Claw The Unconquered!

Conan the Barbarian was a hit. Marvel was sopping up sales with the color comic and the black and white version. Barbarians were selling it seemed in 1975, so the call went out at DC to bring more barbarians to the table. And that's how we got Claw the Unconquered. 

The book was written by David Michelinie and was originally drawn by Ernie Chan who had just left his gig at Marvel inking the Conan comics. It is to be noted that Chan drew under the name "Ernie Chua" when he first started in U.S. comics because of a typo on his immigration documents. Chan is assisted on art chores by Pat Boyette. Claw was apparently supposed to be called "Talon", but Jim Steranko had dibs on that name. The first nine issues were all edited by Joe Orlando.   

Claw is the one character in DC's "All-New Adventure Line" that looks like Conan. That the series lasted twice as long as most of its companions and three times as long as more than few it's possibly due to that resemblance. In the first Claw story we meet our hero, a man who suffers a bit of amnesia yet is still a potent warrior. Possessed of a red gauntlet which overs a furry claw, he is a man prophecy suggests will bring down King Occulus of Pytharia. The King orders his underlings to kill Claw, but that proves more difficult than one might've thought. 

The first several issues follow a familiar pattern as Claw will encounter an individual, save them from some threat and then see them turn on him either for reward or other recompense. His "Claw" seems to have a will of its own, and moves to save him in circumstances in which he is oblivious to the threat. This is the best cover of the series. 

He also confronts giant creatures with names such as Kann the All-Consuming , often referred to as gods and is able in most instances to kill them or at least escape their clutches. The look of the earliest Claw comics seemed especially designed to evoke the Conan comics being produced over at Marvel. 

In the fourth issue he meets Ghylkin, a warrior from another dimension who sought adventure and so came to our world, but not before he got a nifty pair of horns. Claw and his new ally battle N'Hflhss, an ogre-like demon called down to Earth. The story stays open as the threat is not ended, and leads to the first multi-part epic. A prophecy from Asvitar the Burning Man causes the duo to seek the Moonthorn, a sword which will be effective against the threat of N'Hflhss and will give Claw much needed info as well. 

"The Gemstone Trilogy" begins the search for the Moonthorn, a sword which will reveal great secrets to Claw. But before they can find the Moonthorn, they must find the Gristone and that's divided into three parts. The first takes them to a territory guarded by strange women with a bizarre secret, the second has them battling a teenager who comes into possession of great magical powers, and the third is found at the bottom of the sea among a society of passivists. King Occulus and his court magician are keeping an eye on Claw and making things none too easy for him. 

The cover of issue eight is Ernie Chan's last contribution to the series. He headed back to Marvel, leaving Claw in the hands up new talent Keith Giffen who is aided by a bevy of inkers. 

Alas, Claw the Unconquered number nine is the only issue of the run I actually bought off the stands at the time of publication. I must have had some extra quarters in my pocket when it hit the spinner rack. Giffen is inked by Bob Layton in this issue. 

Claw the Unconquered returns to the stands after a one and six-month hiatus. Joe Kubert joins the book's regular team of Michelinie and Giffen as the cover artist for the final three issues. So, at long last we are about to get a face-off between Claw and Occulus, foes who battled but never met in the many issues previous. But not before Claw must confront the weird trio of "Those Who Must Abide". This issue was edited by Paul Levitz. 

The actual confrontation between Claw and Occulus is in issue eleven and it's an Occulus made even  more powerful by the magic of Miftig. To avoid Claw, the palace is even lifted into the air, but that doesn't stop our hero and he finally gets to see the man behind the death of his parents pay a price. This would've been an ideal place to end the series, but we get one more issue. Joe Orlando returns as editor. 

In the final issue drawn by Giffen and Layton, Claw is robbed of his red gauntlet and later when he hooks up with a group of fighters, he finds he loses control and the violence gets out of hand, so to speak. We see that Occulus is rescued so to speak from the wreckage of his palace and there are hints of battles to come. Without his protective glove, the Claw we are left with is a man who fears himself, so much so that in the final panels of the story he makes a tragic decision. Larry Hama is the third editor in three issues, probably one good reason this revival didn't get off the ground. 

Apparently two more issues of Claw the Unconquered were prepared but went unpublished. I note that the price on issue thirteen is for fifty cents so there might've been discussion of bumping up the price and adding a back-up, like another of the Adventure line. I haven't read these, but those Kubert covers are incredibly suggestive. 

Claw made DC's Who's Who line-up in the 80's, suggesting that he wasn't forgotten about. In fact, he makes a few cameos in comics over the years, but nothing of real substance. 

Claw the Unconquered was brought back to comic life in a cross-over with Dynamite's Red Sonja. The two shared two issues in 2006 which initiated a revival of Claw in his tittle from the Wildstorm brand. I love the cover Alex Ross produced for the crossover event. 

Wildstorm gave us a full-blown Claw the Unconquered limited which featured the slightly reimagined hero, with a full name -- Valcan Scaramax. In this story we are reminded that Claw cut off his hand (again) in the Red Sonja appearance, but the hand refuses to die and in fact regrows on Claw's arm. The abandoned hand also grows and develops into a full-blown copy of Claw but more savage. (Reminded me of the plot to Frankenstein Versus the World.) Claw is recruited by a sorceress and is led to her compound by a gang of werewolves. I'm not  that taken with Andy Smith's artwork on this one. The series seems to lack the elaborate detail I like in my fantasy yarns which creates that other world. Sadly, this presentation reeks of those bad old Image days when muscles mattered more than storytelling. They are im freezing temps in much of this story, so put some darn clothes on! I will give the story credit for a bold ending. 

Below is a short gallery of the  Wildstorm issues. 

Next time we meet Stalker - The Man with No Soul. 

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The Clown Prince Of Crime!

The Joker is likely the most famous villain in all of comics. Thanos got a fantastic boost from his key role in the Marvel movies, but even that doesn't counteract the fame the Joker got from his TV show appearances played by Casear Romero, his first movie appearance portrayed by Jack Nicholson, and the mesmerizing second coming presented by Heath Ledger. The Joker even has his own movie. And once upon a time, he had his own Bronze Age comic book. Let's take a walk down memory lane with the Clown Prince of Crime. 

The popularity of Batman's number one nemesis the Joker is proven when DC saw fit to give the "Clown Prince of Crime" is own ongoing series. DC already had tried Secret Society of Super-Villains and Marvel had Marvel Super-Villain Team-Up, but this time one bad guy got the top billing. In the first issue under a handsome Dick Giordano cover, the team of Denny O'Neil, Irv Novick and Giordano bring us "The Joker's Double Jeopardy" in which he and Two-Face both escape from Arkham Asylum and contend with one another to prove who is the better baddie. They both get recaptured, so I guess it's still up for grabs. 

Then the Joker is busted out by Willie the Weeper who seeks advice from the smiling villain about he can stop crying so much when he commits a crime. The two team up to steal some platinum and it's a wild scheme with a barrage of double-crosses. This one is titled "The Sad Saga of Willie Weeper" and was written by O'Neil, with art by Novick and inker Jose Luis Garcia-Lozpez. Ernie Chan's cover is a powerful one. Two Arkham guards who get fired for letting the Joker escape are in this story. They are Benny Khiss and Marvin Fargo. 

Chan steps in as artist with help from inker Garcia-Lopez for the story 'The Last Ha-Ha" in which the Joker has to contend with The Creeper. This one was written by O'Neil and features as fantastic cover by Giordano. I should mention the Joker has a regular hide-out called the Ha-Hachienda. 

In "A Gold Star for the Joker" the mirthful murderer travels to Star City where he kidnaps Dinah Lance because he's smitten with her and decides he must either marry her or kill her. Green Arrow of course gets involved in this story by Elliot Maggin featuring pencils by Garcia-Lopez and inks by Vinnie Colletta. Ernie Chan supplies the cover. Dinah never becomes Black Canary in this issue for reasons I will never understand. One would've thought seeing the Canary in the Joker's clutches would've garnered more fan interest. Why would they pass up a chance to show off those fishnets baby?

Under another Chan cover we find a convoluted story titled "The Joker Goes Wilde" by writer Marty Pasko. Irv Novick returns as penciller with Tex Blaisdell on inks. With one exception this will be the art team for the balance of the nine-issue run. The story has the Joker contending with the Royal Flush Gang to get possession of a legendary painting which supposedly points the way to riches. Venerable science fiction writer Alfred Bester is given some credit for having something to do with the story, but it's not clear what. I assume the story references in some a story Bester wrote for DC in the Golden Age, but this is never spelled out. 

Denny O'Neil and Novick and Blaisdell are back for "Sherlock Stalks the Joker" under a clever cover by Chan. When an actor named Clive Sigerson is knocked on the noggin during one of the Joker's heists, he thinks he's the real Sherlock Holmes and dedicates himself to tracking down the cackling prince of crime. The yarn is filled with puns which call back to classic stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. It's a goofy romp, ideal for the Joker's series. 

DC was on a Sherlock Holmes thing because a few months earlier they'd put out a Sherlock Holme de facto one-shot. Maybe this story was a way to embed Holmes into the DCU, though actually that had been done decades earlier by Gardner Fox. 

Superman's arch-nemesis and former Joker partner Lex Luthor shows up in "Luthor - You're Driving Me Sane" by O'Neil, Novick and inker Frank McLaughlin. The cover is by Chan. The Joker and Lex Luthor exchange personalities when the Joker interrupts one of Lex's attempts to gain control of Green Lantern's ring. Hal Jordan makes a one-panel cameo. Needless to say, neither of them is happy though Lex does seem to use the opportunity unleash some of his darker aspects. 

Maggin, Novick and Blaisdell team up to give us "The Scarecrow's Fearsome Face-Off" in which the two Batman villains battle it out under another slick Chan cover. When the Joker impersonates the Scarecrow in a crime, the latter is annoyed and seeks vengeance. Eventually the two manipulators of emotion face off. This issue gives names to a trio of young men who have been the Joker's entourage in the latter part of the series. The are Southpaw, Tooth, and Sonny November who alas doesn't make through this issue. 

The same creative team of Maggin, Novick, Blaisdell, and Chan wrap up the series when Catwoman shows up in "The Cat and the Clown". The series wraps up as both the Catwoman and the Joker attempot to kidnap Benny Springer and his cat Hiawatha. Springer proves to be a worthy adversary for both the Bat-villains as the story rumbles along. The Joker kills a good number of folks in this series, though I don't have an exact number. For all the hijinks and general light-heartedness of the series his deadly nature is never forgotten. It's not really a spoiler to say that the Joker is back in Arkham as he was when the series started. We all know it's only a matter of time. 

And that's a wrap. Tomorrow stuff not about the Joker. Be sure to check out all three of today's posts, and I sincerely hope your April Fool's Day has been a dandy! No Foolin'!

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Savage Reflections On Cimmeria!

While I did not take time to review the issues specifically, I did finish reading the original Roy Thomas run on Marvel's remarkable Conan the Barbarian comic book. Roy wrote the book for a decade, leaving in 1980 with issue one hundred and fifteen. Three artists worked with him throughout most of that time - Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema, and Ernie Chan. When BWS left the book, it lost a little of its special charm which had been watching a new kind of comic and a new talent of remarkable quality develop and find their way. Buscema is such a sturdy and reliable artist that it's easy to take the work he does for granted, and to some extent I confess to doing that here. 

There's no doubt that the comic post Smith, looked best when "Big John" was either inked by Ernie Chan or himself. Dick Giordano and Tom Palmer both have brief stints, and while the art looks great, but still lacks the specialness which CtB demanded. A fourth talent who spent a lot of time on the book was Gil Kane, once considered to draw it regularly, it's a good thing in the end that he was mostly doing covers. I had forgotten how many issues Howard Chaykin had drawn, but thanks to Ernie Chan those issues still keep the essence of what had come before. Of course, for many of us Neal Adams made a lasting impression with only a few Conan stories, and only one in the regular color run. And while he was not part of the color run, Alfredo Alcala deserves a special mention since he performed a similar task as Chan over Buscema's pencils in The Savage Sword of Conan. Thomas remarks several times that Buscema did not cotton to these inkers, but in this instance "Big" John Buscema, a might man and a might artist was wrong. 

Roy himself seem to have found his way to Conan in the most backhanded of ways. He wrote it because he had overpromised the REH estate on royalties in the beginning and planned to take the difference out of his fees if called on the carpet about it. But it seems quickly enough the Hyborian Age got into his blood and before you know it, he's writing the book in such a way as to plan for long schemes such as the period when Conan sails with Belit, the Queen of the Black Corsairs. 

Belit's story comes to an end of sorts in issue one hundred where the one actual REH story featuring her is adapted, and of course ends in her death. (That's not a spoiler since most readers at the time knew where the story was headed all the time.) It's clear that with the passing of Belit, Roy seems to lose his passion for the title. The stories which followed the centennial were somewhat listless, though the finale is at once dramatic and memorable. 

It was fascinating to read the first one hundred and fifteen issues of Conan (with Giant-Size books and annuals included) all the way through. I've been meaning to do it for several years and it didn't disappoint. I was surprised how many of the stories wrote concocted were adaptations of works by REH and other writers such as John Jakes and Norvell Page. The issues in which Roy develops his own plots are pretty dang good and sometimes the adaptations feel a little forced, and make Conan do things which seem out of character. But what is apparent reading the comics in order like this is seeing how Conan matures. We begin with a young teenager just finding his way in a world which often makes little sense to him and we leave him ten years later, a man in his late twenties (though the way Buscema drew him he always looked at least thirty to me all the time) who has had to lead men and so has become less impulsive, and has fallen in true love for the first time making him more responsive to the needs of women and others in general. Conan after Roy Thomas left him has adventures for sure, but he seems to quite growing up. (Not unlike Peter Parker who matured swiftly in his first decade, but then became rather static.) 

Those are my reflections on Conan the Barbarian for now. Let me close things out with a poem by Robert E. Howard. I think that's how the great writer thought of himself, a man who wrote the pulp adventures to earn a living, but who in his heart of hearts yearned to make poetry. Here is the poem "Cimmeria".

Cimmeria
by Robert E. Howard

It was gloomy land that seemed to hold
All winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,
And the dark woodlands brooding over all,
Not even lightened by the rare dim sun
Which made squat shadows out of men; they called it
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.
It was so long ago and far away
I have forgotten the very name men called me.
The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,
And hunts and wars are like shadows. I recall
Only the stillness of that sombre land;
The clouds that piled forever on the hills,
The dimness of the everlasting woods.
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.

The 1932 poem "Cimmeria" was discovered by Glenn Lord and first published in The Howard Collector #7 in 1965.


Later Barry Windsor-Smith got hold of it and developed an interesting version of his own. It first appeared in Savage Tales #2 in 1973.

That Smith original was apparently in a somewhat incomplete condition and later Roy Thomas and Tim Conrad developed another version using much of Smith's original material. Here are Conrad's version and a more complete and more lush Smith version compared page by page.

You can see that the endings in particular are different. 

And that wraps up a month of Conan and all things REH. It also wraps up another year. 2023 has been a mixed bag for sure, and we can only hope things get some better in 2024. See you tomorrow for news about what's up here at the Dojo in the coming year. Changes loom. 

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