CONAN AND THE JEWELS OF GWAHLUR

Script and Art: P. Craig Russell
Colors: Lovern Kindzierski | Letters: Galan Showman
Based on the story “The Jewels of Gwahlur” by Conan creator Robert E. Howard.

As noted when I "digitally unboxed" it a few months back, I picked up 2005's CONAN AND THE JEWELS OF GWAHLUR in a Dark Horse Conan sale simply because the cover jumped out at me and the story sounded interesting. Plus, despite his long and distinguished career in comics, I'm pretty sure I had never read any sequential work by P. Craig Russell, and I wanted to rectify that. I've seen pinups by him and I've seen him ink other pencilers here and there, but when it comes to pure, unvarnished Russell as plotter, scripter, penciler, and inker, this story marks my first exposure.

(I mean, yeah, technically he's adapting an original work by Robert E. Howard, but you know what I mean.)

The story finds Conan, working as he often does in the capacity of a mercenary, as a general in the kingdom of Keshan. But his true purpose in the backwater nation is to steal its legendary treasure, a cache of jewels called the Teeth of Gwahlur. However Conan finds himself up against a rival in this quest, the sinister Thutmekri. When Thutmekri tells Keshan's king that peace with neighboring Zimbabwei could be achieved with some of the Teeth provided as a show of good faith, Conan realizes the villain's true plan, to get the king to reveal the location of the sacred jewels, and then steal them.

Conan takes advantage of Thutmekri's plot when the king sends his priests to the isolated and long-deserted city-temple of Alkmeenon, where they are to commune with its oracle, Yelaya, and, if necessary, bring back the Teeth of Gwahlur. Now knowing where the Teeth are hidden, Conan sets out ahead of the priests and reaches Alkmeenon before them.

RED SONJA / CONAN: BLOOD OF A GOD

Written by: Victor Gischler | Art by: Roberto Castro
Colors by: Alex Guimaráes | Letters by: Simon Bowland | Edited by: Joseph Rybandt
Conan was created by Robert E. Howard
Red Sonja based on a character by Robert E. Howard | In memory of Arthur Lieberman

A few months after the end of Dark Horse's CONAN/RED SONJA, Dynamite picked up the crossover reins for RED SONJA/CONAN: BLOOD OF A GOD. Written by Victor Gischler with art from Roberto Castro, this mini-series serves as a direct sequel to the story crafted by Gayle Simone and Jim Zub at Dark Horse, though it can easily be read on its own; enough backstory and recap is given that no one should feel lost within its pages.

The story begins many years ago, on the same day as the Simone/Zub tale. In that story, Conan and Sonja met as they stole a box containing Bloodroot seeds from the chamber of a corrupt prince. Here, we learn that the morning before the theft occurred, a moderately skilled mage named Kal'ang was directed by a blind shaman to steal one such seed from the prince. The story then leaps ahead many years (though just how many is open for debate as will be discussed below). Some time after their defeat of Thoth-Amon in CONAN/RED SONJA, the Cimmerian barbarian and the Hyrkanian she-devil cross paths once more, hired as co-generals for army of the kingdom of Kush. Sonja and Conan are to lead Kush's forces in an invasion of neighboring Stygia, which is ruled by Kal'ang himself, still advised by the blind seer.

Following an epic battle with giants and monsters, in which the entirety of their forces are killed, Conan and Sonja storm the castle of Stygia and battle even more horrific creatures, such as a giant three-headed rat and an enormous spider filled with many smaller spiders. All have been mutated by a strain of the Bloodroot. When our heroes finally reach the castle's throne room, they find Kal'ang killed by his advisor, now revealed as Thoth-Amon.

CONAN / RED SONJA

Script by: Gail Simone & Jim Zub | Pencils by: Dan Panosian (#1-2) & Randy Green (#3-4)
Inks by: Dan Panosian (#1-2) & Rick Ketcham (#3-4) | Colors by: Dave Stewart
Letters by: Jimmy Betancourt at Comicraft
Conan was created by Robert E. Howard
Red Sonja is based on a character created by Robert E. Howard

At some point in the nineties, the rights to Red Sonja and Conan split apart. Sonja had been created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel's CONAN THE BARBARIAN comic series, but somehow her intellectual property was deemed separate from Conan's but also separate from Marvel's. Both IPs were allowed to make use of Robert E. Howard's Hyborean Age settings and concepts, but neither could use the other's title character. Thus, for close to two decades, Conan has been published by Dark Horse Comics while Sonja has had a home at Dynamite for about the past ten years. And for a while, rumor had it that Dark Horse and Dynamite were not willing to play nice for any sort of crossover.

So it was kind of a big deal in 2013 when the two publishers jointly announced a CONAN/RED SONJA mini-series to be written by the characters' respective ongoing writers, Brian Wood and Gail Simone, and published by Dark Horse. The series eventually saw print in 2015 with Wood replaced by Jim Zub, and a collected edition was released later in the year -- which brings us here.

The story by Simone and Zub follows Conan and Red Sonja across a handful of meetings spanning several years of their lives. The first encounter each other in their youth, a pair of brigands hired separately to steal a precious box from a corrupt prince. The container's contents are eventually revealed as deadly "bloodroot seeds", and the man after them is a servant of the evil wizard Thoth-Amon. Conan and Sonja are unimpressed, burning the seeds before they can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction, then killing their employer and going their separate ways.

SPIDER-MAN / RED SONJA

Writer: Michael Avon Oeming | Artist: Mel Rubi
Colorist: Brian Buccellato | Letterer: Simon Bowland
Assistant Editors: Alejandro Arbona & Lauren Sankovitch | Editor: Bill Rosemann
Consulting Editor: Joe Rybrandt | Editor in Chief: Joe Quesada | Publisher: Dan Buckley
Special Thanks to: Tom Brevoort, Josh Johnson, Juan Collado, Nick Barrucci, Jason Ullmeyer, Arther Lieberman, and Luke Lieberman
Red Sonja is based on the Heroine Created by Robert E. Howard

In 1979, Marvel, then holder of the license which (at the time) included both Conan and Red Sonja, published a MARVEL TEAM-UP issue pairing the She-Devil with a Sword and Spider-Man in a fight against the evil wizard, Kulan Gath. in 2008, Marvel and current Red Sonja rights-holder, Dynamite Entertainment, teamed up for a sequel to that tale by the then-current RED SONJA creative team of Michael Avon Oeming and Mel Rubi.

It's worth noting that in the interim -- only a few years after the original team-up -- the scripter of that MTU issue, Chris Claremont, penned a sequel story sans Sonja in the pages of UNCANNY X-MEN, in which Kulan Gath transformed New York into a replica of his native Hyborean era and set various mind-controlled superheroes against Spider-Man for revenge. But by that story's conclusion nearly everyone involved, including Spider-Man, had all memory of the incident wiped from their minds.

For this story, Oeming borrows a cue from Claremont as Gath's sinister necklace turns up in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where a visiting senator is drawn to it and puts it on. This transforms him into the embodiment of Kulan Gath, who promptly turns Manhattan once more into a Hyborean world, and plants a sword for Mary Jane Watson (Parker?) to discover, even while placing a suggestion in her head that Spider-Man is her enemy. Thus MJ finds the sword, turns into Red Sonja as she did years earlier in MARVEL TEAM-UP 79, and goes out to kill the web-slinger.

THE HYBOREAN AGE

Art by Alex Ross

Though by no means a hardcore fan, I do enjoy dabbling now and then in the sword-and-sorcery genre, and for me, no world better represents my ideal version of that concept than Robert E. Howard's "Hyborean Age" featuring Conan the Cimmerian and Red Sonja, she-devil of the Hyrkanian steppes.

A while back I covered MARVEL TEAM-UP #79, which featured a pairing of Spider-Man and Sonja, and noted at the time that my review copy of the issue was included as part of Marvel's printing of the 2009 SPIDER-MAN/RED SONJA mini-series. Since then, a couple of "Unboxings" have shown that I picked up the CONAN/RED SONJA and RED SONJA/CONAN crossovers from Dark Horse and Dynamite, respectively. And on top of all that, last year I pitched in a few dollars to a Dynamite-sponsored Humble Bundle which netted me a digital version of the opening story arc to Dynamite's 2005 RED SONJA ongoing series.

Now, each Friday for the next few weeks, I'm going to cover all those bits and pieces of Hyborean lore. We'll lead off with RED SONJA #1 - 6, followed a week later by SPIDER-MAN/RED SONJA, then it'll be on to CONAN/RED SONJA before closing things out with RED SONJA/CONAN. So this past Friday's MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE installment was merely a prelude to a month of brawny barbarians, buxom she-warriors, and more decapitations than you can handle. I'm looking forward to this.