Crom The Barbarian!

It's a new year and all but before I jump full bore into 2024 let me hearken back to Conan the Barbarian, the subject of December's Dojo posts. It turns out that Conan was adapted to comics before Roy and Barry did it for Mavel in 1970...sort of. Many fans already know about Crom the Barbarian from sundry Avon Comics from the earliest 1950's. They are pretty well-crafted little gems. Let's take a look. 

The first Crom the Barbarian story appeared in Avon's Out of this World #1 from 1950.  The story also appears in the debut issue of a pulp titled Out of the World Adventures, offering up a gaggle of comic adventures in the midst of the all-prose misadventures. Written by Gardner F. Fox and drawn by John Giunta this is a detailed little saga that relates how the blonde Crom and his blonde sister Lalla of the tribe the Aesir are kidnapped by the savage minions of a aged wizard who essentially blackmails Crom with Lalla's life to go to the city of Ophir and there steal a liquid which will return his youth. Crom does so, encounters the Queen Tanit who keeps the potent potable who falls for him. He also fights various critters including an enormous snake. To read this debut saga go here. 

The series then shifts over to another Avon title called Strange Worlds. In the second story titled "The Spider God of Akka", Crom and Lalla and Queen Tanit are attempting to return to Ophir when they are waylaid by some monkeymen called Cymri. When a ransom is sought for Queen Tanit her regent refuses and Crom and the two women have to find their own way out, encountering a giant spider along the way. Eventually they do get back to Ophir where Tanit confronts her treasonous regent who is killed by Crom after a ferocious swordfight. Crom and Lalla are invited to stay, and he becomes de facto king alongside Tanit. To read the original go here. 

In the third and final original Crom adventure by Fox and Giunta called "The Giant from Beyond", Crom and Tanit (Lalla is missing) become aware of a giant who has formed an army of sorts and threatens the outskirts of the kingdom of Ophir. Crom leads a force to confront the giant named Balthar the Terrible and after an exceedingly tough battle does win the day. To read the original go here. 

The next adventure in this slender tome turns out not to be a Crom adventure at all. There is no explanation offered but we are given a Silver Age story from Skywald Comics which pretends to be a Crom story but is in fact from the third issue of Jungle Adventures starring a hero named Zangar. Zangar's red hair is changed to blonde and the names of "Zangar: are altered to read "Crom" throughout. They even alter the indicia at the bottom of the first page. We get a whole new gaggle of characters. I can find no evidence who wrote this but I suspect it might 've been Fox. The art is by Jack Katz and it's pretty good. 

The rest of this tome is taken up with new adventures of Crom and Lalla and seem to be tales which pre-date the original three. It's almost like when we got The Phantom Menace so many decades after the debut of Star Wars. The art is by Kurt Brugel and Gardner Fox's name is on it but I don't think he contributed. It's an amateur affair with some really unfortunate trimming on pages robbing me of pertinent dialogue.  I don't necessarily dislike the art which swipes pretty heavily from Jack Kirby's Thor work in a few spots, but it doesn't feel fully developed either. A fan work for sure. 

I cannot recommend this book, which is part of the Gardner Fox Library found here, but I did find it diverting. I think that Crom is indeed influenced by Robert E. Howard's Conan but also there's plenty here to say that Edgar Rice Burroughs' work is involved as well. It's rather like what Lin Carter did so well long ago. 

And by the way, here is another detailed look at Crom the Barbarian over at World of Monsters. (Great minds and all that John.)

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The Boyette Chillers!

Steve Ditko was at Charlton for two reasons, they paid promptly and they left him alone to draw his comics he liked. That combination drew many talents to Charlton, not the least of which was Pat Boyette. Boyette was a "Renaissance Man" of sorts, a maker of early radio as a performer and later television and even movies as a producer and director. His most famous movie The Dungeon of Harrow is a drive-in horror flick not without its charms. And those charms are also evident in his artwork, which was incredibly distinctive and ideal for rendering tales of gothic horror. I daresay no single comic artist of any era was better at drawing ancient castles and musty denizens of same.  A heaping helping of Boyette's most distinctive work is included in the 2003Vanguard Press volume titled The Nightstand  Chillers. 

Most of the stories had appeared earlier in an issue of Vanguard's Tales from the Edge. That material plus more to plump it up a bit makes The Nightstand Chillers a nifty read. The stories included are from a wide array of publishers Boyette worked for through the 1970's. The list includes Skywald, Atlas-Seaboard, Globe Publications, Ace and of course Charlton.

Here are the covers of the magazines and comics the stories appeared in. They range from early in his career in 1971 to the early 90's. Two of them are from the period when Charlton was doing painted covers and Boyette was perfect for that kind of presentation. Boyette, co-creator of The Peacemaker died twenty years ago now in 2000, and for some more on him there is a very nifty interview with his career in the volume or you could check out this link. 

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The Heap - Uncollected!

The Heap ended in the 50's, but as one might expect from a moss-encrusted creature who rose out of the swamp from the bones of a long-dead World War I airman, it did not stay ended.

The Heap was revived by Skywald Comics, first in the black and white pages of Psycho magazine and later in pages of a self-titled off-beat full color one-shot. To see some delicious artwork by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito drawing the Heap Psycho check out this link and this one too. To get a look at Tom Sutton and Jack Abel in the color comic go here.

Many years later Eclipse comics revived Airboy and the Heap along with him. The mossy monster appeared in several issues of the comic, getting more than a few intriguing cover appearances.

Most recently Moonstone Publishing brought out a Heap comic, this one a modern revision of the classic character with a few more violent aspects to the storytelling. It didn't catch on and only lasted a single issue.

The Heap is dead of course, but as we see long live the Heap.

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Heaps Of Fun And Horror!

This is a simply delightful image of the vintage comic book monster The Heap by the great Frank Brunner. The truly offbeat nature of this longtime obscure Hillman character is lovingly rendered in this infinity cover. I wish I had the sheckels to bring this one home.

Likewise this first volume from PS ArtBooks featuring artwork by Mike Ploog, an artist also connected to vintage swamp art with his contributions to Man-Thing for Marvel.

If you'd like to check out some Heap stories, then go here and spend a few delightful minutes.

The swamp monsters were all the rage in the early 70's as evidenced by the nigh simultaneous creation of Swamp Thing and Man-Thing, but also by this revival (if in pretty much name only) of the Heap character in the second issue of Skywald's Psycho magazine.  To read the story stop by here.

The character even rated a single issue of his own comics from the short-lived publisher. This cover by Tom Sutton and Jack Abel is vintage Bronze Age. For more see this Progressive Ruin link at one of the most thoroughly and entertainly mucky sites on the net.

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Moonestone's Heap!

A friend of mine, also a teacher, gets scuds of coverless comics to share out to his students. He asked to identify one handful of such books and from the ads I knew immediately it was a Moonstone book and soon I knew it was their Heap revival from earlier this year.

I remember seeing this advertised and seeing on the stands. I don't usually go for new comics, but I sometimes make an exception for Moonstone and this Heap comic didn't look all that bad. But I didn't get it, and soon enough forgot it.

But I ended up with a few minutes at the end of my planning period yesterday and I found a copy of this coverless comic and gave it a quick reading. It wasn't too bad actually. This Heap is a Nordic deity of sorts blended with a human WWI airplane pilot. The swamp area seems to have been infused with Runic magic and later the plane crashed there. In WWII the Heap rises and confronts the Nazis who are chasing a girl. One of Odin's Ravens in human shape shows up and fills the Heap in on his background, though he himself surprised at the human qualities.

The story ends abruptly, and typical for modern comics all too quickly. But I have to confess I was interested the whole way through.


I still think I prefer the older Skywald versions of the Heap, and I have to confess to knowing next to nothing about the original Airboy version, though I do see the echoes in his origin story.


Here's a very groovy link to the Skywald version in Black and White.

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