Conan? Not so Much.

As I stated in a previous post, I spent much of my summer reading on all things Conan and Robert E. Howard in anticipation of the movie Conan The Barbarian (2011). While the new movie was largely a disappointment for me, re-reading, and in many cases reading for the first time, Howard's works was time well spent. I also sought out new "Conan" experiences. I watched, or attempted to watch both the 1997- 1998 TV series Conan the Adventurer and the 1992-1994 cartoon of the same name.

From the get-go, it was obvious to me that the live-action show, Conan the Adventurer, was going to be poor pastiche at best. I remember catching a few episodes when the show was originally airing, and thinking, "what is this happy horse-shit?" Meaning, anyone watching this show expecting Robert E. Howard's Conan, will be disappointed.

The Conan of the show is played by Ralf Moller. The Conan he portrays is kind, jovial and honorable. While REH's Conan could be those things, he was more of a loner and could be very unkind when the situation warranted. In the show Conan travels with a band of Adventurers to include Otli, a clever dwarf often used as comedic interlude, played by Danny Woodburn; Bayu, a martial-artist that must overcome his natural tendency towards greed and is often the brunt of Otli's jokes, played by T.J. Storm; and Zzeben, a mute, staff wielding, acrobatic warrior, played by Robert McRay. Many episodes often include the character Karalle The Queen of Thieves, who is a cross between Belit of "Queen of the Black Coast" fame and the character Valeria of the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian staring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Karalle is played by Aly Dunne.

In the show, Conan and crew face legions of bad guys that work for the evil sorcerer Hissah Zuhl (played by Jeremy Kemp). Hissah Zuhl enslaved Cimmeria and killed not only Conan's parents, but also the love of Conan's life (a girl that Conan met and fell in love with in a span of five days). I found it laughable that Hissah Zuhls minions were so easily beaten. They could have easily been replaced with cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica.

All in all, I couldn't stomach this awful Conan pastiche. I found the cartoon of the same name slightly better then the live-action Conan the Adventurer.

In the cartoon, Conan has a shield with a design of a phoenix upon it that comes to life via magic as a fledgling named Needle.This almost sounds cool, but Needle (irritatingly voiced by Michael Beattle) is the Jar-jar Binks of the Hyborean universe.

In the cartoon, Conan is voiced by Michael Donovan. In my opinion, Donovan tries way too damn hard to sound like a tough guy. He over does the machismo of his voice. Instead of machismo, he obtain cheese-mo. I will stop with the negatives of the show. The truth is, I suffered through four episodes and couldn't take it any more.

However, there were a few things I liked. The main bad guys of the show were serpent people. These are torn right from the pages of Howard's Kull stories, but have more in common with the same serpent people portrayed in Marvel Comics Kull books back in the day.

I may not have given the show that much of a chance, but I did find one episode I particularly enjoyed, "Hanuman the Ape God". It is worth mentioning that the Ape God of this episode is named after the Hindu Ape-God of the same name. In this episode, Conan and clan encounter an alien that is apish in appearance. The alien, Hanuman, is being held captive by the wicked ruler of a city that Conan comes upon. Conan ends up freeing him and returning his magic rod to him that allows Hanuman to return to his people. I really dug the science fiction angel of this episode, and appreciated how it reminded me of Robert E. Howard's Conan tale, "The Tower of the Elephant".

Unfortunately, despite how much I enjoyed the episode "Hanuman the Ape God", the show over all failed to resonate with my barbaric soul.

Conan or Clonan?

In this post, I am referring to the new Conan: The Barbarian movie. Let me state first that I have spent most of my summer reading, and in some cases re-reading, all things Robert E. Howard.

I've always been a fan of Conan, and I've been a peripheral fan of REH; however, it was within the past two years that I became a hard core REH fan.

My introduction to the character of Conan came from issues of Marvel Comic's The Savage Sword of Conan. These comics coupled with the "Arnan" movie drove me to a thirst for all things Conan that has lasted twenty years. As an adolescent, I devoured every Tor Conan paperback that I came across, gleefully innocent of the fact that most didn't match up to the real thing, and over the years, I have followed Conan in comic book form, traveling from Marvel to Dark Horse.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to become a REH fan, but it did. I read other things besides Conan, namely Kull and a few, odd Solomon Kane stories, but I never felt the need to dive into Howard's other creations. This changed with the recent Del Rey Robert E. Howard library series.

I bought them all as they came out, and read the Conan stories immediately. I must admit, I believe this is the first time I had ever read all of the Conan stories, I'm sure I had read most of them in one form or another - mostly various comics adaptions, but never all of them. My initial experience to the true Howard Conan stories was also through the Lancer editions edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Thus, I had never read un-edited Howard.

As I said, it was not until early this past spring that I began reading everything Howard that I could get my hands on. I bought all of the Del-Rey trade paper backs as they came out (minus The Horror Stories of REH, which I for some reason missed). It started because I was so impressed by the Solomon Kane stories that I immediately launched into the Kull stories, followed quickly by Bran Mak Morn, both "Best of" books, El Borak and sadly the last in the series "Historical Tales".

Wow. I am hooked. That being said, I finally found time to see the latest Conan movie at my local second-run-bargain theater. Even though I am now a solid REH enthusiast, I am not an REH Purist; meaning, there are REH fans that loath pastiche. It has been years since I've read any Conan pastiche (other than in comics, which I have read a mountain or two of), and while I am certain I most likely would not enjoy the Tor pastiche novels as much as pure REH, I do have fond memories of reading them. I will have to revisit them one day.

Even though I am not an REH Purist, I did not have high hopes for the new film. My feeling was that if it was better then Conan The Destroyer, or at least as good as "Arnan" The Barbarian (which I still enjoy watching to this day), I would be happy.

I left the theater happy with the $3 I spent on watching it. My son, who is neither an REH fan, nor a particularly big Conan fan, enjoyed it as well. Yes, I have problems with the overall plot, particularly, I had problems with the fact that for nearly two hours our heroes are dreading the bad guy completing and activating the mask. Spoiler Alert: Big Bad Guy does so, but the mask doesn't seem to do much of anything. It was akin to Sauron gaining the One Ring and after much dread, it just looks pretty on his finger.

There are other quibbles, Jason Mamoa has brown eyes, not blue, etc.. However, it was a fun movie. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough of a box office smash to warrant more Conan movies and that is sad. I can promise you this, it's better then, and truer to Howard's vision then the television show Conan the Adventurer, and the cartoon of the same name and don't even get me started on Conan and the Young Warriors.

Overall, three stars. It is not Conan, but is just more Clonan, but check your brain at the popcorn stand and enjoy.

Groo versus Conan, Thomas Yeats, New ERB Book

Yes. It is true. A Groo/Conan comic is in the mix. I read about this news on one of my favorite Conan related blogs Crom! here. I direct you there for more information, not to mention, if you dig Conan, like I dig Conan, you will enjoy the blog.

I would also direct you to Thomas Yeat's website here. While Sergio Aragones is drawing Groo, Yeats is drawing Conan. At his site, link above, sample pages can be found.

When visiting Yeat's site, I would direct your attention to the fact that he has advertised there an upcoming project that Edgar Rice Burrough's fans will find exciting: an adaption of The Outlaw of Torn titled The Outlaw Prince. More details found here.

This puts me in a good mood, a new Conan comic featuring my favorite Conan parody in Groo, plus a new ERB project.

John Jakes Brand of Sword & Sorcery

John Jakes is best known for his historical fiction, prominently his Kent Family Chronicles and his North and South trilogy; however, before he gained fame for his historical fiction, he was best known for his Sword & Sorcery stories.

Born in Chicago IL March 31, 1932, Jakes sold his first stories to pulp magazines. It was his character Brak the Barbarian that first brought him to my attention.

First off, I want to admit that it was not until recently that I read a single John Jakes story. I was ignorant of his contributions. It was through my gaining interest in Lin Carter in 2010 that I Jakes even came across my radar. Prior to reading about him while researching Carter, I passed him off as a historical novelist that held no interest for me. Ironically, he is my father-in-law's favorite author for his North and South Trilogy.

When Lin Carter formed the Swordsmen and Sorcerers Guild of America (S.A.G.A.) in the 1960's, John Jakes was included in the roll-call amongst fantasy greats such as Poul Anderson, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Andre Norton, Jack Vance and of course Carter himself. Other then being a loose-knit social club with a drinking agenda, Carter set forth to publish the works of the founding members in the Flashing Swords anthologies. Later on other authors were added to the roll-call, C.J. Cherryh, Katherine Kurtz, Tanith Lee and Roger Zelazny just to name a few.

The premise of S.A.G.A. was a love and respect for the fantasy sub-genre of Sword & Sorcery tales first made popular by Robert E. Howard's Conan, Kull and Dark Agnes stories. Thus S.A.G.A. was a club for like minded authors that shared an enthusiasm for tales of blood, guts, honor, mystery and adventure.

By the 1960's, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was gaining massive popularity. Riding the coat tails of this popularity was a new found love for the Conan yarns of REH. Conan was most likely saved from obscurity by the editorship of L. Sprague de Camp in the Gnome Press hard cover editions of Howard's tales. Later, Lancer publications would join with more affordable paper back editions and Lin Carter and Bjorn Nyberg would join de Camp as co-conspirators. Some fans have never forgiven the three of them for "finishing" many of Howard's unpublished tales and converting non-Conan tales into Conan tales; however, in my opinion, if they had not done these things, perhaps Sword & Sorcery would not have survived Howard's death. At least, not with the popularity which Conan did, eventually spawning popular comics with Marvel and leading to the making of a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Because of the Conan popularity "boom" of the 60's and 70's, it was not uncommon to see many titles featuring a "Clonan" type character and bearing the inscription: in the tradition of Conan. It was these sorts of stories that Jakes set out to write with his Brak the Barbarian tales.

I'm not sure when and to whom Jakes sold his first Brak the Barbarian tale, but according to Lin Carter, Jakes began writing Brak tales in 1963 and sold most of the earliest to the Ziff-Davis magazine Fantastic. The cover to the left is from the 1980 Tower publication of Brak the Barbarian. In its introduction, Jakes states that the title of the first Brak story was "Devils in the Walls" and he also freely admits that it was "...a Howard pastiche". Brak the Barbarian was Jakes first of five collections of Brak stories and first saw print in 1968 with Avon Publishing. It is currently out of print and it took much haunting of used book stores for me to acquire a copy.

I was curious about them for Lin Carter stated his admiration of them more then once. I respect and follow Carter's recommendations; after all, the man was the editor of the fabulous Ballentine Adult Fantasy series, which I have not yet read a bad volume of.

Brak the Barbarian proved to me that Carter's opinion is not infallible. I did not hate the book, but it was not worth the time it took me to find a copy. Brak is a collection of five stories: "The Unspeakable Shrine", "Flame-Face", "The Courts of the Conjurer" , "Ghosts of Stone" and "The Barge of Souls". The edition pictured above that I read is illustrated by Thomas O. Miller, whose art I am unfamiliar with. The stories are loosely connected in the sense that they are sequential, but they could easily be read separately. I gained the sense that Jakes performed much post-editing in an attempt to join them into a weak serial.

In this book, Brak has recently left his home in the north for the fabled land of Khurisdan based upon a flimsy notion that he is destined to do so. In each of the five stories, our hero - who differs from Conan because he has blond hair kept in a braid, and always wears his lion skin pelt (how did a barbarian from the north come across a lion skin pelt?) - in each story he encounters adventure. In the opening story "The Unspeakable Shrine" he does battle with an ancient evil sorcerer named Septegundis and the sorcerer's evil daughter Ariane; both worship the evil Yob-Haggoth. He defeats them, but it is promised that Septegundis and he shall meet again, perhaps in Khurisdan or before. Four more adventures follow and the fifth ends with Brak continuing his journey to Khurisdan.

I expected Brak to be a Clonan. With that I take no umbrage; however, the lack of originality was banal. These stories are in the vein of Conan with Lovecraft imagery thrown in for spice, but they read like the poorest of pastiche. I am not against Conan pastiche. I used to read lots of them in my younger reading years and every now and then I get a yearning to buy one at a used book store, check my brain at the door and read for pure pleasure. They are perhaps a guilty pleasure for me, but I stopped feeling guilty long ago. In hopes that the Brak stories grow stronger, not weaker, I will probably continue to look for them. At the very least, they read quickly. This one was great "airplane" fodder. I like books I can read in entirety on a two or three hour flight, and this one fit the bill.

A much more enjoyable read by Jakes is Mention My Name in Atlantis, 1972 Daw SF Books. From the back cover blurb:

The continent of Atlantis had troubles enough before Conax the Barbarian washed ashore. The king was on his last legs, his generals were plotting, there were those scary lights in the sky, and Hoptor the Vintner's favorite girl was being put up for auction on the slave block.

Then Conax, the self-styled king of Chimeria - a place nobody ever heard of - turned up at the auction with broadsword, his barbaric manners, and his hair-triggered temper.

John Jakes, author of Brak the Barbarian and many fast-moving novels of past and future, has written an uproarious cliffhanger that even Robert E. Howard would have approved...not to mention his legion of readers.

This book was as entertaining as its blurb led it to sound. It clocks in at 142 pages and reads in its entirety easily on a long afternoon sitting, or again on a two or three hour flight. I actually read this novel prior to Brak, and based upon it, I had higher hopes for Brak. In Atlantis, Jakes sets out to satirize the numerous volumes of Howard pastiche that were being published at the time. Note his dedication:

To the memory of the real Robert E. Howard who has been kept spinning in his grave for the last decade by the new antics of his favorite character's overactive ghost, not to mention his busy and admiring imitators.

Jakes' attempt makes for an enjoyable read. It is obvious from the get go that Jakes is even making fun of himself here. Note his description of Conax the Chimerical:

he was young with eyes of brighter blue...A mane of yellow hair reached well below his shoulders.

"Yellow hair", just like Jakes' own creation Brak. I liked Conax, perhaps because I am a fan of Conan pun characters such as Groo the Wanderer; however, it is the main character Hoptor the Vinter that is the real entertainment. Hoptor is a weasel always one step ahead of the law and his creditors. He makes his living by brokering deals, in fact his name is his livelihood. he often gets himself out of a sticky situation by convincing others that he can get them a great deal if they visit X merchant and "mention my name" (hence the title).

Based upon the enjoyability factor of Mention my Name in Atlantis, while I may or may not be done with Brak tales, I am not done with John Jakes.