What shall a man say when a friend has vanished behind the doors of Death? A mere tangle of barren words, only words.

–Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, ca. May 1928–

Sometimes it’s easy for my generation to forget how good we Howard fans have it. With Del Rey, Bison and Wildside volumes easily available, access to the internet and like-minded fans, and a CPI which is most vocal and active in its support of REH, I can’t really imagine what it was like for prior generations. Unfortunately, despite the veritable golden age we are blessed to experience, the stifling mist of ignorance and wilfull misrepresentation is not long gone. Even with the writings of Robert E. Howard a click away on Project Gutenberg and Wikisource, the persistent mistakes of past years yet rear their faces of nightmare and lunacy.

Paradox has been doing a spectacular job, with many different Howard stories in print, and many volumes of tales. CPI has also done Howard proud, practically falling over themselves in promoting Howard as the creator of their lucrative property. However, though Howard and his works are represented by Paradox and CPI, they are not the only companies to be involved in the writer and his creations. Enter Dynamite Entertainment, who despite festooning Robert E. Howard’s name around their products, seem less interested in maintaining the integrity of Howard’s creation than hijacking it for its own ends. Rather than celebrate the author largely responsible for one of their major sources of revenue, they are merely using his name for some literary credibility, to give a semblance of legitimacy and faithfulness to the source material that simply doesn’t exist.

Dynamite Entertainment are largely known as the heirs of Red Sonja, the pathetic shadow of Robert E. Howard’s irrepressible Russian heroine, who gained a title of her own during the Bronze Age of Comic Books’ attempt to address the timely feminism controversies. Unfortunately, the pro-feminist elements of female empowerment and desire for equality are somewhat obscured by the titillating artwork and humiliating backstory. While I have plenty to say on Red Sonja, it is best left for another time. Dynamite’s latest comic has gained my attention–as well as their choice of writer.

“From the pages of writer Robert E. Howard comes the debut of Dynamite’s Thulsa Doom!”

Crom’s Devils, where to begin?

First of all, it’s obvious that this Thulsa Doom is nowhere to be found in the pages of Robert E. Howard. This isn’t even the dulcet-toned demagogue concocted by John Milius for Conan the Barbarian, rather it is a sort of merging of Doom and Conan himself–doesn’t that pose look rather familiar? The facial similarity to future Thulsa Doom actor Djimon Honsou is uncanny. Regardless, this is a character interpretation entirely alien to the villain of “The Cat and the Skull.” Saying that Jim Earl Jones is “from the pages of Robert E. Howard” is as incorrect and dishonest as claiming Kevin Sorbo’s Kull to be a fairly accurate depiction of Howard’s Atlantean, or that Red Sonja was Robert E. Howard’s creation–which, incidentally, Dynamite is also doing. This is not the first time the character has appeared in Red Sonja: a miniseries with the fairly succinct title Red Sonja vs Thulsa Doom. There, too, he is portrayed in Milius as opposed to Howard form, though at least they had the sense to have no explicit connections betwixt the two characters. Perhaps I’m being too hasty: it’s possible that this is not meant to be the original Thulsa Doom. Perhaps he is a man inspired by the Valusian necromancer, taking his name as a mark of reverence, before developing some major ophidiophilia and a preoccupation with conundrums of iron alloys.

Unfortunately, the man chosen to write this is Arvid Nelson.

Before I begin on Thulsa Doom, I must discuss the previous sins of the Rex Mundi author. Arvid Nelson is, alas, not a newcomer to Robert E. Howard. His previous foray into the Thurian Age managed to contradict something Howard wrote in nearly every single issue. For example, despite Howard stating that Kull was not only unmarried and celibate, but a virgin, Nelson feels it necessary to marry him off! Not only that, but his wife-to-be is named “The Lady Igraine.” Even if this was the Hyborian Age, where names taken from mythology and legend are an important aspect of the setting, “The Lady Igraine” is so steeped in Arthurian legend that it cannot be extricated. It would be like having Conan meet a Brythunian king called Uther Pendragon, or an Iranistani sailor named Sinbad the Sailor. He also includes a demon called Etrigor, the name obviously very similar to Etrigan–another link to Arthurian mythology given the character’s origin. I’m almost expecting to see the Green Knight and Fisher King pop up in the next series.

Another bizarre change is the re-imagining of the Serpent Men as green-skinned Count Orlocks. Howard very specifically noted that the Serpent Men were of mostly human shape, but with the head of a snake where a man’s head should be: this in keeping with similar beings Howard described which have the bodies of humans, and the heads of animals. Wolf-headed De Montour and elephant-headed Yogah/Yag-Kosha, for instance, or the reverse–the human-headed God in the Bowl, for that matter. Yet even though this is supposed to be an adaptation of “The Shadow Kingdom,” Nelson and Conrad seemed to think that Howard’s depiction just wasn’t cool enough, so they concocted a race of Max Schrek clones. Later on, Serpent Men more similar to Howard’s appear… although this time they’re eight foot tall giants with cobra-heads.

Perhaps most egregious is the depiction of the Picts. Much like Tolkien’s Elves, the Picts are one of the most important, lasting elements of Howard’s fiction. They figure in nearly all his fantasy works, much of his horror, and many historical stories. Yet somehow, Arvid Nelson, in supporting Will Conrad’s artistic direction, has allowed even the Picts to be altered. Contrary to every single description of Howard’s Picts, not to mention the Thurian-era incarnation, Will Conrad has chosen to depict the Picts as unambiguously Sub-Saharan African in appearance, using the rather thin justification that the Picts are described as “dark-skinned,” and that other peoples change over time. Despite the fact that Brule is described as practically the spitting image of Bran Mak Morn–one wonders if in Nelson and Conrad’s adaptation of “Kings of the Night,” Bran and the Picts would also be black, dreadlocked warriors–and the many references Howard makes to Picts being “the same as they’ve always been,” Conrad has chosen to make a very major change to a race in Howard’s canon. This change puts all the ironic racial tension in “The Black Stranger” and “Beyond the Black River” in a completely different light, and one that makes it far more racist by implication than Howard ever did.

So what can we expect from Thulsa Doom? Let’s look at a quotation from the writer Arvid Nelson:

“Nelson explained to CBR that part of his goal in this origin series remains reconciling these two ideals. “I’ve always thought Howard’s original Doom was the inspiration for Skeletor, if you can believe that. Making him more of a David Koresh in the original ‘Conan’ was a stroke of genius. Skeletor is pretty sweet, don’t get me wrong, but we’ll be staying more on the David Koresh side of things.”"

It cannot be done. Despite the best attempts of De Camp and Roy Thomas, the story, characters and events of Conan the Barbarian and Howard’s stories are, not to put too fine a point on it, incompatible. Regardless of one’s opinion of Conan the Barbarian on its own merits, even the most fervent defenders would agree that the film and stories occupy separate universes.

What’s most baffling is that, even if we somehow accept that the gaunt, dessicated, skull-headed sorcerer becomes a muscular, human, death-obsessed warrior in a skull mask–not to mention then becoming a pudgy, snake-obsessed cult leader–this leads to a rather large point of confusion in the timeline. Nelson describes Thulsa Doom as being neither a hero nor villain in the chaotic period just after the cataclysm. Does this mean that Thulsa Doom starts off evil and undead, then ambiguous and alive, then evil again? Or was the frightening figure of “The Cat and the Skull” not actually evil, thus completely changing the tone of the story?

It’s at this point one must ask: what is the point of such umbrage? Red Sonja is not a Robert E. Howard character, and Howard did not write these comics, so there is no reason to be concerned with whatever Dynamite does with her. The idea of not concerning ourselves with derivative material is one Cimmerian alumnus Mark Finn appears to uphold, and it’s a perfectly reasonable position: since this is clearly not Robert E. Howard’s Thulsa Doom, why worry about how he’s presented? The answer, really, is that this still has everything to do with Robert E. Howard. Howard’s name is being used in promotional material for the Thulsa Doom comic. Arvid Nelson talks about Howard in interviews, and the comparison between the two iterations of Thulsa Doom. Most crucially, Robert E. Howard as a writer and man is being distorted. By presenting this version of Thulsa Doom as Howard’s creation, then those unaware of the truth will treat it as Howard’s creation. It doesn’t matter if the things being said are good or bad: misinformation is misinformation.

This is an unacceptable state of affairs. At best, it merely dupes people into thinking Howard created something he didn’t. At worst, any criticisms leveled at the series may well be leveled at Howard. Surely I can’t be the only one who sees the unfortunate implications of a black barbarian warrior, torn between good and evil, who succumbs to his dark side, especially considering it takes place in the same universe of a white barbarian warrior who time and again resists the power of evil? This is not the first time such a comparison has been made: in addition to a number of bizarre factual errors and and the usual tiresome dismissal of the source material, Roger Ebert found the imagery of a white proto-Germanic warrior striking down a black man somewhat suspect. Given the perennial controversy of the race issue, and the precedent of blaming Howard for the wrongs of a pastiche, this and other criticisms are possibilities.

Howard fans are already fighting to gain our favourite author’s acceptance in literary circles, and we’ve practically won in that regard: pastiches which present their content in such a way as to obfuscate what is “Howard” and what isn’t are not on the same side. It’s often said that if someone likes the pastiches or films, they will naturally gravitate to the original stories: that is true, but so is the reverse–if someone doesn’t like the pastiches or films, they will stay away from the original stories, even if they would probably enjoy them. What of the people who were turned off by the right-wing politics and heavy Nietschean atmosphere of Conan the Barbarian? Why would they seek out the original source material of a film they didn’t like? By the same token, how many people–women especially–were turned off Robert E. Howard by the adolescent cheesecake of Red Sonja, assuming all of Howard’s heroines were as puerile and one-dimensional as Red?

Another possible counterpoint is that while cinematic Thulsa Doom is quite well-explored and developed within the film, literary Thulsa Doom is more of an enigma. Surely it would be better to use the more established, complete version of a character than the villain of one short story? I believe in the opposite: because there is more mystery about literary Doom, there is more allowance for creativity and exploration. The answer is obvious to me: Dynamite, and Nelson himself, just don’t seem interested in Howard’s Doom. In fact, Howard’s Doom seems almost an afterthought to Milius’ Doom: why else would they focus on Doom as a virile, powerful black man with a snake fixation than as Howard intended him? Nelson’s pride in memorizing the film–no mean feat, I mean, it has literally dozens of lines–suggests the likelihood that this is Conan the Barbarian fan fiction.

Overall, the depiction of Thulsa Doom as a semi-heroic black man is but one of many such changes in the current crop of Howard pastiches. There are more than a few cases of “race-lifts” given to major characters in Howard’s canon for seemingly no defensible reason. Kalanthes, the last priest of Ibis, is depicted as black–despite also being depicted as a native Stygian priest. How could a black man become a priest in the caste-obsessed nation of Stygia, where only pure Stygians are admitted into the priesthood and army, any other stock–be it black, brown or white–consumed by the vast, mongrel peasant caste? Combined with Brule, there is almost the sense of an agenda at Dark Horse.

While I celebrate worthy attempts to boost African presence in Sword and Sorcery–Charles R. Saunders’ Imaro and Dossouye being the greatest examples–I do not believe it should come by willfully re-writing another author’s characters and creations. Why not do what De Camp did with Juma, and create a new companion for the early comics: an Amazon warrior-woman, a renegade prince of Keshan, a wandering Kushite adventurer. Even beyond original creations, there are plenty of existing black characters who would benefit from an “upgrade” from one-time characters to part-time sidekicks in future Dark Horse volumes. What of Sakumbe, the adventurer Conan knew of old in the Tombalku fragment? What of Ajonga, Yasunga and Laranga, three corsairs who Conan remembered from his time as a black corsair twenty years before The Hour of the Dragon? What of N’Gora and N’Yaga, the corsair sub-chief and shaman whom Conan would surely have become acquainted to during his time on the Tigress? Why restrict it to those of “Kusho-Hyborian” descent: what of the Hyborian equivalents of Asians, Native Americans, or other ethnic minorities? Likewise, if the writers wanted a “black friend” for Kull, why not introduce one of the Black Atlanteans alluded to in “Black Canaan” and the Am-Ra stories, instead of turning the Picts into Pictafarians and completely messing up Howard’s mythos? I’m almost surprised John Silent wasn’t turned into a Morgan Freeman-esque “Moor” for the Solomon Kane miniseries.

Considering Nelson is the writer of both series, I’m rather concerned as to how this depiction of Thulsa Doom will relate to the Kull series. Will Hounsou Doom turn up in Kull, perhaps with a skull-mask in a limp attempt to “reconcile” the two, crossing companies in the process and infecting Dark Horse with Dynamite’s nonsense? Is the mysterious golden-masked spokesman of the Great Serpent in the early series, in fact, Doom? Thus we get the peculiar oddity that not only Conan, but Kull have a charismatic black man–the same charismatic black man–as their lifelong nemesis. For all Howard’s faults, he certainly did not write Conan or Kull diametrically opposed to a black man for their whole lives in a racial Taijitu, unlike the implications of Milius and, now, Nelson.

Nelson, Dynamite, it’s one thing to continue the misrepresentation of Red Sonja and Thulsa Doom as characters. It’s quite another to drag Howard into it as an unwilling accomplice. Don’t even dare to hijack Howard for literary cred, and present your own half-baked ideas and inventions as “reasonable extrapolation,” much less an honest portrayal of Howard’s character. Your depiction of Doom as a “dark antihero” is completely at odds with everything we know about REH’s character. Your own timeline doesn’t even make sense, with Doom acting like a complete monster in “The Cat and the Skull,” then an antihero in your comic, then falling to darkness again for Conan the Barbarian. Either ignore Howard completely and do your own thing, or actually stick to his descriptions. You can’t have it both ways.