If you missed the last one…
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.
H. P. Lovecraft created the shoggoth in his classic horror tale “At the Mountains of Madness” (Astounding Stories, February March April 1936), a tale written back in February-March 1931. The basic idea was an elder race known as the Old Ones (or the Elder Things) had created a slave race that looked like putrid slime piles filled with multiple eyes. The Old Ones are gone but they left these slimy servitors behind. Not surprising these icky-sticky monsters have found their way into Sword & Sorcery.
Certainly Robert E. Howard’s “The Slithering Shadow” (Weird Tales, September 1933) borrows from this tradition. (Not to be confused with Skywald’s Shoggoths, which are more like ghouls.) The monster, Thog the Slithering, is mostly solid though. Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp gave us a slimier version with The Hundred-Headed Thing, in “The Castle of Terror” (1969). Truly Lovecraftian.
Whether borrowing from H. P. Lovecraft or not, (there were plenty of slime monsters in the comics even back in the Golden Age) many Sword & Sorcery comics during the Bronze Age threw some shoggothian horrors at their brave sword-swinging heroes. This trope is a natural for the artist in particular since he or she has to render slimy tendrils and amorphous goop with some control. Roy Thomas can write “–before some nether-world monster–some obscene travesty of life spawned only to feed upon life!” But John Buscema’s got to pencil the damned thing.
Now I do want to make one small distinction here. I have tried to avoid what I call “tentacular beasties” such as the Watcher in the Water in The Lord of the Rings. These octopoid creatures deserve their own post. So I was looking for a certain squishy, formless feel here. Here’s a baker’s dozen shoggoth-inspired horrors from the greatest age of Sword & Sorcery comics (and a few after).
The Bronze Age
“The Cloud of Hate” (Sword of Sorcery #4, 1973) was adapted by Denny O’Neil from the story by Fritz Leiber (Fantastic, May 1963). The two best thieves in Lankhmar face-off against The Cloud of Hate, an evil force worshiped by a cult of hate-worshipers. The cloud itself isn’t gooey but the central controlling brain is. Grey Mouser dispatches it with his sword. A central brain will recur again as well, perhaps inspired a little by Donald Wandrei’s “The Red Brain” (Weird Tales, October 1927) ? (They are often red.) Religion will often be the central force behind these squishy remnants.
“It Lurks By Moonlight” (Tales of Sword & Sorcery Dagar the Invincible #11, April 1975) was written by Don Glut. Dagar and Graylin encounter the terror that lurks under the Stones of Dargomma. Graylin is trapped in rock but Dagar’s sword is sharp. Having had enough of the cult, Dagar pushes ruin stones over the goopy god.
“The Sword and the Silent Scream” (Claw the Unconquered #1, May-June 1975) was written by David Michelinie. Claw is lured into an ancient shrine to fight the revived god of the ruin, Kahn. The Kannites abandoned their worship when the god became too evil. Valcan restores it with a massive jewel that sucks out his lifeforce. Claw destroys the flower-like squishy with a spear thrown at its center. These shoggothians seem to have one small flaw that can be exploited.
“Abode of the Damned” (Savage Sword of Conan #11, April 1976) was adapted by Roy Thomas from REH’s “The Country of the Knife”. The bubbly goo monster was certainly added by Roy since “The Country of the Knife” was a El Borak adventure story. An enchanted egg becomes a mass of gelatinous killer ooze that grows until it explodes.
“City of the Crawling Dead” (Kull the Destroyer #21, June 1977) was written by Don Glut. In the ruins of Atlantis, Kull is lured by a gorgeous redhead who turns out to be a slime monster. Lorkar saves him only to be eaten. The shoggothian is a remnant from the worship by the Atlanteans, who fed it corpses. Kull destroys it with his axe by smashing its brain organ.
“The Quest Part II: Citadel of Death” (The Warlord #17, January 1979) was written by Mike Grell. Travis Morgan and Tara solve the death of Ogir Falconeye who entered the strange citadel long before them. The mage is dead but has left behind a squidgy with a vertical mouth full of teeth. Morgan uses a mystic gem in a box to burn away the fiend.
“The Corridor of –Mullah-Kajar” (Conan the Barbarian #117, December 1980) was written by Larry Hama. Conan takes on another cult, this one worshiping Hanuman. He captures their high priestess before discovering the squishy truth. The shoggothian entities can’t stand up to a good sword though. Later the Cimmerian crosses a gate into an entire universe of squishies.
“The Voice of One Long Gone” (Conan the Barbarian #119, February 1981) was written by J. M. DeMatteis. Conan’s grandfather leads him to another realm ruled by a pudgy godling, Ravenna, who turns out to be a mass covered in eyes. (At last, a real shoggoth!) Ravenna attacks Conan but granddad intervenes, casting fire onto the thing. Conan gives the god a haircut but both men get blown back to their own dimension.
It is worth pointing out that the classic slimy beast had to be included in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. One of the earliest (1974) monsters was Green Slime (along with Ochre Jelly and Gelatinous Cube) that would fall onto unsuspecting player characters and devour them. Seven years later this creature started off a series of ads in comic books for the game.
“Green Slime” (Various comics, August 1981) In the ruins of Zenopus castle… something is leaking down the wall! For more on these adventure ads, go here.
“Through the Shade Gate” (Elric #5, February 1984) was adapted by Roy Thomas from the novel Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock. Elric and Rackhir the Red Archer entered the cursed city of Ameeron. They are attacked by demons of Chaos, many of which resemble squidgies. Stormbringer does a good job of slicin’ and dicin’.
After the Bronze Age
“The Last Shoggoth” (Cormac Mac Art #4, 1990) was written by Roy and Dann Thomas. A four-part series loosely based on Tigers of the Sea (1979), once again a book with little original monsters in it, being an adventure volume completed by Richard L. Tierney. This one is problematic in that the monster is called a Shoggoth but looks like something else. A resurrected druid calls forth the “Last Shoggoth” to face-off with Cormac. This thing doesn’t look squishy but like a typical demon. It is so hungry it eats an entire ship then does a Mr. Creosote. An odd version of Lovecraft. And I am sure both Tierney and Roy Thomas know their HPL.
“Stalker of the Snows” (Conan the Savage #2-4, September-November 1995) was adapted in part by Roy Thomas from Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”. We finally got an actual Shoggoth in its Antarctic realm. Great art by Docherty and Nebres but no giant penguins.
Hyperborea (2004) was adapted by Jason Thompson from Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros”(Weird Tales, November 1931) features CAS’s slimy protector now known as Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua. Thompson uses the classic tale as a portion of larger Hyperborean exploration.
Conclusion
This Shoggothian line-up is dominated by DC and Marvel, which isn’t surprising since they produced the most S&S comics during the Bronze Age. Roy Thomas shows up again and again. (Who better to adapt those old stories?) Conan is the star as always, again hardly a surprise. What did surprise me was all the religious trappings of these tales. Humans encounter some primordial slime and decide to worship it, then regret it or die out, leaving goop god with no choice but to eat wandering heroes. There is certainly some kind of commentary there about religion. Lovecraft himself did a little of that in “At the Mountains of Madness” when he suggests that all life on Earth was created by the Old Ones (including humans when they genetically manipulated an ape. We didn’t make very good servants so the Shoggoths were created.)
That swordsmen (I couldn’t find one of Red Sonja taking on anything slimy) should fight these evil leftovers is a natural. With all the weird cults in the worlds of Hyborea, Hyperborea, Pytharia, Skartaris, Valusia, Melniboné and elsewhere, it’s going to happen. It’s a good thing a sharp sword is often enough though some quick thinking doesn’t hurt. The cosmic Horror of H. P. Lovecraft was certainly a fine seasoning to Robert E. Howard’s Sword & Sorcery and that tradition hasn’t changed. Bring on the Shoggoths!
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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