Conan of Melnibone

[Supplement Four]

I'm slowly reading my way through The Chronicles of Conan, and what do I see when I open volume 3? A title of the first story: The Sword Called Stormbringer.

Really? Are they kidding?

Nope. I read in the back of the book that Michael Moorcock contrived the story, and it serves as Marvel Conan's first two-parter.

I was so prepared to roll my eyes and quickly skip through the story to get to the "good stuff" when, to my complete astonishment, I found myself engaged in the story.

There was a not-so-good, D&D-ish story in one of the earlier volumes, and characters from that tale also show up in this story--and, you know what? Even though the first story I found lacking, the same characters are actually quite interesting in this second appearance!

And, the merging of worlds? Melnibone and what the sorcerers call "Hyboria" is also...quite interesting. It's just enough to give the series "something different". I actually really like it (it helps that I love Conan and like the Elric tales).

If you're a Moorcock fan, you may find it interesting, also, to note that Prince Gaynor The Damned makes an appearance, too!

Melnibone is treated as another plane of existence--another world, long ago. The sorcerers and gods and jump planes. And, this isn't too unlike normal Conan stories if you consider Yag-kosha. Plus, Moorcock includes earth among the various planes where his stories of the Eternal Champion are set. So, in a whacked out way, it all sorta makes sense.

The basic plot is pretty interesting, too. In Elric's world, a terrible sorcererss lays dead in a tomb--Terhali, the Green Empress, lying dead in the tomb city of Yagala--but they're not happy with her tomb residing in that world. It is sent elswhere, ending up in the Hyborian Age on earth, disguised and hidden under water in a place called the Sighing Lake. This looks to be somewhere in Koth.

Other characters making an appearance are Xiomberg, Queen of the Chaos Swords whom Prince Gaynor serves, and one of Thoth-Amon's rivals, Kulan-Gath.

The fight between Elric and Conan was neat--not unlike Deniro and Pacino staring in a movie together for the first time.

Oh, and I love this line that Conan speaks: I've fought, this day, with a bewitched sword, beside a wizard-king, beneath an enchanted sky.

It's not a story for Conan pureists, but I find it quite refreshing and an enjoyable read.

 

[Supplement Four]

Cannot image Conan fighting Elric, if he had Strombringer, Conan should be a soul-less husk now

A mage ensorceled Conan's blade, and it looked to me like Conan was winning.

Check the link above. I'm talking about the Chronicles of Conan Marvel run.

The next story, BTW, features a character based on Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Their Hyborian Age counterparts are Fafnir, a Vanirman, and Blackrat, a Zamorian thief.

 

[Voormis]

The Marvel Comics Conan/Elric crossover as influential enough that Dave Sim parodied it in his Cerebus comics back in the day. The Elric parody that Sim invented for this purpose would show up later in that comic's run as a parody of Neil Gaiman's Sandman (in both appearances, he inexplicably spoke more or less like Foghorn Leghorn).

Speaking of comics and Conan/Elric crossovers, Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier handles that idea a different way. That book includes a prose history of the world written by Alan Moore's Aleister Crowley stand-in, Oliver Haddo, which explains that following the era of the Cimmerians and their god Crom was the age of the Melnibonen Empire. At the end of Conan's age, the British Isles separate from the continent, and Great Britain is known as Melnibone in that age. This era ends in the way it does at the end of Michael Moorcock's novel Stormbringer, with a cataclysmic war between the Lords of Order and Chaos. So if you reinterpret the Marvel Comics Conan from that perspective, Elric actually comes from the same world, in the future.

 

[Supplement Four]

I was just so-so with the Marvel run at first, reading them because I love Conan and because I figured I could use some of the stories as sorce material for my game--use some of the ideas in my campaign.

As I read them, though, I see them get better and better. I'm finishing up Vol. 3, and I'm surprised that I'm in the middle of a long-run story arc set around a war featuring Turan, Prince Yezdigurd, King Yildz, the Vilayet, and Fafnir the Vanirman. Looking ahead, I see this same story arc moves into the very first introduction of Red Sonja.

It's not bad. Not bad at all.

The whole idea of the war is novel-worthy, too. It gets into the religion of the Hyrkanians and Turan. I haven't checked the RPG books, but is Tarim mentioned in the game? He's supposed to be the living god of the religion, and he's kidnapped by a rival city state on the eastern side of the Vilayet. Turan goes to war, sending several ships full of warriors.

At the end of his previous adventure, Conan found himself adrift at sea on a raft. One of the war ships picked him up out of the drink--which is how Conan meets Prince Yezdigurd and comes to fight on Turan's side in this conflict.

The war and the adventures, it seems, goes on for several issues.

The quality of the story is getting much, much better than what I read in Vol 1 and 2.