CTB #37
Story by Roy Thomas and art by Neal Adams, based upon an idea by REH, this tale guest-stars Juma the Black. Not the most original descriptor for a proto-African warrior during the Hyborian age, but what are you gonna do? A warrior from Kush created by L. Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter, Juma appears in some of the expanded Conan pastiche material.
As a young reader, I did not make a very clear distinction between the idea of REH's original stories and the lesser quality, though greater in number, tales by authors that came after him and extrapolated from his work. I thought it was all something rather like the Marvel Bullpen. In any case, Juma appears as a supporting character in parts of my favorite non-Howard Conan story, Conan the Buccaneer, which Marvel also adapted, so I will eventually get round to reviewing that as well.
The art by Adams is top notch with a lot of his trademark fluid anatomy and crisp details, though somewhat crowded panel-wise and with some stiff figure work here and there. Even so, this is a great looking Conan comic, making me wish Adams had done more art for Conan over the years. I was familiar with this one from the magazine-sized, black and white Conan Saga. I had assumed for many years that it was a reprint from Savage Sword of Conan. Honestly, I think I might prefer the story in that format, though it is cool to see it in color. The cover alone, also by Neal Adams, is one of the great CTB covers.
Delivered a mortal blow by Kull the Destroyer (off-panel before the story begins), a dying wizard utters a curse that preserves his bones as golden relics. Discovered millennia later by one of the Hyrkanian hill-people, the moment the living man touches the golden bones his flesh and life-force are both stolen to resurrect the wizard.
Conan and Juma, working as mercenary guardsmen for a Turanian caravan escorting the granddaughter of the emperor, are both captured along with the young woman. The rebel tribesmen that have ambushed the caravan are loyal to the evil wizard. The captives are led to a hidden tropical valley amid the wintry mountains, preserved by a freak geothermal vent. Along the march, Conan sees a "unicorn" for the first time when it charges at the staring Cimmerian. The unicorn is in fact a rhonocerous. Juma explains they have a lot of them in his homeland.
Before it is all over, Conan and Juma have to escape slavery in a gold mine, elude a gigantic slug, and ultimately rescue the girl. The story wraps up quickly and the final panel somehow puts me in mind of the final freeze frame shot of a sitcom episode where the character share a final laugh-- if they were laughing about the female lead having a small knife with which to kill herself if the evil wizard had actually tried to get into her underwear.