| Serpent Men | |
|---|---|
| In-universe information | |
| Home world | Earth |
| Base of operations | Valusia (initially) |
Serpent Men are a fictional race created byRobert E. Howard for hisKing Kull tales. They first appeared in "The Shadow Kingdom", published inWeird Tales in August 1929.
They were later adapted for theMarvel ComicsConan comics byRoy Thomas andMarie Severin. Their firstMarvel Universe appearance was inKull the Conqueror vol. 1 #2 (September, 1971).
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 theGreat Old OneYig and with the Stygian serpent godSet from Howard'sConan stories.
The seat of the First Empire of the Serpent People, during thePaleozoic era, is Valusia. Valusia is afictional country in the Kull stories of Robert E. Howard and his stories tell, among other things, of the Serpent Men trying to conquer the world once again, around 20,000 years ago, where Kull fromAtlantis reigned over the Valusia Kingdom, located on the west coast of the main continent ofThuria. The ancient Serpent Empire was based onsorcery andalchemy, but collapsed with the rise of thedinosaurs about 225 million years ago during theTriassic era. The Serpent Men originally ruled over humans in Valusia, but were defeated and almost wiped out in humanity's battle for survival against the "elder things", which predated even them. Over time, humans dominated Valusia and the Serpent Men became a legend. The Serpent Men, one of the few surviving "elder things", infiltrated human society and ruled from behind the scenes for a time, but were again discovered, defeated, and cast out in a secret war. However, they later repeated this tactic. Soon, they added the front of a Snake Cult religion, which gained power and influence within Valusia while the Serpent Men used their abilities of disguise to murder or replace each reigning monarch. Their power is eventually broken by King Kull, formerly an Atlantean barbarian who had recently conquered Valusia, and thePict 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 beneathK'n-yan inNorth America (ironically, the Pictish Isles of the Kull stories). They built subterranean cities, of which only ruins remain in the modern age. Explorers from K'n-yan visited Yoth frequently to learn more of the Serpent Men's scientific lore. Their next downfall came when they brought idols ofTsathoggua from N'kai and abandoned their patron deityYig 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 beneathMount Voormithadreth.[2]
Serpent Men arehumanoids withscaled skin and snake-like heads. They possess magical abilities, the most common of which is the use ofillusion 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 ashibboleth in the storyThe Shadow Kingdom.[1]
Lin Carter andClark Ashton Smith adapted the race for inclusion in theCthulhu Mythos, inspired byH. 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 aBran Mak Morn story,Kings of the Night, while in another such story, "Worms of the Earth", Bran Mak Morn explicitly refers toCthulhu andR'lyeh. ManyConan stories written by Howard are also part of the Mythos.
The fictional settings of King Kull and Robert E. Howard's other creation,Conan the Barbarian, are linked through Howard's essayThe 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 undefinedcataclysm). The Serpent Men didn't, however, appear in any Conan story written by Robert E. Howard himself.
InThe Temple of Abomination, written by Howard and completed byRichard L. Tierney, the Irish pirate Cormac Mac Art encounters a single Serpent Man still dominating a sinister temple in a forsaken corner ofKing Arthur's Britain.
| Serpent-Men | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Kull the Conqueror #2 (September1971) |
| Created by | Roy Thomas Marie Severin |
Serpent-Men have also appeared inMarvel Comics. They first appeared inKull the Conqueror #2 and were adapted byRoy Thomas andMarie 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 ofKull andConan, 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 encounteredSpider-Man in the modern era. A Serpent Man passed himself off as the ghost ofUncle Ben to be part of an illusion that Spider-Man ascended into Heaven. To gain Spider-Man's trust, a Serpent Man posed asDevil-Slayer to attack the Serpent-Men. After Spider-Man experienced some memories about Kull, the Devil-Slayer imposter took Spider-Man to the cave where the Spider People resided and Spider-Man lifted the statue of the Spider God Omm (who was fooled into thinking that Spider-Man was one of his own due to his radioactive blood) after a fight with the Spider People. Once in the sewers, Spider-Man was duped by the Devil-Slayer imposter where they encountered theDefenders membersDoctor Strange,Clea,Gargoyle,Hulk,Namor, andValkyrie. 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 alongsideNicholas Scratch and theSalem's Seven.[5]
The Serpent Men were the main antagonists in theanimated seriesConan 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 gameMarvel 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'sRainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against The Lovecraftian Mythos.
