With this post, we’ve arrived at the penultimate installment of Marvel Comics’ five-part crossover between Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja, She-Devil with a Sword, as originally published in the summer of 1976 — although, if you’ve been following along the last couple of months, you might be feeling that, three chapters in, the story seems to have barely gotten started. After all, the first two installments (in Marvel Feature #6 and Conan #66) were basically solo adventures that served to set up a face-to-face confrontation between the two principals on their respective last pages. And the subsequent episode (in Conan #67) moved the main storyline forward only incrementally, as its primary focus was a sidequest by Conan on behalf of a couple of his former comrades, Tara and Yusef, in which Sonja didn’t figure at all. (Though for what it’s worth, Conan’s current partner in both adventure and romance, the pirate queen Bêlit, didn’t play an active role in those proceedings, either.)
But, assuming we can trust artist Frank Thorne’s cover for Marvel Feature #7, both Big Red and her Cimmerian co-star will be front and center for this fourth chapter — which, we may hope, will see some further progress in their competing quests for a single page from the Iron-Bound Book of Skelos, regardless of which of the two adventurers fortune ultimately favors. So, without further ado, let’s turn to this issue’s opening splash page to pick up our narrative where we left off…
As with Marvel Feature #6, Frank Thorne is responsible not only for pencilling and inking this issue’s story, but for lettering it as well. Meanwhile, Roy Thomas continues as both writer and editor for the entire crossover.
As Red Sonja gallops away, she silently mulls over recent events — which, naturally, allows for Thomas and Thorne to provide a tidy recap of the major beats of the storyline thus far. As the sequence ends, Sonja wishes that she could have confronted Conan before leaving, “to get it all over with, one way or the other!”
Upon returning to his living quarters, the nameless Stygian sorcerer makes the necessary preparations for the performance of an arcane ritual…
Writing in his 2019 book Barbarian Life, Vol. 2, Roy Thomas confessed that, while he’d definitely lifted the names “R’lyeh” and “Yuggoth” from the Cthulhu Mythos fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, he wasn’t sure where “Tublat” had come from. But if your humble blogger had to guess, he’d go with the great ape of that name who’s an early enemy of Tarzan in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first novel about that character.
Having already crossed swords (albeit briefly) with Red Sonja, Bêlit now departs the narrative for the remainder of this chapter, leaving the field clear for the cover’s promised one-on-one “clash of titans”.
For the last panel above, Frank Thorne has offered a pretty faithful recreation of Howard Chaykin’s depiction of the same scene, which (as Thomas notes) had appeared as part of Red Sonja’s origin story, published in the black-and-white Kull and the Barbarians #3 about a year before this. Your humble blogger has some serious issues with that origin; but since I discussed them at some length in my Conan the Barbarian #24 post back in 2022, I’ll refrain from rehashing them here.
Naturally, Karanthes is eager to take possession of the long sought-after page, but before she hands it over, Sonja feels obliged to give the priest of Ibis a piece of her mind. “I did not appreciate your using your store of magic to nearly kill my pursuers, Karanthes!” she tells him. “I fight my own battles.” “And I mine,” comes the reply. “But are you positive I caused that rockslide?”
At this point, anyone who’s previously read more than a couple of sword-and-sorcery stories knows that, before our story is done, someone is indeed going to “disturb those bones”, and there will then be hell to pay, of one sort or another. It’s only a matter of time…
Throughout this story, we find Frank Thorne making innovative design choices — such as the multiple tweaks to the ordinary conventions regarding panel borders seen on the page above — to add extra visual interest to his artwork .
Speaking of Frank Thorne’s approach to design, Roy Thomas made the following observation concerning the page shown just above in his Barbarian Life:
One reason that there are five captions running down the left side of the 14th page is that I had probably written a different caption for each of several panels as originally laid out by Frank. When he saw them, he decided to stack them that way, both to give him a bit more breathing space for the art, and as an added design element to the page.
Another thing before we move on… I know I said I wasn’t going to get into my issues with Red Sonja’s origin in this post, but I can’t resist pointing out how this scene demonstrates one of its major problems: if Sonja’s strength and skill are (at least in part) the gifts of a supernatural entity, why should it matter that Conan is of “superior size“? Logically, magical fighting prowess shouldn’t be dependent on weight or mass. But, of course, in this sequence it has to be — because however much Roy Thomas may enjoy writing Big Red, there’s no way he’s ever going to let her be portrayed as the physical equal of his main man, Conan.
Gee, that fight with the python was over so quickly that it hardly seems worth the trouble of setting it up. On the other hand, it did interrupt Conan and Sonja’s fight, and put them back on the same side, more or less. And just in time, too, it seems…
Huh. I guess if you can sprout big leathery wings and long, sharp talons, why do you really need a name, anyway? But in any event, that last page reveal makes for a very suitable cliffhanger to set up the concluding chapter of “this tale of tales”… so be sure and return next Saturday for our coverage of Conan the Barbarian #68 — a book we can expect to not only bring Bêlit back into the action, but also to introduce a fourth major player into Marvel’s big summer sword-and-sorcery event — none other than King Kull, himself. How will Roy Thomas and his artistic collaborator, John Buscema, ever pull that off in just 18 pages? We’ll all find out together in a week.
Frank Thorne’s work was exquisite, wasn’t it? A heady combination of grace, grittiness, attractive lettering, masterful storytelling, and innovative page designs that always added to the narrative.
Thorne’s style strikes me as very apt for this sort of fantasy set in an imaginary distant past, and allowing for bits of playful whimsy amidst the violent clashes. I think Barry Winsor-Smith’s “The Song of Red Sonja” issue of Conan is a comics masterpiece, but Thorne’s Red Sonja is the definitive version to me, silly metallic bikini and all.
Interesting in that, unlike most of your comics images, these do not appear to be digitally recolored, but actual scans from the original publication, though with an attempt to heighten the contrast and to remove any yellowing of the pages. The result is still a little muddy, but truer to the poor printing of the mid- to late ’70s in the Big Two’s comics.
Frank Thorne’s page layouts still often recall Joe Kubert here and there, especially since he had previously drawn the Korak, Son of Tarzan comic at DC under Joe’s editorship. Still a bit jarring to me to see Red Sonja in close up with those huge manga eyes, but Thorne did it on purpose. Fine figure drawing all around, good compositions, etc.
I have this issue, along with most of Sonja’s Marvel Feature run, and, yes, the printing quality of these books, and of the rest of Marvel’s line at the time, was atrocious. Which is a shame, because I think Thorne was a truly amazing artist. Yes, he owed a clear debt to Joe Kubert, but he added his own personality and style to Kubert’s influence, and he was the perfect artist for Red Sonja. No one has ever matched his work on the character.
MoB, yes, the images in this post, as in the one for MF #6, were based on a scanned copy of the original book. The only digital/reprint edition I could find was Dynamite’s recolored version, which may be “cleaner”, but is a less authentic representation of the material, at least in my opinion.
I’m still not into Thorne’s art but your post does make me appreciate some of his choices here. Nevertheless I don’t feel any more excited about his work than I did at the time. Red Sonja was a book I bought by rote, not from any enthusiasm and I don’t feel any more enthusiastic now.
I look at Thorne’s art as a “bridge” between Alex Toth and Joe Kubert. It wasn’t as sparsely stripped away of surface detail as Toth’s work, but it was slightly less rendered than Kubert’s – which was had intentionally coarse linework. None of them sought for surface polish like Joe Sinnott or lush textures and brushwork like Wrightson (of the early to mid ’70s). They all seemed to be under the influence of Caniff and Sickles in this regard, and it allowed them to work more quickly as a result.
While I enjoy the work of all of these artists mentioned, I prefer strong page layouts, fine figure drawing, descriptive backgrounds, believable perspective, nice contrast of lights and darks (spotting of blacks), *AND* exquisite surface rendering. This last category is very time consuming for an artist/cartoonist under deadline.
That’s why Alex Toth is sometimes referred to as “an artist’s artist,” because many fans didn’t appreciate the deceptive simplicity of his work, but responded far more to Frazetta, Williamson, Neal Adams, Wrightson, Redondo, etc. In their peak years in comics.
I think this was the last time I bought something drawn by Thorne and may have been my last purchase of anything that featured Sonja. The ridiculous bikini and the vow to only have sex if raped was too much.
I would never have bought or read this way back but am struck by the colouring , Yes the original print quality was poor and would get worse over time but I think the pulpy style of the art and the hand colouring give it a distinctive and vivid retro look.
Oh for God’s sakes, Conan! Why don’t you and the Red Sonja just get a room! I’ll even pay for it if it will spare us one more line of the mutual respect you both continually babble on and on about.
With that out of my system, the initial thoughts on this comic mirror several other comments. I respect Frank Thorne’s art – particularly the Alex Toth and Joe Kubert influences – but still find it a bit of a murky mess due to the production of that time.
The other predominant thought is that this was the second summer feature of 1976 where Roy Thomas padded the storyline with so much extraneous material that it nearly collapses under its own weight. I’m thinking of the Fantastic Four where Galactus wants to eat Counter Earth with the High Evolutionary rising to his creation’s defense. But before they can cross swords, we have detours into robot worlds, Skrulls posing as Medieval characters, and a verbose golden ape. By the time the High E and Big G decided to duke it out, I’d pretty much lost interest.
And that was with a series I liked. Not being as enamored with sword and sorcery, I would have never stuck around for the conclusion of this one.
But that was then. This is now. Now being a time when our host provides an excellent review of this meandering saga that’s followed by thoughtful commentary from all of you. As a result, thanks to Alan, I look forward to further discussion on this fifty-year old pulp adventure.
Having wound up in the minority in my dislike of Gene Colan’s artwork recently, I hesitate to mention Frank Thorne. Let’s just say that Thorne was a taste I never fully acquired. I appreciate his page design and his Sonja was certainly a sexy (if deadly) wench, but I never really warmed to his work in the 70’s and while I appreciate it more today, he’s still not my favorite version of Red Sonja, though I confess, whenever I think of her, his version is the one I see in my mind.
I agree with Rick above that Thomas seems to be throwing a lot of unnecessary baggage into this story. The side quest for Tara and Yusef was totally unnecessary, and could have been saved for a Conan stand-alone or filler issue. I understand the editorial decision to say, “We’re going to have a Conan/Red Sonja cross-over and it’s going to last for five issues,” but there also needs to be an authorial decision about what compelling narrative those five issues will contain. A Conan/Red Sonja team-up might sell comics at the time, but a less-than-successful storyline erodes the trust of the reader and doesn’t hold up for the long haul.
And while it was fun to see Conan and Big Red go at each other, you knew something was going to happen to stop the fight before it’s conclusion. Thomas was never going to answer the question between Conan and Sonja, certainly not when Belit was still in the picture to take exception to Sonja offering herself up to Conan, should he actually defeat her. Speaking of Belit, it’s a shame she was shunted out of the story so unceremoniously. I guess that fork in the road was called “Lost Supporting Character Pass,” or something similar. And yes, the second I saw that big pile of bones in Karanthes’ temple, I knew it was coming down. I even guessed the giant snake part, because in Conan, it’s almost always a giant snake.
All in all, while this chapter had more forward movement than the last one, it was largely Roy tap dancing to fill five issues, which is always disappointing. Given Roy’s love of Conan, it’s surprising he would be so lazy in his writing of this cross-over, but maybe he thought the sheer presence of his two leads would be enough to cover any shortcomings in the writing or perhaps he had to give his attention to something else that month. “It’s always something,” as Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say, and she was right. Thanks, Alan!
You are not alone in your lack of enthusiasm for Thorne.
Reading the enthusiasm of others in these comments (and earlier) I’ve thought about rereading the Red Sonjas I have. But Roy’s writing was nowhere near his best Conan — Sonja ambles from adventure to adventure, lost city to treasure horde, with none of the overall arc that Conan’s established life story gave to the Cimmerian’s appearances.
While I respect Thorne as professional, I’ll also say that I’ve nevet bought a comic for his art. Any Korak issues I own were for Kaluta’s “Carson of Venus” backup feature. The Kubert covers and Thorne lead features were icing on the cake, but not what secured my purchase.
Thanks, Alan!
Like you, I’ve expressed grave misgivings about Sonja’s nasty little origin story, but it was nice to see that it was at least acknowledged here, rather than the last several issues where Sonja has been variously described as some kind of ‘warrior born’ (she wasn’t).
I started to lose interest in Conan, I think, at about the same time that John Buscema appeared to, however briefly, which to me was when Conan acquired the fur nappy. Buscema’s art, compared to the early days with Chua/Chan inks, had descended to the auto-pilot level. Based on this issue, though, I would have quite liked to see Frank Thorne drawing Conan for a year or two. If he could have been asked to tone down the cartoony, broad broken nose, this Conan looked more vital and exciting than Big JB was drawing at the time. Thorne’s ornate and careful page layouts seemed suited to follow in BWS’s footsteps. At least it would have given him something to draw preferable to the voyeuristic drivel that he seemed to then build his future career around.
Agree with the general opinion that this ‘epic’ started to feel horribly padded, and nobody yet has won a clear-cut victory (which trend would unfortunately continue into the next chapter).
That’s pretty common to crossover arcs. Dracula vampirizes Dr. Strange, then Dr. Strange destroys Dracula … who turns out to survive (and not even bruised IIRC). The Thing beats the Hulk in FF, then the Hulk wins in Part Two in his own book.
Pretty sure it was Barry Windsor-Smith who first gave Conan that “fur nappy”, Mike — all the way back in CtB #1! 😉
Yeah but it was the leather ‘kilt not a skirt’ that was the fashion du jour when I first encountered Conan, so that’s what looked right to me 😃
Interesting that it was not the unnamed Stygian sorcerer as I originally thought, but rather Karanthes was the one who created the rockslide, much to Red Sonja’s annoyance, since she only wanted Conan and Belit stopped, not killed. Good reminder that even though Karanthes is “good” compared to his rival Thoth-Akmon, who is out-and-out evil, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s nice or honorable, either. No wonder Conan doesn’t trust wizards!
Of course, the morality of most Hyborian Age characters is certainly different than what ethical people in the present-day real world normally consider to be acceptable. All three of our protagonists — Sonja, Conan and Belit — are criminals of some sort or another, with the latter two of this trio currently working as pirates. And, of course, as we saw when Alan spotlighted “Shadows in Zamboula” in Savage Sword of Conan #14 a month ago, Conan can be absolutely ruthless, brutal & conniving when he wants to be.
So, yeah, there’s definitely a lot of morally grey figures in these storylines.
I have this issue – a classic!