In this post, we’ll be looking at the third chapter in Marvel Comics’ 1976 five-part crossover between Conan the Barbarian and Marvel Feature, featuring Red Sonja — though this issue’s status as such is completely ignored by the cover, which, nice as the illustration by Gil Kane and Pablo Marcos is, gives no indication whatsoever of the She-Devil with a Sword’s role therein, either by image or blurb-text.
Panel from Conan the Barbarian #52 (Jul., 1975). Text by Roy Thomas; art by John Buscema and Tom Palmer.
On the other hand, one of Conan’s word-balloons (previously a rarity on CtB covers, one might note) does mention another woman’s name — that of “Tara”. And those of us who’d been reading the book for a while would recognize that as the name of the daring young acrobat whom our barbarian protagonist had first encountered back in issue #52, and whom he’d last seen in #57, right before taking up with Bêlit, the pirate queen of the Black Coast. Was the typically underdressed, generic cover girl featured in Kane and Marcos’ illo supposed to be the same Tara? If so, her fashion sense had certainly changed since the old days, when she’d preferred to rock a green-and-purple jester-type outfit (see right).
As we’d learn from the story contained within, this was indeed the same Tara — and things had definitely changed for her, although the impression made by her cover attire was more than a little misleading. But we’ll get to all that soon enough; first, however, let’s turn to the comic’s opening splash page, where regular readers — whether of Conan the Barbarian, Marvel Feature, or both — found themselves looking upon a familiar scene:
From Marvel Feature #6 (Sep., 1976).
From Conan the Barbarian #66 (Sep., 1976).
The tableau we see on this first page, with Conan and Bêlit confronting Red Sonja over a page from the iron-bound Book of Skelos, had already appeared twice — once as drawn in Marvel Feature #6 (not, as the credits box rather amusingly misstates, “RED SONJA #6“) by Sonja’s regular artist, Frank Thorne, the other as drawn for Conan #66 by this book’s current art team, John Buscema and the Tribe (the latter of whom were comprised of Filipino artist Tony DeZuñiga and such other illustrators as were working in his studio at any given time) — and all three featuring identical dialogue from writer/editor Roy Thomas. Even so, given that some readers might be coming in late, one can see why, as Thomas puts it in his 2019 book book Barbarian Life: A Literary Biography of Conan the Barbarian, Volume Two, “it seemed advisable, almost inevitable” to open this third chapter with the very same scene that had ended the first two. And it’s not as though the three renditions of the scene aren’t very distinct artistic compositions from one another — as will hopefully be made clear by our comparative presentation of all three together, here.
But now, to continue with our story…
And so Red Sonja launches into a tidy recap of the events of Marvel Feature #6, explaining how she was hired by Karanthes, priest of Ibis, to travel to Messantia and acquire the precious page from the Book of Skelos for him. She relates how she came through the sewers, fighting and slaying a trio of albino crocodile men along the way, then “found the long-neglected doorway which led to this very temple. I heard voices beyond…”
And now, of course, it’s time for another recap — this time of Conan the Barbarian #66 — as Conan tells Sonja the tale of how he and Bêlit were themselves charged by the Messantian merchant Publio to assay the theft of the page; and also how, soon after arriving at the temple, they almost mistakenly killed each other thanks to the magical illusions cast by its priestly caretaker, though fortunately (and obviously) they escaped that dire fate…
Yeah, Bêlit versus Red Sonja! This is what we wanted to see (and what should have been the cover scene, in my humble opinion). Alas, it’s over all too quickly…
By the time Conan recovers the sliced-off but still-flaming head of the torch, Red Sonja is gone — and what’s more, she’s bolted the door to this chamber from the other side. So Conan leads Bêlit back out the way they came, through the front entrance — and soon, near one of the sewer system’s large pipes, they find a waiting horse which Conan is certain must be Sonja’s. Bêlit doesn’t see what good this does them, since the Hyrkanian swordswoman surely won’t return for her mount as long as she and Conan are hanging around. But her lover tells her she’s mistaken: “Sonja is a horsewoman as well as a soldier. Without a horse, she’s like a legless centaur!”
In Barbarian Life, Roy Thomas describes how, when writing this issue, he felt impelled to tie up “a couple of loose ends” in regards to Tara and Yusef. From this reader’s perspective, I’m not sure that move was at all necessary — or even advisable.
Back in issue #57, we’d seen Conan get himself in trouble with the Messantian criminal justice system for refusing to rat out Yusef. As far as we knew at the time, Conan’s actions had been sufficient to keep his young friends out of trouble; if, as we now learn, the young soldier ended up being arrested and thrown into prison regardless, Conan’s gallant gesture (which, you may remember, Thomas derived from a passage in Robert E. Howard’s short story “Queen of the Black Coast”) looks in retrospect to have been fairly pointless. Or so it strikes me, anyway.
Also, while I realize that Tara’s getting pregnant very soon after she and Yusef first started sleeping together, and thus having to trade in her green-and-purple acrobat’s costume for maternity wear in the same colors (!), is perhaps more “realistic” than a scenario in which Tara could keep kicking up her heels (and even occasionally kicking ass) as she and her lover got on with their adventurous lives, I can’t help but wish Thomas had just left well enough alone. (Though I suppose it could have been worse; at least Tara has been spared the “scantily clad damsel in distress” fate that was indicated by this issue’s cover. So I’ll try to be grateful for small mercies.)
The hill-bred Cimmerian easily scales the castle wall, takes out the one guard patrolling the parapet, and steals within… but remains completely unaware of the hooded Stygian with the striped cat, who has followed him here and continues to observe events from a distance…
The cat-man lands on his feet, then springs again to the attack; but even as he does, Conan retrieves his dropped sword and thrusts upward…
As anyone who’s read many Roy Thomas stories knows, the man loves his literary references. I have to confess that this one would have escaped me entirely, had Thomas not called it out himself in Barbarian Life:
The man-tiger of the title… allowed me (in captions over the corpse of the beast, as it reverts to human form) to have fun paraphrasing a line from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: “And it really was a cat, after all.”
(Actually, the line is from Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and the key word there is “kitten”, not “cat”. Still, close enough.)
Conan’s luck continues to hold, as he and the weakened Yusef encounter just two more guards as they make their exit; a lucky one whom Conan merely knocks unconscious, and a less fortunate fellow whom he runs through with his blade…
As best as I’ve been able to determine, this is the last we’ll ever see of Tara and Yusef in any Conan comics, so let’s wish them and their little bundle-of-joy-to-be all the best, OK? Who knows, Tara may even get to wear pants again, some day. (Let your own headcanon be your guide.)
As for Conan, Bêlit, and Red Sonja — well, now that we’ve got this largely irrelevant little interlude out of the way, maybe we can get back to this storyline’s main business, i.e., the Quest for the Page from the Iron-Bound Book of Skelos. We’ll see soon enough, when we take a look at Marvel Feature #7 (no, Roy, not “RED SONJA #7“, jeez), just a couple of weeks from now — and then, not long after that, we’ll be back to cover the wrap-up of the whole thing in Conan the Barbarian #68, as we see our Cimmerian star come face-to-face (and sword-to-sword) with… King Kull!? Now how’s that going to work, considering that those two heroes are supposed to have lived many thousands of years apart? I guess we’ll all find out together, sometime in August.
Solid drawing from John Buscema, as should be expected, and some very subtle *improvements* in the ladies’ faces and expressions by inkers Tony DeZuñiga and the Tribe. Steranko has joked that John B only drew one (type of young) woman throughout his comics career, and the inks have given their faces a bit of nuance the pencils didn’t have.
The backgrounds in this issue are perfunctory, though. Rather generic “medieval” with nothing particularly intricate or atmospheric.
When the Tara character shows up she looks completely anachronistic in this “Hyborian” age, more like a 20th century refugee from one of the World Wars.
I guess Buscema was recently watching Burt Lancaster in the 1952 “The Crimson Pirate” when he attired the Man-Tiger character. Again, the result seems out of step with this fantasy age between the fall of Atlantis and the rise of modern civilizations:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/7fcf8475243e3793ddcd54ae04f8b16e/tumblr_mkj150YaGK1qgpddwo1_r1_1280.jpg
Byrne exceeded Buscema when it came to drawing the same faces over and over again. Anyone who missed that just had to look at the Handbook page with all his head shots of Avengers.
Romita Sr., too. And so many other artists on super-hero titles in the golden and silver age, and some bronze. Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson, etc.
I’d say that part of the problem was that economics demanded quantity over quality for many artists in those generations. To match the volume of either Buscema, Kirby, Romita and later Byrne, there tended to be a limited number of faces. That’s also noted in the physiques of the men and women characters. More pages simply meant more jobs and more money.
Ironically, the sameness of the Caucasian super-hero face of most 1960s comic books was actually a *selling point* for Hasbro’s Captain Action and Action Boy figures which could change into any number of super-heroes and their sidekicks:
https://hero-envy.blogspot.com/2017/12/captain-action-first-and-greatest-super.html?m=1
Have bum chin, will travel!
I loved Captain Action dolls (sorry, action figures.) I remember hounding my poor Grandfather to take me to numerous stores trying to find the elusive Batman outfit. To no avail, always sold out!
As good an explanation for those vertically striped pants as we are likely to ever get.
I mean, he is a shirtless were-cat jailer working alone in a closed environment. You would not expect him to spend much time with thoughts of expressing a distinctive fashion sense. And if he did, odds are that the colors of choice would not be white and magenta.
Darn, now I almost want Roy Thomas to write a story explaining the origin of that unexpected outfit. Hopefully it won’t feature someone with a NSFW cat fetish.
A single panel with a striped marketplace awning, minus the center portion which was torn out, and a very unhappy vendor, looking around in vain, would pithily explain it all. 😉
Being just over two hours from the start of the Bix 7 near the shores of the Mississippi, my head is in “race mode” for Iowa’s largest running event. As Alan’s impressive writing has crafted an engaging review of what’s an otherwise ordinary sword and sorcery comic and my mind is contemplating the hills my Nikes and I will soon experience, I thinking of this issue as the comic book equivalent of a “easy run.”
An easy run is just that. Going out for “x” number of miles at a relaxed pace. No strides or speed work. Nothing to really push yourself. Just an opportunity to enjoy the experience. That’s Conan the Barbarian #67. Good writing with solid action. No shortage of hacking and chopping. A couple scantily-clad women thrown in for good measure. An enjoyable experience that ends after so many miles – I mean, minutes.
The only real mystery in my mind is if I used to have this comic or not. Tara’s being with child seems familiar as does the “were-cat.” But again, this is also familiar enough ground that I could be thinking of several other Conan stories.
Regardless, once again, Alan’s gotten another Saturday off to a delightful start! I look forward as well to everyone’s comments!
Happy Saturday! Enjoying the latest 50 Year Old Comics entry with my morning coffee.
Has this storyline ever been reprinted? I’m genuinely curious, since as I mentioned in a comment on one of the previous chapters Conan and Red Sonja have had different owners for a number of years now, making it somewhat problematic to get the rights all lined up for this story to be collected.
Regarding the cover, I agree with you, Alan, Belt vs Red Sonja would have been a much, much better image. Seems like writer / editor Roy Thomas was asleep at the wheel when he approved the Gil Kane & Pablo Marcos cover that this issue actually got. Although I suppose we should be grateful that it was not more faithful to the story. I would have hated to have seen a “scantily clad PREGNANT damsel in distress” topping this issue 🙂
Speaking of Thomas dropping the ball, I also agree with you, Alan, that it seems like an unnecessary digression to return to Tara and Yusef in this issue, especially since this is smack dab in the middle of a big crossover event. I feel like the information that Yusef gives Conan on the final page could have been delivered in some other manner.
Anyway, that is one of my pet peeves about Thomas, a writer who I otherwise enjoy, that the man cannot abide seeming loose ends being left alone, whether they are his or someone else’s and sooner or later he has to try to tie them up, often with less than spectacular results. I mean, who was really asking for a two-part X-Men story just to reveal why Wolverine got a new mask between Incredible Hulks #181 and Giant-Size X-Men #1?
Oh, well, at least that fight between Conan and the cat-man was pretty cool. And the short duel between Belit and Red Sonja was also nice. I’m glad that the two of them being catty did not devolve into an actual catfight!
Finally, nice inking by Tony Dezuniga and the Tribe. I definitely see Dezuniga’s stylistic flourishes in a lot of these panels. I’m sure the ever-picky John Buscema disliked it, but to my eye it gives the finished art a nice illustrative look.
To see “…a scantily clad PREGNANT damsel…” in comics, one need look no further than the 1972-75 issues of National Lampoon featuring “Idyl” by Jeffrey Jones:
https://comic-historietas.blogspot.com/2009/10/los-que-huyeron-del-comic-2-jeff-jones.html?m=1
Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the entire run. Beautifully drawn, sometimes funny, and always thoughtful.
To (almost) bring this back full circle, here is a Jeff Jones cover for Fantastic magazine, cover dated August 1972, featuring Conan the barbarian:
https://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Fantastic-August-1972-min.jpg
I bought that one. 🙂
Good purchase!
That one is very much screaming for a CBZ treatment.
Interesting personal history, that of Jeff Jones.
Sometimes I wonder if all people are not interesting and colorful if we only take the trouble to look beyond initial expectations.
“ Has this storyline ever been reprinted?”
Not all together, as far as I know. Dynamite has reprinted the Red Sonja chapters alone and I think both Dark Horse and Marvel have reprinted the Conan ones. Marvel’s Epic Collection “Of Once and Future Kings” offered a one-page summary of Marvel Feature #7 to bridge the gap between Conan #67 and #68.
“…Conan has taught Bêlit much these past months… still… Red Sonja, she-devil of Hyrkania, was raised to the sword…”. No, Roy, no she wasn’t. Don’t you remember that nasty little origin you wrote for her, where she was raised to the simple country/peasant life until she was raped and gained her warrior skill-set through supernatural intervention? She was NOT ‘raised to the sword’, but you seem to keep forgetting that.
Also, are we to believe that Bêlit was rubbish with a sword until Conan taught her some stuff? Or that fighting with a dagger (basically a short sword), is an entirely different proposition to fighting with… a sword?
Seems also to have been forgotten that Conan was raised in ‘…Cimmeria, a land of darkness and deep night’, as per his killing of Mikhal Oglu, the Vulture in #23 (in the dark), or how at the start of #4’s Tower of the Elephant, when the Kothian abductor insulted him, Conan extinguished the candle and ‘… with the unerring instinct of the barbarian… killed his man in the darkness and confusion’. But here, Sonja cutting the head off the torch stalls him enough for her to make her escape, even though the torch is ‘still-flaming’? If this was supposed to suggest that he allowed her to escape, it’s not entirely clear from what’s written, and doesn’t seem entirely in character. Why would he help her escape?
Yes, the cover is misleading (I think the preferred expression at the time was ‘symbolic’), and the Bêlit/Sonja confrontation would have made more sense (and tied in, thematically, with the upcoming Conan/Kull scene). It’s also a shame that both fights ended somewhat anticlimactically, with no clear victor. It was a nice cover though – the man-tiger looked more of a threat than he did within the comic.
Yes, I doubt the most obsessive fan was desperate for an update on the further adventures of Yusef and Tara. To be honest, I don’t remember readers or letter-writers of the time being overwhelmed when they were first installed as semi-regulars, and their send-off in #57 was as much as they really needed.
One nit-pick with the scene from Marvel Feature #6 and Conan #66 being replayed as the splash-page for this issue: the first two times, Sonja’s sword is in her left hand, but now it’s in her right, even though the dialogue would indicate that it’s the exact same moment in time so she couldn’t have switched hands.
Overall, this issue is typical of the Conan series in general in the second half of the first 100 issues. Pleasant enough, and professionally done, but nothing to shout about.
In the battle of the three splash pages, I’m awarding top honors to Frank Thorne. His dramatization of the scene is stronger, and the reader gets a good sense of the power in both Conan and Red Sonja. The bird’s-eye view from Conan 67 (6-7!) puts the reader too far from the action.
I agree with Mike about the sword skills/backstory/training of Sonja and Belit. Disagree with him on Tara — I enjoyed her as a supporting character. Hated this issue for sidelining her (and whoever said she looks more like a Central European peasant, yes). I don’t think the realism of having sex with Yusef has anything to do with it — Belit, after all, never conceived despite three years of presumably banging Conan like a screen door.
Fun enough, but still very minor in the annals of Roy’s Conan run.
I just never really felt that Tara fit within REH’s milieu – she came across more like a generic Marvel supporting character, if that makes sense. What nubile, lithe young wench in REH’s head-space would prefer the pretty-much bland Yusef to the stud-muffin Conan?
What worries me a little is that Roy Thomas has said that he based Tara on his own stepdaughter Tara (Jean Thomas’ daughter). They were a couple when he introduced the character but split up in late 1975 and their separation was finalized in early 1976, presumably before or around the time this story was written. I wonder what was going on in Roy’s head, and in the real-world Tara’s life, that he felt the need to write a farewell story where she was dealing with a (presumably unplanned) pregnancy. It would have been better, I thought, to leave the fate of Tara and Yusef to each reader’s head-canon, as REH originally wrote and #57 had suggested.
Even a mis-leading cover from Gil Kane is still a cover by Gil Kane, so it is a wonder to behold, nonetheless. I agree, they would have sold more books if the cover had featured Belit and Red Sonja squaring off with one another, but who knows what Roy was thinking? Maybe he was simply getting ahead of the fact that the actual fight was too short to be worthy of a cover or maybe there was some other reason for not putting Red on the cover. If Roy hasn’t addressed the issue by now, he’s not gonna. Moving on…
Speaking of that fight, I would have much rather seen it take up the bulk of the pages of this issue rather than our weak-sauce reunion with Tara and Yusef. No offense to the young lovers, but I too fall into the camp who thinks their previous send-off was more than enough and their appearance here not necessary, especially if all Thomas really wanted to use Yusef for was to rip off The Count of Monte Cristo. An issue long Battle Royale would have been a good way for the two hellcats to bond while Conan either sat back and watched or went off to search for the Iron-bound Book of Skelos on his own.
Last thing about Tara and Yusef and then I’m done. Shame on Don Warfield for coloring both the hood of the mysterious Stygian with the cat and the scarf worn by Tara almost the same shade of green. When she first whispered to Conan from that alley, I thought for a moment they were the same person.
As for the art, John Buscema is John Buscema and you can’t take that away from him, but you also can’t disagree that this issue was mainly a tour of “the best blank stone walls of Messantia.” While I can’t disagree that the story in part called for this unimaginative backdrop, it’s disappointing to see Big John do so little in terms of location, especially in a Conan book.
All in all, this book felt like filler in the larger story of Conan and Belit and Red Sonja. Fun, but pointless. Thanks, Alan!
I don’t see that the Cimmerian merely knocked any of those guards out. He was certainly strong enough to kill one with a blow to the skull.
I didn’t show the panel, but after Conan hits one guard in the forehead with the pommel of his sword, he makes a crack about how the next guard to come along can pour a bucket of water over him. So he didn’t intend to kill him, at any rate.