Chane of the Golden Hair was a character written and drawn by Gil Kane. He appeared three times in the back pages of The Savage Sword of Conan. Kane does some pretty typical Sword & Sorcery stuff but dropped the series before he could truly produce something to carry our interest beyond the three episodes.
Gil Kane was no stranger to Sword & Sorcery. He drew some the first S&S tales for DC in the early 1970s, created Jason Drum for the French Tintin comics, drew many of the best Conan the Barbarian covers and contents including the entire adaptation of The Hour of the Dragon in Giant-Size Conan #1-5. After John Buscema and Barry Smith, Kane was the most prominent of early Conan artists. As an influence on other artists, such as Howard Chaykin who had been his assistant, he is a giant.
Gods and Girls
“Andrax the Last” (Savage Sword of Conan #63, April 1981) has Chane happen upon a human sacrifice. He interferes, trying to rescue the maiden who is about to be given to Andrax. Chane thinks the ceremony is symbolic and carries the girl off. The high priest kills her with a thrown knife. Chane wants to get revenge on the man but Andrax shows up. He is a real live god, a giant lizard version of King Kong. He carries off the dead girl and Chane leaves, the priest’s laughter ringing in his ears.
The barbarian saving the sacrificial girl feels a little cliche, going back to Robert E. Howard’s Kull. The god who turns out to be a real monster is of course very King Kong but Kane makes it work. I’m not really sure what that high priest was laughing about. The next year he will have to repeat the sacrifice. The name Andrax reminded me of another comic.
The Ultimate Hunt
“The Devil’s Bait” (Savage Sword of Conan #64, May, 1981) is my favorite of the three. Chane sees a jeweled sword stuck in the ground and goes to take it. It is the bait in a pit trap. A large anthropoid monster attacks him in the pit. Chane’s masterful swordwork keeps the monster at bay. The monster’s owner, Lord Argon, pulls Chane out of the pit and offers him a job. He shows the barbarian his collection of trophies. As a king who has grown bored with war and hunting, he is in search of the ultimate prey. (I was waiting for a retread of “The Most Dangerous Game” but Kane doesn’t go there.) Argon wants to hunt a Hell Hound.
Using his sorcery, Argon conjurs up a passage to Hell. He and Chane go down until he sees the beast. It runs off and Argon follows. Chane is smart enough to see that the situation is the same as Argon’s trap. Argon rushes off into the hands of Satan himself. Chane returns to the surface to look for the sword.
No Banjos Here
“Deliverance” (Savage Sword of Conan #67, August 1981) has Chane wander into Zukura and his daughter, Seela. The two are the last survivors of an ancient kingdom. A prophecy says a golden haired god would deliver or destroy them. Chane denies being a god and shows little interest in Seela, even though she offers herself to him. Rejected, Seela turns into a wolf and attacks Chane. She can’t do it, and ends up rubbing up against this leg.
Zukura grows angry and summons a demon to destroy Chane. The monster rises up out of the pit and Seela, in wolf form, attacks the demon. The creature slaps her into a pillar, killing her. Zukura becomes despondent and pulls the roof down on himself and the demon. If Zukura and Seela had simply left things alone then they would have survived but their own actions doom them. Chane escapes, shaken and like the reader, wonder what the hell? A largely pointless story, and if this is what Kane was going to do in the future, then maybe it is best that the series ended. Perhaps Gil realized, what Roy Thomas could have told him: a wandering barbarian needs a continuous supply of plots.
Conclusion
This series shares a common heritage with all Sword & Sorcery heroes. Chane is a wanderer. Like Brak, he has yellow hair. Some comic artists like Esteban Maroto with Dax the Damned and Victor de la Fuente with Haxtur, tell many stories of their wanderers. Eventually the stories run out and the wanderer dies or settles down or simply wanders off into the sunset. Gil Kane certainly could have sustained this character for longer. He wrote the graphic novel Blackmark (1971), co-penned the novel Excalibur! (1980) with John Jakes, and created Talos of the Wilderness Sea with Jan Strnad. Gil was a bit of a dolphin though, jumping from project to project. Because of this, his influence can be found all over Marvel, DC and independent comics.
