If you missed the last one…
Creatures on the Loose #28 (March 1974) gave us the final line-up for the last two issues of Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria. Gardner F. Fox left and Steve Gerber took over as writer. The art was penciled and inked by Vincent Alcazar. (I particularly noticed that Alcazar uses more full page spreads than Val Mayrik did.) Gerber might seem an odd choice but having started at Marvel in 1972 he was still low-man-on-the-totem pole and might have been stuck with finishing off the job. Around this same time he was developing Howard the Duck with Val Mayerik at Man-Thing and when that bird got his own title the first issue was part of a larger Sword & Sorcery parody. Could he have developed his sardonic feeling towards the sub-genre doing Thongor?
Issue #28 is not the most exciting part of Lin Carter’s novel as it is the set-up for the final confrontation with the Dragon Kings. It does introduce Thongor’s future bride, the Sarkaja of Patanga, Suvia Chond (good Burroughsian rank). Karm Karvus recognizes Suvia immediately, since he was to inherit the throne of Tsargol. Carter carries on the ERB tradition of the hero falling in with royals, despite never being one himself. Vaspas Ptol, the archdruid and usurper of Suvia’s throne, also bears a Barsoomian name.
The story continues after Thongor and Sharajsha are captured at the Temple of Yamath. In his dungeon cell Thongor tries to fight his guards but is struck in the head.
There he meets Suvia Chond, the Sarkaja of Patanga, the empress to be. Unfortunately for her, she has been captured by the archdruid, Vaspas Ptol, who wants her to marry him and give her kingdom to him through matrimony. She has refused and so will be sacrificed along with Thongor and the wizard.
Sharajsha wakes up too. He is powerless because he has been chained so his hands can’t meet. He can’t use his magic. They are taken to the altar for sacrifice.
The archdruid gives Suvia a last chance to accept his hand. She refuses a last time.
Sharajsha notices that Thongor’s sword and the star sword have been placed in the altar. He mentions this to the barbarian, who breaks his bounds and grabs his sword.
Thongor fights the worshipers, allowing the wizard to get the star sword. Thongor picks up the archdruid and throws him into the crowd.
Karm Karvus shows up in the flying boat and the arch druid and his flunkies think it is an angry god. The good guys escape with both swords and the princess.
Sharajsha goes to a sacred mountain to reforge the star sword. Thongor wants to go with him but the magical fires would destroy him. Instead he stays with Karm and Suvia.
Thongor finds himself feeling jealous of Suvia when Karvus talks to her. He is about to make a huge emotional leap when…
…the lizard-hawk attacks.
Thongor saves his friends but falls over a cliff. The hero is lost just before the final attack on the Dragon Kings.
The love elements of this episode seemed perfectly fine to me when I was fourteen but not so much anymore. Thongor has fallen in love with a woman he met the same day. Edgar Rice Burroughs often had love-at-first-sight too but whatever faults Burroughs had at character depth, his romance always satisfied his audience back in 1914. (Burroughs’s greatest innovation was Science Fiction that women wanted to read as well. The Soft Weeklies recognized this talent and ERB would be the top planetary romance writer of his generation.) Carter borrows a lot of that turn-of-the-century style romance (in both senses of the word). It seems pretty silly now. In 1979, Carter would rewrite Burroughs’s Pellucidar with stronger sexual themes as Zanthodon, in a manner similar to John Norman’s Gor. Back in 1965 that would not have found a publisher.
Great stuff