The Mighty Samson #8 (December 1966) featured a strange Northern with a Sword & Sorcery twist. The premise behind TMS was that the world has been destroyed by nuclear war and what remains is a planet filled with monsters and heroes. There is a Science Fiction element but like Thundarr the Barbarian and even the Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, this is the world remade into a Sword & Sorcery realm.
The comic was created by Otto Binder and originally drawn by Frank Thorne. With issue eight, Jack Sparling took over the artwork. Binder was half of the Pulp writer “Eando Binder”, long turned to comic book writing. Frank would go on to draw the iconic Red Sonja series for Marvel. Jack Sparling worked for all the comics companies including Charlton, Harvey, Gold Key, Marvel and DC.
Binder tells a fun story called “The Migration Mystery” (Part 1), filled with one Beowulfian feat after another.
A hypnotic telepathic message draws Samson and his friends to walk north. Stumbling along, the three are unable to avoid dangers like the Petal-Prison Plant.
The mighty Samson does what he does best and clubs their way out. The message continues to draw them on. Others gather around the trio, adding more victims. Mindor, Samson’s scientist friend, observes everything as they walk along. He compares them all to lemmings. The impulse allows them to rest for the night. While they rest, a terror watches. The dread Black Monster!
The dark nightmare grabs a number of victims. Samson can see its glowing eyes. This allows him to aim for the head and free everyone. They continue the next morning. Everyone is feeling hungry because they can’t stop walking long enough to find food. Samson helps out by knocking apples off a tree. Days later the herd comes to a place covered in snow. Mindor looks on his map and tells Samson they are in a place once known as “Canada”. Samson is checking out a plant when an giant lizard attacks. The Arctic reptile unwisely swallows the hero. Samson knocks a tune on his fangs until he is spit out. The monster gets a good bashing. Samson returns to the strange plant and sees it has fur. He gathers enough fur plant hides to outfit everyone in the cold climate.
The “migratory call” continues to pull them north. The party comes to a great crevasse in a glacier. They fall inside but Samson catches them. Everyone is trapped. The sides of the glacier are too slippery to climb. Mindor solves the problem by making an ice ax with which Samson carves a staircase. All seems well when…
Samson faces off with the Ice Monster. The creature is too strong for the warrior to defeat. Samson is sent sliding down the glacier. But he doesn’t give up. He comes up with a plan to take out the beast.
The group continues over the glacier when they fall into a pit trap. The creatures who made the trap are apemen, only semi-human. Mindor figures they are not attracted to the migratory call because they are too close to animals. The apemen want the party’s clothing, food and weapons. When the apes try to lift Samson’s club they can’t. But Samson can and does, knocking them out of the pit.
The heroes take what food they can from the apemen’s camp, burying the pit and leaving food for anyone else drawn by the call, then go. Mutant wolves are following them. Samson takes care of them by making some quick skis, then knocking all the wolves into a ravine.
Eventually the walkers arrive at the North Pole where a giant, glowing rock is found. Mindor tests it and finds it radioactive.
“The Mental Battle” (Part2) has the walkers at their destination but there is no food left. The people all start fighting over the last of it.
The mighty Samson calms them and says the sea will provide. He smacks a hole in the ice so they can gather fish. A Many-headed Shark shows up to ruin everything. Samson cuts another hole and traps the monster’s tail. The men grab their spears and there is food for everyone.
Samson wants to destroy the rock that is sending out the call. His club is not up for the job since the rock goes deep under the ice. He spies a wood where he can make a better club. Mindor wonders why a forest would grow at the pole. He realizes it is because of a deposit of sulphur. He gathers charcoal and begins to make gun powder. His plan is to blow up the rock.
The experiment to test the gun powder attracts a new monster, a giant walrus. Samson takes care of him too. His club can’t do it but the new gun powder can.
With the walrus’s blubber, Mindor makes a waterproof explosive for Samson to place at the base of the rock. Diving into the frigid waters, he swims for the bottom.
A giant fish with icicle quills slows him down. A stalactite works as a makeshift spear and Samson is on his way.
Samson clubs the rock free of the ice, sending deep into the water. The explosive goes off and the rock is destroyed. Sadly, the mighty Samson has not reappeared from the water. Suddenly, a man-shaped Ice Monster appears!
Mindor realizes the monster is Samson trapped in ice. They free him and Sharmaine heals him using “anti-bodies” from the old days. The people are free to return to N’Yark.
There are so many connections between this The Mighty Samson story and other Sword & Sorcery stories, Binder often predating them. For instance, the skis remind me of Fritz Leiber’s “The Snow Women” (Fantastic, April 1970), the giant walrus in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) and plant monsters are always welcome. The story element that Binder used that predates this comic comes from Clark Ashton Smith’s “The City of the Singing Flame” from Wonder Stories, July 1931. In that tale, CAS has an irresistible force that draws people to a gigantic shrine from which they don’t return. The mysteriousness of their demise made it a classic. He did write a sequel “Beyond the Singing Flame” (Wonder Stories, November 1931) but the first one is better.
Otto Binder would probably have known of CAS’s story, being a Pulp SF fan (and later writer) of old. He also draws on some Northern elements as well, such as lemmings throwing themselves into the sea and dying, birds using the magnetic pole for migration and navigation. And of course, we have to have wolves. The end result was a fascinating Beowulf-sized tale with tons of monster encounters that feels a little like a Northern as well as a Sword & Sorcery tale.