The King Is Dead! Long Live King Kull!

Marvel had blundered into a real success with Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. The Bronze Age was blooming and with the now mostly defunct Comics Code having eroded somewhat, the time was ripe for new and old genres to return among the cavalcade of superheroes. Conan was a spearhead in the move for diversity. But with success the desire to imitate is quickened and so Marvel cast about for a copy of their highly successful (ultimately) sword and sorcery star.

(Roy Krenkel)

Lin Carter's Thongor of Lemuria, and John Jakes Brak the Barbarian would be given the nod. But clearly the best first choice was found in Howard's own works, specifically the hero who had preceded and was in many ways exceedingly similar to Conan, the answer was King Kull.

They tried him out in one of their monster comics. The title had been Tower of Shadows and it had debuted alongside its companion Chamber of Darkness a few years previous as EC-style horror mags featuring new stories and art from the Marvel Bullpen. But that didn't seem to be successful, so the decision was made to turn Tower of Shadows into the Creatures on the Loose and feature reprints of vintage Marvel/Atlas monsters from the classic days.

But during that transition, there had been plans apparently to feature a King Kull story written by Roy Thomas and drawn by the young talent Berni Wrightson. Wrightson would make his reputation a year later at DC when he and Len Wein co-created Swamp Thing, but at that moment he was doing covers for Marvel, specifically the aforementioned horror mags Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness. Wrightson was graduated from covers to a complete story with King Kull.

This story was an adaptation of a Howard story which had only recently been uncovered and published. It speaks for itself, and you can read the adaptation of "The Skull of Silence" in its entirety here.

But what's curious is how Wrightson's original cover for the story was shelved in favor of the Marie Severin version eventually used. Marie's is more kinetic in a classic comic book way, but Wrightson's is the better cover, more obviously in keeping with the story it advertises. Maybe it was the title change that prompted the new Severin cover, as it seems to have been made very quickly, since ads about Kull being in Tower of Shadows had already been published. Maybe Kull's back is too much to the reader, but whatever the cause, the cover was changed, and Wrightson's Kull was hidden behind a rather "superheroesque" cover.

I've always liked Kull. Robert E. Howard's other sword and sorcery hero, the prototype to the much more financially successful Conan is at once the same and different from his more famous glowering brother-creation. He is a King of Valusia, and with that comes age and maturity and a greater comfort with the supernatural than Conan ever displayed. Conan as King of Aquilonia is familiar with dark magic but it still makes him bristle, while Kull battling black magic always was opposed but never quite dismayed by it. Kull was a bit more learned perhaps than Conan, at least I always imagined it so. Kull's Atlantis was less barbaric by a small bit than Conan's Cimmeria maybe. His was a civilization soon to crash which Conan's is one still gathering its strength. 

Above you can get a great look at two very distinctive takes on a fantastic debut cover for the debut of Kull the Conqueror. 

Howard's surly king got his own title with scripts by Roy Thomas and art by Ross Andru and Wally Wood. But that team didn't last as while Thomas lingered a bit, the art was taken on by the brother-sister act of Marie and John Severin. This duo is what makes these early issues of Marvel's Kull the Conqueror so memorable.

Marie offered up some muscular pencils in the brawny Marvel style while John inked them in a way that evoked more classic comics like the work of Hal Foster and others. The synthesis of these two was remarkable and made for good comics. Gerry Conway took over for Roy after a short time and Kull rumbled along with a hiatus here and there. The sales weren't great, and Kull became a sidebar in Marvel's black and white line where sword and sorcery could really show its stuff. 

Dark Horse reprinted those Marvel comics, though I have to say the artwork was not as clean as I'd have hoped. Maybe it's the original materials but the work seems a bit muddy to me compared to the other volumes Dark Horse has reproduced. The stories are still great though, and they offered up many fine moments of pleasure and dallied with the trade for a few days.

A very good sword and sorcery read. But that's not all. 

Dark Horse has done a pretty dang good job collecting up Marvel's REH material. The run of Conan trades has been pretty awesome and now that the series is into issues, I didn't get off the stands, I have beautiful "new" John Buscema artwork to look forward to a few times a year.

One of the runs I yearned for them to get to was the King Kull material. The first volume featured great comics by Marie and John Severin, even if the reproduction was a bit muddy in places. The second volume caps off that classic run.

But the big news is it gives us the lush revision by Mike Ploog. It's a shame Ploog couldn't do more of these, as issue eleven of the newly dubbed "Kull the Destroyer" is as good as S&S comics get. But with the very next issue, the inking by Sal Buscema while perfectly fine lacked the luster of the earlier installment and things go downhill from there.

Ploog and Steve Englehart left the book after a handful of issues and are replaced by Doug Moench, Ed Hannigan and the great Alfredo Alcala. But while all of those talents are great in other times and places, the final result here looks rushed and muddled.

It doesn't help that there is a two-year break in the run between issues fifteen and sixteen. Kull had some B&W adventures in between there and they are key to understanding the subsequent stuff. It's not included though there are some obligatory explanations.

Marvel apparently thought that the failure of Kull was due to his being a King, as they cast him down off the throne and make him a wannabe again. This served to make him more like Conan, but it sadly also took away much that made him distinctive. In the later issues of this run, it might as well be Conan in the mix as the distinctive personality of Kull, reflective and less reflexively violent is gone.

It's a shame, but I'm still glad this material is finding a new audience. I just hope that audience is a forgiving one.

Rip Off