Undead and Unleashed! Marvel in the Bronze Age gathered the undead and unliving monsters of Robert E. Howard (and pastichers like L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter) into their comic sagas. Ghosts, wraiths, skeletons and lichs galore along with vampires and zombies.
All of these stories were adapted by Roy Thomas except one. (You find it when you find it…) Roy was always on the hunt for more material, both published and in manuscript, to turn into more Conan comics. He also adapted the adventures of other Howard characters too, like King Kull and Solomon Kane. It was actually Kane, the Puritan adventurer, who encountered the undead most often. Conan had a lotta Mythos squidgies, hulking beasts and lumbering gods to deal with.
“The Keepers of the Crypt” Conan the Barbarian #8 (August 1971) was based “The Hall of the Dead” by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp (Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1967). Conan and a rival enter the ancient building after fighting a giant slug (a giant gila monster in the comic). The treasure is guarded by eight foot tall undead giants.
Howard describes the mummy warriors thusly:
Around the room, seven giant warriors, each at least seven feet tall, sprawled in chairs. Their heads lay against the chair backs and their mouths hung open. They wore the trappings of a bygone era; their plumed copper helmets and the copper scales on their corselets were green with age. Their skins were brown and waxy-looking, like those of mummies, and grizzled beards hung down to their waists. Copper-bladed bills and pikes leaned against the wall beside them or lay on the floor.
Thomas has perhaps wisely left off the long beards. These undead giants are almost invincible. Speed and sunlight are what save the Cimmerian.
“The Shadow Kingdom” Kull the Conqueror #2 (September 1971) based on the REH story (Weird Tales, August 1929) Everybody thinks of Serpent Men in “The Shadow Kingdom” and they are pretty cool but don’t forget King Eallal’s ghost was a slave to those evil reptiles.
Kull and Brule encounter he spirit:
The glow merged into a shadowy form. A shape vaguely like a man it was, but misty and illusive, like a wisp of fog, that grew more tangible as it approached, but never fully material. A face looked at them, a pair of luminous great eyes, that seemed to hold all the tortures of a million centuries. There was no menace in that face, with its dim, worn features, but only a great pity—and that face—that face—
“Almighty gods!” breathed Kull, an icy hand at his soul; “Eallal, king of Valusia, who died a thousand years ago!”
Kull’s fate is made so much worse by Eallal’s appearance. If the Serpent Men replace him, they will also enslave his spirit forever. It also didn’t hurt to have a ghost in a story sold to a Horror Pulp.
“The Skulls in the Stars” Monsters Unleashed#1 (1973) based on the story by Robert E. Howard (Weird Tales, January 1929). Solomon Kane the road less traveled and encounters the Torkerton Ghost. Eventually, he even solves the mystery behind it’s creation.
The Torkerton Ghost is not overly described in this Solomon Kane story. Perhaps this explains why Ralph Reese drew it like a winged demon. The thing looks quite solid and not ethereal at all.
The shadows melted, and Kane saw! At first he thought it only a shadow of mist, a wisp of moor fog that swayed in the tall grass before him. He gazed. More illusion, he thought. Then the thing began to take on shape, vague and indistinct. Two hideous eyes flamed at him – eyes which held all the stark horror which has been the heritage of man since the fearful dawn ages – eyes frightful and insane, with an insanity transcending earthly insanity. The form of the thing was misty and vague, a brain-shattering travesty on the human form, like, yet horridly unlike. The grass and bushes beyond showed clearly through it.
“The Horror from the Mound” Chamber of Chills #2 (January 1973) was adapted from the story by Robert E. Howard (Weird Tales, May 1932) by Sword & Sorcery master, Gardner F. Fox. This tale set in the American Southwest raised the hackles of some Weird Tales readers for not following the conventions of Hollywood. (You have to remember REH wrote during the hey-dey of the Universal Horror films like Dracula (1931). Howard preferred to surprise the reader’s expectations rather than follow the herd.
His fear-glazed eyes took in the tall, vulturelike form–the icy eyes, the long black fingernails–the moldering garb, hideously ancient–the long spurred boot-the slouch hat with its crumbling feather–the flowing cloak that was falling to slow shreds. Framed in the black doorway crouched that abhorrent shape out of the past, and Brill’s brain reeled. A savage cold radiated from the figure–the scent of moldering clay and charnel-house refuse. And then the undead came at the living like a swooping vulture.
The comic is pretty faithful with Brill shooting the vampire and finally setting it on fire. One thing they changed was the creature’s wardrobe, which looks like Marvel’s Dracula. The monster also talks, making it more human, I suppose.
“Curse of the Undead-Man” Savage Sword of Conan #1 (August 1974) was based on Robert E. Howard’s “Mistress of Death” (Witchcraft & Sorcery #5, January-February 1971). This tale by Howard was not a supernatural one but a historical adventure of Red Agnes the swordwoman. Easily converted to Red Sonja, Thomas would have had to add some magic. A villain who is impervious to steel is pretty challenging. But Red and Conan are up to task.
A tall man entered, closing the door behind him. He was wrapped in a wide black mantle, and when he raised his head and his glance over the tavern, a silence fell suddenly. That face was strange and unnatural in appearance, being so dark in hue it was almost black. His eyes were strange, murky and staring. I saw several topers cross themselves as they met his gaze, and then he seated himself at a table in a corner furthest from the candles, and drew his mantle closer about him, though the night was warm. He took the tankard proffered him by an apprehensive slattern and bent his head over it, so his face was no longer visible under his slouch hat, and the hum of the tavern began again, though somewhat subdued.
“The Hills of the Dead” Kull and the Barbarians #2-3 (July-September 1975) was based on the Robert E. Howard story (Weird Tales, August 1930). Chronologically this story appeared after “Red Shadows” where we are introduced to zombies. In “The Hills of the Dead”, Howard got to really stretch his legs with a whole army of the undead:
Kane was used to grotesque sights, but at first glance he started and a slight coldness traveled down his spine. Two black men stood before him in silence. They were tall and gaunt and entirely naked. Their skins were a dusty black, tinged with a gray, ashy hue, as of death. Their faces were different from any negroes he had seen. The brows were high and narrow, the noses huge and snout-like; the eyes were inhumanly large and inhumanly red. As the two stood there it seemed to Kane that only their burning eyes lived.
“Red Shadows” Marvel Premiere #33-34 (December 1976-February 1977) based on the REH story (Weird Tales, August 1928). This tale, that begins in England, takes Kane to Africa where he meets his friend, N’Longa the ju-ju man. An episode in this novella has N’Longa resurrect a dead man so that it can attack his enemy, the chief. Kane witness this but doesn’t fight the undead thing.
First a twitching of a hand, then an aimless motion of an arm, a motion which gradually spread over the body and limbs. Slowly, with blind, uncertain gestures, the dead man turned upon his side, the trailing limbs found the earth. Then, horribly like something being born, like some frightful reptilian thing bursting the shell of non-existence, the corpse tottered and reared upright, standing on legs wide apart and stiffly braced, arms still making useless, infantile motions. Utter silence, save somewhere a man’s quick breath sounded loud in the stillness.
In a later story, “Moon of Skulls” he will seek the Vampire Queen, Negari, but she is not an actual “vampire”. Roy Thomas would have Solomon Kane meet the actual Dracula in Dracula Lives #3 (October 1973).
“Rattle of Bones” Savage Sword of Conan #18 (April 1977) was based on the Robert E. Howard story (Weird Tales, June 1929). This bad guy gets his just desserts as the tale ends thusly:
The host of the Cleft Skull lay lifeless on the floor of the secret room, his bestial face set in lines of terrible fear; and deep in his broken neck were sunk the bare fingerbones of the sorcerer’s skeleton.
“The Thing in the Crypt” Conan the Barbarian #92 (November 1978) was based on the story by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter (Conan, 1967). Who can forget this classic scene? (I won’t whine again about how disappointing Conan the Barbarian was when that skeleton didn’t get up to fight the Cimmerian. Sigh.)
And then the hair lifted from the nape of his neck, and the boy felt his skin roughen with a supernatural thrill. For there, enthroned on a great, stone chair at the further end of the chamber, sat the huge figure of a naked man, with a naked sword across his knees and a cavernous skull-face staring at him through the flickering firelight. Almost as soon as he sighted the naked giant, Conan knew he was dead—long ages dead. The corpse’s limbs were as brown and withered as dry sticks, thee flesh on its huge torso had dried, shrunk, and split until it clung in tatters to naked ribs.
The story was actually adapted earlier in Conan the Barbarian #31 (October 1973). When L. Sprague de Camp got hedgy on allowing the story to be adapted, Roy had to change the undead warrior to a shadow. I suppose Sprague and Carter got used to the idea of Marvel using their material because most (if not all?) of their stories were used eventually.
“Legions of the Dead” Savage Sword of Conan #39 (April 1979) from the story “Legions of the Dead” by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter (Conan the Swordsman, 1978). The Hyborian witch-queen has an army of undead to attack the neighboring kingdom of Cimmeria. You have to wonder how likely it was George R. R. Martin read this one, both in prose and comics form. The undead ice warriors of Game of Thrones certainly are similar. GRRM is also a huge comic book fan.
Glancing again, Njal saw the mangled flesh of Egil’s naked breast, whence hours before the living heart had been untimely torn. Revolted by the thing he saw, Njal perceived that however much he wounded his adversary’s flesh, these wounds would never bleed. Neither would his old friend’s corpse feel the bitter kiss of steel. Behind the dead but battling Æsir, a halfcharred Witchman stumbled up the slope, his face a grinning mask of horror. Here, thought Njal, was a denizen of Haloga who had perished in the fire set by the wily Conan.
“The Return of Sir Richard Grenville” Savage Sword of Conan #41 (June 1979) was based on a poem by Robert E. Howard (Red Shadows, 1968). Solomon Kane, in a desperate battle, gets a ghostly help from an old fiend:
And Solomon turned with outstretched hand,/Then halted suddenly,/For no man stood with naked brand/Beneath the moon-lit tree.
Since our focus is the Marvel Comics of the 1970s I have had to leave out Robert E. Howard’s undead masterpiece, “Pigeons From Hell” (Weird Tales, May 1938). Seems Roy Thomas never found a way to use the story in a Sword & Sorcery comic. It was adapted in the 1980s and again in 2004 and 2008.
Roy Thomas and other Marvel writers would add to the legion of undead in the Conan comics and magazines. Robert E. Howard firmly placed the vampire, zombie and ghost in the Hyborian Age. De Camp and Carter added to those undead terrors (perhaps sometimes inspired more by Ray Harryhausen than old REH himself.)
