Last time we looked at the Winged Ape, the eldritch monster who Conan, Belit and her crew of pirates faced off against. That evil being knew terrible sorcery, including how to create were-hyenas, his loyal servants:
And now from the shadows dark shapes came silently, swiftly, running low–twenty great spotted hyenas. Their slavering fangs flashed in the moonlight, their eyes blazed as no true beast’s eyes ever blazed…Glaring down into the blazing eyes, Conan knew these creatures were not beasts; it was not merely in their unnatural size that he sensed a blasphemous difference. They exuded an aura tangible as the black mist rising from a corpse-littered swamp. By what godless alchemy these beings had been brought into existence, he could not guess; but he knew he faced diabolism blacker than the Well of Skelos.
Conan faces off with twenty of these gigantic killers in a fight as only Robert E. Howard could write it in “Queen of the Black Coast” (Weird Tales, May 1934). The first time they see the animals there are fifty but N’Gora and the pirates cut down their numbers.
The were-hyenas were not Howard’s first lycanthropes. He actually explored the idea of a singular were-hyena in “The Hyena” (Weird Tales, March 1928). This fairly standard werewolf yarn is set in Africa and the were-hyena is a well-known ju-ju priest. Howard may have been remembering this old story when he decided on his new Conan adventure.
Even earlier, almost the first thing Howard wrote was “In the Forest of Villefere” (Weird Tales, August 1925) and more importantly, its sequel “Wolfshead” (Weird Tales, April 1926) “Villefere” is set in France, where the cavalier, de Montour, meets and kills a werewolf, cursing him to suffer the change at the full moon. (Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin turned this into a Red Sonja comic for Kull and the Barbarians #2 (May 1975).
By “Wolfshead”, de Montour is visiting a rich plantation owner, Dom Vicente, in Africa. Howard does something in this story that was yet to become a common idea: his werewolf has the head of a wolf but the body of a man. The film The Werewolf of London, that gave us the classic Henry Hull “Wolf Man” look was still nine years away. At the end of the story, the lycanthropic curse is blasted out of de Montour by a dynamite explosion. (Roy Thomas, Tony DeZuniga and Rey Garcia adapted this tale in its own comic, Robert E. Howard’s Wolfshead in 1999) I mention all this because I think it is worth noting that Howard did not write the standard werewolf so typical of Weird Tales, but used the ideas in his own way. Like a pack of were-hyenas.
Conan manages to fight and kill all twenty of the rabid beasts. His armor protects him some but it is his fierce sword arm that wins the day. After defeating the hyenas, the winged ape rattles the pyramid that Conan stands on and traps his legs under a broken pillar. This is the classic scene where the dead Belit saves him.
The hyena scene, despite it excellent daring-do never got drawn until the 1970s. Stephen Fabian did a portfolio for the story including a great hyena fight image.
Roy Thomas included it (of course!) in the comic book adaptation in Conan the Barbarian #100 (July 1979). John Buscema and Ernie Chan did the art.
Dark Horse comics also included it in their 2013 adaptation in Conan the Barbarian #1-25. The adaptation was written by Brian wood with art by Riccardo Burchielli.
The were-hyena are servants of a greater evil but their large numbers give us one of the best fights in the works of Robert E. Howard (at least since the showdown with the Serpent Men in “The Shadow Kingdom” (Weird Tales, August 1929) or Kull’s charge with the Vikings in “The Kings of the Night” (Weird Tales, November 1930). Their presence shows how Howard improved as a storyteller, for in “The Garden of Fear” he has the winged man and the blood-sucking plants, but in the longer “Queen of the Black Coast” he knew he had to challenge Conan more than just have him fight the winged ape. The were-hyenas serve this purpose wonderfully.
Next time…the Dragon…
