I admit I was a bit taken aback a few months ago when Deuce Richardson approached me about writing for The Cimmerian. My first impulse was to turn him down.

(Continue reading this post)

Damon C. Sasser just picked up the latest issue of the Robert E. Howard: Two-Gun Raconteur journal from the printer. It will be available at Howard Days 2010 on June 11.

Since the announcement of the fourteenth issue of the TGR journal on TC last April, Damon has posted some updates on its contents, which will be detailed below.

Above, you can see Michael L. Peters’ cover featuring El Borak. Two of his drawings from a four-plate Solomon Kane portfolio based on “The Hills of the Dead” are also illustrating this blog entry.

(Continue reading this post)

Although The Cimmerian’s days are numbered, the legacy and works of Robert E. Howard will live on and on. The TC print journal and its accompanying blog did their part to preserve his legacy, and I was proud to be a part of it, but we were literally laboring in the shadow of a giant who will continue be read for as long as the world exists.

With my days as a TC blogger winding down I thought I’d get back to the reasons why I (and perhaps if I may be so bold, extend that to the plural we) love the life and works of REH—and why he continues to enthrall us.

(Continue reading this post)

Last year, Bill Thom won the first Munsey Award, given “to a deserving person who has given of himself or herself for the betterment of the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and to foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy” for his hard work on Coming Attractions, an indispensable resource on Pulp-related news that I peruse each week and where I found dozens of news items to announce on The Cimmerian these last six months. This year, essayist (and Cimmerian journal-contributor) Don Herron is nominated.  Don Herron authored several seminal pieces on Robert E. Howard –you can read Brian Murphy’s appreciation of Don’s “milestones in Howard studies” here on the Cimmerian blog.

Besides his literary criticism about the Bard of Cross Plains, Don Herron is also an authority on Dashiell Hammett, Charles Willeford, Philip K. Dick and the Emperor of Dreams, Clark Ashton Smith. He created the Dashiell Hammet Tour in 1977 and has lead Hammett aficionados through San Francisco every year since then.

(Continue reading this post)

Previous Posts In This Series:

1. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 1

2. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 2

3. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 3

4. A Bloodstained Map of Britain

5. “Uther Was A Black-Bearded Madman” Part 4

(This is the final post in a series about the possible career of Uther Pendragon. I base it on hints and references, and rather derogatory comments by Gaelic pirate Cormac Mac Art, concerning Uther in REH’s stories of Cormac, “Tigers of the Sea” and “The Temple of Abomination”. The previous posts can be linked above. All of it is speculation and guesswork by this writer, extrapolating from statements in REH’s stories and fragments. Wherever any part of REH’s background, or the personages, conflict with accepted history, I’ve taken the Howard version as being correct in this context.

At the end of the previous article, Uther had established himself in Britain, though none too securely. His base was the region known as Dorset today. Immediately to the east of him lay the realm of Cerdic in southern Hampshire, and to the west, Dumnonia, the kingdom ruled by Gorlois. Uther had made an enemy of Gorlois already by sacking Isca (Exeter) upon arriving in Britain, and then at what was putatively a peace conference, he had bedded Gorlois’ young queen, Igraine. Now, as they say, read on … )

(Continue reading this post)

I am still puzzled as to how far the individual counts: a lot, I fancy, if he pushes the right way.

– T.E. Lawrence

The First World War smashed the heroic ideal of the individual warrior under massed artillery barrages, chopped it down on the Somme and drowned it in the mud of Passchendaele.

(Continue reading this post)

The Dark Man, vol. 5, no. 1

The most recent issue of The Dark Man (vol. 5, no. 1), the peer-reviewed journal of Robert E. Howard studies is now available from Gavinicuss Books and Mike Chomko Books. This issue contains three articles from REH scholars Charles Hoffman, Jeffrey Kahan, and Philip Emery as well as several reviews by Hoffman and Morgan Holmes. This week I would like to take a closer look at the three main articles in this issue and add a few comments of my own.

The first article, “’The Shadow of the Beast’: A Closer Look,” by Hoffman discusses one of the more unseemly sides of Howard’s work in analyzing the theme of miscegenation in “Shadow” and some of the other “Piney Woods” horror stories. The subject of Howard’s views on “race” is certainly a touchy one and often evokes passionate responses on the part of his fans (see for example this 17-page thread from the official REH forums). Trying to decipher the personal views of someone who lived and died nearly a century before is always a dangerous game, even when one has access to numerous writings and personal correspondence. To paraphrase Mark Finn, Howard’s views on race were complicated. Whatever his personal views, it is undeniable that Howard, like many pulp writers (as well as creators from other media), did make use of a number of the often-demeaning racial stereotypes of his day.

In this article, Hoffman unflinchingly discusses one of these stereotypes — the sexually aggressive black male who lusts after white women — and looks at how Howard made use of it in certain of his stories in order to play on the fears of his readers. For Hoffman, the fear of miscegenation in white America was “at the root of horrific violence committed against blacks” (TDM 5.1, p. 8). This is something of a generalization, but there is probably a lot of truth there. Consider the incredible popularity of the film Birth of a Nation (1915), in which the ‘heroic’ Ku Klux Klan rides to the rescue of a helpless white woman in the clutches of a lustful black man, or the intense hatred directed at heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, who dared to cross the color-line not only in the ring, but also in the bedroom.

(Continue reading this post)

This is it. Quite possibly the iconic Conan image. It adorns the walls of bedrooms and offices as posters, decorates the cover of Conan the Adventurer and others, even used as a basis for film posters — Conan or otherwise. Everything a Conan or Sword-and-Sorcery fan could want is in this image: the muscular hero standing atop a veritable hill of ruin and carnage; the hints of sorcery and eldritch horror lurking in the background; the inimitable Frazetta female reclining next to the hero.

But is that all there is? Art historians pore over the likes of a Caravaggio or Michelangelo, eagerly pointing out little tidbits like the artist inserting a self-portrait into the painting, or a sly insult in the background–even the allusion of religious commentary via biological symbolism. Could this same method be used with Frazetta?

Someone might say this is the height of pretentiousness, pseudo-intellectual drivel designed to imbue a commercial work with deeper meaning that simply isn’t present. “It’s just an awesome painting, you don’t need to analyse it!” On the contrary, I do need to analyze it, precisely because it’s an awesome painting. There’s more to the picture than the mere fact that it’s a muscular dude on a mound of corpses with a sword in hand and a babe holding his leg. A look at the details might shed some further light on why this image has become possibly the defining visual interpretation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan.

(Continue reading this post)

Sword and sorcery? Epic fantasy? Sword and planet? Sword and sandal? Does anyone really care about these delineations? Do they serve any purpose?

A couple of the blogs I frequent, Charles Gramlich’s Razored Zen and James Raggi’s Lamentations of the Flame Princess, have in recent days argued both sides of the debate. LOFP sneered that no one really cares about the issue and that all such divisions are meaningless; RZ’s opinion is clearly apparent in the fact that he’s written the first two parts of a detailed three-part series on heroic fantasy and its subdivisions.

So who is right? Here’s my take, for whatever that’s worth.

(Continue reading this post)

It would've been nice to have "Robert E. Howard" on the side of the bus, but hey, it's something, right?

It’s been a few months since Solomon Kane came to European screens, but with the fight to get it on American screens (so Howard fans across the pond can praise or condemn as they will) still raging on, there’s the danger of things simmering down too much, and the wave of critical acclaim and controversy over the character from the Howard community dying down.

Well, leave it to Michael Moorcock to start splashing those waters again.

(Continue reading this post)