The Thongor Comics: Creatures on the Loose #23

If you missed the last one…

Creatures on the Loose #23 (May 1973) literally changed the course of my life. That sounds pretty hyperbolic for a ten year old buying a comic from a spinner rack in an Alberta town nobody’s heard of. But it remains true all the same. I had been sent to the corner store with my hard-earned twenty cents to buy another Avengers comic. Being a kid I didn’t understand it would be a month or more before that was possible. Also being a kid I didn’t want to wait. I looked for something else that might be as good.

And in that moment I discovered Sword & Sorcery. It wasn’t Robert E. Howard. That would be two years later when I would get a Solomon Kane paperback from a neighbor. It wasn’t even Conan who must have not been in that rack of comics too. I hadn’t read the first half of the story, not for years until I tracked down that first issue. None of that mattered. Even my older brother’s disappointment when I brought the Avengers-less comic home did nothing to blunt my new found love. Sword & Sorcery was here to stay.

As a writer, I have to assume that I would have found these things I love anyway but it began with that John Romita cover. How Beowulf is that piece? It could be the King of the Geats verses Grendel. I was all-in from that cover on…

Inside we have the same team as last time: George Alec Effinger adapting Lin Carter, Val Mayerik on pencils and Vince Colleta on inks. The story picks up where we left it, Thongor is facing off against the bird-demon, no longer possessing the amulet that protects him from evil. George spends four pages on this fight, and why not?

Thongor uses his might Valkarthan blade but it has no effect on the magical attacker.

As the Romita cover suggests, Thongor switches blade for brazier and tries to burn the thing instead.

This appears to work but…

…the bird-demon grabs Thongor by the throat and chokes him into unconsciousness. When he wakes he is in the dungeon. Where in the best Edgar Rice Burroughs fashion he meets an ally with an ERB-style name, Ald Thurmis. (Carter was equally inspired by Burroughs as he was REH. He wrote the Jandar of Callisto and other series in the ERB style.)

Thongor uses his amazing strength to pull the straps and chains out of the wall. The two men are free and explore the wizard’s house including his laboratory.

They are interrupted by the bird-demon who wishes to play with these “flesh-things”. Armed with swords, the two men begin to lose again, until Thongor finds his amulet.

Protected by magic, and armed with his great sword once again, the bird-demon is quickly rendered to dust. The Shield of Cathloda has done its work.

Then in his best imitation of Jabba the Hutt, the wizard suddenly appears, watching everything from his throne.

Athmar Phong traps both men with a spell that slowly turns them to stone. He reveals to the dying men the black mirror, the Mirror of Zaffar, that Thongor was supposed to steal. Dwelling inside the mirror is Phong’s patron demon, with the Lovecraftian name of Aqquoonkagua. Thongor, possessing the Shield of Cathloda isn’t quite as stoned as Ald Thurmis so he throws the amulet at the mirror.

This action releases the demon, who decides to collect the wizard now instead of after his death. Aqqu–Ackie–Aquil–the demon– departs.

The two swordsmen are free to leave, which they do with a few baubles for their breakfast. Kaman Thuu doesn’t get his mirror and Thongor is ready to leave the city.

This tale has so many of the quintessential elements that a classic S&S story has, going back at least to Lord Dunsany if not further. The hero is in the castle of the enemy, surrounded by horrors and wonders. There are traps, guardians and dangers everywhere. Through brawn and brain, magic and being on the side of right, he presses on to victory. I will see this echoed in Robert E. Howard and Lin Carter’s “The Hand of Nergal”, in Henry Kuttner’s “Spawn of Dagon” (Weird Tales, July 1938) and even in Dave Sim’s Cerebus the Aardvark. But I saw it first in Creatures on the Loose #23.

Now I am aware of my nostalgia enough to know this was not the best S&S comic ever. Lin Carter was an able imitator but no Robert E. Howard. Effinger and the Marvel crew are trying to imitate the success of Conan the Barbarian and deliver a tale that could be one of the Cimmerian’s many-many adventures. Despite all of that, it still made my list of Top Ten Sword & Sorcery Comics of the 1970s.  I think because it is so quintessentially the hero tale retold for a modern audience. Many stories, movies, comics, etc. have tried to tell and retell this basic story better and rarely succeed better.

Next time…the novel begins….