The Kull story
which most hints at archaic reptilian forces that once ruled men is The
Shadow Kingdom. In it – very typically – the savage clean-limbed body, here
of Kull and Brule, is set against the sky-soaring antiquity of a city young
only when Atlantis was yet to be born.
Valusia is
fading, decadent yet still with the power of ages. The unholy scale
(unintentional pun) of the degeneracy becomes known to ambassador Ka-nu of the
Picts, and Brule is dispatched to lead Kull a merry chase through the
serpentine layers of the palace.
Though in past
ages serpent men had taken the shape of kings, now only the decadent depths of
the palace itself keeps them from the sight of men, and it is into this
labyrinth Brule leads Kull.
The ancient,
slithering spine is hard to kill, and it is kept alive by the sinuous
uncertainty of the palace itself. The slitherers weave in and out of the
stonework itself, through treacherous tunnels. They are hard to kill since the
spine is just the primitive unconscious of Man that does not even need a body,
that undulates with sickening ease.
The sickening
sexuality of these archaic people is somewhat similar to the physical boredom
of Modern Man, whereby the (sexual) physique and the numerical head become one
(see prev.) This is really our hygienic order, whereby the head is the tool of
smart-machines and houses. Dyson, Musk, Bezos are the serpents in plain sight!
In the palace of
Valusia, the serpent men must be hidden because the palace has a mythical
darkness that is built for clean-limbed bodies dancing to the tune of time.
Kull seems to
have a mild disdain for the conventional dances of the social calendar that
frequent the halls of his domain, but is a pleasing human whirl of artifice
amid the dust-strewn halls. The vast palace has probably only a few clean areas
and the patina of age and sweat peppers the corridors.
What I really
mean is a palace is a living thing of stone, wood – and gardens. Kull at one
point leans over the sill onto the inner courtyard.
The moon had not risen when Kull, hand to
hilt, stepped to a window. The windows opened upon the great inner gardens of
the royal palace, and the breezes of the night, bearing the scents of spice
trees, blew the filmy curtains about. The king looked out. The walks and groves
were deserted; carefully trimmed trees were bulky shadows; fountains near by
flung their slender sheen of silver in the starlight and distant fountains
rippled steadily. No guards walked those gardens, for so closely were the outer
walls guarded that it seemed impossible for any invader to gain access to them.
Vines curled up the walls of the palace,
and even as Kull mused upon the ease with which they might be climbed, a
segment of shadow detached itself from the darkness
It is really the
decadent dinginess of the palace that maintains it as fit for a savage king and
the thronging dances in musty halls with billowing tapestries and drapes for
windows where breezes idly eddy.
Eddy from the
garden below, since this is a living palace with the currents of life through
it. Kull, through the story, has an eerie sense of unreality or a dream; is it
this age-old patina and dark fertility of Daphne?
The human myth
is born of sweat and the body, the agile lustiness, the throb of the dance, the
swirling sweep of the blade. Honed athletic grace is what keeps the serpent at
bay; the spine may be ancient, but the body is human. A moral action, a
harmonic performance.
Kull #9 © Marvel 1973
In the modern order
one can have a head without being human (in that sense). It is the hygiene of
the snake (in human guise). Darkness and fertility are the mythical aspects of
the body that protect it from slithering peril.
The physical
action and grace of the body in places of power, the wild groves, the hunt, the
kill in order to survive.. these are our mythic heritage.
This is why I
say Jean-Luc Godard has much to say to the Howard mythos (see Made In USA prev.)
This is why esoteric European lore is still germaine in the 21st century,
for it is still the4 century of age-old patina. That can only change if “they”
(the serpents among men) win.