Cimmerian September (nod to Michael K. Vaughan for coining that) continues here at A (Black) Gat in the Hand. Spooky season is right around the corner, so let’s combine a little horror with our Conan (albeit, of the Marvel variety). I have been reading Savage Sword of Conan lately. But earlier this year, I finished my reading of the first 115 issues of Conan the Barbarian. Those comprised Roy Thomas’ first run of the series, as he left Marvel. I wrote previously about how he brought Conan to Marvel.

He adapted several non-Conan stories, such as “The Marchers of Valhalla,” The Lost Valley of Iskander,” and “Black Canaan,” among many others.

“Sea Curse” appeared in the May, 1928 issue of Weird Tales. It recounted the death of a young girl and an ensuing curse, in the small coastal village of Faring. That same year, he also wrote another tale set in Faring, but it was rejected by both Weird Tales, and Ghost Story. There was also a short poem called The Legend of Faring Town, which first appeared in 1975.

That second story, “Out of the Deep,” finally found print in the November, 1967 issue of Magazine of Horror. Whereas “Sea Curse” is a tale of revenge, this one is a sea monster story. And the reason I chose this of the two is because Roy Thomas adapted it for Conan the Barbarian.

This one certainly has the supernatural elements that are required for a sword and sorcery tale. It’s a relatively short story, and the comic makes full use of the whole thing. So, let’s take a look at issue #69, from September, 1976.

Conan had joined Belit’s ship in issue #58, that prior January. Now, he corrects her statement that he had never seen the Western Sea before. This issue is a flashback to the one time he actually had, though not in a boat. We go all the way back to issue number two. Young Conan had fought for the Aesir vs. the Vanir. He ended up wandering on his own and was captured by a Vanir war party. Led by Lireigh, they marched for days to their sea-side village.

They arrive to find a young man named Fallon, on shore, drowned. He was to have married the chief’s daughter, Marga. Though it is his body, she swears the body is someone – or something – else. They dismiss her fears and take the body into his house, where she conducts a death watch over the body. An obnoxious rejected suitor named Gowar comes, says he doesn’t think it’s the Fallon he knew; then promptly gets his butt kicked by Conan.

Conan is chained to a stake at the water’s edge, and the sea talks to him menacingly at night. They all rush in to find Marga dead in Gowar’s arms, the body of Fallon gone. He insists it was a demon, not Fallon’s corpse they found. Remembering the sea’s words, Conan is the only one who suspects he may be right. Gowar says he came in to keep her company and saw Fallon open his eyes, get up, and take her in his arms. Whereupon she died. And she looked as if she had drowned.

Lireigh and Conan set out to investigate his claims. Conan finds Lireigh dead. As the villagers blame him or the escaped Gowar, another cry leads them to Gowar’s dead body, drowned on dry land. The locals panic and lock themselves in their homes. Conan prowls the streets until at the first light of dawn, Fallon comes down to the shore. Conan can see by its eyes that it is a sea demon.

Somehow Conan senses it must be back beneath the sea before sunrise, or it will die. And he is determined to stop it. They lock arms around each other, the battle full of sea aphorisms. Conan manages to overpower it “with a fury which, perhaps, only one who has never known the seas can wield against her or her kind.”

Conan breaks his enemy and he names it a merman. The sun’s rays strike it and the body dissolves into a pile of seaweed, with two eyes. With the villagers still locked in their homes, Conan leaves, unhindered. He was captured by the Hyperboreans a few weeks later, which was related in issue #2.

We snap back to the present, as he leans over the rail with Belit on The Tigress. He tells her that he did not know the monster had to return to the sea before the sun hit it, but that it was a sudden thought from nowhere. Maybe the sea itself had planted it, betraying her monster. It ends with some foreshadowing that Conan would meet the woman of the sea someday.

Thomas followed the original story pretty faithfully, substituting Conan for the unnamed narrator, who is a villager. He is the only person in the village who doesn’t lock himself up. He’s a local lad, not a prisoner, but that’s a logical change for Conan.

 

Howard’s story is a horror one, and Thomas and Marvel ‘softened it up a bit’ for  Conan comic. From the original story:

“Then stark horror fell like a thick fog on Faring Town. We clustered about the stocks, struck silent, till shrieks from a house on the outskirts of the village told us that the horror had struck again, and rushing there, we found red destruction and death. And a maniac woman who whimpered before she died that Adam Falcon’s corpse had broken through the window, flaming-eyed and horrible, to rend and slay. A green slime fouled the room and fragments of sea-weed clung to the window sill.

Then fear, unreasoning and shameless, took possession of the men of Faring town and they fled to their separate houses where they locked and bolted doors and windows and crouched behind them, weapons trembling in their hands and black terror in their souls. For what weapon can slay the dead?

And through that deathly night, horror stalked through Faring town, and hunted the sons of men. Men shuddered and dared not even look forth when the crash of a door or window told of the entrance of the fiend into some wretch’s cottage, when shrieks and gibberings told of its grisly deeds therein.”

THAT is some atmospheric writing!! Howard is second only to John D. MacDonald as my favorite writer, and I think he absolutely was a master of prose. His writing is often evocative, and stands out as far more than just ‘Pulp.’

It comes in at just a shade over five pages and is just about the same length as “Sea Curse.” It’s another solid story which Howard couldn’t sell during his lifetime, which is a shame.

Both stories are included in Del Rey’s The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, which I highly recommend.

Prior Conan Comic Posts
By Crom: Marvel, Roy Thomas, and The Barbarian Life 
Starr the Destroyer

---

Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, and founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXIII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.

---