Looking at covers for the old Conan the Barbarian comics, I was struck by a few thoughts. First off, a number of covers feature Conan and a hulking brute of some kind (often a minion of a sorcerer) in a deadly embrace. My first reaction was this was typical Marvel stuff. It could be Ben Grimm or the Hulk punching it out with a super villain. But in these cases it is the hero who is the larger figure. Then I thought of Wolverine…
But this really isn’t true. The Conan versus the monster motif goes back to the first story, “The Phoenix on the Sword” (Weird Tales, December 1932). Granted Jayem Wilcox didn’t draw the hyena-demon of Hyboria really large but others who followed did. This is the essential Sword & Sorcery motif that comes down to us from ancient times. Beowulf versus Grendel in their punch-up in the halls of Heorot. Beowulf pulls Gren’s arm clear off. Could you get any more Conan than that? And later he kills Grendel’s Ma with sword he finds lying around. Also very Conan. (Tolkien wasn’t immune either with Frodo versus the cave troll or Gandalf versus the Balrog.)
There was another revelation here. I’ve read Ron Goulart’s rather ambivalent appreciation of Conan as “another Tarzan” in his An Informal History of Pulp Magazines (1972). In a chapter called “Tarzan and the Barbarians” Goulart refers to “Robert E. Howard’s heavy-handed Conan epics”, equating them with Tarzan on some level. I always found this idea a misnomer. I love both the apeman and and the Cimmerian, but never really put them together. Tarzan is about adventure in the jungle (think The Jungle Book) , while Conan is adventure in an imaginary world (think The Arabian Nights). I always thought of REH and H. P. Lovecraft as being closer.
But looking at Andy Kubert’s cover below and thinking about hulking beasts, yes, the two are related. Both Tarzan and Conan go head-to-head with large hulking opponents, perhaps animals but not always. And this also may explain my dislike of John Buscema’s Tarzan for Marvel. After a trillion Conan covers, John just didn’t belong there. Well, maybe he did…
Well, no matter. Conan versus the ten-foot-tall adversary is certainly a Sword & Sorcery motif. Here are some of the best covers displaying that image that lies at the heart of all good adventure, S&S or just superheroes, the challenging opponent vs. the under-dog.
I’ve never really thought of Tarzan and Conan in the same breath. To me they are different characters in different worlds. Of course, thinking on it now, there are plenty of stories to write where their two worlds intersect. Maybe Conan has to find an ancient temple taken over by the jungle, or Tarzan were to venture into the towns for some reason. Presumably the character in his element would be the Alpha, but some interesting ideas arise from the pairing of the two.
As an aside, I remember reading the “Satan had a Son” issue many moons ago. The story reminded me obliquely of “The Travels of Biturian Varosh” in the Glorantha role-playing Cults of Prax supplement. In there a young, animalistic child is returned to his kind, sort of. A towering half-man, half-bull creature takes him as his own. I always liked the feel of this wild-child finding where he belongs, where his acting out and odd body bits were seen as the norm.
First time I’ve ever heard Tarzan and Conan paired together as they’re totally different characters in totally different universes. But this conclusion was made by Ron Goulart so for me, that explains a lot right there.