This weekend’s light-hearted and escapist superhero post looks at Marvel Comics’ adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s non-Conan short story The Altar and the Scorpion rewritten with Conan as the central character.
CONAN THE BARBARIAN Vol 1 #52 (Jul 1975)
Title: The Altar and the Scorpion
Villain: The Scorpion God
Synopsis: Conan’s wanderings bring him to Belverus, the capital city of Nemedia in the Hyborian Age. He encounters the suave, handsome and capable Murilo, whom he first met in Rogues in the House during his battle with Thak and Nabodinus.
Murilo now leads a mercenary troop called Crimson Company and he hires Conan as his new second-in-command. The hundreds of Crimson Company soldiers ride south to Ophir to start working for their new client – the ruler of the city of Ronnoco.
Their first mission is to retrieve the Ring of the Black Shadow, a powerful ring in the ruins of an abandoned, ancient Valusian city dating back to the time of Robert E. Howard’s character Kull the Conqueror. The ring can unleash a dark god if worn by a mortal. Conan and a female member of Crimson Company, Tara of Hanumar, shine in the expedition.
Conan finds the Ring of the Black Shadow, thus animating a huge statue of the Scorpion God which guards the ring to keep it out of human hands. Our hero fights the statue and renders it inert again with a sword through its “brain.”
Heeding Murilo’s instructions that nobody must touch the ring, two Crimson Company soldiers are assigned to stand guard over it while Conan, Tara and the others ride on to Ronnoco to get priestly help in containing the ring.
One of the guards greedily decides to steal the ring but upon touching it is transformed into a human-sized black shadow-being. He absorbs the other guard at his touch and becomes as large as two humans. Continue reading
MR. A 
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #31 (Aug 1976) 
Superstitious people in Liberty, NM get covert glimpses of the creature and decide to raid the Pace ranch to destroy Woodgod and any other such “monsters” being created there. David and Ellen are shot to death in the attack but our main character is super-strong and invulnerable, so he survives being shot multiple times.
THE LUNARIAN PROFESSOR AND HIS REMARKABLE REVELATIONS CONCERNING THE EARTH, THE MOON AND MARS TOGETHER WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE CRUISE OF THE SALLY ANN (1909) – Written by James B Alexander back in the glory days of titles so long they might not fit in a 140 character limit. 
TEEN TITANS Vol 1 #44 (Nov 1976) 
DOES LOVE DIE WITH YOU? (2025) – This is the first novel from 
THE NEW HUMANS (1909) – Written by B Vallance. No other name has come to light for the author of this thought-provoking work. Explorer Montgomery Merrick is roaming around the wilds of 1909 Uganda when he falls down a mountainside and into a concealed valley. 
FLASH COMICS Vol 1 #1 (Jan 1940) 
Jay’s love interest Joan Williams asks him to find her father, who has been abducted by enemy spies called the Faultless Four and led by the French Sir Satan. The Frenchman and his British, Russian and Slavic colleagues want her retired major father to reveal the secrets of America’s new Atomic Bombarder.
BEYOND THE ETHER (1898) – Written by W. Cairns Johnston. This little honey is so jam-packed with enjoyable weirdness that it’s sort of like “If Ed Wood wrote Steampunk.” 
This weekend’s belated superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at this Iron Fist adventure serialized in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. It was penned by Chris Claremont and though it features his X-Men foes the Demons of the N’Garai and a woman called the Firebird whose schtick resembles his later retcons to the Phoenix Force, the story ultimately sucks and is an incoherent mess. 
DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU Vol 1 #19 (Dec 1975)
Iron Fist attacks the pair, joined by Colleen, who is swiftly defeated. Our hero continues fighting the Messengers and when he uses the power of the Iron Fist to finish them off, that somehow causes him and Jade to be transported from Earth to Feng-Tu. They are in the throne room of Dhasha Khan (right), who affirms that he is the ruler of this afterlife and states that he plans to strip Jade of her soul and have it damned forever.
Balladeer's Blog 