Guest Post | DC Flirts with Sword-and-Sorcery, Part Two: Horror Anthologies

By GW Thomas

Nightmaster failed to become DC's first sword-and-sorcery title, but DC kept trying in the horror magazines. “The Eyes of the Basilisk” (The House of Mystery #184, January-February 1970) was written by E Nelson Bridwell and drawn by Gil Kane and Wally Wood. The plot has the country of Karinek invaded by the deadly serpent. The king offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who can slay the basilisk. Many try, but fail. Two brothers, Ursus and Ulfar, go to defeat the monster using a polished shield. Ursus doesn’t look into the basilisk’s eyes, but in the shield. The terrible gaze freezes him and the serpent kills him. Ulfar goes to avenge his brother, lifting the shield and reflecting the monster’s gaze into its own face. The basilisk turns itself to stone and Ulfar becomes king. It is only at the end that we find out Ulfar is blind.

Kane and Wood’s presence here is significant. Wally Wood was the artist responsible for “Clawfang the Barbarian” (Unearthly Spectaculars #2, December 1965) five years earlier and he had drawn several pieces for his own fanzine, Witzend. He would go on to do both Hercules Unbound (1975) and Stalker (1975) for DC. Gil Kane would draw many sword-and-sorcery pieces, some based on Robert E Howard’s stories for Marvel in the pages of Savage Sword of Conan and Conan the Barbarian. Perhaps his best of all of them was his adaptation of “The Valley of the Worm” in Supernatural Thrillers #3 (April 1973).

DC’s next ploy to test the waters was to reprint three of Joe Kubert’s Viking Prince stories from the pages of The Brave and the Bold from 1955, in DC Special #12 (May-June 1971). More Viking Prince episodes would be used to fill out the backs of DC Special #22-25. These giant-sized magazines featured new stories about the Three Musketeers and old Robin Hood reprints.

Gil Kane tried again with “Sword of the Dead” in Adventure Comics #425 (December 1972). This time Kane wrote and drew the six-pager. The story concerns two warriors. The first is Evlig, a merciless killer who murders the family of the second warrior: John of Gaunt, a retired knight turned farmer. John suits up and finds Evlig. The two square off with lances, sending John to the ground. Evlig tries to finish him off, but John rises up and slays him. Only after Evlig is dead does John see his own slain body. His righteousness was so powerful, his spirit accomplished what his body could not. A few things come to mind about this tale. One: the villain’s name is so obviously a form of the word Evil, while John of Gaunt was an actual historical person. The idea of the dead who kills reminds me of Robert E Howard’s “The Man on the Ground” (Weird Tales, July 1933) where a Texas feuder also sees his dead body after a fight. Kane was a fan of Howard, so this isn’t surprising.

This was followed by DC's first sword-and-sorcery title launch: Fritz Leiber’s two best thieves in Lankhmar, in Sword of Sorcery (March-April to November-December 1973). Before the five-issue run, drawn largely by Howard Chaykin (another artist linked to the feel and look of sword-and-sorcery with his work for Marvel), Fafhrd and Grey Mouser first appeared in Wonder Woman #202 (September-October 1972) in an introductory episode that did little but pit them against Diana Prince. This tale was written by science fiction master, Samuel R Delany and drawn by Dick Giordano. Sword of Sorcery failed after only a few issues, as would titles like Stalker, Beowulf, Dragonslayer, and Claw the Unconquered. Success was to be found in the science fiction-tinged The Warlord by Mike Grell, running for 133 issues with new material up to 2008. You would think after all this trying, DC would have ended the sword-and-sorcery appearances in their horror titles, but this was not so.

“The Survivor” in Weird War Tales #15 (July 1973) was written by Jack Oleck and drawn by Gerry Talaoc. Oleck was a mainstay of the DC horror titles, and not surprisingly, he wrote more of the stories featured here than anyone else. Here is the first of two about Vikings. Lars Ironhand and his crew are stranded on a weird island where the monsters of Throna the Witch attack them. Defeating all her minions, Throna leads them to water. Drinking the liquid causes the Vikings to grow small in body but large in head. Lars, the last survivor, writes a warning to anyone else who might end up on the island and be changed by the water. By the time he finishes, he has changed into a monkey.

“King of the Ring” from Plop #23 (September-October 1976) is an unusual outlier that has to be mentioned. Written and drawn by Wally Wood, the strip is one of the first comic parodies of The Lord of the Rings in the manner of Harvard Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings. While not sword-and-sorcery exactly, the funny piece packs many of the highlights and characters of Tolkien’s masterpiece into only six pages. Woody uses silly variations such as Gondeaf for Gandalf and Snyder for Rider, etc. He has a crew of dwarves with names like Slappy, Droopy, Sleazy, Groucho, Harpo, Snoopy, and Shlepo. There is an incognito king who announces he is incognito, the frog-like Glum who wants his “sweetums,” Nazighuls, norks, Schlob, and the ring finally gets destroyed when Frodo shoves Glum over the edge. Wood ends it with the ring flying out of Mount Doom to Gondeaf’s hand. The wizard decides to keep the ring and be evil. Drawn with Wood’s best Mad Magazine-meets-The King of the World style, it is a classic parody.

“Valley of the Giants” was written by Jack Oleck with art by Jess Jodloman for Secrets of the Haunted House #6 (June-July 1977). Jodloman drew King Kull for Marvel’s Kull and the Barbarians (1973) and this experience serves him well in this tale of Vikings. Oleck has a ruthless band of Vikings - lead by Rurik - raid the English coast where an old witch prophesies that Rurik and his men would die by giants. A storm drives them to the African coast. There they attack and capture an Arab ship. One of the Arabs tell them of a fabulous treasure in a valley of giants. The Vikings kill all the Arabs to protect their ship and then press on into the jungle. Pygmies attack them with poisoned arrows. Rurik and his men die fighting the pygmies, but before they die Rurik laughs, knowing the giants of the prophecy are not their opponents but themselves.

“Bruce the Barbarian” in Unexpected #205 (December 1980) was written by JM Dematteis with art by Vic Catan. Bruce E Platt is an unpopular disc jockey who uses the occult to create a fantasy world in which he is a heroic barbarian. This alternate reality becomes so real that when his former girlfriend, Cornelia, comes to his apartment, he kills her by accident. When the cops come to arrest him, they find Bruce being tormented for eternity in a very real hell. This type of story, the fantasy fan as escapist-loser is one of my least favorite tropes, being the shallow reaction of non-fantasy fans: whether it is Harlan Ellison’s “Delusion For a Dragonslayer” (1966) or the anti-LARPing film, Mazes and Monsters starring a young Tom Hanks (1982). Dematteis would pen the final issues of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, so I suspect he’s not an anti-fantasy fan.

“Troll Bridge” in Unexpected #220 (March 1982) was written by Gary Cohn; art by Paris Cullins and Gary Martin. This tongue-in-cheek tale of a troll who works his way up to larger and larger bridges ends when he is tricked into wearing a magic cloak by the wizard Wendik the Trollsbane. The cloak sends him to another dimension where he finds a new home under the Brooklyn Bridge. This goofy tale appeals to me with its cartoony style that reminds me a little of Shrek and by not taking itself too seriously.

“No Penny, No Paradise” in Unexpected #222 (May 1982) was written by Robert Kanigher of Wonder Woman fame (as well as SF titles like Metal Men) and had art by Keith Giffin and Larry Mahlstedt. Not really a hardcore sword-and-sorcery tale, the plot follows Alexander the Great as he conquers Asia. Before his death, he reminds Philo to place a penny on his tongue. When Alexander arrives at the River Styx, Charon refuses him entrance into heaven because he has no penny. Alexander goes back to haunt Philo. The thief defeats him by placing a penny in his own mouth before dying. Alexander is powerless to stop Philo from crossing the Styx while he is damned forever. Giffin got his start with the later issues of Claw the Unconquered. Unfortunately he did not ink his own work. Malhlstedt’s inking lacks the weird flavor of Claw. The cover art was provided by Ernie Colon, the artist who created Arak, Son of Thunder with Roy Thomas.

With that final issue, DC Comics said goodbye to short sword-and-sorcery, but not all heroic fantasy. In 1982, the company had the unpopular Arak, Son of Thunder, Arion, Lord of Atlantis, Masters of the Universe tie-ins, The Warlord (no longer with Grell), The Atlantis Chronicles by Esteban Maroto, and the on-again-off-again Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld. By 1988 though, the ranks of DC would not include sword-and-sorcery. In fact, by the 1990s, only old cornerstones such as Conan, Elfquest, Masters of the Universe, and television fare such as Xena, Warrior Princess would be in evidence. The 1990s would not be kind to sword-and-sorcery. DC Comics, like everyone else, had tested the waters, but ultimately gone back to superheroes.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

The End of a Beautiful Friendship: Creators' Rights [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The fight over creators' rights seems like ancient lore these days, but for those of us who remember Destroyer Duck and all the fuss that spawned the Gerber vs Marvel fight, it lingers. The movie Howard the Duck tanked, but his cameo at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy reminded me of those old battlegrounds. But not all the battles were fought with Marvel and DC.

Wally Wood, despite being famous from as early as EC Comics, fought his own battles. He was one of the people who created witzend (issue #1 in 1966), the first pro fanzine in which all material was owned by its creators. Commercially a disaster, it did spark the first discussions around "Who owns this idea, anyway?" Other prozines would follow like Phase 1, Hot Stuf' and Star*Reach. The seeds planted in the 1960s would bloom in the 1970s and 1980s, first as "underground comics," but eventually as creator-owned and published works like The First Kingdom, Cerebus the Aardvark, and Elf Quest.

Unhappy with the big companies, Wally drew for James Warren's horror magazines Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. With more leeway than the superhero books, Wally could create his own stories and retain certain rights he would not at Marvel or DC. His first appearance was supposed to be the very first issue of Creepy, an EC All-Star reunion (January 1965), but mistakenly his story was sent to Gray Morrow instead. He did appear by issue #9 (June 1966) with "Overworked!" written by Archie Goodwin and inked by pal Dan Atkins. This was the first of a dozen appearances at Warren. Wood would draw some of the first sword and sorcery tales for them in "War of the Wizards" (Vampirella #10, March 1971), "To Kill a God" (Vampirella #12, July 1971), and "Prelude to Armageddon" (Creepy #41, July 1971).

So in June of 1978, when Warren began their version of Heavy Metal - first called 1984, then later changed to 1994 - it made sense to include some sword and sorcery from Wally Wood. Who better? Wally had been into heroic fantasy since the 1960s, as well as inking Kull the Conqueror #1 (1971) for Marvel, then the short-lived Stalker for DC in 1975 and Hercules Unbound (1975-76). He also did a wonderful Lord of the Rings parody for DC's Plop #23 (September-October 1976) called "The King of the Ring." These jobs were nothing though compared to his fantasy masterwork, The King of the World, an adult Fantasy he had been working on since the witzend days.

What he sent to Bill DuBay at 1984 was a 12-pager entitled "The End," set in a world of elves and ogres similar to The King of the World. What DuBay did with this sterling black-and-white piece was turn it into two, unconnected 6-pagers, "Quick Cut" (1984 #1, June 1978) and "One Night Down on the Funny Farm" (1984 #2, August 1978), neither of which make much sense. Since he cut and pasted, then rewrote the story, these two stories have anomalies in their pictures and make very little sense. For the first one he gave Wood full credit, but on the second he took the blame as the writer. Wally was outraged. He had not been consulted. A master of the comic form, a champion of creators' rights, his work had been mangled and trivialized. After thirteen years, he walked away. He never worked for Warren again.

Ironically, in 1983, Bill DuBay would be one of fifty-eight former Warren writers and artists to appear before the judge in the Warren bankruptcy case, protesting that Harris, who bought out the folding Warren empire, did not have the rights to such characters as Vampirella and decades of stories. Creators' rights? What's that?

So what we are left with since has been a lot of questions as to why Bill DuBay treated Wally Wood's work in this fashion. The answer lies perhaps in a larger question: why was 1984 the worst magazine Warren put out? In trying to out-Heavy Metal the competition, the writing of the magazine was slanted heavily toward sleaze. The work Wally Wood (and others) turned in simply wasn't sleazy enough. DuBay, as editor, was the chief sleaze provider. He knew better than to ask Wood to redo the story in an adolescent way, so he cut and pasted and lost the work of a great artist in the process. DuBay had bigger worries on his hands, including a lawsuit with Harlan Ellison and possibly a copyright haggle with the heirs of George Orwell over the title. Is it any wonder he went by the name Will Richardson for a few years after all this?

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.