This post is brought to you by the Sirtago & Poet series by Jack Mackenzie. These tales are collected in two volumes (so far) including Blades & Alchemy and Blades & Abominations. Sword & Sorcery’s greatest duo since Fafhrd & Grey Mouser, Ka Sirtago is a massive swordsman but also the heir to the Trigassan Empire; and Poet is his companion, smaller but equally deadly. The two blunder their way through the earlier adventures, gaining skills and knowledge that lead them to even bigger trouble. There is a reason these two are a fan favorite.
The wonderful An Informal History of the Pulp Magazine (aka Cheap Thrills) (1972) by Ron Goulart makes this statement: “The best remembered of the pulpwood barbarians, and the character who is today still giving Tarzan competition, is Robert E. Howard’s Conan.” This statement seems obvious especially in 1972 but struck me as inaccurate. Tarzan and Conan are nothing alike, but Goulart puts them together like brothers. Tarzan lives largely alone in the jungle and Conan is part of a civilization, though as a peripheral member. How could Ron get that so wrong?
When I thought about this more seriously I saw he was right on certain levels. Both Tarzan and Conan have a fierce savagery that is off-putting to more civilized (and corrupt) men. They are heroes that succeed because they are not like others. What makes them outsiders is also their strength. (Now I know why I loved these books as a teen!) Thematically they are, in fact, bruvs. (When Marvel took over the Tarzan property in 1977, the readers found the product too similar to Conan the Barbarian. The John Buscema art didn’t help.)
There is one element in both series that comes up again and again. And that is apes. There is no mystery that Robert E. Howard studied successful writers including Edgar Rice Burroughs (as well as Sax Rohmer, Harold Lamb and Talbot Mundy). That apes should make that transition from Burroughsian jungles to Hyborian ones is not a surprise. But unlike snakes, which REH knew well from his Texas rattlers, the apes in Conan seem like Burroughsian homages at the same time they have a long tradition in adventure fiction going back to H. Rider Haggard.
Precursors
Tarzan of the Apes
Edgar Rice Burroughs published Tarzan of the Apes in The All-Story, October 1912 when Robert E. Howard was only six. There is a famous scene in which the naked jungle child Tarzan stumbles into a “Bolgani” or gorilla. Tarzan has the knife of his dead father in his hand and it helps him to kill the giant brute. (Let’s just say it now, none of the apes in this post resemble real ones. Gorillas are powerful but aren’t the blood-thirsty monsters of Pulp fiction.) The brilliant Joe Kubert gave us this battle for DC comics in April 1972. Tarzan would also defeat Kerchak the king of the apes to take his place.
Red Shadows
From ERB’s titanic struggles we get the first of Robert E. Howard’s apes, but not in Conan. Solomon Kane in “Red Shadows” (Weird Tales, August 1928) faces an African ape four years before the Cimmerian takes the stage. Kane follows a murderer named Le Loup to Africa. There the feud ends with a widowed gorilla who takes his revenge as much as Kane does.
The mighty ape came out into the moonlight and there was a terrible majesty about his movements. He was nearer Kane than Gulka but he did not seem to be aware of the white man. His small, blazing eyes were fixed on the black man with terrible intensity. He advanced with a curious swaying stride.
Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin did the adaptation first for Marvel Premiere #33-34 (December 1976-February 1977).
A second version appeared in the six-part mini-series The Sword of Solomon Kane #1 (September 1985). This time the story was done by Ralph Macchio and the art by Steve Carr and Brett Blevins.
Conan
There were three ape-related Conan stories in Weird Tales that were the work of Robert E. Howard alone. (I do not include supernatural creatures such as the Winged Ape from “Queen of the Black Coast” or the two demons in “The Phoenix on the Sword” and “The Snout in the Dark”. While these have a resemblance to apes, they are, in fact, something else, something from the outer dark and as such belong to a post about demons.) These were followed by adaptations and pastiches bringing the number to five in the original paperback volumes.
Rogues in the House (Weird Tales, January 1934)
The first ape encounter after Solomon Kane has a young Conan forced into breaking and entering a wizard’s den. There he encounters the ape guardian, Thak, who is not an actual ape but something a little more advanced:
“That is Thak,” answered the priest, caressing his temple. “Some would call him an ape, but he is almost as different from a real ape as he is different from a real man. His people dwell far to the east, in the mountains that fringe the eastern frontiers of Zamora. There are not many of them, but if they are not exterminated, I believe they will become human beings, in perhaps a hundred thousand years. They are in the formative stage; they are neither apes, as their remote ancestors were, nor men, as their remote descendants may be. They dwell in the high crags of well-nigh inaccessible mountains, knowing nothing of fire or the making of shelter or garments, or the use of weapons. Yet they have a language of a sort, consisting mainly of grunts and clicks.
For more on Thak, go here.
Now on 1967’s Lancer Books collection, Conan, Frank Frazetta immortalized Conan’s fight with Thak. You will notice that the Cimmerian is only armed with a knife. This is the heritage of Tarzan in full view. Most of these ape encounters this will be the case. (I suppose an ape fight with a sword appears less dangerous.) These awesome scene was turned into monotonous yawns in Conan the Destroyer (1984).
In 1971, it fell to Barry Windsor-Smith to do justice to this same scene in Conan the Barbarian #11 (November 1971) adapted by Roy Thomas. Barry captures the desperate energy well.
Shadows in the Moonlight (aka Iron Shadows in the Moon) (Weird Tales, April 1934)
The next Conan tale to feature an ape is “Shadows in the Moonlight” sometimes called “Iron Shadows in the Moon”, Howard’s original title. After much trouble, Conan and his female companion escape but stumble upon an ape creature… Boris Vallejo did a great version of this fight for the cover of Savage Sword of Conan #4.
In general outline it was not unlike a man. But its face, limned in the bright moonlight, was bestial, with close-set ears, flaring nostrils, and a great flabby lipped mouth in which gleamed white tusk-like fangs. It was covered with shaggy greyish hair, shot with silver which shone in the moonlight, and its great misshapen paws hung nearly to the earth. Its bulk was tremendous; as it stood on its short bowed legs, its bullet head rose above that of the man who faced it; the sweep of the hairy breast and giant shoulders was breathtaking; the huge arms were like knotted trees.
“Iron Shadows of the Moon” (Savage Sword of Conan #4, February 1975) was adapted by Roy Thomas. I love the Alfred Alcala inking on these Savage Swords. John Buscema disagreed. Marel wasn’t the only ones to do an adaptation. Dark Horse followed with….
Conan the Cimmerian #25 (November 2010) was adapted by Timothy Truman.
“The Hour of the Dragon” (Weird Tales, December 1935 January February March April 1936)
The only original Conan novel was The Hour of the Dragon which also appeared as Conan the Conqueror. Published in five parts in Weird Tales with great Vincent Napoli art, it features a gorilla in “Chapter V: The Haunter of the Pit”. Conan has been captured by his enemies but he has the slave girl Zenobia (his future queen) to help him escape. Armed with a knife, he comes face-to-face with the Haunter, a massive gorilla.
Conan knew it at last – understood the meaning of those crushed and broken bones in the dungeon, and recognized the haunter of the pits. It was a grey ape, one of the grisly man-eaters from the forests that wave on the mountainous eastern shores of the Sea of Vilayet. Half mythical and altogether horrible, these apes were the goblins of Hyborian legendry, and were in reality ogres of the natural world, cannibals and murderers of the nighted forests.
The choice of an animal monster shows Howard trying to keep things relatively earthly as he had hoped to sell the novel to Adventure, not Weird Tales. We know how that worked out.
Giant-Size Conan the Barbarian #2 (December 1974) was adapted by Roy Thomas. What an you saw about the Gil Kane art except wow. These Giant-Size were confusing if you didn’t know they were adapting the novel they are based on. Giant-Size was canceled before it could finish the whole book and the last installment appeared in Savage Sword without Gil Kane.
Ablaze’s The Cimmerian: Hour of the Dragon #2 (2022) was an English version of the French Glenat comic, L’heure du dragon (December 2021). It was adapted by Julien Blondel. Valentin Sécher adds some horns and things for some reason.
The Flame Knife (1981)
L. Sprague de Camp rewrote Howard’s non-Conan tale “The Three Bladed Doom” and added the snow ape in to give it some monsters.
It was like ghoulish incarnation of a terrible legend, clad in flesh and bone; a giant ape, as tall on its gnarled legs as a gorilla. It was like the monstrous man-apes that hunted the mountains around the Vilayet Sea, which Conan had seen and fought before. But it was even larger; its hair was longer and shaggier, as of an arctic beast, and paler, an ashen grey that was almost white.
Its feet and hands were more manlike than those of a gorilla, the great toes and thumbs being more like those of man than of the anthropoid. It was no tree-dweller but a beast bred on great plains and gaunt mountains. The face was apish in general appearance, though the nose-bridge was more pronounced, the jaw less bestial. But its manlike features merely increased the dreadfulness of its aspect, and the intelligence which gleamed from its small red eyes was wholly malignant.
For more on this, go here.
Savage Sword of Conan #32 (August 1978) was the second half of two-part adaptation by Roy Thomas. I don’t usually have a problem with John and Tony’s collaboration but this snow ape looks like a lion and a Yeti had a love child. It reminds me more of the Bumble from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer than an ape. (Actually the Bumble is a better version.) Esteban Maroto had nothing to fear here.
Conclusion
Conan in the comics faced off against a few other things that resembled apes but weren’t quite. I have left those because this list is quite long enough. Along with giant snakes, hulking beasts and flying monsters, the gorilla is a regular in the Hyborian world of Conan. The influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs is obvious but not over-powering. REH uses these apish beasts in his own way and with some innovation. Thak is almost pitiful since he is only 100,000 years away from being a man. (He will also put wings on one and make it a most terrible foe.) The others are more animals but still incredibly dangerous, especially when you only have a knife. Tarzan cheers the Cimmerian from the sidelines.
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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