Weird Revisited: Comics' First Barbarian

I've revisited Crom several times over the years. Jason Sholtis and I talked about doing a revival oneshot at one time...

Before Claw, Wulf, and Ironjaw--even before Conan--there was a barbarian Sword & Sorcery hero in comics. Though there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of this particularly mighty-thewed sword-slinger, he’s got a famous name: Crom the Barbarian!

Crom was the creation of Gardner Fox and first appeared in Out of this World #1 (1950) from Avon. Fox tells us that Crom’s adventures come to us courtesy of “long-lost parchments recovered in an underwater upheaval, translated by a lingual expert,” but I suspect he made it all up.  He also took a lot of inspiration from Howard's Conan yarns.

Anyway, Crom’s a yellow-haired Aesir living in an age forgotten by history, and he’s got a problem. His sister Lalla have been kidnapped by ape-men called Cymri (which may or may not tell us how Fox felt about the Welsh). Crom makes short work of the ape-men, but he and Lalla wind up adrift.

They end up on an island. Good news: It’s full of lovely women. Bad news:

The wizard is named Dwelf, and he’s got a job for Crom. Dwelf wants him to bring back water from the fountain of youth which was built by “people from the stars" and will one day be lost “under what men will call the Sahara desert.” Dwelf threatens Lalla if Crom doesn’t get the stuff for him--and then hypnotizes him to make double sure.

Crom sails to fabled Ophir. He sneaks into the city and while he’s casing the tower that houses the fountain, he meets a girl who doesn’t really get the concept of sword & sorcery tavern-dancing:

Crom takes the girl (Gwenna) dancing and formulates a plan to get into the tower by first being thrown in jail. It works, but once at the tower, he’s got to fight panthers and some guards. He dispatches them all with his sword “Skull-cracker.”

When he gets to the fountain he finds he guarded by a giant snake! He kills it, too, but is almost done in by the queen of Ophir, herself, Tanit. He takes her hostage so he can get out of the city:

By the time they’ve escaped though, Tanit has warmed to Crom and is asking him to come back and be her king! She and Crom deliver the water to Dwelf, who suffers the ironic fate of being turned into an infant.

Not really into childcare, apparently, Crom leaves the wizardling and decides he and Tanit should head back to that kingdom she’s promised him--with his sister Lalla, too, of course. They don’t make it back without adventure, but that ends this particular issue.

Crom goes on to have two more improbable adventures in the pages of Strange Worlds.

Beneath the Crooked Hills

A week ago, we had another session of our Land of Azurth 5e campaign. The party had become much more interested in the trinkets and where they might come from. The townsfolk really didn't know, but mentioned a mage who had been looking into the mystery. Unfortunately, she had disappeared.

The party searched her old residence and found some cryptic notes they couldn't make much of. There was also some sort of design or pattern imprinted on a rectangle of an unknown, transparent material. They did discover she had gone into the Hills and never came back.

Knowing there's nothing for it but to explore their selves, they look around until they stumble upon some fissures with foot prints around it. It's a tight squeeze, but they are sure that's where the strange sleepwalkers came from. The party goes in, but it takes a bit of time because Dagmar gets stuck. With they seem a weird glass wall and hear ethereal music. In the next room, they fight a nest of oversized snakes from a pile of debris, before figuring out how to open a door into an octagonal room. There, each wall is adorned with a symbol, and there's a wooden ball in the middle of the room. 

With some investigation, they find a hidden panel that seems to provide some sort of control over what the room does. They eventually decide to put the ball under a symbol matching what the "control panel" shows, and a another, secret door opens.

Into the Wilderness

I have the rudiments of an idea for a setting. A wilderness not unlike Middle-earth's Wilderlands, but also not unlike America's early frontier between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River--and at a 1820s level of technology. A place of dark forests, mighty rivers, skin-changers, and dragons, but also rivermen in keelboats, ancient mounds, and perhaps the skeletons of ancient giants. 

Not really the American Frontier any more than Middle-earth is Europe (and no need to tell me Tolkien intended it to be Eurasia in the distant past, please). No colonialism as we know it, though likely some clash of cultures and plenty of room for man's inhumanity to man, of course. Probably no demi-humans as usually constituted but maybe something with more Biblical resonance. After all, the Garden of Eden could be in Missouri.

Wednesday Comics: DC, November 1980 (wk 2, pt 1)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around August 28, 1980.

Action Comics #513: It feels like the late 90s idea of riffing off the Silver Age for a "Neo-Silver" approach, wasn't actually original to the 90s. This Wolfman/Swan story features the return of Superman Island, which was an island shaped like Superman that Superman had thrown into space for reasons he doesn't want publicly known. At the opening of the story, it's heading back to Earth! Two hoods know the secret, so Lois is trying to track them down to keep them from talking, but H.I.V.E. wants to know what they know. Turns out Superman Island has a core of Kryptonite. Luckily, a group of friendly aliens have made the island their home and use Kryptonite as an energy source, so they are eager not to let any of it get away. The aliens help Superman defeat H.I.V.E., then Superman gives the island a super-push toward a planet the aliens can settle on. In the Airwave backup, our young hero teams up with the Atom and his inexperience and lack of caution get them both in trouble.

Adventure Comics #477: DeMatteis and Orlando have a really desperate Aquaman going to the mayor of New Venice to get his help (how?) to find Mera. This seems particularly pointless since Aquaman had previously said he would help the Mayor find his brother and didn't, and the people of the city are upset due to his recent attacks on them while controlled by Poseidon. A little girl asks for Aquaman to help her cousin. Cal Durham whose a former henchman of Black Manta and now can only breath water. He tells him Manta is again up to no good. They go to check it out, but are captured. Manta and his crew of dissaffected and marginalized surface folk plan to attack Atlantis. Starman wasn't dead, but also his series wasn't ending (yet), just changing direction. Levitz and Ditko have him going through a number of almost Starlin Cosmic trials to rescue Mn'Torr. This is the best installment of this in a while. The Plastic Man story manages to work in roller-skating and disco, and swipes at 70s pop songs Pasko must have found annoying. Staton's art is up to the semi-comedic challenge as always.   

Brave & the Bold #168: Burkett and Aparo bring us a Team-Up with Batman and Green Arrow. This could be tricky, because Green Arrow can be seen as a low rent Batman with a more limited schtick, but by 1980, they have distinctive personalities. Green Arrow volunteers Batman to appear a charity benefit performance of escape artist Samson Citadel, a reformed criminal who Green Arrow took set on the straight and narrow. When crimes are committed requiring the skills of an escape artist, Citadel falls under suspicion. Batman investigates and discovers a hypnotist who has been mesmerizing folks to commit his crimes for him. Green Arrow confronts Citadel who he saw leaving the scene of a crime and realizes he's hypnotized. Ultimately, his appeal to his friend breaks the spell, while Batman escapes from a deathtrap in full Houdini style. In fact, the last page is Batman describing step by step how he made the escape. 

The backup story continues Nemesis quest for justice. Spiegle's art works well for the pulpier fair.

Detective Comics #496: The "dollar" days of this title are over, and it returns to being a normal-sized comic, meaning we only get a Batman lead story and a Batgirl backup. Fleisher and Newton bring back the Golden Age Clayface who has appeared since 1968 (in his single, previous "Earth-One" appearance). Batman drops in a Horror Film Exposition held aboard a luxury yacht belonging to actor/director John Carlinger. Batman seems familiar with and enthusiastic about Carlinger's films, which is a surprising bit of characterization. Anyway, when this event is televised in the psych hospital of Basil Karlo, the original Clayface, he's offended he wasn't invited. So offended he kills a nurse and two other people to sneak onboard and attempt to kill Carlinger. Meanwhile, we learn that Carlinger is in a dispute over money with his production partners. Then, Clayface show's up and starts trying to murder people--specifically those partners. After a tussle with Clayface, Batman realizes the truth and uses that knowledge to trick Clayface, who isn't Basil Karlo, after all. Fleisher delivers a nice (if simple) little mystery here worthy of the title "detective comics" and it's good to see Basil Karlo back.

The Batgirl story by Burkett and Delbo has her facing off with a Dr. Voodoo (no relation to Brother Voodoo, who is also a doctor) who is using music to put people into a trance state to do his biding. Batgirl does some good observation to figure this out, and use some sound equipment to break Voodoo's hold.

Green Lantern #134: Wolfman and Staton have Dr. Polaris thoroughly defeat Green Lantern. He takes the power ring and leaves Jordan in the Arctic. Jordan plans to make his way to a national geographic research station--on foot. This section portrays Hal Jordan as a badass, walking across the ice, battling a bear and a wolf, and going snowblind before reaching his destination in his torn uniform. (Wolfman supplies the idea that the Green Lantern costume, made for space, is protection against the cold to a degree to make this work.) When he's back in California, he seeks out his friend Tom Kalmaku for help, who seems to contemplating suicide due to work setbacks. Jordan slaps him around, and the two set out to somehow defeat Polaris. 

In the backup story by Sutton and Rodriquez, Adam Strange is being tortured by Kaskor and his men. Strange tricks them to make his escape, but the base is going to explode for some reason, and he only gets out via zeta beam. A beam that returns him to earth! 

House of Mystery #286: This issue is rougher than the last--and the last was not top shelf DC horror. Jameson and artists Hasen and Bulnandi take us to the distant future of 2023 where a cop gets a cybernetic arm following a vicious attack by a criminal, then gets obsessed with seeking revenge and makes himself judge, jury, and executioner--because he's got a mechanical arm, and he can! The punchline is he programs the arm to seek out evil and--wait for it--the hand strangles him! The next story is a perfunctory "mummies curse" yarn by Kelley and Patricio. One savvy archeologist figures out the mummy is degrading its ability to move with every attack, so he figures he'll let it get his colleagues first, then he'll be in the clear. He's almost right, but the mummy catches him on a pier. It isn't strong enough to finish him, but in their struggles, they tumble from the pier and the archeologist is hung on the bandages. 

The last story is kind of a Twilight Zone thing. A aging man in the 1890s, regretting he is in tough financial straits and never able to provide for his wife in high-style, crosses a bridge into a peculiar purple smoke and is transported back in time three decades. As a young man, he resolves to become rich, even if that means selling to both sides in the Civil War. The Confederates pay him off after a deal, but he has to flee the union forces and is shot crossing a bridge into that same magical fog. He collapses dead back in the 1899, and drops his much fought for sack of loot--which turns out to be Confederate money.

Talislanta Returns

The word on the Talislanta facebook page is that the setting will be returning (via Kickstarter) in a 5e compatible form. While I don't know that 5e is the optimal system for Talislanta, I'm glad to see it back and will definitely kickstart it. 

This announcement puts me in a mind to get back to the series I started in 2020 but never finished where I did an in-depth look at setting. Those posts can be found here.

Mysterious Trinkets

I realized we had a Land of Azurth 5e session weeks ago I didn't blog about. Here's the belated news from Azurth...

The party finally reached the eastern border of the Country of Virid. Immediately, the fae influence became apparent in the more fanciful foliage. As evening approached, they decided to seek lodging for the night in the town of Carabas, nestled at the feet of the Crooked Hills. It turned out there was a fair going on.

Our heroes joined the celebration and took part in various contests to win what the townsfolk call "trinkets." Erekose wins a dueling competition. Kully takes a storytelling prize. Shae won in dancing, showing off her Elven moves. Kairon managed to pull out a victory in kite-fighting. Dagmar, however, only succeeded in getting drunk in the drinking competition.

They still took the trinkets they were awarded, even after seeing a man with too many of them explode (the townsfolk didn't seem over-bothered by this). 

The party was confounded by the strange devices. Each was unique and their use was not obvious. Also, while the items appeared to have spell-like effects in some cases, they did not register as magical.

With no rooms available, the party rented a pavilion on the edge of the fair grounds near the hills. That night, after a strange, shared dream, they were attacked by sallow-skinned, nonhuman somnambulists with strange, branch-like, metallic golden growths out of their foreheads.

The party managed to kill a couple of the creatures and drive off the others, but they are left with the idea that the things were after the trinkets.

Savage Swords of Middle-earth: Magic

Re-reading those old posts got me thinking about the "Middle-earth in the style of Robert E. Howard" idea, and with some time to read in travel, I was thinking about the similarities and differences in Tolkien's and Howard's approaches to magic.  The comparisons are interesting, and I don't think they would be difficult to fuse to a degree.

Compared to modern fantasy literature or rpg fantasy, both the Hyborian Age and Middle-earth are decidedly what we might term "low magic," which is not to say there is little magic in them. In fact, both worlds are full of things we would consider magical in the real world sense. There are any number of specially wrought items and substances that in D&D would be "magic items." Magic-users are not necessarily less powerful either, but they tend to use magic less and in less flashy--and certainly less "zappy" ways--than the D&D standard.

In Howard, you could say spellcasters are thinner on the ground. In Tolkien, that's true to an even greater degree; there are only like 6 wizards! But that's ignoring the special (magical) abilities so many people seem to evidence: the abilities of elves and dwarves to craft magical items, Bard and other Men of Dale having the ability to speak with thrushes, etc.

In an unsent letter, Tolkien addressed magic in LotR, drawing a distinction between magia (physical magic) and goeteia (charms, enchantments). For elves and spirits both of these are entirely naturally parts of the world, it's only the mortal races that view them as magic. Tolkien notes there do not rely on spells or "lore," and that humans can't perform them. This letter was unsent, though, and this last part contradicts elements of published works. The Hobbit speaks of dwarves casting spells (though maybe this is just superstition on their part and doesn't work), and even in the margins of the letter Tolkien reminds himself about Numenoreans using spells in making swords.

While Howard has the trappings of classic Sword & Sorcery spellcraft with summoned demons and dark, magical tomes, there is also an element of the psychic to his portrayal. In "People of the Black Circle" it's implied that belief plays a role in susceptibility to magic, even when it seems to be manifesting as physical phenomena, and that a lot of it's effect is hypnotism. Both Thoth-Amon and Xaltotun seem to accomplish a lot merely by directing mental energy without spell or obvious ritual.

For a more Sword & Sorcery Middle-earth, it goes without saying that Morgoth and Sauron, at least, taught sorcery to mankind. Sorcery that arises from evil and risks corruptions fits in well with a Howardian vibe (though, as I've mentioned before, not all spellcasters in Howard are evil. Just most of them!) Also, I would also have evil magic-users (Sauron, Saruman, etc.) perform more magic and more visual magic than in LOTR as written, more along the lines of things we see in Hour of the Dragon--where interestingly, keeping a magic item of power out of the hands of an ancient, awakened evil out to conquer the world is the key to that evil's defeat.