A while back, I voiced my opinions about a certain Dynamite comic called Robert E. Howard Presents (it still causes me to gag a little) Thulsa Doom, by Dark Horse Kull writer Arvid Nelson and artist Lui Antonio. Having read the issue, while competently constructed, and a few nice surprises pop up, most of my fears came to pass.

The good elements are largely Easter eggs for Weird Tales fans: a Lovecraftian gug makes an appearance, Poseidonis receives a cameo, and there are one or two Thurian references. There’s gratuitous “fan-service” in the form of a buxom sorceress (is there any other kind of sorceress?) named Ancasta with the sort of form-hugging latex that’s normally the domain of super-heroines, though this is tempered with the right side of her face being scarred like Jonah Hex or The Dark Knight’s incarnation of Two-Face. The art is generally adequate, with Doom looking disarmingly like Djimon Honsou, and the lettering is alright outside a few odd spelling mistakes. Still, there are larger problems than that.

Most worrying of these, to me, is an unnamed character, who I presume will become either a love interest or sister surrogate for Doom. With Antonio’s loving attention to her developed figure, she seems like typical pulp cheesecake–except she is only fourteen years old. When the girl is menaced by a brutish Pict slaver, we’re supposed to believe that the act of ravishing her is particularly abhorrent due to her age, despite fourteen being a perfectly appropriate marrying age in every pre-modern society in history–not to mention Howard’s Hyborian Age, where we read of a thirteen-year-old Westermarck newlywed in “Beyond the Black River” without any hint of out-of-place condemnation or disgust. Considering the life expectancy of most societies would be severely reduced, marriage at such an age is simple pragmatism, and any repulsion at the notion is entirely anachronistic within the context of the story, and thus only works for a modern audience. Yet how can the reader do this in good conscience when she’s so salaciously rendered in a flimsy, revealing tunic, making the reader’s intended indignation to be utterly hypocritical? I checked back to the credits page to see if Chris Hansen’s name appears anywhere, suspecting To Catch A Predator to have branched out into comics.

But what about the most important stuff: how does Thulsa Doom measure up to Kull, and Robert E. Howard? As I’m sure you’ll have gathered, not entirely well.

First of all is the titular character himself: as feared, it appears that despite the complete impossibility of such a concept, Nelson is honestly trying to reconcile Howard’s Thulsa Doom with Conan the Barbarians’ Doom. Not only that, but Nelson even adds more elements from Thoth-Amon’s biography to Doom: along with the association with Set and connection to monstrous snakes from the films, it turns out Doom was a former slave–something never alluded to by Howard. What’s most galling to me is that not only did Doom apparently outlive his nemesis Kull, but it’s heavily implied that he himself was partially responsible for the Great Cataclysm. I guess Nelson’s never read “The Isle of the Eons” or “Marchers of Valhalla,” unless Doom actively provoked Poseidon’s rage. Nelson even suggests that the Pictish Isles sank beneath the waves, though I pray that particular snafu is just rumor-mongering in the story and not a mangling of Howard’s geography.

Although the Picts are not prehistoric Rastafarians in Dynamite’s Hyborian Age (not much comfort, considering their Hyrkanians are typical western medieval peasants, nary a recurve bow to be seen) they aren’t like Howard’s either: rather than short, swarthy, beardless, dark-eyed/haired/skinned Mediterranean types (as Howard consistently described them), the Picts of the Cataclysmic period are tall, bearded, white-skinned Nordics. The only Picts noted to have beards in Howard are white-haired elders: no warrior in his prime sports a beard. So in Nelson’s Hyborian universe, the Picts start off as noble, short, black savages in the Thurian Age, then become cruel, tall, Nordic savages during the Cataclysm, then finally become the dangerous, short, swarthy Mediterranean folk of the Hyborian Age–all for a race Howard describes as being largely consistent until their final extinction in modern times.

It isn’t just the Picts, though: the Atlanteans are the subject of “re-interpretation.” At least here, Nelson has some sort of leg to stand on: one of the great conundrums of Howard’s fiction is the depiction of Atlantis. The barbaric continent of the Kull stories appears to be incompatible with the decadent seafaring civilization of sorcerers as seen in “The Moon of Skulls” and “Skull-Face.” Nonetheless, scholars like the Cimmerian’s own Deuce Richardson are making compelling arguments reconciling the two Atlantises within Howard’s universe. Unfortunately, Nelson doesn’t make any implication of the dual nature of Atlantis in Thulsa Doom #1: as far as the comic goes, Atlantis was the same nation of corrupt sorcerers of “Skull-Face” and thousands of other depictions of Atlantis in weird fiction (not to mention the sorcerers use not Howard’s style of subtle magic, but a World of Warcraft-style lights show with glowing runes and gaudy designs floating in midair).

Despite a thorough talk on the conan.com boards, Nelson maintains that Conrad’s interpretation of Afropicts is within the bounds of Howard’s descriptions, at least to the faithful hordes at Dark Horse (including Steve “Korak” Allsup, late of the Conan forums: come back Korak, we miss ya!) Hopefully, this post will address once and for all the exact reasons why it is not, and why Howard’s Picts cannot be viewed as anything other than Caucasian.

…when I re-read the source material for Kull, and for the Picts in general, I was surprised at how much of what was considered “authoritative” was actually established after Howard’s time. The source texts on the Picts are fragmentary and sometimes even contradictory. I don’t think Howard knew or would even have cared if people endlessly minced his unpublished writings after his death. He wasn’t the Solomon Q. Whitethorn Professor of Medieval Studies for Cambridge University.

So there’s a lot of room for interpretation.

Nelson appears to be ignoring two things: First, none of the problems Howard purists have is in any way influenced by material not present in Howard’s own writings – what is he referring to, pastiches? Marvel comics? Secondly, he assumes that Howard had so low an opinion of his work that he’d be perfectly happy for future authors to hack it to pieces for their own designs–though Howard was self-deprecating and hypercritical of his work, I doubt he was completely without pride. The use of the phrase “endlessly minced” is most telling.

I completely stand behind Will Conrad’s interpretation of Brule for Kull. It’s unorthodox, but not outside the limits of the original Howard texts. If you disagree, it’s a “tomato, tomahto” thing. I, personally, have always imagined Brule looking more Asian-Indian or American-Indian… but I’m not Will’s, or any other artist’s, overlord. Artists need to make their own contributions, or they are just pencil-wielding robots.

Ah, the “artistic license” defense. While at college, my tutor imparted an important anecdote: if you’re illustrating a scene that features a boy in a red jumper, then you can do whatever you like, as long as you don’t put the boy in a blue jumper. It’s the exact same thing with the Picts. Despite Nelson’s protestations, there is no evidence whatsoever that justifies the depiction of the Picts as black, and plenty that justifies exactly what Howard consistently describes: short, dark, Caucasian. This is not a case of “tomato, tomahto” as Nelson puts it: Howard was explicit, consistent, and clear about his depiction of the Picts.

So where did Conrad & Nelson get this idea anyway? Here’s his explanation, from a thread on conan.com:

There’s a persistent myth in Ireland and Wales, and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland, that their nations were founded, at least in part, by “swarthy” colonists from the sea. Spain, Egypt, even lost tribes of Israel are the purported identities of these “dark” colonists. The reason is that a lot of Irish, Welsh and Scottish people have very dark hair, which seems anomalous for the British Isles.

As far as I know, all these theories are totally absurd. The real reason for the dark hair is probably just genetic drift–the original Indo-European settlers of Ireland, Wales and Scotland probably just had dark hair. No need to get more complicated than that.

Nelson seems to be unaware of “Men of the Shadows,” the Bran Mak Morn tale which makes this “totally absurd” theory–which is actually a plausible and well-supported one to modern science, certainly in regards to Spanish migration–explicit in Howard’s universe, as well as directly comparing Bran Mak Morn directly to Thurian era Picts.

Howard definitely describes Brule as “dark, like all his race”. I’ve read all the Thuria stories and essays very carefully, and I’m not entirely sure where the certitude about the Caucasian facial features of the Thurian Picts comes from. If someone would like to point it out to me–civilly–I would consider it a favor.

Here you go, Mr Nelson: “Kings of the Night” and “Men of the Shadows.” I would’ve thought that you’d already pored over the first, seeing as it’s as much a Kull story as it is a Bran one.

Such was the man who paused before the silent group. He seemed slightly puzzled, slightly amused. Recognition flickered in his eyes. He spoke in a strange archaic Pictish which Cormac scarcely understood. His voice was deep and resonant.

“Ha, Brule, Gonar did not tell me I would dream of you!”

For the first time in his life Cormac saw the Pictish king completely thrown off his balance. He gaped, speechless. The stranger continued:

“And wearing the gem I gave you, in a circlet on your head! Last night you wore it in a ring on your finger.”

“Last night?” gasped Bran.

“Last night or a hundred thousand years ago–all one!” murmured Gonar in evident enjoyment of the situation.

“I am not Brule,” said Bran. “Are you mad to thus speak of a man dead a hundred thousand years? He was first of my line.”

The stranger laughed unexpectedly. “Well, now I know I am dreaming! This will be a tale to tell Brule when I waken on the morrow! That I went into the future and saw men claiming descent from the Spear-slayer who is, as yet, not even married. No, you are not Brule, I see now, though you have his eyes and his bearing. But he is taller and broader in the shoulders.

–”Kings of the Night”

Kull starts a conversation with Bran Mak Morn, mistaking him for his sword-brother Brule. It is not until Bran explicitly says that he is not Brule that Kull actually realizes he’s not talking to the Spear-Slayer: if Bran did not, who knows if Kull would ever suppose otherwise? Only slight differences in Brule’s proportions mark them as different: interestingly, Brule and Bran appear to have the same or similar eyes, though Brule has blue eyes in the Ronaro fragment, while Bran has dark eyes. Since Howard never referred to Brule’s blue eyes outside the Ronaro fragment, however, and every other reference to his eyes are dark, it seems Howard intended Brule’s eyes to be black all along. Nevertheless, Bran Mak Morn is so similar to Brule he could be his brother, almost his twin.

In order for this episode to work in Arvid’s universe, Bran Mak Morn, a Pictish chieftain of late antiquity Scotland, has to look like a sub-Saharan African. Although the inherent ludicrousness of the notion is self-evident, for completeness, here are some descriptions of the Last King:

There was about him none of the warm, almost Oriental sensuality of the Mediterranean which colored their features. The blond barbarians behind Sulla’s chair were less unlike the man in facial outline than were the Romans. Not his were the full curving red lips, nor the rich waving locks suggestive of the Greek. Nor was his dark complexion the rich olive of the south; rather it was the bleak darkness of the north. The whole aspect of the man vaguely suggested the shadowed mists, the gloom, the cold and the icy winds of the naked northern lands. Even his black eyes were savagely cold, like black fires burning through fathoms of ice.

His height was only medium but there was something about him which transcended mere physical bulk–a certain fierce innate vitality, comparable only to that of a wolf or a panther. In every line of his supple, compact body, as well as in his coarse straight hair and thin lips, this was evident–in the hawk-like set of the head on the corded neck, in the broad square shoulders, in the deep chest, the lean loins, the narrow feet.

–Bran Mak Morn, “Worms of the Earth”

Turlogh felt somehow that this was the image of a man who had lived long ago, for surely the unknown sculptor had had a living model. And he had contrived to bring a touch of life into his work. There was the sweep of the shoulders, the depth of the chest, the powerfully molded arms; the strength of the features was evident. The firm jaw, the regular nose, the high forehead, all indicated a powerful intellect, a high courage, an inflexible will. Surely, thought Turlogh, this man was a king–or a god. Yet he wore no crown; his only garment was a sort of loincloth, wrought so cunningly that every wrinkle and fold was carved as in reality.

–Description of Bran Mak Morn’s statue, “The Dark Man”

To render any ambiguity moot, “Men of the Shadows” specifically notes that Bran Mak Morn is as the race was in the old days, i.e. before the descent into savagery with the cataclysm, explaining the difference between the noble Bran and the more apish Picts of the modern ages as being a result of admixture:

“I am as the race was,” he replied. “The line of chiefs has kept its blood pure through the ages, scouring the world for women of the Old Race.”

…

“The western coast of that northern continent is fierce and rugged. Huge mountains rear skyward. But those peaks were islands upon a time, and to those islands came the Nameless Tribe, wandering down from the north, so many thousand years ago that a man would grow a-weary numbering them. A thousand miles to the north and west had the tribe come into being, there upon the broad and fertile plains close by the northern channels, which divide the continent of the north from Asia.”

–”Men of the Shadows”

Coarse, straight hair, thin lips, Caucasoid features closer to Scandinavians than the corrupt, decadent Romans. Yet as Nelson would have it, Bran Mak Morn would look more like this:

Which is rather like mistaking Sidney Poitier for Gregory Peck.

Hopefully this will be enough for Mr Nelson, but I get the impression he will continue to dig his heels trying to defend this ludicrous interpretation:

I appreciate your point of view, and I think it’s perfectly valid. But it’s still not been demonstrated it’s the only valid point of view. You mentioned the “dark Irish”, the fact that Conan is often described as “dark”. Very true! Sometimes “dark” can mean “Caucasian”, yes. But sometimes it doesn’t.

I think it’s important to remember the chronology of the stories. The Shadow Kingdom contains, as far as I know, the very first description of a Pict, and Howard describes Brule as “dark”. Just “dark”. How do we know Conan is “Caucasian looking”? There are lots of descriptions of him as such. Not so for Brule. It’s distinctly possible Brule is a “dark Caucasian”, but without Howard explicitly saying so, it’s conjecture.

Shadow Kingdom is 1929. Then we have Kings of the Night, 1930, in which Kull mistakes Bran for Brule. We know the Picts are “dark Caucasian” at this time. How could Kull mistake Bran for Brule? Well, as we’ve discussed at length, there are lots of relatively “dark” Caucasians. Such as the post-Thurian Picts. And by that token, there are lots of “light” Africans. Also, Kull first meets Bran at sunrise, when the light is dim.

Then we have The Hyborian Age. I’m actually not sure when this was written, it wasn’t published until after Howard’s death. But he says he wrote it as he was starting his Conan stories, so let’s clock it at 1932. If anyone has a better date, I’m all ears! In The Hyborian Age, he calls the Picts “very dark”. Yes, I maintain “very dark” and “Caucasian” are mutually exclusive. If you disagree, that’s fine, but don’t think it’s worth debating. It’s a case of res ipsa loquitur. They’re not the “very dark Irish”, after all!

The specific descriptions of the “Caucasian” Picts all occur later on, starting, I believe, in 1934. That, it seems to me, is when Howard finally settled on the exact “phenotype” of the Picts. Until then, it was inchoate. Again, I respect the opinions of everyone on this BB! But there’s definitely a lack of clarity and consistency in the early texts that lends itself to interpretation.

Well, since Nelson brings up the chronology, it’s unfortunate that he ignores “The Lost Race” (1924), “Men of the Shadows” (1926), “The Little People” (1928)–all of which describe the “Caucasian” Picts, and as described below, use descriptions like “dark” and “very dark.” He also emphasizes his interpretation of “very dark,” completely uncaring of what Howard’s interpretation and application of the phrase meant, which is what should matter.

So one ambiguous line somehow trumps the multiple, more conclusive descriptions of Howard’s Picts? “Very Dark” can mean a lot of things depending on personal interpretation. Nelson claims that Caucasians cannot be “very dark” despite the considerable number of Indians, Bedouins, Semites and Mediterraneans who have remarkably dark skin, as well as the many Caucasoid characters Howard refers to as “dark” without necessarily being black. As seen above, however, he at least reassessed that notion, though he still somehow believes that it’s possible for Kull to mistake a short, black man with dreadlocks for a short, Caucasian man with straight hair, blaming “morning light” for Kull confusing the two. Some examples include the Cimmerians (“they were dolichocephalic, and dark skinned, though not so dark as either the Zingarans, Zamorians or Picts“–Notes on Various Peoples); the Zamorians (“like all his race, he was very dark”–Shevatas, “Black Colossus”); the Dagonians (“She was undoubtedly a member of a white race, though her skin was very dark“–”The Devil in Iron”); the Tlazitlands (“He was slightly above middle height, very dark, though not Negroid.”–”Red Nails”) and of course, the Picts themselves.

Here are some descriptions of Picts from every age they appeared in (my emphases):

The Picts are of the same type as they always were–short, very dark, with black eyes and hair.

–Picts during the time of Conan, “The Hyborian Age”

Scarce above four feet stood the tallest, and they were small of build and very dark of complexion.

–Picts of pre-Roman Britain (unknown, but possibly 200-100 BC), “The Lost Race”

He was a short, heavily-muscled man, smooth-faced and very dark.”

–Brulla, a Pictish chief during the time of Uther Pendragon (circa 490 AD) “Night of the Wolf”

Within this circle, mingling with the bodies of their slayers, lay other men, such as Turlogh had never seen. Short of stature they were, and very dark; their staring dead eyes were the blackest Turlogh had ever seen.

–Picts of Early Medieval Britain (circa 1014 AD) “The Dark Man”

So throughout history in Howard’s writings, the Picts have always been referred to as “very dark.” Arvid explains this away as “lack of clarity” in the source material, which is patently absurd and confusing, and entirely based on his own interpretation of “very dark” regardless of Howard’s consistency. Is there any possibility of there being a race of “Black Picts” which could support Conrad’s depiction? There is only one, and it is hardly conclusive: the painted warriors of “Marchers of Valhalla.” However, apart from their warpaint and seamanship, these warriors very different from the Picts: they are huge instead of short, they had no archers, they wield war-clubs and hide-covered shields instead of the axes and knives of most Howardian Picts. Although some have compared them to Picts, they sound more like warriors of the Black Kingdoms than Picts of any sort: finally, Patrice Louinet reports that the painted warriors are referred to as “black” in the original draft.

While the Picts did mix with black people some time after the age of Conan, there is no evidence of it happening any time prior to that, and Howard detailed many cases of Pict miscegenation.

Our Thulsa Doom is more a product of John Milius and Oliver Stone than Howard in the first place! I don’t think anyone, however talented they might be, whomever they’re working for, *can* do a definitive Kull, or any other Robert E. Howard character. There’s only one guy who could do that, and he died in 1936 in Cross Plains, Texas.

As I said in my original post, if this Thulsa Doom is more a product of John Milius & Oliver Stone, then take Howard’s name off the marquee and replace it with the true creators. I don’t mind if Dynamite and Nelson make a comic about Conan the Barbarian’s Thulsa Doom: just don’t muddy the waters by claiming Robert E. Howard had anything to do with it other than the name. That’s as dishonest as “Bram Stoker Presents Van Helsing” or Isaac Asimov Presents I, Robot. Although I’m sure this is far more to do with Dynamite than with Nelson himself, but it would be nice if he didn’t adhere to such a misleading assertion.

Thulsa Doom, to my knowledge, only appears in the story Delacardes’ Cat, at the very end, for just a handful of paragraphs. That’s it. Delacardes’ Cat was never published in Howard’s lifetime. For a reason. I don’t think it’s a very successful, coherent story. In fact, I think Howard abandoned it. Doom is really an afterthought, something he threw in at the very end. Ka-nu tells Kull Doom is going to be his nemesis… but we never see Doom again.

So Nelson thinks it’s perfectly alright to monkey around with Howard’s creation because he considers it to be a subpar story? By that logic, I can put a dinosaur and wise-cracking female thief in “The Man Eaters of Zamboula” just because I consider the story “unsuccessful,” or have Conan fight Yaggites on a spaceship in “The Tombalku Fragment” just because Howard rounds out the end in a synopsis. I may not be one of those uber-fans who thinks every line Howard commit to paper was a stroke of genius, but I do know that “The Cat and the Skull” (“Delcardes’ Cat” is the title for the fragment which didn’t have Doom at all, and Nelson even manages to consistency misspell “Delcardes”) should be considered sacrosanct when it comes to Thulsa Doom, regardless of perceived quality. I’m guessing this perception of “The Cat and the Skull” is influenced by Patrice Louinet’s thoughts in “Atlantean Genesis,” and while Louinet has long more than proven himself one of the premier Howard scholars, his opinions certainly do not reflect that of Howard scholarship at large. In this case, I do indeed disagree with him on “The Cat and the Skull,” but that is beside the point. Even in the case of stories I dislike, or even those I do which have elements I don’t favor, it would be as inappropriate to alter those elements as it would be to alter Shakespeare. People wouldn’t dream of giving King Lear or Romeo & Juliet a happy ending, or changing a single line of dialogue in Hamlet or Macbeth, yet people seem perfectly happy to cut and mangle Howard’s work.

There’s another fellow who had generally low opinions of the unpublished Conan stories, and who made alterations and additions to “improve” them for publication: sometimes simple things like word substitution and sentence construction, sometimes entire subplots or paragraphs, even chapters and characters. De Camp’s alterations of “The Black Stranger” are universally vilified for adding superfluous sorcerers and shoehorned attempts at precluding Conan’s rise to kingship. Perhaps I’m being too harsh: Nelson is more following in the footsteps of Roy Thomas. Although Thomas had many mitigating factors in his adaptations, like the draconian Comic Codes Authority and De Camp’s monopoly on Howard’s writings, there are occasions where he made alterations to the stories to better fit the narrative as he saw it, or to be “cooler” for the comic. For example, instead of Thak trapping and killing the patriots in “Rogues in the House,” Thomas has Thak kill… a leopard, that just happened to be wandering about Nabonidus’ house. Similarly, he deprives Pallantides and Hadrathus of their chance of glory in The Hour of the Dragon by having Conan dispatch Amalric and Xaltotun personally, the big glory hog. However, there’s a substantial difference between changing events that last a panel, and changing characters and races that last an entire comic, which is what Nelson is doing with two comic series under his penmanship.

It’s also very telling that Nelson doesn’t even seem sure of himself – “to my knowledge” and his insistence on using the incorrect title & spelling indicates a lack of familiarity that I would assume would be essential to someone purporting to be writing an adaptation. As Nelson says, it’s only one story: why doesn’t he know it backwards and forwards, seeing as it’s the only piece of information we have on the character?

It’s sort of like the Picts “controversy”, a case of getting worked up over traditions established after Howard’s time, rather than going back to the original texts. With or without Thulsa Doom, Kull is a great character.

Once again, Nelson returns to the “post-Howard traditions” without actually telling us what those traditions were. It’s also rather amusing he puts the Picts controversy in quotations, as if it isn’t a real controversy, but some minor quibbles or the protestations of unpleasable fanboys. Perhaps he’s right: a controversy usually has two equal, opposing sides on a matter and opinion. The Picts “controversy” has Nelson & Conrad arguing against the entire Robert E. Howard scholarly community, Howard fans, Conan fans, Marvel Conan fans, Dark Horse Conan fans and just about everyone else who has enough sense to put two and two together and come up with “four,” instead of “apple.”

None of that matters, of course, since Arvid’s of the opinion that such details aren’t of major relevance in the grand scheme of things:

I agree with you, the exact “racial type” of the characters isn’t the most important thing in the story.

Well that certainly explains a lot, doesn’t it?

Overall, it appears Thulsa Doom is going to be as bad as feared, with not only Milius & Stone’s “interpretation” of Doom usurping Howard’s completely, but Arvid Nelson completely unwavering in his support of the more ludicrous elements of his Kull series. Doom gets a heroic past in a high-profile comic adaptation while genuine Sword-and-Sorcery heroes of colour like Imaro and Dossouye glare from the sidelines. Black Picts are the tip of the iceberg, but other elements like the Serpent Men, Kull’s “wife,” the emissary of the Great Serpent and others are more easily disproven by direct quotes. Disproving the Black Picts requires a more thorough analysis of Howard’s writings beyond merely the Kull and Conan stories, and it’s clear this was beyond the scope of Nelson. I only hope that the Kull/Doom crossover Arvid alludes to (and which many Dark Horse fans astonishingly favour) never comes to pass, even if I consider Dark Horse’s Kull beyond the point of no return. This is the age of Howard’s creations, his Kull, his Conan. Milius’ Thulsa Doom has had his day in the sun for the past 20 years: let Howard’s have his.