The Lost Cities of Conan

In the last post, we looked at the lost cities in the Tarzan novels. Edgar Rice Burroughs was one of Robert E. Howard’s commercial inspirations, along with Sax Rohmer. REH imitated both authors but the lost cities of Conan feel more like those found in other adventure fiction. There is a good dollop of H. P. Lovecraft’s R’yleh here too, with its weird geometry. Conan finds eldritch horrors galore in these cities forgotten by time.

Conan the Cimmerian wanders into some strange places in his travels. He often finds old temples and other haunted structures but I have focused on those that are bigger, actual cities. I have also included some were not published in Weird Tales but were posthumous collaborations with L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter or adaptations by Roy Thomas from non-Conan stories. Conan’s adventures went on longer than the man who created him. As one of the immortal characters (like Tarzan, James Bond, Dracula, Frankenstein and many others), Conan will go on and on having strange encounters with monsters in odd locations.

The artwork in this post goes back to the Marvel Age of Conan. I know there have been other comics done since but I am a Bronze Age boy after all. All the adaptations were done by Roy Thomas (who else?).

Kuthchemes

“Black Colossus” (Weird Tales, June, 1933) by Robert E. Howard

He stood, the one atom of life amidst the colossal monuments of desolation and decay. Not even a vulture hung like a black dot in the vast blue vault of the sky that the sun glazed with its heat. On every hand rose the grim relics of another, forgotten age: huge broken pillars, thrusting up their jagged pinnacles into the sky; long wavering lines of crumbling walls; fallen Cyclopean blocks of stone; shattered images, whose horrific features the corroding winds and dust-storms had half erased. From horizon to horizon no sign of life: only the sheer breath-taking sweep of the naked desert, bisected by the wandering line of a long-dry rivercourse; in the midst of that vastness the glimmering fangs of the ruins, the columns standing up like broken masts of sunken ships – all dominated by the towering ivory dome before which Shevatas stood trembling.

Savage Sword of Conan #2 (October 1974) features a city where a three thousand year old wizard returns to Conan’s world. Kuthchemes is Thugra Khotan’s base of operations for “doing what we do every night, Pinky: Try and take over the world!“

City of the Ape

“Queen of the Black Coast” (Weird Tales, May 1934) by Robert E. Howard

It was but the ghost of a city on which they looked when they cleared a jutting jungle-clad point and swung in toward the in-curving shore. Weeds and rank river grass grew between the stones of broken piers and shattered paves that had once been streets and spacious plazas and broad courts. From all sides except that toward the river, the jungle crept in, masking fallen columns and crumbling mounds with poisonous green. Here and there buckling towers reeled drunkenly against the morning sky, and broken pillars jutted up among the decaying walls. In the centre space a marble pyramid was spired by a slim column, and on its pinnacle sat or squatted something that Conan supposed to be an image until his keen eyes detected life in it.

Conan the Barbarian #100 (July 1979) was a celebration of one hundred issues of that comic. If you’ve read Hither Came Conan (2023) you’ll know this is my favorite Conan story. The lost city element certainly helps in that effort. The unnamed ruins that were once a thriving metropolis of aliens now down to one devolved survivor. What’s not to like? This is a lost city of horror more than adventure.

Xuthal

“The Slithering Shadow” (Weird Tales, September 1933) by Robert E. Howard

At first he thought it a phantom, one of the mirages which had mocked and maddened him in that accursed desert. Shading his sun-dazzled eyes, he made out spires and minarets, and gleaming walls. He watched it grimly, waiting for it to fade and vanish. Natala had ceased to sob; she struggled to her knees and followed his gaze.

Savage Sword of Conan #20 (July 1977) is probably my second favorite, with its dreamy occupants waiting for death. I always wondered if Richarx Adams had read this story. In Watership Down (1972) there is a warren full of rabbits who are the same, waiting for the bullet or the snare.

City of the Black Ones

“The Pool of the Black One” (Weird Tales, October 1933) by Robert E. Howard

He hesitated, fingered his sword, then went forward, bitten by the worm of curiosity. He saw no one as he approached a tall archway in the curving wall. There was no door. Peering warily through, he saw what seemed to be a broad open court, grass-carpeted, surrounded by a circular wall of the green semi-translucent substance. Various arches opened from it. Advancing on the balls of his bare feet, sword ready, he chose one of these arches at random, and passed into another similar court. Over an inner wall he saw the pinnacles of strangely shaped tower-like structures. One of these towers was built in, or projected into the court in which he found himself, and a broad stair led up to it, along the side of the wall. Up this he went, wondering if it were all real, or if he were not in the midst of a black lotus dream.

Savage Sword of Conan #22 (September 1977) is a typical Hyborian ruin with no one around. Of course, there are monsters lurking. This is REH’s other version. With “The Slithering Shadow” and “Red Nails”, the cities still have a few inhabitants. Most of the stories like this one and “Queen of the Black Coast”, they do not.

Xapur

“The Devil in Iron” (Weird Tales, August 1934) by Robert E. Howard

That he was where he was proved that he was less dully incurious than most of his people. Men seldom visited Xapur. It was uninhabited, all but forgotten, merely one among the myriad isles which dotted the great inland sea. Men called it Xapur, the Fortified, because of its ruins, remnants of some prehistoric kingdom, lost and forgotten before the conquering Hyborians had ridden southward. None knew who reared those stones, though dim legends lingered among the Yuetshi which half intelligibly suggested a connection of immeasurable antiquity between the fishers and the unknown island kingdom.

Savage Sword of Conan #15 (October 1976) is one of the lost cities that has no one living there anymore. And for good reason. The remote island is used by pirates like Conan for shady work but the temple with the undying devil in it makes it a poor place to hang out.

Alkmeenon

“The Jewels of Gwalhur” (Weird Tales, March 1935) by Robert E. Howard

It was like looking into the interior of a vast bowl, rimmed by a circular stone wall. The floor of the bowl was covered with trees and denser vegetation, though nowhere did the growth duplicate the jungle denseness of the outer forest. The cliffs marched around it without a break and of uniform height. It was a freak of nature, not to be paralleled, perhaps, in the whole world: a vast natural amphitheatre, a circular bit of forested plain, three or four miles in diameter, cut off from the rest of the world, and confined within the ring of those palisaded cliffs…below him lay the fabulous and deserted palace of Alkmeenon.

Savage Sword of Conan #25 (December 1977) feels like a Sprague rewrite like The Flame Knife but isn’t. In a vast crater lies a lost city. This one has more H. Rider Haggard behind it, I think.

Xuchotl

“Red Nails” (Weird Tales, July August/September October 1936) by Robert E. Howard

She looked uneasily at the city. No helmets or spear-heads gleamed on battlements, no trumpets sounded, no challenge rang from the towers. A silence as absolute as that of the forest brooded over the walls and minarets.

The sun was high above the eastern horizon when they stood before the great gate in the northern wall, in the shadow of the lofty rampart. Rust flecked the iron bracings of the mighty bronze portal. Spider webs glistened thickly on hinge and sill and bolted panel.

Savage Tales #2 (October 1973) is Howard’s best lost city with its warring factions that Valeria and Conan stumble into, after defeating a dinosaur! Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) may have supplied some elements.

Kara-Shehr

“The Fire of Asshurbanipal” (Weird Tales, December 1936) by Robert E. Howard

Now as they crossed the level wastes that separated the broken land from the city, they saw the shattered walls take clearer form and shape, as if they grew out of the morning sky. The city seemed built of huge blocks of black stone, but how high the walls had been there was no telling because of the sand that drifted high about their base; in many places they had fallen away and the sand hid the fragments entirely.

Conan the Barbarian #35 (February 1974) is based on a real lost city story by Howard with Cthulhu in it! Roy Thomas converted it into a Conan story and Cthulhu took a bow. For more on this Mythos tale, go here.

The City of Lost Valley

“King of the Forgotten People” (Magazine of Horror, Summer 1966) by Robert E. Howard

…He was looking into a valley which he did not recognize. Somehow he knew it was Lost Valley, but in it towered a gigantic city of dully gleaming stone… Its towers and battlements were those of an alien age. Its outline baffled his gaze with its unnatural aspects; it was a city of lunacy to the normal human eye, with its hints of alien dimensions and abnormal principles of architecture…He saw them in the twisting streets, and in their colossal buildings, and he shuddered at the inhumanness of their lives. Much they did was beyond his ken; he could understand their actions and motives no more than a Zulu savage might understand the events of modern London. But he did understand that these people were very ancient and very evil.

Conan the Barbarian Annual #6 (1981) is another re-write job by Roy Thomas. The original story features the Worms of the Earth and cowboys.

Larsha

“The Hall of the Dead” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, February, 1967) by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp

Thirty paces north of the gate, the wall had crumbled so that its lowest point was less than twenty feet above the ground. At the same time, a pile of tailings against the foot of the wall rose to within six or eight feet of the broken edge… A grunt, a heave, and a scramble, and he was over the edge, ignoring scratches and bruises. He stared down into the city.

Inside the wall was a cleared space, where for centuries plant life had been waging war upon the ancient pavement. The paving slabs were cracked and up-ended. Between them, grass, weeds, and a few scrubby trees had forced their way.

Conan the Barbarian #8 (August 1971) was an early one since it was the only the eight issue of the color comic. Windsor-Smith always gives us ornate-looking locales. Thomas changed the creature ( a giant slug, I believe) defending the city to a giant gila monster for some reason. The tall mummy warriors remain the same.

Yolgan

“The Lost Valley of Iskander” (1974) by Robert E. Howard

Yolgan was built at the foot of a mountain, overlooking the valley through which a stream wandered among masses of reeds and willows. Timber was unusually dense. Rugged mountains, dominated by Erlik’s peak to the south, swept around the valley to the south and west, and in the north it was blocked by a chain of hills. To the east it was open, sloping down from a succession of uneven ridges. Gordon and his men had followed the ranges in their flight, and now they looked down on the valley from the south.

Conan the Barbarian #79-81 (November 1977-January 1978) is another non-Conan story turned into a Conan three-parter. It features Alexander the Great and time travel since the Hyborian Age takes place thousands of years before Alexander’s reign. Successful? Hmm….

Conclusion

Robert E. Howard (and Roy Thomas by proxy) knew the value of a lost city. It is a bottleneck where monsters can lurk for aeons, or groups of people with long standing beefs (ala Edgar Rice Burroughs) which the hero intrudes upon. They offer color and splendor and fantastic romance. Why else would writers like H. Rider Haggard use them so often back int he 1880s? Adding a Sword & Sorcery element to such a location seems pretty easy, though you end up with the same problem ERB had: the world becomes covered in lost cities.

I may have forgotten a city or two, so feel free to remind me. These weren’t the first comics to feature lost cities, not by a long shot. Next time we’ll begin a three post look at Lost Cities in the Golden and Silver Ages of Comics…