This is one of the Howard stories which languished unpublished
until the 1970s. Originally sold to STRANGE DETECTIVE STORIES in
1936, both Howard and the magazine died before it could be
published.
Detective stories were not Howard's forte and he was the first
to admit it. During the heyday of the pulp magazine BLACK MASK,
Howard considered detective stories just another market to crack.
While he did sell a few, most of them are routine and colorless.
Those that rise above this actually mixed in some other bits of
business to make them something more than just gumshoe stories,
and the best of them were far different from anything that even
Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett were experimenting with in
their stories which revolutionized the form.
"Lord of the Dead" is one of these and it was dead on
perfect for a magazine called STRANGE DETECTIVE STORIES.
Rather than being a real detective story, this is a cross
between a WEIRD TALES story and a weird menace story and would
have comfortably fit in any weird menace magazine. The story has
violence, a supposed fantasy menace (which turns out to be a
post-hypnotic suggestion), oriental villains and a secret hideaway
where torture, imprisonment and intense battles take place. Not
exactly a BLACK MASK story.
The "Lord of the Dead" of the title is Erlik Khan, a
character Richard Lupoff compares to Kathulos (AKA Skull-face),
but actually Erlik Khan is your standard oriental villain such as
Howard employed in many stories. There is even an El Borak story,
"The Daughter of Erlik Khan," in which Erlik is a
mythical figure who has temples erected to him and even a mountain
named after him, but he isn't a character in the story, just an
exciting name.
As Howard writes of Erlik Khan in "Lord of the Dead"
the character is portrayed more like an Oriental Professor
Moriarty in that he rules over a secret criminal empire and does
nothing which would draw the attention of the authorities to him.
He even forbids the killing of policemen unless one is clearly in
the way of one of his master plans, and even then Erlik must be
the one to say how and when the policeman will die. He's not at
all like Skull-face who plotted revolution, as Erlik Khan wishes
to wage a more secretive war in which he benefits monetarily. He
employs the trappings of Oriental religion, including a huge idol
in his main audience chamber, but he is not portrayed as being
superhuman in any manner.
No, with this story Howard was using the weird menace story to
convey not just menace, but an eerie mood of impending disaster.
Suleyman has been hypnotized by Joan La Tour into believing that
Steve Harrison is the reincarnation of the man who slew him in a
former life. Once convinced, Suleyman devotes every fiber of his
existence to slaying Harrison, even in that he crawls from a
burning building, collapses and dies at Harrison's feet while
trying to kill him with his dying breath. Joan caused this fiction
to come to be believed by Suleyman because she mistakenly thought
that Harrison was responsible for the death of her brother. So the
story is filled with plots and counterplots, but what drives it is
Suleyman's thirst for revenge. This works because Suleyman always
believed that he was the reincarnation of a warrior who died on
the day that Suleyman was born. He had always wished to avenge his
former self and had been disappointed that the man who had slain
that other warrior was himself killed just days later. But when
drugged and convinced that his revenge could be achieved, he
pursued it with fearless vigor.
And yet the portrayal of Suleyman is not entirely
one-dimensional. When he calls Harrison to come out for their
final battle in the climax, he promises the detective his freedom
from the confines of Erlik Khan's secret citadel should he win.
But when one of Khan's underlings immediately attempts to shoot
Harrison as he emerges from cover, Suleyman is so disgraced that
he kills the underling and even attacks (and apparently slays)
Erlik Khan himself.
In mood and style the adventure is very reminiscent of
"Skull-Face" and Lupoff goes so far in the 1978 Berkley
Book collection SKULL-FACE as to label it a direct sequel, and I
suppose that one could argue that it is in that Steve Harrison is
once again battling an Oriental mastermind in underground
catacombs, although in America rather than London this time.
Lupoff seems to think the story takes place in New York, but the
description of it could also fit San Francisco. It's probably New
York because many pulp adventures were set there as the city had a
certain exotic flare to it back in the '30s and '40s, while today
it is regarded as a gigantic concrete and steel metropolis where
it would be unlikely that fantastic doings could escape detection
for long. New York just seems too modern today to harbor the old
world elements which abounded in the pulp adventures. The New York
which Robert E. Howard and other writers described in the '30s and
'40s was clearly the same realm which was prowled by The Spider
and The Shadow, but that realm does not at all resemble the
glittering and intensely crowded New York which is now nearing the
millennium.
"Lord of the Dead" is a chapter out of the history of
pulp America. Even though it didn't see print until 1978 it drips
atmosphere and fully captures the sense of the time in which it
was written. People can imitate the kinds of stories found in the
pulps of the 1930s, but inevitably it is those which were actually
fired in the hearts and minds of writers in the 1930s which best
capture the essence of that period. Howard may never have been to
New York any more than he ever visited Afghanistan or Atlantis,
but he knew how to capture the dream essence of whatever realm he
wrote about, and he brought us there with him.
LORD OF THE DEAD
(Conquest Press, 1992) Adaptation: Richard
Lupoff. Artwork: Felix Ortega
This 32 page black and white comic book adaptation has very
nice art but is a superficial retelling of the story which skimps
on details and unnecessarily alters the plot. For instance, in the
first scene in the story, the comic book shows Suleyman attack
Steve Harrison with a sword when the original text states that it
was with a knife. This is because in the original story, Suleyman
has a scimitar in the climax, and so the artist has the Druse
using the same weapon all through the story, rather than as Howard
described him. Also Suleyman is silent during the first attack in
the comic, omitting the great line: "Dog! You shall die in
the mud, as I died in the sand! You gave my body to the vultures!
I give yours to the rats in the alley! Wellah!"
The whole point of Howard's best stories is the passion he
brought to them, but Lupoff's adaptation doesn't just ignore
Howard's powerful prose but actually paraphrases it in the skimpy
captions. Where Lupoff writes: "Without warning, the exotic
figure attacks. . ." Howard had written: "The onslaught
was as unexpected as the stroke of an unseen cobra. One second
Steve Harrison was plodding profanely but prosaically through the
darkness of the alley ó the next, he was fighting for his life
with the snarling, mouthing fury that had fallen on him, talon and
tooth." That's how Howard began the first paragraph in the
story! Instead, Lupoff's script unnecessarily opens with an aerial
shot of New York City and captions explaining that this is 1933 in
the time of the Depression. Why? That's not what the story is
about! Howard clearly understood dramatic storytelling far better
than Lupoff does.
Adapting this story should have been a no brainer. You just
portray what Howard wrote, you don't "fix" it! Lupoff's
tampering just waters down the intensity of the story. Whereas
Howard had Harrison flee for his life up the alley, bump into
Hogan the policeman, grab his gun and shoot at the retreating
figure, Lupoff has Hogan walk up and shoot at Suleyman, driving
him off. Why? The change makes no sense and turns a dramatic scene
into a cliché.
Howard also has revelations about Suleyman come from Brent, a
character who couldn't possibly know what he does at the time he
tells Harrison the facts he reveals in the comic book adaptation.
Scenes are truncated and reduced to their most common essentials,
leaving out the elements that made them so interesting in Howard's
original story. Even the climax is altered and given an
unnecessary epilogue. If one had only this comic book adaptation
to go by, you'd never understand why this story was so highly
praised when it was first published in 1978.
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