TC editors advertising (I refuse to use the term “pimping”) their personal literary items for sale has a long history here on the blog. Check out this post by Leo Grin (and several subsequent).
Times are dire here in serpent-haunted SEK. Musing on such, a decision was reached by yours truly. Time to lighten the load for the journey into the future.
Sixty years ago this month, a comic book with a very new type of story hit the newsstands. Avon’s Out of this World one-shot, cover dated June 1950, sported a classic science fiction cover by Gene Fawcette featuring a menacing robot carrying off a hapless damsel while her would-be rescuer fires his ray gun. The comic was an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories, including “Lunar Station” by Joe Kubert. But it is the final story in the book whose title should raise the eyebrows of Robert E. Howard fans — “Crom the Barbarian.”
Written by Gardner F. Fox and illustrated by John Giunta, “Crom the Barbarian” is listed by the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide as the first sword-and-sorcery comic story. Whether this designation is accurate or not is probably a matter for debate. There are fantasy stories and characters — primarily Arthurian and mythological — that appear earlier in comics (Prince Valiant would be a notable example), but “Crom the Barbarian” is very likely the first true Howardian sword-and-sorcery story. It is littered with tropes and place names that can found in the Conan stories — the name of the titular protagonist, “Crom”, being the most obvious example.
Courtesy of the ever redoubtable Bill Thom of Howard Works and Coming Attractions, it appears that the collection previously known as Dark Agnes and Other Historical Adventures has received a subtle, but potent, name change: it is now The Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures. In addition to the name change, we have an illustrator — and a sneak preview.
The Dark Man, The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies No. 1 (1990)
Previous Installments:
Collecting REH: Fanzines and Chapbooks, Part 1
Collecting REH: Fanzines and Chapbooks, Part 2
As the Howard-mania of the 1970s began to die down by the following decade, the deluge of small press and fan publications slowed to a trickle. The venerable Amra ceased publication in the early 1980s, but REHupa remained, still producing its mailings on a regular basis. REH fanzines did not vanish altogether, though, and several new small presses continued to print Howard-material related through the 1980s and 1990s. By the turn of the millennium, Howard and his characters began to creep back into the public consciousness with the publishing of the Wandering Star limited editions and their mass-market Del Rey reprints, as well as a popular new Conan comic book series by Dark Horse. With this renewed interest in the Man from Cross Plains, new journals and publications began to appear and even a few once-defunct periodicals returned from the grave. This article will give a brief overview of some of these publications from the last three decades, but for a more comprehensive listing of Howard-related publications, I once again refer the reader to the Howard Works site, or Paul Herman’s print bibliography, The Neverending Hunt.
As mentioned above, several new small publishers cropped up in the 1980s. One of the first was Gibbelins Gazette Press, based out of Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1982 they released The Ghost Ocean, a collection of poetry edited by Rusty Burke and Vernon Clark. The Ghost Ocean had a print run of 360 numbered copies, the first 50 of which were hardbound. This was followed by The Ballad of King Geraint in 1989, featuring the long title poem. It had a print run of just 70 copies and is very difficult to find. These two Gibbelins Gazette publications run around $75-125 when they come for sale.
Another small press that appeared in the 1980s was Thomas Kovacs’ Dark Carnival Press. Although based out of Zurich, they produced several English-language items of Howard ephemera, beginning in 1983 with The Rhyme of the Three Slavers. This was a simple broadside sheet printing the title poem. 250 copies, numbered and signed by Kovacs were produced for the Raven Club. Another of these broadside sheets, Neolithic Love Song was produced in 1987 with only 36 copies printed, also signed and numbered.
A previously unknown copy of the exceedingly rare 1937 Herbert Jenkins first edition of A Gent from Bear Creek has been just been discovered by noted Robert E. Howard scholar Patrice Louinet. This is only the thirteenth known copy of Howard’s first published book to be located and it could very likely be one of the nicest copies in existence. Judging from the photos, it appears to be in better condition than the Darrell Richardson copy, which sold at auction last month for over $12,000. Louinet found the book last week with an automated online search and quickly purchased it from the UK bookseller that had listed it. The exact events are best described by Louinet himself (as posted at TGR):
Leon Nielsen’s survey A Collector’s Descriptive Bibliography of American and British Hardcover, Paperback, Magazine, Special and Amateur Editions, with a Biography will be republished by McFarland & Company. Damon C. Sasser of REH: Two-Gun-Raconteur fame provided the foreword.
From the blurb:
This guide is an invaluable resource about Howard, with information for every known published work. Initial chapters provide a biography, discuss Howard’s literary legacy, and give basic tips about collecting Howard’s writings. The main body of the work is a bibliography of Howard’s published works from 1925 through 2004. Each entry includes a description and known details including publisher, date, print run, and estimated value. A thorough index locates the publication of every Howard story or poem.
This volume should be available in Fall/Winter 2010.
The late Wisconsin writer and collector Leon Nielsen contributed to The Cimmerian print journal and to Two-Gun-Raconteur (you can read his TGR article “The Image of Conan” here). He also authored Arkham House: A Collector’s Guide (2004) .
Its Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword by Damon C. Sasser 1
Introduction 51. Robert E. Howard: A Brief Biography 11
2. The Robert E. Howard Legacy 36
3. A Robert E. Howard Cast of Characters 80
4. Collecting Robert E. Howard 105
5. A Robert E. Howard Bibliography 134
6. Most Collectible Titles 247
7. A Representative Robert E. Howard Collection 253
8. Reference Bibliography 260Indexes 263
ISBN 978-0-7864-6109-7
98 photos, notes, bibliography, index
288pp. softcover 2010 [2007]
While the majority of this volume is dedicated to collecting, identifying and evaluating the prices of Howard’s writings, book also contains a biography, several photos of REH and his parents Hester Jane and Dr Isaac Mordecai Howard, as well as a discussion on the rights to Howards works.
REH: Two-Gun Raconteur #1 (1976) published by Damon Sasser
Previous Installment:
Collecting REH: Fanzines and Chapbooks, Part 1
During the great Howard revival of the 1970s and early 1980s, a large number of fanzines, chapbooks, amateur press journals, and other ephemera related to Howard were produced. In this segment I will give an overview of some of the more notable examples of these publications. For a more comprehensive survey, I recommend The Neverending Hunt by Paul Herman and of course the Howard Works site.
Following Glenn Lord’s publication of Etchings in Ivory in 1968, several small presses began producing similar high quality, limited edition chapbooks. Beginning in 1972, Roy Squires, literary executor for Clark Ashton Smith, produced a series of small chapbooks featuring Howard verse. Each booklet contained one poem and had print runs of a little over two hundred copies each. They are: Black Dawn (1972), The Road to Rome (1972), A Song of the Naked Lands (1973), The Gold and the Grey (1974), and Altars and Jesters: An Opium Dream (1974). These Roy Squires volumes sell for around $50 to $100. Squires published another volume in 1977, Up, John Kane! And Other Poems, with a print run of three hundred fifty-three copies and which sells for $30-50.
George Hamilton published Verses in Ebony in 1975, the first in series of chapbooks with dust jackets that he would put out over the next few years. Verses in Ebony contained previously unpublished poems, had a print run of two hundred sixty-three copies, and sells for around $50. An unauthorized “prototype version” of around fifty copies was released the previous year and sells for a bit more. Hamilton followed Verses with several volumes of Howard’s historical fiction illustrated by Stephen Fabian: Blades for France (1975), Shadow of the Hun (1975), Isle of Pirate’s Doom (1975), The King’s Service (1976), The Shadow of the Beast (1977), and Spears of Clontarf (1978). Most had print runs of around three hundred copies and sell for $30-60. Hamilton also published Bicentennial Tribute to Robert E. Howard, a collection of essays in 1976; it had one hundred ninety-two copies and sells for around $75.
February 1936 issue of The Phantagraph, containing part one of "The Hyborian Age."
For the Howard completist, it can be a daunting picture when one first delves into the world of amateur, semiprofessional, and small press publications related to their favorite author. Few writers have had as many fanzines, semiprozines, chapbooks, journals, amateur press mailings, and other ephemera dedicated to their work as has Howard. Many of these date to the 1970’s, the heyday of fanzines and the peak of Howard’s popularity, but the earliest of them date to the 1930’s when Howard was still alive. In this series I will try to cover as many of these publications as possible and discuss their content, scarcity, and collectability.
The amateur publications that would come to be known as “fanzines” have their origins in the letter columns of Hugo Gernsback’s pioneering science fiction pulp, Amazing Stories. Beginning in January 1928, Gernsback began printing the addresses of the fans who had their letters published. This seemingly simple event was the spark that ignited the movement that has come to be known as “fandom.” For the first time fans of speculative fiction could correspond directly with one another rather than through the medium of magazine letter columns. Isolated fans began to organize meet-ups, the pre-cursors to the massive “cons” of later years, and amateur publication soon followed.
As some fans started to realize they were writing essentially the same letters to multiple correspondents, they began to combine their efforts into group mailings, much as amateur press organizations had been doing since the late 19th century. Newly available printing technology such as the mimeograph machine allowed multiple copies to be created and circulated among groups of fans – thus, was born the “fanzine.” Some of these early publications were of higher quality than others; some were free to contributors, while others were sold for a minimal charge. Most of these fanzines had very small print runs and are incredibly scarce today.
The next REH volume published by Subterranean Press in Limited Edition will be The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. It is scheduled for this fall. Fellow blogger Jeffrey Shanks recaps the history of Subterranean’s Howard-related limited editions here on The Cimmerian.
Greg Staples has done the black-and-white illustrations and Subterranean promises some never before published full-color plates.
The Limited run is of 750 numbered copies, signed by the artist, housed in a custom slipcase for $150. The Deluxe edition consists of 50 numbered copies, signed by the artist, bound in leather, housed in a leather slipcase for $400.
After a long delay, the third and final Wandering Star Conan volume has been released.
Well, the wait is finally over! Five long years after it was originally supposed to appear, Conan of Cimmeria, Volume 3 has been released and those who preordered their copies from The Book Palace or Terence McVicker should have them in their hands and on their shelves by now. For those who have been collecting this series of beautiful limited editions by Wandering Star over the years, this is a tremendous relief, as it seemed for a while that the Conan volumes were doomed to suffer the same fate as the incomplete Donald Grant Conan series from the 1970’s. Now, with Wandering Star focusing its efforts fully on the big screen rather the printed page, it is possible to step back and take a look at the most ambitious, most beautifully illustrated, most accurately edited, and certainly the most expensively priced series of Howard’s works ever produced.
The first Robert E. Howard book published by Wandering Star was The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane in 1998. Lavishly illustrated by Gary Gianni and edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet, this beautiful slipcased volume came with a audio CD recording of “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” and prints of the interior color plates. All the copies were numbered and signed by Gianni and there were three versions created: the standard Limited Edition of one thousand fifty copies, the Publisher’s Edition of one hundred copies with extra illustrations, and the Leatherbound edition of fifty copies which was not sold to the public. The original purpose behind Wandering Star’s production of this book was to have a visual and textual package that could be given to producers, directors, and studio executives in order to help pitch the concept of a Solomon Kane movie. Soon, however, they decided to continue to produce more limited editions, with the lofty goal of eventually publishing all of Howard’s major works in such a format. The series promised to deliver Howard’s verse and prose not only in an aesthetically pleasing presentation, but also in the most textually-pure format possible.
