The Cimmerian blog’s first year was a good one, fueled by the buzz around Howard’s Centennial, the World Fantasy Convention, and the print journal’s nominations for the World Fantasy Award. Year Two would be just as eventful.
The history of The Cimmerian journal is storied, and well worth the perusal at the dedicated section on this site. Some of the very best of Howard scholarship in the last decade — even the best Howard scholarship full stop — can be found locked in those now-rare pages. In August of 2005, over a year after the TC journal’s introduction, Leo saw fit to start an online web log for news, information and contact details for the journal. There started the journey of The Cimmerian blog.
This is the first in a five part series charting the history, growth, and expansion of The Cimmerian web log. Each part will look at the blog over the course of a year since its inception in August 2005, and will concentrate on the highlights that most illustrate the state of the blog at that time.
Regular readers of The Cimmerian might recall my post about Missions Unknown; the website by, for and of the San Antonio “weird fiction/art” community. An excellent blog, MU recently celebrated its first anniversary. Paul Vaughan, Sanford Allen, John Picacio and others have done a fine job of making San Antone a hub for imaginative art in all its expressions and forms. San Antonio was REH’s favorite city. I think he’d be proud. Y’all should stop by Missions Unknown now that reading TC won’t be taking up your blogospheric time.
Mythos Con, a new convention celebrating the life and works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, is scheduled for January 6 to 9, 2011, in Phoenix, Arizona. It will feature art, merchants, movies, panels and games. A large number of writers, artists and film makers will attend, including contributors to the Cimmerian print journal like Donald Sidney-Fryer and Chuck Hoffman.
You can find more details on the official website by clicking here.
Thanks to Grim Blogger for the heads-up.
“For every being there is an appointed time, and even the gods must die….”
– Robert E. Howard, “The Grey God Passes“
To his thousands of fans — to the many artists who grew up in his shadow — to me personally, Frank Frazetta was a god. In this media-driven age when pop idols are deified on an almost daily basis, it does not seem so ludicrous to make such a statement about an individual whose work, whose creations redefined how entire genres would be represented in countless minds’ eyes. At every stage of his career he stood out from his peers as something special, someone to be emulated, a man ahead of his time. As he eschewed his mortal coil last week, moving on to whatever lies beyond, it seemed at first to me that world had changed. That something great and vital was lost. But in seeing so much of his work being displayed in forums, on blogs; in reading so many wonderful tributes about what Frank and his work meant to so many individuals, I realized that in fact he left the world a much richer place than it was when he entered it.
Yet what is more beautiful than a splendid human body in coordinated motion? The lithe finely poised figure of a dancer, the pantherish body of a boxer with the wedge-shaped torso, the long swelling muscles rippling under the smooth velvety skin, the easy glide of onset and retreat, the perfect balance and carriage, the suppleness of limb–where is a finer model for an artist or sculptor?
–Robert E. Howard, letter to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. December 1932
It’s sometimes asserted that illustration, especially fantasy or science fiction illustration, is not on the same level as “true art”: the reasoning being that art as commercial, mercenary work, as opposed to art for art’s sake, excludes it from the pantheon of real artistic endeavour. Such a view is not only painfully divorced from the history of art, where many of the greatest paintings were commissions for pampered nobles or local churches, and it’s an entirely arbitrary and worthless distinction to make. How can the motivation behind a work of art’s creation exclude it from consideration? How can a beautiful painting fail to be considered as art, whereas something like, say, a dislocated urinal is? The notion of “high art” is thus fraught with fluctuating social trends, reinterpretations, and above all, subjectivity–much like “high literature,” or most odiously of all, those who insist on a fallacious distinction between “books” and “literature.” Much as C.S. Lewis disregarded the desire to appear mature as a sign of immaturity in itself, I long ago cast away such childish ideas of what was “allowed” to be art and what wasn’t, and started to make up my own mind.
Illustration, in my opinion, can be counted as being something more than what it was commissioned to be–it can speak beyond mere depiction of characters and events that happen in another medium, and convey the deeper themes and thoughts that may not be apparent at first glance. There can be a great synergy between author and illustrator that creates a symbiotic magic unique to the medium, where the two complement each other perfectly, making something that is greater than the sum of two parts–Roald Dahl & Quentin Blake, Arthur Rackham & Lewis Carroll, Lord Dunsany & Sidney Sime, George Cruikshank & Charles Dickens, J. Allen St. John & Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sidney Paget & Arthur Conan Doyle. Nobody provided a better example of this phenomenon than the combination of the king of fantastic art of the 20th Century, Frank Frazetta, and the master of Sword-and-Sorcery, Robert E. Howard.
Just one month until Howard Days 2010, REH fans. REHupa and the REH Foundation are working with Project Pride to prepare for the most important annual gathering of REH fans in Cross Plains, Texas. Since 1986, people have come from all around the world on the second weekend in June to render homage to the life and writings of Texan author Robert E. Howard.
Frank Frazetta Tribute by El-Grimlock
I always knew it was going to happen. Frank Frazetta was going to die, it would happen fairly soon, and being a Scot without the funds or opportunity to take the flight to the Frazetta museum, I would probably never get a chance to meet him. I’m a latecomer to Frazetta fandom, so I can’t share some of the memories of other Frazetta fans. I never picked up one of the Lancers when they came out, to be wowed by Conan the Adventurer or Conan of Cimmeria. I never saw a Frazetta picture on the side of a van, or on somebody’s wall, or in the shops. I never saw a Molly Hatchet album cover hot off the record shelves. Nonetheless, the power of Frazetta means that his presence is felt even now: it’s just in different ways.
Frazetta Memorial by Dave Curbis
Following our own “Black Indy’s” footsteps, many artists across the internet have paid tribute to Frank Frazetta in an expression that mere words couldn’t convey. Here is a selection. This will be an image-intensive post, and as is common with Frazetta’s work, some of the images may not be appropriate for viewing in certain environments: follow the links with this in mind.
The passing of one of the greatest illustrators of the twentieth century is huge news, and people throughout the world have shared their feelings on the loss of Frank Frazetta. Here are some excerpts, with links to the full stories.
