In case you missed the last monster….
Thog the Slithering Shadow is without doubt the most Lovecraftian of all Robert E. Howard’s monsters. Formless, tentacled, you only have to add an -“oth” to his name to see where he comes from. (It’s like saying Shoggoth with a lisp.) Thog appeared in “The Slithering Shadow” (Weird Tales , September 1933). (For more on Lovecraftian connections: Conan and the Cthulhu Mythos.)
Fritz Leiber has called it the worst Conan story ever: : “repetitious and childish, a self-vitiating brew of pseudo-science, stage illusions, and the ‘genuine’ supernatural.” (“Fantasy Books”, Fantastic, May 1968) I disagree (which I don’t often do with Fritz.) I quite like “The Slithering Shadow” for a number of reasons. Thog is the first. The second is that this story is perhaps the most Gothic thing Howard wrote (since “The Shadow Kingdom” anyway.) The city of Xuthal is a gigantic haunted house, and it is haunted by Thog. Xuthal is a classic bottleneck, with people trapped inside, literally waiting for the monster to come. They fog their minds with the black lotus. (I would not find another good example of this scenario until 1972’s Watership Down, where a warren of rabbits sit around writing gloomy poetry, waiting for the farmer’s snare.)
Conan and Natala stumble upon the lost city of Xuthal, where sorcerers of the past have created the terrible Thog. The city is riddled with trapdoors and secret passages, so Thog can come visit whenever he likes. This massive network of dark tunnels is a Gothic setting worthy of the dank jungle of “Queen of the Black Coast” or the deadly tower of Yara in “The Tower of the Elephant”. Thog is coming:
She saw a giant toad-like face, the features of which were dim and unstable as those of a specter seen in a mirror of nightmare. Great pools of light that might have been eyes blinked at her, and she shook at the cosmic lust reflected there … Only the blinking toad-like face stood out with any distinctness. The thing was a blur in to the sight, a black blot of shadow that normal radiance would neither dissipate nor illuminate… It towered above him like a clinging black cloud. It seemed to flow about him. His madly slashing saber sheared through it again and again, his ripping poinard tore and rent it; he was deluged with a slimy liquid that must have been its sluggish blood. Yet its fury was no wise abated. (“The Slithering Shadow” by Robert E. Howard)
Of Thog the Slithering Shadow’s origins, Thalis the Stygian (not too busy with her whip) explains:
“That was Thog, the Ancient, the god of Xuthal, who dwells in the sunken dome in the centre of the city. He has always dwelt in Xuthal. Whether he came here with the ancient founders, or was here when they built the city, none knows. But the people of Xuthal worship him. Mostly he sleeps below the city, but sometimes at irregular intervals he grows hungry, and then he steals through the secret corridors and the dim-lit chambers, seeking prey. Then none is safe.”
This is very Lovecraftian explanation. Either Thog was brought from outside, from some dimension or outer space, or it had lived there since the beginning of time. Thog is one of the ancient races of monsters that Howard mentions more often in his Solomon Kane stories.
The Weird Tales illustrator, Jayem Wilcox, didn’t like drawing monsters and the cover artist Margaret Brundage focused on women whipping other women in the story so we didn’t get to see a version of Thog the Slithering Shadow until the comics in the 1970s. (Howard put that whipping scene in to both guarantee a sale and to get the cover. It better darn well be there!)
The Savage Sword of Conan #20 (July 1977) rectified this lack of a Thog image big time. Earl Norem put him front-and-center on the cover (along with that girl whipping thing!) And what better team than John Buscema and Alfred Alcala for the story art. Alcala’s moody inks brought the slithering beastie into proper detail.
Dark Horse’s Conan the Avenger #13-15 (April-June 2015) returned to Xuthal. This time Guiu Vilanova does the art and he makes the monster look more frog-like. Which I like because it looks more like the Servitor of the Outer Gods from Howard’s “The Black Stone” (Weird Tales, November 1931). The two creatures could be the same or related.
“The Slithering Shadow” proves it is possible to do Cosmic Horror and Sword & Sorcery. In my opinion, the best stories usually do. Howard’s monsters don’t all follow the squidgy path but Lin Carter (with L. Sprague de Camp) did write another story with a very Lovecraftian beastie, “The Castle of Terror” in Conan the Cimmerian (1969). And for those who consider “The Slithering Shadow” the worst Conan story, take a gander at this one!
Next time….Thak the Apeman…
