeed. Probably will succeed. This colonization business is mad, anyway.” Above, an illustration by Gregory Manchess from https://www.blackgate.com/2019/04/01/hither-came-conan-keith-j-west-on-beyond-the-black-river/ |
There is nothing wrong with how Howard employs Western elements in his Conan story. The settlers take refuge in a doomed fort, while Conan and his young comrade Balthus race down a road to warn settlers of the danger just behind them. There is even an evil shaman who summons beasts from the wild. Great stuff, and yet the overarching message of doom hangs heavy, even for a series that ain’t lollypops and sunshine.
“The Black Stranger” – It’s more of the same here, literally, as Conan seems to arrive at the beginning 15 minutes after escaping “Beyond The Black River.” This time we are even further out west, well beyond the reach of civilization, which is how Count Valenso wants it. But his past is coming for him, taking no prisoners.
How to describe this one? Not only is it not set in Conan’s world, but the Cimmerian himself is absent for much of it. Instead, Valenso must vie with a pair of rival pirates who seek what they believe is the count’s hidden treasure, not to mention that figure from his past, and those Picts again, which always get riled up at the wrong time.
Like all the tales here, “The Black Stranger” has some fine, atmospheric prose: “The sun sank in a wallow of crimson, touching the tips of the black waves with blood. Fog crawled out of the sea and lapped at the feet of the forest, curling around the stockade in smoky wisps.”
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| "The Black Stranger" was rejected by "Weird Tales" in 1935 and recycled without Conan under the title "Swords Of The Red Brotherhood." After Howard's death, Conan was put back in and it was published as "The Treasure Of Tranicos." Marvel Comics adapted it in December 1979. Image from https://twitter.com/conancomicbooks/status/1162846774052216833 |
But is it a pirate story, or a Conan story, or another Pict/Western hybrid? Each of these elements is teased out, but the plot never settles on a formula. More problematically, it is very long, with a lot of confusing subplots to sort out, including one involving Valenso’s female ward and her waif companion that reveals Howard at his most mawkishly fey and uncomfortably sentimental.
“The Man-Eaters Of Zamboula” – When Conan is offered to some local cannibals by a duplicitous innkeeper, you know that someone has bitten off more than they can chew. Throw in a naked dancing girl and a mesmerist backed by a giant muscleman, and you have the bones for a good Conan story, if nothing more than that.
Probably the least popular story in this collection, I actually liked “Man-Eaters” more than I did “Black Stranger,” if only for its utter simplicity and constant motion. Also, more than any other tale here, it is recognizably set in Conan’s established world, even if on a kind of remote cultural crossroads without a firm identity of its own:
“Nay, in this accursed city which Stygians built and which Hyrkanians rule – where white, brown and black folk mingle together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds – who can tell who is a man, and who a demon in disguise?”
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| Howard knew the secret for getting a prize cover placement in Weird Tales - find a place for a naked woman quivering with fear. Thus is the climactic battle set up in "Man-Eaters Of Zamboula," printed in 1935 under the title "Shadows In Zamboula." Image from https://comics.ha.com/itm/pulps/horror/weird-tales-november-1935-popular-fiction-condition-vg-/a/40155-81619.s |
Conan’s cleverness at story’s end is a saving grace, but much of this tale seems designed to please his publisher at Weird Tales, who wanted images of terrorized, underdressed ladies for the cover to boost flagging sales. Whatever his motives, Howard can’t help but keep you reading.
“Red Nails” – This was Howard’s last Conan story, completed just a year before his suicide and published after his death. As such, it unfairly carries the accumulated weight of Howard’s reputation, and yet does so with no drag or strain. From first to last, it is one of the most exciting, solidly designed, yet thoroughly moody stories you will ever find.
It is also something else, a moving valediction not only to the world of Conan, but to fantasy adventure, a genre Howard left behind after this to focus on humor-filled westerns for the rest of his short life. In its very outsized passion, its focused exploration of a world gone mad, “Red Nails” questions not only the point of civilization, but the hollow nature of the adventuring life.
Conan and his wary companion, Valeria, travel to a strange city where they soon discover a generations-long civil war is underway. The combatants live only to kill each other, relishing whatever tortures they inflict. As the city’s inhabitants have been whittled down by fighting, powerful Conan and the formidable swordswoman Valeria are able to tilt the scales – but who or what are they really helping?
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| "Red Nails" was an early success in the Marvel treatment of Conan stories. The credit indicates it was "adapted with aplomb" by writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor Smith, which is no exaggeration, for the pages of "Savage Sword Of Conan" issues #2 and #3. Image from https://alchetron.com/Red-Nails |
The city, nameless because its builders have long vanished, is constructed as an endless indoor affair with hallways that serve as streets and skylights and gemstones providing eerie illumination: The whole city is built like one giant palace under one great roof.
It is like some bloated shopping mall before its time, but also a grim take on the world of violence Conan has inhabited since the beginning. Too much carnage, even for him. “Aye, we kept the life in him until he screamed for death as for a bride,” brags a Conan ally about a victim.
Brilliantly developed, with several ingenious twists and a flirtatious camaraderie between Conan and Valeria, “Red Nails” builds and builds. This ersatz-Mesoamerican society is again strikingly different from the world Howard painstakingly created for Conan in his earlier stories, yet this time that uprootedness sharpens a sense of desperation and despair that makes it fitting for Howard’s last Conan tale.
The Conquering Sword Of Conan also includes several earlier drafts of stories featured in this collection, a map of Conan’s world Howard drew himself, and a couple of drafts of an unfinished story, “Wolves Beyond The Border,” which features the same wilderness encountered in “Beyond The Black River” a little later. Conan is mentioned in “Wolves Beyond The Border,” but does not appear.
Finally, nods must be given to Gregory Manchess, whose illustrations suggestive of the work of N. C. Wyeth are terrific in their own unique way, suggesting classic storybooks of old. Everything about this volume demands a different response from that of the Conan we knew before, but Manchess’s work requires the least adjustment to appreciate.
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| "Her last impression, as she sank into slumber, was of his muscular figure, immobile as a statue hewn out of bronze, outlined against the low-hanging stars..." Above, a Gregory Manchess illustration from the "Red Nails" section of the book. Image from https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1432414 |
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