RED NAILS (1936): MARVEL’S CLASSIC ADAPTATION OF THIS ROBERT E. HOWARD CONAN STORY

This weekend’s escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at Marvel’s 1970s adaptation of one of Robert E. Howard’s best Conan the Barbarian stories, published shortly after his suicide in 1936. 

RED NAILS – I always like to emphasize that – despite the way Marvel Comics’ 1970s and 1980s Conan stories kept the character’s name alive and introduced new generations to him – the Cimmerian was not a mere comic book figure. Iconic author Robert E. Howard introduced Conan on the printed page in his 1930s stories featuring the character. 

That being said, I acknowledge the excellent adaptations that Marvel did of many of Howard’s works. They also adapted REH’s King Kull and Solomon Kane. Previously Balladeer’s Blog examined the company’s version of Queen of the Black Coast and others.

And that brings us back to Red Nails. With Barry Windsor Smith’s art and Roy Thomas adapting the story, this three-part work originally appeared in the black & white Marvel magazine Savage Tales #2-3 (Oct 1973-Feb 1974). Full-color versions of the tale were later reprinted in the Conan Treasury and elsewhere. 

I. This first installment introduces readers to a blonde female pirate – Valeria of the Red Brotherhood. She is the only female pirate among them and is as notoriously deadly as the others. NOTE: Yes, this is the character that Sandahl Bergman played in the 1982 Conan the Barbarian film. That movie made her a standard thief instead of a pirate and – sadly – gave her the “ghostly return” scene that actually belonged to Conan’s true love Belit (Bay-LEET) from Queen of the Black Coast.

In the Stygian city of Sukhmet Valeria was in between seagoing adventures and was forced to use her sword to kill a powerful man who tried forcing himself on her. She fled to avoid arrest and Conan, already attracted by her beauty and fighting skill, rode after her. While following her he slew the brother of the man she killed to prevent him from avenging himself on Valeria.

In a heavy forest the she-pirate dismounts while her horse drinks from a stream. She climbs a nearby steep crag and spots a high-walled city in the middle of a desert plain to the south. Conan, as stealthy as ever, catches Valeria by surprise and amid flirtatious battle-of-the-sexes bickering Valeria plays hard to get but clearly finds Conan as attractive as he finds her.

NOTE: It helps that Conan didn’t speak like a moron in the original Robert E. Howard stories, unlike Arnie in the 1980s Conan flicks. At any rate, their dysfunctional dating game nearly results in swordplay between the high-spirited duo but the sound of a dragon attacking and devouring their horses distracts them.

Conan and Valeria hurriedly climb back up the crag she just came down from, barely getting to safety ahead of the dragon – cleverly drawn to resemble a stegosaurus as if some of the species are still around but are called “dragons” in Howard’s fictional Hyborian Age of so long ago.

Neither of our two main characters are strangers to deadly danger and while Valeria sits on Conan’s lap to be kissed, etc. they grimly note that the skeleton of a human atop the crag indicates the “dragon” below is patient enough to wait out cornered prey until they die of thirst.

Valeria spots apples growing on the branches of a nearby tree, but Conan points out that they are poisonous Apples of Derketa – potent enough to swiftly kill people. This gives Conan an idea. He fashions a crude spear from the tree branches and dips the spear in the juices of the Apples of Derketa. 

The next time the dragon stands on its hind legs to poke its head up at the besieged Conan and Valeria he drives the poisoned spear into the dragon’s tongue. It runs for the stream to try soothing away the pain caused by the poison, so our heroes climb down the crag and run toward the high-walled city far in the distance.

Soon, the dying dragon closes in on his escaping prey, but Conan uses his sword on the creature’s open mouth to snuff out its last gasps of life.

NOTE: I won’t be so slavish with details after this, but I wanted to emphasize how Barry Windsor Smith’s excellent artwork throughout this story could have easily been used like storyboards for any movie studio that wanted to make a Red Nails film over the decades. 

      In my opinion, Jason Momoa right after his Khal Drogo role would have been perfect as Conan in Red Nails instead of the lame film in which he did get to play the barbarian.

While passing through the cactus-dotted desert plain approaching the mysterious city, Valeria and Conan observe that no roads lead to the place and the far-off irrigation ditches are bone-dry and crumbling, proving no water has reached the city before them in a very long time.

Valeria wonders aloud if the obviously deserted city holds any treasures from its one-time occupants and the two force their way inside via a large, rusted door. Once inside, they see the place is mostly dark except for some sunlight which shines through the city’s skylights on the ceiling far above them.

The entire city is enclosed, like it’s one enormous building that runs for miles and stands several stories high. No loose valuables are to be found, but Conan and Valeria are shocked to see that the one-time inhabitants of the metropolis possessed jade in such large quantities that all of their streets, buildings and furnishings are made of the precious substance.

Our heroes continue exploring and discover artwork on the walls indicating that the native inhabitants of this odd place were not entirely human. (Imagine what Giger could have done with those drawings.) Valeria grows disgusted with finding no food, water or loot, so she sits down in annoyance while Conan continues looking.

After a time, she sees a strange gray-skinned man on the street below the balcony on which she rests. He is trembling with fear and has not noticed her. She continues observing him as he passes through a tapestried doorway and is loudly killed by something unseen.

Attracted by the sounds, another gray-skinned man bearing a sword comes across the corpse and calls it by the name “Chicmec.” From the doorway comes a walking, glowing skeleton whose skull is horned, obviously the being that killed Chicmec. Its gaze keeps the newly arrived man paralyzed, unable to flee. 

Valeria rushes to his aid. She fights and kills the creature, who is seemingly part human. She and the man she saved communicate in Stygian and he says his name is Techotl. He regards Valeria with awe for killing the Burning Skull, as he calls it, a menace that killed many of his people.

He warns the she-pirate not to look at the horned skull but she can’t resist. Techotl tells her the skull once housed the brain of a powerful, ancient wizard and luckily Valeria is strong enough to snap out of it. She uses her sword to smash the horned skull to pieces, unleashing a disembodied scream and a faint wind.

The panicked Techotl tells Valeria they must both flee to his people who live in Tecuhltli by the Western Gate of this enormous, enclosed city. She refuses to go without Conan and makes Techotl come with her to search for the Cimmerian. 

As they begin their search Valeria states that once reunited, she and Conan will take their chances in the wilderness outside and leave behind this city of death. Robert E. Howard’s original narration closes this installment with the words “If find him you can, Valeria. If find him you can.” 

II. THE LURKER FROM THE CATACOMBS – Time passes and we join Conan as he is at last returning from his vain attempt to find loot that could be carried off by him and Valeria. Suddenly, he hears the clashing of swords and follows the sounds to their source.

He finds Valeria and her strange friend Techotl fighting it out with more gray-skinned armed men, obviously the enemy people that Techotl was afraid of. The man fights only one foe, while Valeria is doing fine against two and has already slain a third. 

Conan joins Valeria and kills one of her opponents while she finishes off the other. Techotl manages to slay his foeman and then loudly rejoices “Five dead dogs! Five slain! Five Red Nails for the Black Pillar! The gods of blood be praised!”

NOTE: Techotl is counting the slain Burning Skull among the “five dead.” Conan is wary of the “madman” Techotl and Valeria explains that he and his people live at one end of the strange city, while the people they just killed are of a faction who live at the other end.

Techotl excitedly tells our heroes that all his people at Tecuhltli will honor them for slaying five of their enemies from Xotalanca. Knowing that, as a minimum, they need food and water, Conan and Valeria let the still-gibbering little man lead the way.

Before too long, Techotl informs our heroes that none of them are safe until they are securely in the halls of Tecuhltli, the numerous suites of rooms in which his people live. The Xotalancas might ambush them in the dark anytime until then.

Hearing pursuit, the trio begin running as quickly as they dare in the darkened city. At length, a certain slithering, writhing something that can’t be made out overtakes them. Conan lets Valeria and Techotl race onward while he stays to fight whatever it is.

The Cimmerian’s sword injures the creature enough to slow it down and he joins the others through a door which Techotl makes secure behind him. The unseen thing batters at the door, which starts to buckle.

Our trio at last enter Tecuhltli through the Door of the Eagle, which Techotl says even their pursuer, the Lurker from the Catacombs, cannot break through. Soon, Conan and Valeria are being feasted and given ample wine in an audience with Tecuhltli’s fat and sleazy ruler Prince Olmec and his beautiful, dangerous-looking wife Princess Tascela. She alone of the denizens of this city looks healthy, not gray of skin.

While hailing the killing of five men of Xotalanca, including the Burning Skull, Olmec and Tascela and their subjects are even more impressed when Conan tells them how the dragon outside the city was killed.

The five freshly slain enemies are noted in a ritual hammering five more Red Nails into a black pillar already studded with similar nails almost from floor to ceiling. Every person of Xotalanca killed in this long war has been noted in this way over the decades.

While the feast in honor of Conan and Valeria continues, Prince Olmec explains the history of his people to the guests of honor. Over fifty years ago, they were on the losing side of a civil war in Stygia and were driven southward.

There were three dragons alive back then and they preyed on Olmec’s forebears at will. They reached the walls of this very city but the inhabitants – descendants of the ancient people who built the place – refused to grant them safety inside the walls.

That night, Tolkemec, an outsider who had been taken as a slave by the inhabitants of the city (Xuchotl) years earlier, snuck outside the walls and bargained with the defeated men and women from the north.

At dawn, Tolkemec opened the city’s gates from inside. Olmec’s forebears rushed into the city and, led by two brothers – Tecuhltli and Xotalanc – slaughtered the descendants of the city’s founders. The few thousand rebels from the north now called the city of Xuchotl their own. 

Per the bargain with Tolkemec, the former slave was given one hundred of his defeated former masters to torture to death. After five years of peace inside Xuchotl, Xotalanc wed Tascela, who was desired by his brother Tecuhltli. 

With the scheming Tolkemec’s help, Tecuhltli stole Tascela to become his own wife. The soldiers of Xotalanc started this war to try taking her back. Both brothers – Xotalanc and Tecuhltli – were killed during the war, with the factions taking their name from each of them. 

Tolkemec played both sides against the other until Tecuhltli’s forces captured him, tortured him and tossed him into the catacombs. He was presumed dead but his remains were never found and to this day Tolkemec’s ghost supposedly haunts those catacombs.

Prince Olmec had since married Princess Tascela and both warring factions have whittled down each other’s numbers ever since. Though several women are still alive in both groups, all have been sterile since moving into this cursed city. But before everyone in the two factions goes extinct, they desire only to kill as many of the other side as they can.

Tascela browbeats Olmec into hiring Conan and Valeria to lead their forces against the Xotalancas, but it’s clear she has sinister plans for Valeria. Our heroes agree and Olmec has them shown to separate sleeping quarters, which annoys Conan, who grumbles that Olmec has Tascela to keep him warm.

Valeria is slyly amused that Conan feels frustrated that they can’t spend the night together. Soon they are both asleep in their separate rooms but Valeria wakes up when she detects Princess Tascela’s serving girl Yasala trying to render her helpless with a black lotus (powerful drugged flowers in Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories).

She overpowers the girl and forces her to tell her what’s going on. It turns out Tascela wants to use  Valeria in a dark ritual but before details can be gotten, Yasala splashes wine in Valeria’s face and flees. Our she-pirate chases her until Yasala enters the catacombs, hoping Valeria won’t follow her there.

She’s right and Valeria stops at the doorway. She angrily bars the door, trapping Yasala in with the dead and whatever else may lurk in the catacombs. Soon, Valeria hears Yasala screaming as she is killed by something or someone who titters and the blonde woman remembers the tales of Tolkemec’s ghost haunting the catacombs.

Before she can take any further action, cries of alarm spread throughout the vicinity. Somehow the Xotalancas have made their way inside the Door of the Eagle and are fighting the people of Tecuhltli. Conan and Valeria, since they’re paid warriors in the conflict, rush to the sounds of combat.

Roughly two dozen Xotalancas, though outnumbered by the Tecuhltli, fight furiously but Conan and Valeria slay several of them each as other Tecuhltli warriors deal with the rest. The Xotalancas, learning that the great fighters who killed the Burning Skull and others were helping the Tecuhltli, decided to risk everything on one last, desperate surprise attack.

The battle rages for some time, and in the end Conan and Valeria prove to be the difference. The pitifully few Tecuhltli people still alive have won the war. It is learned that the Xotalancas got inside by using the mystic Pipes of Madness, which enthralled the guard at the door into opening it.

Prince Olmec sends Conan and a pair of other men to search the Xotalancas’ part of the city to make sure that all of them really are dead. While the Cimmerian is gone, Olmec catches Valeria by surprise and renders her unconscious.

He carries her off in his arms and when Techotl objects to treating a valued ally that way, Olmec overpowers him and stabs him in the back before going on his way with the unconscious Valeria.

At length, Conan, Topaz and Yanath enter the part of Xuchotl formerly inhabited by the Xotalancas. They find it deserted and also come across the long, scaly corpse of the Lurker from the Catacombs which pursued our heroes the previous day. Mortally wounded by Conan, it had crawled back home to die.

Inspecting the Xotalanca throne room, Conan and his comrades see their now-extinct people’s version of the Tecuhltli’s Black Pillar of Red Nails. It is floor to ceiling shelves filled with the decapitated but preserved heads of every Tecuhltli they killed over the decades.

Yanath sees his dead brother’s head among the other trophies and snaps. With no more Xotalancas to kill, he unleashes his fury on Conan and Topaz, mortally wounding the latter with his sword. Conan kills the crazed Yanath and crouches down to see if the dying Topaz has any last words.

Topaz tries to stab Conan, who angrily asks what is going on. With his final words, Topaz tells our hero that Prince Olmec ordered him and Yanath to kill him so that Olmec may have Valeria for himself. Conan races off to rejoin her on the other side of the city.

Meanwhile, Olmec is trying to convince Valeria to become his new lover … and rule over the dozen or so people who are still alive in Tecuhltli I guess. Pretty tempting offer! Valeria refuses, and Tascela enters the room.

She uses her powers of sorcery to entrance Olmec and force him to drink a paralysis drug. Valeria tries to escape but is amazed to see that her strongest blows don’t even phase Princess Tascela.

She has incredible strength and ties up Valeria before telling her she will ritualistically kill her in order to keep herself young and beautiful.

III. HE COMES FROM THE DARK – With most of the need for explanations gone now, this final part will fly by. Conan, sword drawn, is still making his way back toward Tecuhltli. He comes across the crawling body of Techotl, who dragged his own dying form all this way to warn Conan to find Valeria and flee the city together before it’s too late.

As Techotl perishes, Conan hurries on as silently as he can. He surreptitiously reenters the Tecuhltli part of the city and soon comes across Olmec where Tascela left him – bound in chains to a torture rack with a slowly lowering iron ball over his head.

Olmec pleads to be released and says only he can lead Conan to where Tascela is planning to sacrifice Valeria to preserve her own youth and beauty. Conan agrees but as they near the place, they hear Valeria scream.

Olmec takes advantage of the distraction to disarm and then attack Conan. They wind up grappling while tumbling down the stairs, with Olmec dead as they reach the bottom. The now-swordless Cimmerian takes in the scene before him.

Tascela has converted the Throne Room into a ritual chamber. Valeria is held in place on a jade altar by other women. Torches are lit all around the room and the few women and even fewer men still alive sit in lotus positions on the floor watching the ceremony.

Tascela draws nearer to the altar with a sacrificial knife in her hand. Conan rushes forward to save the bound but conscious Valeria only for one of Tascela’s booby traps – a bear-trap, oddly enough – to sink its steel teeth into one of Conan’s legs.

With our hero snagged and motionless, Tascela does a Villain Rant, informing Conan that she will plunge the knife into Valeria’s heart as she kisses her, and Valeria’s life-force will flow into Tascela, extending her vitality.

Tascela further explains to Conan that three more Techuhltli men disappeared while taking the bodies of those slain in the final battle down to the catacombs. The survivors say Tolkemec’s ghost killed them but she dismisses that notion.

The villainess leans in to sacrifice Valeria but is interrupted by the arrival of the shambling, tittering still-living body of Tolkemec. He used his own dark sorcery to remain “alive” in the catacombs for the past twelve years, living on the dead for profane nourishment of a sort.

Tascela recognizes this through her own knowledge of sorcery. She sees that this barely alive figure before her accounts for all the tales of Tolkemec’s “ghost”. She is surprised that he hadn’t returned for vengeance before now, then concludes he must have been searching for something in the catacombs.

Tolkemec titters and nods, showing Tascela what he was searching for – a green-colored wand with a pink knob at the top. From that knob he shoots mystic energy beams that kill everyone he aims at. Tascela runs for cover and Valeria breaks free as Tolkemec – or what is left of him – points his wand over and over again, killing the last surving Tecuhltli men and women one by one. 

The battle-savvy Conan and Valeria notice that the wand can only be fired when its beams will come into contact with metal after penetrating the bodies of its victims. Tascela reaches Conan and strikes a deal with him. She’ll unlock his leg from the bear-trap’s grip if he’ll kill Tolkemec. 

Conan has no choice but to agree and Tascela has no choice but to free his leg and hand him her sacrificial dagger to use as a weapon. As Valeria and Tascela look on, Conan and Tolkemec maneuver around each other.

Our hero is careful not to get between Tolkemec and any metal, so that the wand can’t fire and kill him. All the while he draws closer and closer to the living dead man. Fatally, Tolkemec at one point maneuvers Conan so that a metal door is behind him across the room.

Valeria shouts a warning to Conan just in time and he slips to one side, with the wand’s beam merely grazing one of his arms as he hurls the dagger into Tolkemec’s heart, at long last killing him. He drops the wand in death.

Tascela reaches the wand before Conan can and prepares to kill our hero. Valeria saves the Cimmerian by killing Tascela with a sword before she can use the wand, however. Conan and Valeria then soak in the aftermath of the hellish events of the past few days.

After sharing a long, deep kiss, the duo leave the city. As they walk away from Xuchotl the sun rises and they discuss their plans to form a new pirate crew and take to the seas as soon as they reach civilization.

*** And that wraps up Red Nails, one of Robert E. Howard’s best Conan stories. This adaptation by Marvel did him a lot of justice, making clear why Howard was the greatest name in Sword & Sorcery fiction in all its violent, macabre glory.

FOR MY LOOK AT ROBERT E. HOWARD’S REAL RED SONYA (NOT SONJA) CLICK HERE.

FOR MY REVIEW OF THE FIRST ADVENTURE OF ROBERT E. HOWARD’S “OTHER” RED HAIRED WARRIOR WOMAN DARK AGNES CLICK HERE.