Last December, we looked at the first issue of Sword of Sorcery — DC Comics’ new (as of December, 1972, that is) bi-monthly series featuring author Fritz Leiber’s fantasy fiction duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.  The debut of the two roguish heroes in their own title came five months after their introduction to DC readers in Wonder Woman #202, courtesy of writer Samuel R. Delany, artist Dick Giordano, and editor Denny O’Neil — the latter of whom, not so coincidentally, would be not only editing DC’s new sword-and-sorcery title (the company’s first ongoing effort in that genre), but scripting it, as well.  SoS #1’s art, meantime, was contributed by a young penciller named Howard Chaykin, with inks by the mysterious “Crusty Bunkers” (whom, as we’d soon learn, consisted of various talents working out of the Continuity Associates studio run by Neal Adams and Giordano.) 

Following the first issue’s adaptation of Leiber’s short story “The Price of Pain Ease”, issue #2 offered another such, as “Revenge of the Skull of Jewels” was based on Leiber’s “Thieves’ House”.  O’Neil and Chaykin were again the primary storytellers for this one, for which the Bunkers again supplied the inks (although an error led to them being unlisted in the book’s credits).  A more significant error led to issue #3’s “Betrayal!” carrying no credits whatsoever; according to issue #4’s letters column, the story (not a Leiber adaptation this time) was again by O’Neil, with art by Chaykin “and about a dozen of Howie’s artist pals” (per the Grand Comics Database, this group is likely to have included Bernie Wrightson, Michael Kaluta, Walt Simonson, and Alan Weiss, among others).

The primary subject of today’s post, issue #4, introduced a slight change in format, as the book offered not one but two stories.  The first of these was yet another Leiber adaptation — this time of “The Cloud of Hate”, a story originally published in the May, 1963 issue of Fantastic magazine:

Again, the script is by Denny O’Neil, while the art is credited to “Chaykin, Inc.”  Turning again to the Grand Comics Database, we find that both Walt Simonson and Sal Amendola are supposed to have helped out with the pencilling of this issue, while Amendola reportedly did all the inking.

Hypothesizing that this mysterious fog might also be in the business of stealing silver and gold, and that they might find such loot by trailing the phenomenon to its source, Fahhrd and the Gray Mouser follow their quarry out beyond the walls of the city, towards an encampment of traveling merchants. There, observing from cover, our heroes wait to see what will transpire next…

I think that the preceding scene is supposed to be funny, but it falls pretty flat, at least for this reader.  Why would anyone post such a useless idiot as a guard, if they were actually serious about guarding something?  (For the record, there’s no corresponding scene in Leiber’s original story.)

But, moving on… Faf and the Mouser proceed to enter the cave, and after traveling for some time through a dark tunnel, emerge into a large, torch-lit space, and are amazed…

I won’t hazard a guess as to which of our pencillers rendered page 9’s splash (though if you twisted my arm, I’d have to say Simonson), but it’s spectacular, in any case.

Fafhrd’s statement that the priest’s complaint on page 9 about there having been a lack of strife in recent times “explains” why things have been quiet in Lankhmar lately is, frankly, baffling, as it does no such thing.

Coming to his friend’s aid, Fafhrd is gratified to find that the cloud-tentacles are solid enough to be sliced through — still, that only provides a momentary respite for the pair, since, as the Mouser notes, their enemy has dozens more appendages where that one came from, “…and most bear weapons!”

Fafhrd and the Mouser seem to have forgotten about the mob of worshipers that presumably still lie between themselves and the cave entrance — but I guess that’s OK, because I’m pretty sure Denny O’Neil has forgotten about them, as well.

In our look at Sword and Sorcery #1 six months back, I noted that O’Neil’s adaptation of “The Price of Pain Ease” hit most of the story beats of Leiber’s original tale, but stripped out the underlying character motivations that made that adventure something more than a light-hearted romp.  Something of the same sort happens with his take on “The Cloud of Hate” where the whole point of the title — that the cloud-entity actually instills hatred in those it touches — is something we’re mostly told about, rather than shown.  In the source material, the reason that the rogues Gnarlag and Gis attack our heroes is that they’ve been infected by the cloud, so the fight has a point.  In this version, it’s just an extraneous, barely-motivated action scene, as superfluous in its way as the later “comic relief” bit with the guard.  I dunno… perhaps the story should have been retitled “The Cloud of Weapons-Wielding Tentacles”, since that seems to be what O’Neil was most interested in.

Oh, well; at least it looks nice, right?  An assessment which I’m happy to say also applies to the issue’s second story:

As with the issue’s lead story, “The Prophecy!” is scripted by Denny O’Neil, while the art — for anyone who might need help deciphering his dinosaur-shaped signature — is by Walt Simonson (whom, as we’ve noted, also anonymously assisted Howard Chaykin on the art for both “The Cloud of Hate!” in this issue and “Betrayal!” in the last one).

The 26-year-old Simonson (whose more-or-less contemporaneous self-portrait, dated Oct. 30, 1972, is shown at left) already had a four-year degree in geology from Amherst College behind him (he’d originally intended to go into paleontology to study — you guessed it — dinosaurs), as well as a second degree in art from the Rhode Island School of Design, when he broke in at DC Comics in the summer of 1972.  As he recalled decades later for an interview published in Comic Book Artist #10 (Oct., 2000):

The first day I went to DC, I walked into the coffee room there and, to the best of my memory, Bernie Wrightson, Michael Kaluta and Howard Chaykin were sitting around talking together.  I think Alan Weiss was also there, and they were all doing work for DC.  I knew all their work, and for some reason, Howard and I just hit it off, maybe because we were so different.

While his instant rapport with Chaykin led directly to his working for O’Neil on Sword and Sorcery, the artist’s earliest assignments at DC (officially speaking, at least) came from a couple of other editors: Joe Orlando (“Cyrano’s Army”, published in November, 1972 in the 10th issue of Orlando’s Weird War Tales, was Simonson’s first professional comic-book credit) and Archie Goodwin (who assigned him a couple of short stories that ran in Star Spangled War Stories #170 and #172, respectively).  The latter association with Goodwin would prove to have a dramatic impact on the young artist’s career… but more about that in a bit…

Fritz Leiber had been writing about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser off and on since the late 1930s, and had written one tale of the Mouser set prior to his first meeting with his partner-to be (“The Unholy Grail” [1962]), but had never explored the early days of Fafhrd until relatively recently, in 1970’s “The Snow Women”.  O’Neil thus had a basic foundation on which to write new stories of the heroes’ youths, but one that left him with a good deal of room for going his own way.

In his Comic Book Artist #10 interview, Simonson confessed that at the time he was helping out on Sword of Sorcery #3 he was so unsure of his ability to draw people (or, at least, people that he himself hadn’t designed) that he mostly limited his contributions to objects and backgrounds.  In Sword of Sorcery #4, his command of the human face and form seems quite assured — with the possible exception of the last panel on page 4, where, even allowing for foreshortening, Faf’s hands simply look too damn big.

“The Prophecy!” may be a slight story — of course, at a mere 6 pages (and the first of those a symbolic splash), you could argue that it could hardly have been anything else — but O’Neil’s script gets the job done; and Simonson’s art is impressive throughout, with the expressions he gives the long-faced Fafhrd being particularly charming.

And the young artist’s success here was a good portent for the immediate future, as with the very next issue of Sword of Sorcery he’d be taking over as penciller of the title’s lead feature.  What happened to Howard Chaykin, you ask?  Considering the difficulties he’d had in getting a complete job of pencils done solo for the last three issues, you might hazard a guess that the young artist had come to the conclusion that the book’s bi-monthly schedule was just too much of a challenge.  But you’d be wrong — at least if we’re to judge by what he actually did next.  Because Chaykin’s very next gig would involve his taking on even more of the work of producing an ongoing bi-monthly comic for DC, with August, 1973 bringing the release of Weird Worlds #8, featuring the book-length debut of “Ironwolf” — a new strip created by Chaykin, for which he’d handle the complete art (at least at the beginning) as well as the plotting (though the scripting, as well as editing, would be by Denny O’Neil).

We’ll have more to say about Weird Worlds #8 in a couple of months, but we’ll go ahead and close out our coverage of Sword of Sorcery with this post, beginning by noting that issue #5’s lead story, “The Sunken Land”, was another Fritx Leiber adaptation, once again scripted by O’Neil (in probably his most successful effort at capturing the essence of one of Leiber’s stories); in addition to being pencilled by Simonson, it was inked by a recent arrival in NYC from Detroit, Al Milgrom; Milgrom also inked the issue’s backup feature, “The Mouse Alone!”, a tale of the Gray Mouser’s early days (back when he was known as Mouse) that took Leiber’s “The Unholy Grail” as its starting point in the same way that issue #4’s “The Prophecy!” had “The Snow Women”.  This one was scripted by George Alec Effinger, a young science fiction writer who’d recently done some work for Marvel, and pencilled by a friend of Milgrom’s from Detroit named Jim Starlin, who’d been quite busy at Marvel in recent months, but who was making his DC Comics debut with this story.

It was a good issue — though not quite good enough to stave off cancellation.  Sword of Sorcery #5 would prove to be not only the final issue of the series, but also the last stab DC would take at a sword-and-sorcery title for the next year and a half.  Still, none of the principal creative talent involved on the series would go hurting for work; while Effinger opted to concentrate on prose SF henceforth, his collaborators on “The Mouse Alone!”, Starlin and Milgrom would find themselves ever busier at Marvel.  Chaykin, naturally, would be occupied with “Ironwolf” (at least while it lasted), and O’Neil would also be kept busy writing (and sometimes editing) a variety of features at DC, with perhaps the most notable being The Shadow.  As for Simonson, he was already collaborating with Archie Goodwin (the latter serving as scripter as well as editor) on a new strip called “Manhunter”, which began its seven-issue run in Detective Comics with issue #437, released in July.  (Fear not, we’ll have more to say about both The Shadow and “Manhunter” in future posts — the former as early as next month, the latter [alas] a few months later.)

Comic-book readers hadn’t seen the last of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, either, although they’d have to wait until 1990 for the roguish duo’s next foray into the graphic story medium. In that year, Marvel (under its Epic imprint) would release a four-issue miniseries offering adaptations of seven of Fritz Leiber’s stories, as pencilled by Mike Mignola (who also drew the covers), inked by Al Williamson, and scripted by… Howard Chaykin.  Among issue #3’s adaptations was “The Price of Pain Ease”, which Chaykin had of course previously illustrated from O’Neil’s script in Sword of Sorcery #1; somewhat ironically (if not really surprisingly), his own script proved considerably more faithful to its source material than its 18-year-old predecessor.   Funny how things work out sometimes…