Serpent Men

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For other uses, see Snake man.
Serpent Men
In-universe information
Home worldEarth
Base of operationsValusia (initially)

Serpent Men are a fictional race created by

King Kull tales. They first appeared in "The Shadow Kingdom", published in Weird Tales
in August 1929.

They were later adapted for the Marvel Comics Conan comics by Roy Thomas and Marie Severin. Their first Marvel Universe appearance was in Kull the Conqueror vol. 1 #2 (September, 1971).

Origin and society

In Robert E. Howard's King Kull stories, the serpent people worship a god known as the Great Serpent. Later writers would identify the Great Serpent with the

Set from Howard's Conan
stories.

The Serpent Men were created untold aeons ago by the Great Serpent. At some point, the Serpent Men had a cultural split, with one group becoming the Man-Serpents. One Man-Serpent is the titular being in the Conan story "The God in the Bowl".

The seat of the First Empire of the Serpent People, during the

Pict Brule the Spear-Slayer, whose society was aware of the Serpent Men's infiltration.[1]

After the destruction of Valusia, the Serpent Men escaped to Yoth, a cavern beneath

Yig to worship their new god. As retribution, Yig placed his curse upon them and forced the few remaining worshipers to flee into a series of caverns beneath Mount Voormithadreth.[2]

Appearance and abilities

Serpent Men

Serpent Men are

scaled skin and snake-like heads. They possess magical abilities, the most common of which is the use of illusion to disguise themselves as a human. In some stories, the ghost of someone killed by a Serpent Man becomes the Serpent Man's slave. Due to the shape of their mouths, Serpent Men cannot utter the phrase "Ka nama kaa lajerama." Howard's character Kull uses the phrase as a shibboleth in the story The Shadow Kingdom.[1]

Man-Serpents

These creatures, unlike their kin and predecessors, have the bodies of giant serpents and the heads of human beings with smaller snakes for hair like Medusa. Man-Serpents have hypnotic gazes and lethally venomous bites, as well as terrible crushing strength.

Cthulhu Mythos

Lin Carter and Clark Ashton Smith adapted the race for inclusion in the Cthulhu Mythos, inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's 1921 short story "The Nameless City", which refers to an Arabian city built by a pre-human reptilian race. Lovecraft's 1936 story "The Haunter of the Dark" explicitly mentions the "serpent men of Valusia" as being one-time possessors of the Shining Trapezohedron. However, the Cthulhu Mythos was already connected to the works of Robert E. Howard (a contemporary and correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft as well as a direct contributor to the Mythos itself). In this case, the Serpent Men were created for the first Kull story. The character of Kull later made an appearance in a Bran Mak Morn story, Kings of the Night, while in another such story, "Worms of the Earth", Bran Mak Morn explicitly refers to Cthulhu and R'lyeh. Many Conan stories written by Howard are also part of the Mythos.

Conan

The fictional settings of King Kull and Robert E. Howard's other creation, Conan the Barbarian, are linked through Howard's essay The Hyborian Age. This states that Valusia, and its Thurian Age, existed in some time before Conan's Hyborian Age (the land was reshaped in between the story cycles by an undefined cataclysm). The Serpent Men didn't, however, appear in any Conan story written by Robert E. Howard himself.

They made a reappearance in "

Thoth-Amon
, after Conan eliminated all of his human allies. These are in fact Serpent Women, who magically show an alluring female appearance to King Conan and plan on sacrificing him while Thoth-Amon watches from hiding. Their deception is discovered by Conan's teenage son, Conn, who sees at first what appears to be a beautiful girl; but her reflection in a burnished shield reveals the woman's true identity by showing him a serpent-like head. Conan and Conn eventually settle their conflict with Thoth-Amon, while the Aquailonian knights slay all of the Serpent Women.

In The Temple of Abomination, written by Howard and completed by Richard L. Tierney, the Irish pirate Cormac Mac Art encounters a single Serpent Man still dominating a sinister temple in a forsaken corner of King Arthur's Britain.

Marvel Comics

Serpent-Men
Publication information
PublisherMarvel Comics
First appearanceKull the Conqueror #2 (September 1971)
Created byRoy Thomas
Marie Severin

Serpent-Men have also appeared in Marvel Comics. They first appeared in Kull the Conqueror #2 and were adapted by Roy Thomas and Marie Severin. Since then, they have been imported into the Conan comics, as well as other adaptations and Conan pastiches.

The original Serpent Men were a race of reptilian semi-humanoids, who were created by the demon Set and ruled areas of prehistoric Earth. Due to the efforts of Kull and Conan, the original Serpent-Men became extinct about 8,000 years ago. However, since then, numerous human worshipers of Set and his demonic progeny such as Sligguth have taken on reptilian characteristics to different extents. Some, like the people of Starkesboro,[3] are only partially transformed. Others become hosts for the spirits of long-extinct original Serpent Men, who transform their bodies into duplicates of their own, complete with their power to take the form of any human.

Some modern Serpent Men encountered

Clea, Gargoyle, Hulk, Namor, and Valkyrie. When Spider-Man asks the Defenders to pronounce the words on the card, they could not and the Serpent Men shed their disguises. After destroying the statue, Spider-Man freed the Defenders (which had the true Devil-Slayer among them) as Doctor Strange banished the Serpent Men to Limbo. The human followers of the Serpent-Men were allowed to leave unmolested.[4]

Russel Daboia is a Serpent Man/demon hybrid that fought the Avengers alongside Nicholas Scratch and the Salem's Seven.[5]

In other media

The Serpent Men were the main antagonists in the

Conan the Adventurer
. The Serpent Men were personified by the wizard Wrath-Amon. The show retained the Serpent Men's ability to infiltrate human society in disguise, although this disguise failed in the presence of meteoric "star metal" in which contact with anything made of star metal sent a Serpent Man back to "the Abyss."

The Serpent Men appeared in the video game Marvel Heroes. This version of the Serpent Men have a snake tail instead of legs.

A Serpent Man appears in "The Deathless Snake", the last story in Edward M. Erdelac's Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against The Lovecraftian Mythos.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b The Shadow Kingdom by Robert E. Howard
  2. The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana
    , pp. 348.
  3. ^ Marvel Premiere #4
  4. ^ Marvel Team-Up #111
  5. ^ Avengers 2000 Annual #1

References

  • Harms, Daniel (1998). "Serpent people". The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. pp. 263–4.
    ISBN 1-56882-119-0
    .

External links

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