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.

After all, I have a lot irons in the fire: I edit a weekly newspaper for a living, front a Western folk band, have a family I love dearly and jealously guard my woods-running time.

All that wasn’t really the cause of my hesitancy. I wasn’t sure I could meet the high standard that kept me coming back to TC over and over again. I wasn’t worried about the writing chops; writing is what I do. No, I was afraid I couldn’t match the analytical skills of Al Harron, the hawk-like eye for the scoop of Miguel Martins (thanks for putting the X where it belonged Miguel) or the mythic sensibilities of Brian Murphy. I told Keith Taylor that I felt profoundly under-credentialed in his company and the same goes for Bill Maynard. I wasn’t sure I could match Barbara Barrett’s erudition (thanks for the kind words Barbara) and I am noways the scholar Jeffrey Shanks is.

And, of course, over all loomed the ghost of Steve Tompkins, the man who brought me back to Howardia (you gonna let me get away with that Steve?).

Besides, I thought, I’m really a guns-and-historical-adventure kind of guy, not a sword-and-sorcery guy. Outside of REH,  Tolkien and a taste for the epic grit of A Song of Ice and Fire, I hardly touch fantasy. (I do love Conan. Named my dog Conan, though he has a hard time living up to it). Of course, Howard wrote more boxing and Western yarns than he did fantasy and the Del Rey El Borak volume was proof that REH was the master of the  Oriental adventure. I always loved best that El Paso gunfighter adventuring in Afghanistan.

For me, Howard was an historical adventure writer above all. But I figured most Howard fans and TC readers love his fantasy first and foremost and I just wasn’t sure my bent would serve the readers or the blog. I felt like a gypsy in the palace. Surely the invitation had been misaddressed?

Fortunately, my wife is much wiser than I. When I told her about Deuce’s offer and said I thought I should say no, she looked at me with that cute little “why are you so stupid” look and said, “I think it would be good for you.”

Crom! but she was right.

I’ve loved every minute of my short run on The Cimmerian. Turns out that my interest in the historical and things “frontier” was welcomed and encouraged. I should never have doubted it;  a vibrant diversity and wide-ranging intellectual curiosity are, of course, hallmarks of The Cimmerian. Nothing makes me happier than being told that I was an asset to this blog. I am proud to have ridden for the brand. And I know my friends will miss my weekly reminder to head this way for a dose of historical arcana.

The short ride brought me many joys in exploring the varied and distant fields of my historical interests, some that had lain fallow for a time. Working on TC helped me understand and reconcile the deep connections that mark my various passions — musical, historical, even spiritual. Passions I share with Robert E. Howard, the man who first inspired me to become a writer.

Studying his letters, I found proof of what I had felt in my bones since I was a youth: here was a kindred spirit. Like Howard, I have always felt out of place and time, regretted that I did not live on the American frontier. It is hard to explain, this intense, painful nostalgia for a time I never saw; yet Howard understood.

If I could choose the age in which I was to live, I can think of no better epoch than this: to have been born about a hundred years earlier than I was, to have grown up on the Southwestern frontier, to have fought through the Texas Revolution and taken a part in San Jacinto, to have served as a soldier in the war with Mexico, to have gone to California with the ’49ers, and to have fallen in some great battle of the Civil War. If I could have grown up and lived in primitive virile surroundings, if I could have taken part in stirring events, if I could have shot straight, lived like an Indian, run like a mustang and fought like a grizzly, I would not care whether I could read a line or write my own name.

–To H.P. Lovecraft, ca. August 1931.

I want, in a word, the frontier — which compassed [sic] in the phrase, new land, open land, free land — land rich and unbroken and virgin, swarming with game and laden with fresh forests and sweet cold streams, where a man could live by the sweat of his hands unharried by taxes, crowds, noise, unemployment, bank-failures, gang-extortions, laws, and all the other wearisome things of civilization.

– To H.P. Lovecraft, ca. July 1933

No one has ever expressed the longings of my own heart more clearly. Writing here helped me figure out how I might incorporate that longing into tales of my own. For that, I am profoundly grateful.

Finally, I must make clear my appreciation for Deuce Richardson and Leo Grin. Having myself spent years in a volunteer capacity building something of great worth with no financial recompense, I am acutely aware of the mixed feelings of pride, weariness and regret that must accompany  a decision to let it go.

I will miss standing in the shield wall with my fellow bloggers. On the flank. With a rifle. I hope to see you all down the trail.

Bid ’em all adieu
We can’t turn the world about
The cowboy left the country
The campfire has gone out

– “The Campfire Has Gone Out” — Traditional cowboy ballad as performed by Don Edwards

*Art by Frank Frazetta

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.

Damon has written a blog on the portfolio and the magical staff once owned by Atlantean priests, Moses and King Solomon on TGR.

Here is the full table of contents:

El Borak Cover by Michael L. Peters
Inside Front and Back Covers: Scenes from “Nekht Semerkeht” by Terry Pavlet
Back Cover: Terence Vulmea by Robert Sankner
“The Curly Wolf of Sawtooth” by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Richard Pace
“The Hills of the Dead: A Solomon Kane Portfolio” by Michael L. Peters
“The Old Time Radio Adventures of Sailor Steve Costigan” by Mark Finn, illustrated by John Lucas
“It Really Wasn’t a Game: El Borak and the Victorian Cold War” by Brian Leno
“From Bran Mak Morn to Beyond the Black River: The Evolution of the Picts in Robert E. Howard’s Fiction by Simon Sanahujas, illustrated by Bob Covington
“The Monster in the Jungle: “Red Nails” and the Return of the Repressed” by David Hardy, illustrated by Didier Normand
“Unmasking “The Shadow Kingdom:” Kull and Howard as Outsiders” by Brian Murphy, illustrated by Bill Cavalier
Plus additional artwork, reviews and features.

A rare humorous western story by Robert E. Howard, “The Curly Wolf of Sawtooth,” will be included in the issue, back in print in its original version for the first time since 1936 (a rewritten version featuring Breck Elkins instead of Bearfield Elston was published since several times). Richard Pace did the artwork for the story. Here is one of his preliminary sketches:

Former Cimmerian-contributor Mark Finn “details the creative process involved adapting several of Howard’s “Sailor” Steve Costigan stories into radio plays by the Violet Crown Radio Players of Austin, Texas.  The group also presented Novalyne Price Ellis’ radio play, “Day of the Stranger” over the airwaves.” Fellow blogger Brian Murphy provides and essay on Kull and Howard.

Don Herron will be reviewing The Dark Man Vol. 5, No. 1. Deuce Richardson is reviewing J. Kahan’s ” ‘Marchers of Valhalla,’ Creation, and the Cult of Castration” article specifically. Blogger Jeffrey Shanks, in his own review here on the TC blog had few good things to say on said essay (as opposed to the other articles therein).

You can order TGR # 14 here. It will debut at Howard Days 2010 on June 11, with orders shipping next week. The print run is only two hundred copies, so get them while you can.

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.

1. He died young. People are fascinated with talents who flash like shooting stars across the heavens and are gone just as quickly. The debate over why Howard committed suicide will probably never be settled, nor will the speculation over what he may have accomplished with another 30-40 years of writing ahead of him.
2. He was feted after his death by H.P. Lovecraft. We all dream of accomplishing enough to be remembered after we pass on; Howard’s unique talents were extolled by arguably the 20^th century’s greatest practitioner of the horror tale. In a September 1936 letter to Fantasy Magazine, “In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard,” Lovecraft wrote, “It is hard to describe precisely what made Mr. Howard’s stories stand out so sharply; but the real secret is that he himself was in every one of them, whether they were ostensibly commercial or not.” You could do worse than having your obituary written by the man who was Providence.
3. He was possessed of a multifaceted, complex personality that resists easy analysis. According to which biographies you read, Howard was a man of eclectic interests and contradictions—a recluse and a boisterous storyteller, possessed of a sharp, probing brain and a thirst for history, but also a love of the physical. He boxed and worked out assiduously to build up his body while stories flowed from the boundless imagination of his mind. Who was the real REH? Who knows? Howard seems to bring out the armchair psychologist in everyone, myself included.
4. His underlying themes are more relevant today than ever. As our society has become more and more secular, Howard, who adhered to an existentialist philosophy, resonates with the modern reader. Hyborian Age gods like Crom gave men the strength and will to forge their own destinies and then stepped aside to watch them succeed or fail, live or die. With no higher power controlling the strings or a safety net to catch us when we fall, life is simultaneously more frightening but also more liberating. It’s what you make of it, or in the case of Conan the Cimmerian what you can carve out with a strong sword arm. As noted REH scholar Rusty Burke wrote in the introduction to The Bloody Crown of Conan, “Our destiny, he says, does not lie in the stars, or in our noble blood, but in our willingness to create ourselves.”
5. He was so damned prolific. It’s both startling and humbling to think of how much Howard accomplished during his brief life, of which only a dozen years or so were spent as a professional writer. His most well-known characters—Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn—are only a part of his corpus. Howard also wrote boxing stories, historic fiction, hard-boiled detective tales, horror, and more. Only lately have I discovered that a rich part of his legacy is his letters, of which we now have full access thanks to the work of editor Rob Roehm. His Collected Poetry is another mine yielding vast treasures to the patient reader.
6. He was immensely talented. If none of the above were true, I believe that Howard’s legacy as a pillar of fantastic literature would still be secure because of his incomparable writing style and his ability to tell compelling stories. When you read Howard it’s impossible not to get swept up in his storytelling, including his sweeping scenes of dynamic action and color, his memorable personalities and characters, and his love of language. His tales are studded with vine-choked jungles concealing lost civilizations and lost treasures; monstrous snakes, ape-men, and crawlers of the dark; sinister wizards, scheming politicians, and blood-soaked battlefields. His Hyborian Age is simultaneously alien and recognizable, historic and fantastic. It reminds us of the sands of Egypt and the jungles of Africa and the decadence of the Roman Empire, but also transports us to places that never were and never could be.
7. He’s largely misunderstood by critics, even today. Google Robert E. Howard and you’ll find claims that he was racist (completely overblown, given the era in which he lived), sexist (untrue, he penned several strong female characters) and a simple, shallow writer of pulp. This latter is demonstrably false, as proven by the large and growing body of critical works in journals like TC, REH: Two Gun Raconteur, and The Dark Man, as well as the good work being done by the REH Electronic Amateur Press Association. Howard’s stories contain a remarkable degree of complexity beneath their brightly-painted surfaces and both stand up to and demand further analysis. Howard famously wrote about barbarism vs. civilization and the entropic nature of the universe. Reams of critical essays here and elsewhere have been written about Howard and his works, but I believe there’s much more to be explored and analyzed. The work of a Howard defender is never done.
8. Because he remains The Dark Man. Howard’s motivations and ultimate aspirations remain wreathed in mystery and the impenetrable, labyrinthine house of the human mind. He’s polarizing, complex, and resistant to psychoanalysis, a shadow from the past that we’ll never truly understand. All we can say for sure is that he was a damned good writer—and that’s enough for me.

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.

He has written for or edited The Dark Barbarian: The Writings of Robert E. Howard (1984), the five-volume Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick (1991-1997), The Barbaric Triumph: A Critical Anthology on the Writings of Robert E. Howard (2004) and The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook (2009).

On a more personal note: his 1976 essay “Conan vs Conantics” was a kind of revelation to me. Every Howard fan can — and, in this blogger’s opinion, should if it hasn’t already been done yet – read it thanks to the Web Archive link that I just provided. It opened my eyes in regards to Lyon Sprague de Camp‘s editorial shenaningans when I first stumbled upon it a decade ago.

Damon C. Sasser, REHupan and head of TGR, has recently written a blog on Don Herron’s nomination. Here are some of his kind words:

Much like Hammett’s Continental Op, he is always one step of everyone else and on the cutting edge of literary discoveries and criticism.

The winner of the Munsey Award will be announced next month, during Pulpfest 2010.

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 … )

War with Gorlois had to be, and Uther wasn’t the man to sit waiting. He had strong connections with fighting men and princes in Armorica, across the Narrow Sea. He had a possible ally in Cerdic, the lord of southern Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, who bore a British name, was at least half British himself, and had surely been born in the island — despite the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s later claim that he came to Britain from overseas in 493 A.D. Cerdic may even have been a wholly British kinglet who brought in foreign Germanic warriors to support him. Others, most infamously Vortigern, had done that before.

If Gorlois really lived, and was a king of Dumnonia (called “Damnonia” by REH) — the south-western peninsula of Britain that ends in Cornwall — then he, like the Welsh, was having trouble with Irish pirates (such as Cormac Mac Art!), invaders and settlers. They had been coming into Cornwall, chiefly from Leinster, over several decades at least, and probably longer. Uther, not without cunning, may have seen this as a source of warrior allies and a way to catch Gorlois in the rear while he attacked from the front.

As for Gorlois, older and more experienced than his fierce rival, he probably saw the same opportunity with regard to Cerdic in southern Hampshire. Varied meetings, with bared-teeth smiles and hands never far from the hilts of weapons, shifting and changing alliances, double- and triple-crosses, would have followed in a way worthy of Conan and the two other pirate captains in “The Black Stranger” (altered and renamed “The Treasure of Tranicos” when L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter had finished with it).

REH’s Cormac stories make no mention of either Gorlois or his queen, Igraine, but they do mention Cerdic in a way that implies he was present and active in Britain well before 490. As for King Gerinth, who appears in “Tigers of the Sea“, hiring Cormac and Wulfhere to find his abducted sister, he may just possibly be REH’s version of Geraint son of Erbin. REH had individual ideas about Uther and Arthur, Lancelot and Gawaine (all of whom Cormac describes in “The Temple of Abomination”, briefly and none too flatteringly). Perhaps he had his own notions of Geraint as well. We’re not told when Gerinth — the REH character — died, but he was a seasoned Saxon-fighter in “TotS”, and according to history (or legend, depending how you regard it) Geraint son of Erbin fell fighting the Saxons at the Battle of Llongborth. The fight is commemorated in a famous Welsh poem, composed in the 10th or 11th century, and originally appearing in the Black Book of Carmarthen. Three of its englyns follow:

The date is as uncertain as the place. Within a quarter-century, between 480 and 505, is as closely as this layman would like to guess. There is no internal evidence in REH’s “Cormac” writings to indicate that his King Gerinth is meant to be one with Geraint. There’s only a similarity of names, the fact that they were both British kings who bravely resisted the Saxons, and would have been contemporaries.

Whether King Gerinth was involved, or more likely tried to mediate and make peace between the two, Uther and Gorlois fought against each other without mercy. REH makes no mention of Merlin, and we can dismiss with laughter — as everybody who lived at the time did too, doubtless! — the idea that a magician helped Uther seduce Igraine by giving him the semblance of her husband. This was the fifth century. Celtic women weren’t bashful, and medieval ideas of pure and perfect courtly love were centuries in the future.

Uther had other enemies besides Gorlois. Cerdic, in southern Hampshire, was an ambivalent friend at best. Syagrius, who ruled the Domain of Soissons in the north of Gaul, bore Uther a great hatred because Uther had betrayed, ambushed and killed his father. However, Uther had strong allies and supporters among the British princes of Armorica. He probably cultivated the Irish invaders and settlers in Cornwall, who had founded their colonies there against Gorlois’s stubborn resistance. He promised to be a more friendly overlord than Gorlois, and while they took his promises with salt, they listened.

In the meantime, Uther also sought to win the admiration of the Britons and become a hero to them, to increase his support. United in nothing but their loathing of the Germanic sea-wolves invading their island, they admired slayers of Saxons. Uther had destroyed three ships’ companies of Saxons soon after arriving in Britain, which was well enough but not overwhelmingly impressive. He needed greater deeds against the Saxons on his record.

The opportunity came. Cerdic allowed two Saxon chieftains, Stuf and Wihtgar, to occupy the Isle of Wight off his southern coasts, provided they acknowledged his rule and fought for him. Land in exchange for service. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says Stuf and Wihtgar only came to Britain in the sixth century, but the Chronicle was composed centuries later, and its purpose was partly to justify current ruling dynasties by giving them a spurious origin. Many of its dates, especially the earliest ones, are without doubt wrong.

Uther conducted secret parleys with King Gerinth, whose wisdom and sense of responsibility was uncommon. He saw that this new Saxon presence on the Isle of Wight was a menace which should be removed. Uther still had the three Saxon war-boats he had captured on his advent in Britain; he had friends among the corsairs of Lesser Britain, or Armorica, across the sea. He opened secret negotiations with the Irish settlers in Cornwall, who also had ships. (Cormac mac Art, certainly a noted pirate by that time, may have been involved; his comments about Uther in “The Temple of Abomination” indicate that he had known him personally.) And Gerinth used his influence to bring the last ships of the Romano-British fleet into the project. They would have been moved to the Severn estuary, since all of the south-eastern British coast was now settled by the sea-wolves.

Led by Uther and the Armorican corsairs, perhaps accompanied by Cormac mac Art, the British force descended on the pirate nest of Wight. In a raging day and night of red vengeance, they wiped out the Saxon encampments, left not a sea-wolf living on the island, took and shared out the plunder they found, and removed the Saxon keels for the defence of Britain. Uther, who led the expedition, followed it swiftly with a march by land to the upper Thames valley, where the Gewissae or West Saxons were pressing westward as usual. Uther harried and burned their steadings but did not, as he had hoped, meet a major Saxon force to destroy.

Gerinth was well pleased, though he still had his reservations about this black-bearded madman. Cerdic was enraged. He realised he must meet Uther in battle and destroy him or lose the respect — that is, the fear — in which he was esteemed. He gathered his forces and gave Uther the large battle that was the very thing he desired. Gorlois would have attacked Uther in the rear while he was busy with Cerdic’s host, if he had dared — but the balance-of-power effect of the watchful Gerinth prevented that.

Nevertheless, Uther found himself outnumbered, and while engaged with Cerdic he was surprised by a force of Saxons from the Thames valley who charged his flank. Only his courage and ferocity held his own force together and brought him victory. He was wounded, but so was Cerdic, and rather more severely. Cerdic had to be carried home. This occurred, probably, in 478 or 479. Uther was acclaimed for his victories and given the title Pendragon by common consent. Gerinth affirmed it. Pendragon means literally “head dragon” and figuratively, “greatest of warriors”.

Added to the name Uther, Pendragon would have had a particular meaning in Britain, a meaning of mythic stature. The legendary uther pen, the wonderful head, was the head of the great giant-king of elder Britain, Bran the Blessed. He had died and his head been severed in a great war in Ireland. According to the myth his head had continued to live and hold converse with his followers for many years in the Otherworld. After that it had been taken to London and placed in a sacred temple, looking east towards the continent. While it remained in place, Britain could never be successfully invaded. Once it was removed — an act described in the Welsh triads as one of the “three wicked uncoverings of Britain” — the Romans and later the Saxons found ingress.

A fierce, pre-eminent warrior named Uther Pendragon was made for the role of Britain’s new protector.

His next campaign was not against the Saxons but against his British enemy, Gorlois. Before Gorlois could take advantage of Uther’s losses, the Pendragon launched a savage drive through Devon at the head of his mailed, helmed horsemen. He killed Gorlois’s client subordinate in the region. He took Isca (Exeter) for the second time, held it, and sent a message to Armorica calling for more soldiers. They came. Gorlois’s retaliation was too late; Uther now had the advantage and was not about to relinquish it. Igraine was waiting.

Normal practice in those days was not to fight at harvest time or in winter, for good reason. If gathering the harvest took precedence over anything, war included, the countryside was likely to starve. And finding food for a large body of men like a war-host for any length of time was difficult in winter. Besides, hardy and tough as warriors were then, winter weather could take a toll comparable to that of foemen’s weapons. Uther proceeded, though; if not in the dead of winter, in late autumn. His men could subsist by hunting, for a time at least, and late autumn was also butchering season, when the beasts farmers did not think they could feed until spring were killed and preserved.

Gorlois withdrew to one of his strongholds. It might have been the traditional one at Tintagel head, though the medieval castle associated with Gorlois and Uther was not built there until centuries later. Or he might have had a royal dun at Fowey on the southern coast, another place associated with Arthurian characters. There is a memorial stone inscribed with the name of Drustans son of Kynvawr (Tristan) close to the town. Wherever the fortress was that Gorlois and Igraine occupied that year, Uther made plans to take it by subterfuge. As I picture him, while rash, headstrong and savage, as well as unstable to the point of being slightly nuts, he was still an experienced fighter who knew how to conduct a campaign, and could be crafty. Most likely he pretended to retreat and camped in hiding for a while.

Uther (now Pendragon) might have reached Gorlois by having his Cornish-Irish acquaintances stage an attack on the Dumnonian king’s stronghold. In insufficient numbers. They could have lured Gorlois and his men out of their dun by retreating in disorder, so tempting them to pursue. Then the Irish could have led them straight to uther’s ambush. Perhaps the Pendragon caught them on the bank of a river as he had done to Aegidius in Gaul, long before.

The fighting would have been bloody, and this being Britain, with summer over, it most likely took place in foul weather, “heavily the low sky raining.” When it was done, Gorlois lay in the chill trampled mud with that grey rain sluicing the blood from whatever remained of his face. Uther would have ridden to the fortress of his foe to claim the western part of Dumnonia, and the woman.

When? Perhaps in 478 or 480. Uther would have been forty then.

Such important news would have crossed the Channel to Armorica swiftly enough. Syagrius of Soissons would have heard it almost as swiftly as the Britons did. Scheming with care, he could have set his trap for his father’s assassin, knowing that Uther’s ambitions reached beyond Britain — that he craved to become lord of a revived Western Empire. Of Britain and northern Gaul, at any rate. Nothing was left of the Western Empire by this time. The barbarian Odovacar (Odoacer), the new power in Italy now that Ricimer was dead, had dispensed with puppet emperors and ruled outright as king. Even Dalmatia, on the Adriatic coast, last remnant of the Western Empire, was now denied recognition by the Eastern Emperor (Zeno). Syagrius might have let false information cross the Channel, through plausible agents, that Zeno no longer recognised Soissons either, and that Syagrius had travelled east to present his case for the emperor to confirm his rule.

Even by his forties, Uther remained headstrong and reckless enough to seize what he saw as a golden chance. Taking a small fleet to Armorica, he raised a battle-host among his adherents there and marched straight for Soissons. (He would barely have noticed Paris, or Lutetia, on his way; it wasn’t much of a town then.) En route he called on the various counts and vicars of the country to support his bid for the “kingdom” — for by now it was that, in practice, and bluntly called that by many.

By those who supported Uther, and those who did not, Syagrius would have gained an enlightening insight into who was loyal. The turncoats, and Uther, had a shocking surprise when Syagrius and his Gallo-Romans, supported by Frankish allies, took them in the flank and treated them with as little quarter as Uther was accustomed to give. The battle, if it took place, has been forgotten by history, but so were many battles larger than some others which have become famous.

That may have been the battle in which the Frankish king Childeric I, ally of Syagrius, was slain.  If he didn’t perish in the actual battle, he may have been wounded, lingered for some time — even months — and finally died in November at his capital of Tournai, which is what the records say.  His (Childeric’s) final year was 481, which seems a bit early to me for Uther’s demise, but possible — and it’s not likely that Childeric’s son and successor, Clovis, would have aided Syagrius in the battle. Just five years later, in 486, he overthrew the Domain of Soissons, drove Syagrius south for refuge to the Visigothic court at Toulouse, and eventually, when he got his hands on Syagrius again, killed him.

Syagrius cannot have had any inkling of that on the day he saw Uther dead on the field; no idea of anything but triumph and a son’s fulfilled duty to avenge his father. Perhaps he took Uther’s head to display over the gate of Soissons, or left both head and body for the ravens. The stories that survive have Uther dying in Britain; Thomas Malory, writing in the fifteenth century, has Uther perish of severe illness years after his defeat of Gorlois. It’s REH, and only REH so far as I know, who suggests that Uther had his origins in Gaul, but that being so, it seems appropriate to me to have his personal wheel of fate coming full circle, and have him die there, in a way that carries a certain amount of justice with it.

And Arthur? Well, Robert E. Howard makes it clear that in his stories Arthur was no more Uther’s son than Wulfhere the Dane was! That idea was a fiction proposed and concocted by Arthur’s henchman Lancelot — in Cormac the Gael’s words, Lancelot was ”a renegade Gallo-Roman who has made an art of throat-cutting,” much given to “plotting and intriguing”, not a chivalrous knight.  Claiming his leader was Uther Pendragon’s lost son would have added to the prestige of that “waif from one of the wild western tribes that never bowed to Rome”, and helped Arthur greatly on his way to becoming more than a “chief raiding the borders.”  As Deuce Richardson has pointed out, if Igraine, while married to Gorlois, had a stillborn son or one who died in infancy (as very many did), the lie would have gained verisimilitude thereby.

Arthur was very likely too old to have plausibly been Uther’s son, at the time Uther died — certainly too old to have been fathered by Uther after he came to Britain in 470. But a practiced, inventive liar like Lancelot could have thought of a way around such awkward facts. The fabricated tale may have been that Uther was a member of the embassy that came across to Britain in 459, to invite Riothamus and some thousands of British fighting men across to Gaul, and that Uther and Igraine became lovers then, resulting in a son.

That figment would have been flawed by the fact that Igraine, when Uther was 19, was probably about 11, but not too many people would have been au fait with such inconvenient truths twenty-plus years later. Besides, as observed in an earlier post, folk didn’t have calendars on their walls or precise records at their fingertips in the fifth century, nor did they think in terms of nice chronology. They seldom had a finely developed sense of logical consistency, either. Even those who doubted the story of Arthur’s parentage would have thought it mattered more to have a new Pendragon on the scene, fighting off the Saxons. Maybe, to quote Norman Spinrad in Songs From The Stars, the yarn “fooled only those who wanted to be fooled; i.e., any reasonable person.”

*Art by Jeffrey Jones, Angus McBride, Don Maitz and others.

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.

J.R.R. Tolkien famously translated the horrors of the Western Front into his heroic tales in the grim, despairing images of the Dead Marshes and Mordor and in the ethic of sacrifice nobly demonstrated by his Hobbit heroes.  But the industrialized slaughter did not lend itself well to the kind of individual heroics that are the life’s-blood of pulp fiction. Indeed, when Robert E. Howard directly confronted the Western Front in “Skull-Face” it was to produce the kind of vision of debilitating, crippling and thoroughly unromantic nightmare experience which “mainstream” literature used to depict the war.

You ask how I, Stephen Costigan, American and a man of some attainments and culture, came to lie in a filthy dive of London’s Limehouse? The answer is simple — no jaded debauchee, I, seeking new sensations in the mysteries of the Orient. I answer — Argonne! Heavens, what deeps and heights of horror lurk in that one word alone! Shell-shocked — shell-torn. Endless days and nights without end and roaring red hell over No Man’s Land where I lay shot and bayoneted to shreds of gory flesh. My body recovered, how I know not; my mind never did.

It was only when pulp fiction turned to the air that romanticism and individual heroics had scope to flourish in stories about “an age of aces.” Of course, the reality was that the air war was even more dangerous than being stuck in the mud below. Casualty rates were shocking and life expectancy was usually measured in days and weeks.
There was one other theater of war where there was scope for adventure: the Arab Revolt, where a young British officer played a role that would appeal to any creator of heroic legendry.

We know that REH read T.E. Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert, a popular abridgment of his larger masterpiece Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Howard borrowed from it not only for his Desert Adventures, but also for more prosaic purposes: dealing with a mangy cat.

In an effort to find a cure, I consulted Lawrence’s book, and found that the Arabs use melted butter on mangy camels. This proved a complete success, though he resented being buttered like a roasting ear, and the other cats generally followed him about, much to his rage, licking it off. However, it cured his mange, and he is now the pride of the backyard, though somewhat undersized, but greedy as ever.

– REH to E. Hoffman Price, February 15, 1936

Lawrence was instrumental in sustaining and guiding the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Some historians downplay the importance of the Arab Revolt, rightly noting that the Middle East was wrested from the Turk not by Arab guerrillas but by a  masterful conventional campaign led by General Edmund Allenby.

Still, the Arabs, with Lawrence as advisor, provided important flank security for Allenby’s advance through Palestine. And their guerrilla raids served the classical purpose of tying down and demoralizing Turkish forces.

There is no question that the single greatest coup of the Revolt — the epic desert march to take the Red Sea port of Aqaba by surprise — was achieved at Lawrence’s instigation and under his and Auda ibu Tayi’s leadership. Without Aqaba, deemed impregnable by the British Navy, it would have been very difficult to launch and supply Allenby’s campaign through Palestine.

And the Arab Revolt had massive strategic repercussions, as the betrayal of British promises for an Arab state in the wake of the war — and conflicting promises for a Jewish homeland — set up tensions and resentments that continue to play out in blood and fire today.

Lawrence must have been a figure of irresistible appeal to  a tale-spinner like Howard. Lawrence is the embodiment of a pulp trope: the Western man who goes native to lead native forces to plunder and conquest.

He is Conan among the Zuagirs or the Afghulis or the Black Corsairs. Or, most aptly, he is Francis X. Gordon in Afghanistan and Arabia.

It is important to note that this ethnocentric view of Lawrence is not the way Arabs see his role in the Arab Revolt. To Arab scholars, Lawrence is an important figure, an explosives expert and a useful ally. But the heroes of the revolt are not British officers; they are Arabs: Feisal Saeed Al-Ismaily, son of Sharif Hussein in whose name the revolt was launched; and Auda ibu Tayi, the ferocious Bedouin raider called by many the Knight of the Revolt.

Auda might himself have stepped out of the pages of a Robert E. Howard story.

Lawrence appears peripherally in Howard’s “Son of the White Wolf,” with Gordon as his ally:

The Turks still held the country , that summer of 1917, but lightning-like raids flashed across the desert, blowing up trains, cutting tracks and butchering the inhabitants of isolated posts. Lawrence was leading the tribes northward, and with him was the mysterious American, El Borak, whose name was one to hush children.

Lawrence first came to the Middle East as a scholar and archeologist, studying the Crusader castles of the Levant. As a young man he was fascinated by the knights of the Crusades and it is easy to imagine him in 1917, based in the ruins of a Crusader castle, having  a flashback to a previous incarnation as a Crusader, much as Gordon does in “Three Bladed Doom.”

For all that Lawrence’s story echoes a more romantic age, an old-fashioned kind of heroism of individual initiative and derring-do, there is no escaping a 20th Century conception of the horrors of war. As Lawrence wrote in a letter, describing a raid:

I hope that when the nightmare ends I will wake up and become alive again. This killing and killing of Turks is horrible. When you charge in at the finish and find them all over the place in bits, and still alive many of them, and know that you have done hundreds in the same way before and must do hundreds more if you can.

…We ride in like lunatics and with our Beduins pounce on unsuspecting Turks and destroy them in heaps: and it is all very gory and nasty after we close grip. I love the preparation and the journey, and loathe the physical fighting.

You’ll never hear Conan or Francis X. Gordon say they “loathe the physical fighting.” And yet…

There is a striking scene at the end of “Three-Bladed Doom” where Gordon expresses something as close to Lawrence’s sentiments as a Howardian hero can get:

Gordon struggled up to a sitting position and stared out over the orchard. What he saw there shook even his iron nerves. It was a garden of corpses. The dead lay like fallen leaves in wind-blown heaps and mounds and straggling lines. In the bloody angle and in the road outside the bodies were piled three deep, among the ruins of a wall.

“God!” For a moment Gordon was speechless, his soul in revolt. “Baber Khan, send someone after your warriors. Ali will go. Tell them to stop the slaughter. Enough men have died. Tell them to spare all who will lay down their arms and surrender…”

It cannot be known how much Lawrence’s revulsion at slaughter may have been on Howard’s mind when writing of his contemporaneous hero. Suffice it to say that, as the heroic tale enters the modern age, it is impossible for a tale-teller who aspires to more than cheap “action” to evade the consequences of battle.

Lawrence once said that:

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.

Lawrence was one of the most famous men of his age and his exploits demonstrated that an individual “pushing the right way” could indeed sway events, even in an age of massed, industrialized war machines. Because there was a “Lawrence of Arabia,” other dreamers of heroic dreams could conjure their own visions — bold, bloody, ultimately tragic — and hold them aloft like a torch in the gathering darkness of the 20th Century.

* Zuagirs by John Buscema

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.

In “Shadow of the Beast” Howard plays on this fear, as Hoffman notes. The antagonist (initially at least) is Joe Cagle, a black man, described by Howard in uncomfortably stereotyped language as “ape-like” and “bestial,” who attacks a white woman. Hoffman points out other examples of similar characters in Howard’s works, such as Tope Braxton in “Black Hound of Death” and Senecoza in “The Hyena.” While the racial element is clearly present in Cagle’s description, Hoffman comments that Howard’s language goes beyond race and uses Cagle as a symbol for humanity’s primal bestial nature that lurks under the veneer of civilized man. This becomes evident, Hoffman believes, when Cagle is replaced in the story by an even more bestial threat — the ghost of an actual gorilla.

I would have liked to have seen Hoffman address “Man-Killer” Gomez from “The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux.” Here is another black man described as a throwback to a more primitive state of humanity, but with the sexual element and miscegenation theme nowhere present. Likewise, it would have been interesting to see a brief discussion of the relationship between Bran Mak Morn and Atla in “Worms of the Earth.” There the fear of miscegenation is at the root of Bran’s horror that comes with the realization of Atla’s true nature; but in this story, the gender roles are reversed as it is the female Atla who is the animalistic, sexual aggressor. But these other examples, while interesting, are really beyond the scope of this article, which focuses specifically on the “Piney Woods” yarns.

Differing with Rusty Burke, who has commented that Howard’s sometimes racially insensitive language rarely adds anything to the narrative, Hoffman convincingly shows that the stereotypes employed in “Shadow,” as distasteful as they are to modern sensibilities, are a crucial element in the story as they are meant to evoke the very real fears of miscegenation present in white America during the early 20th century.

"Marchers of Valhalla" by Ken Kelly for the 1977 paperback cover.

While Hoffman’s article offers some interesting food for thought, sadly the same can not be said for Jeffrey Kahan’s “’Marchers of Valhalla,’ Creation, and the Cult of Castration.” Kahan’s thesis, as far as I can tell, is that the James Allison yarn, “Marchers of Valhalla,” can be read as “Howard’s commentary on castration and fertility cults” (TDM 5.1, p. 37). The piece is rife with mistakes, inaccuracies, misunderstandings, and false etymologies as Kahan makes one leap of faulty logic after another. I know that Deuce Richardson will discuss many of these problems in a forthcoming review of Kahan’s article for the next issue of REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, so I will try to confine my remarks to a general commentary on the inherent flaws in Kahan’s methodology.

The greatest methodological faux pas of the article, in general terms, is that Kahan takes every mythological reference that Howard makes (and there are many in “Marchers”) and then looks for any way, however obscure, to tie that reference into the themes of fertility and castration, without taking into account at all the context in which Howard uses those mythological references. Indeed, early on Kahan seems to suggest that to limit his inquiry to “Howard’s use and understanding of myth” (p. 22) would risk creating a western Euro-centric bias in reading the mythological themes in “Marchers.”

Okay… But, I thought we were trying to identify a supposed theme that Howard incorporated into “Marchers”? Should we give consideration to what Howard might have actually meant when using certain names and themes that have their origin in mythology? Apparently not, according to Kahan, who simply cherry-picks obscure usages for the mythological references that Howard makes in “Marchers” in order to try and prove his thesis. A few examples should illustrate the absurdity of Kahan’s methodology.

For Kahan, the city of “Khemu” that Hialmar and the Aesir encounter is a reference to the Egyptian creator god Khnum. It is true the name “Khemu” can be an alternate spelling of Khnum; however, it is only attested in a couple of places in this form. “Khemu” is much more commonly used in the theosophical and occult literature of Howard’s day as an alternative spelling of “Kemet” (KM.t), the ancient Egyptians’ name for their own land. In other words this is simply another example of Howard taking an ancient place name (like Cimmeria, Punt or Corinthia) and reusing it in his fictional Hyborian setting — it is not Howard making an oblique reference to an uncommon variant spelling of an obscure Egyptian creator god.

Additionally, Kahan sees Howard’s references to “Lemurians” as referring to the lemures or malevolent spirits of Roman superstitio. Of course anyone who has read enough of Howard’s pseudo-historical yarns would know that his Lemurians are the people of Lemuria, the now-sunken continent of the Pacific according to the theosophical beliefs of the day. The only connection to the Roman lemures is a convoluted and tenuous etymological link. But Kahan ignores (or is ignorant of) Howard’s actual meaning and because his Standard Dictionary of Folklore says that the Romans would appease the lemures by planting black beans, he is able to conclude triumphantly that “Howard clearly sees Khemu as an agrarian society, linked to the seasons of planting and harvest” (p. 25).

This is the type of methodological jiu-jitsu that Kahan is forced to employ throughout his article in order to “prove” that Howard was inculcating his story with the theme of fertility. In actually, “Marchers” takes place in Howard’s proto-historical Hyborian Age and, like the Conan yarns, he has populated the story with proper names from myth and legend, in order to suggest that the true origin of these names lies in his fictional setting that takes place before the dawn of recorded history. If there is a theme of fertility that can be observed in “Marchers,” it is not because Howard intentionally inserted it; it is simply because he made use of a good deal of mythological material that happened to have fertility themes associated with them. And here is a newsflash for Dr. Kahan: the ancient cultures that created all these myths and gods were agricultural societies. Their lives depended on their ability to grow things and to produce enough children to help tend the growing things. If you look hard enough you find that nearly all myths are related to fertility in some form or another. The unfounded idea that Howard attached the same meanings to the mythological names he employs as the ancient people who initially created them is the great flaw in Kahan’s logic that renders his thesis and his article meaningless.

Painting of Finn mac Cumail by Yvonne Gilbert.

All of this is not to say that Howard was unaware of fertility cults or that he did not make use of that concept in his work. In fact Lovecraft and he touched on the subject in their correspondence in 1930 and Howard included, quite explicitly, a depiction of a fertility cult in “The Black Stone,” complete with obvious imagery from the Roman Lupercalia and a bacchanalian orgy, not to mention a nude female suppliant being whipped and hugging a huge, phallic, stone monolith. When Howard wants to explore a particular theme in one of his stories, he usually is not shy about it. There actually are some comparisons (however tenuous) that could be made between the ritual scene in “The Black Stone” and the sacrifice of Aluna in “Marchers,” but Kahan does not make them. In fact nowhere does he address Howard’s obvious use of a fertility cult in “The Black Stone” or his conversation with Lovecraft on the subject. One would think that if you were looking for Howard’s commentary on fertility cults, you would start with the places where actually did comment on them.

Philip Emery takes a much more structured approach in attempting to discern Howard’s mythological and folkloric influences in his article, “Celtic Influences in the Works of Robert E. Howard.” Emery uses the five genres of Irish folklore identified by scholars Eleanor Knott and Gerard Murphy and attempts to place a number of Howard’s yarns into these categories. The five genres are: (1) mythological tales features the exploits of gods, (2) tales of the Ulster heroes, (3) tales of Finn mac Cumail (a.k.a. Finn mac Cool) and the Fiana warriors, (4) tales of kings and nobles, (5) tales about journeys to the Otherworld (echtrai) or sea voyages (immrams).

Emery does not just confine himself to the obvious stories with Irish and Gaelic protagonists, but also attempts to fit some of the tales of Howard’s sword and sorcery characters such as Conan, Kull, and Bran Mak Morn into Knott and Murphy’s categories. Occasionally this works quite nicely, as with the stories of Bran and Kull in the fourth genre; other times it seems like he is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, such as placing “Queen of the Black Coast” in the fifth category (would not “Pool of the Black One” or “Gods of Bal-Sogoth” be better examples as immram-like voyages into the unknown West?).

In the second half of his article, Emery looks at other characteristics of Irish mythology and folklore, such as the use of supernatural elements, the dichotomy of female characters being either incredibly beautiful or horribly hag-like, and the use of hyperbole in describing heroic deeds. Here Emery’s argument is less convincing, as these are elements that can be found in most mythic traditions. Howard certainly makes use of some of these elements in his works, but his inspiration could just as easily be Greek or Norse mythology as Irish (or more likely, all of the above). Emery admits that this is an issue, but notes that the scope of his article is to focus on only one of Howard’s many influences. That is fine, but then he needs to find some element that is unique to Irish traditions and see if Howard makes use of it, in order to better prove his point.

There is no doubt that Howard was heavily influenced by Irish mythology and folklore and Emery is on the right track in his attempts to indentify and describe that influence. Further research in this area could be a fruitful venture.

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.

…a man whose broad shoulders and sun-browned skin seemed out of place among those luxuriant surroundings. He seemed more a part of the sun and winds and high places of the outlands. His slightest movement spoke of steel-spring muscles knit to a keen brain with the co-ordination of a born fighting-man. There was nothing deliberate or measured about his actions. Either he was perfectly at rest–still as a bronze statue–or else he was in motion, not with the jerky quickness of over-tense nerves, but with a cat-like speed that blurred the sight which tried to follow him.
– “The Phoenix on the Sword”

He felt curiously helpless and futile as he gazed on the proportions of the forest man–the massive iron-clad breast, and the arm that bore the reddened sword, burned dark by the sun and ridged and corded with muscles. He moved with the dangerous ease of a panther; he was too fiercely supple to be a product of civilization, even of that fringe of civilization which composed the outer frontiers.
– “Beyond the Black River”

He was almost a giant in stature, muscles rippling smoothly under his skin which the sun had burned brown.
– “Red Nails”

How can one not see Howard’s descriptions in such an illustration? The taut, iron-ridged muscles rippling under the scarred, sun-darkened skin; the eyes closed to near slits, with the flicker of blue balefire burning; the simple square-cut mane of sable hair. The exact style of Conan’s hair is a matter of some debate: Howard uses descriptions like “tousled,” “matted” and “lion-like,” indicating that it would be a bit wavier than in Frazetta’s depiction. That said, he is noted to be able to blend in with the Stygian warrior class in The Hour of the Dragon, and Frazetta’s could certainly pass for a particularly grizzled Ancient Egyptian.

True, Frazetta used artistic license in some respects, but nearly all of them are used to emphasize elements of Conan that would normally be made in text. How can one say that this man is a barbarian, and not a mere civilized warrior? Frazetta uses visual cues: cues that aren’t in Howard’s descriptions, but they make sense in an illustrative context–and there’s nothing to say that those elements are necessarily absent just because Howard doesn’t mention them.

Accessories to Barbarism

Take the famous barbarian necklace, for instance: a macabre ornamentation of claws, teeth, bones and a bird’s skull. Instantly images of savagery are evoked: visions of fierce eyes peering through the darkness of the forest with murderous hate for civilized interloper, glimpses of black forms etched against the night sky soundlessly sprinting the warpath, half-remembered dreams of the terrors frontier folk tell their frightened children. Not tied to any one cultural horror, it encompasses everything about barbarians that civilization fears and holds in awe: the northern tribesmen whom Rome could never conquer, the steppe horsemen who laid waste to nations, the natives who terrorized invaders and settlers from an old world. The dark barbarian that towers over all, the unconquerable savage, the natural state of mankind. All this could be encapsulated in a simple ornament.

Then one goes further, to think about the individual. Where did Conan get that necklace? Depending on your level of knowledge of Conan, anything could be extrapolated. Was it torn from the bloody neck of a Pictish war-chief, or is it the keepsake of one of his lovers? Are those sharp objects the claws of some monstrous beast, or the fangs of a dozen serpents? The skull appears to be of an undefined species, but it bears some similarities to that of a raptor: a hawk, a falcon… or a vulture. Those who have read “A Witch Shall Be Born” will know the significance of that particular bird in Conan mythology. While that skull might not be the one that belonged to that particular bird, I get a morbid delight in the idea of Conan the Hetman returning to the crucifixion site, and taking his harasser’s skull as a trophy, a pagan ward or charm, or simply as a silent warning against any other birds who dare to try their luck against the Cimmerian.

The species has resonance beyond the iconic Conan moment: vultures prey upon the dead and dying, so there is a morbid irony in seeing another predator of the battlefield take the skull of nature’s ominous psychopomp as a trophy. The entire ornament is a monument to death: the claws and teeth natural deadly weapons, whose original owner is now surely slain; the bones inextricable from the grave; the skull speaks for itself. Around the neck of a barbarian warrior, who happens to be standing atop a mound of bodies and bones, with spectral skulls in the background, Conan looks every bit the “grim pagan hero of mythology.”

The necklace, along with other elements like the earrings and straight hair, would be adopted by the comics, and countless illustrators in Frazetta’s wake. The earrings are more difficult to quantify: what purpose do they serve? While some barbaric cultures are known to have piercings, one could also view this as a reference to Conan’s piratical days. Earrings on men are often linked to sailing, which arose with the tradition that if a man died at sea and was washed ashore, the earrings would pay for burial. Alternatively, wearing an earring was symbolic of having circumnavigated the globe: one could even suppose that having an earring might be a hallmark of being being a sailor in itself.

Whatever the reasons for the earring-sailing connection in this or the Hyborian Age, Conan may well have taken up the practice himself. Conan spent time as a Freebooter, a Black Corsair, and a member of the Red Brotherhood on two seas. This could thus be a nod to Conan’s wanderlust, far travelling and the free spirit of the high seas. Alternatively, even in the 1960s, men wearing earrings was uncommon outside of sailing, and in Medieval Europe was seen as symbolic of exotic, foreign individuals: perhaps this is a subtle hint to Conan’s “otherness” in comparison to civilized peoples.

Let’s look now at the arm accouterments: the bracelet on Conan’s left arm, and the arm ring on his right. The bracelet seems straightforward enough, being a gold or bronze affair with two rows of rivets. It’s too short to be of much use as a vambrace or bracer, as the scars on Conan’s forearms attest, but it might offer some opportunity for deflection. When it comes to seemingly slight accessories with surprising protective qualities, there’s an interesting parallel in Howard: Kull’s circlet in “Kings of the Night.” This golden headgear was effective a protection against the full strength of a Norseman’s axe-stroke as a steel helm. Perhaps Hyborian metallurgy was significantly better than its historical counterparts, if not as impressive as its Thurian ancestors.

The arm ring is more unusual. When worn on the upper arm, one immediately thinks of the Celts, who commonly wore this form of ornamentation in addition to the famous Torcs. But for some reason, Conan is not wearing it on his upper arm, but on the forearm: an interesting aesthetic difference. When worn on the forearm, it becomes more similar to a bangle, and thus evokes the exotic styles of the East, especially India, where the chudi has been a classic accessory for several thousand years. But this is most commonly associated with women: why would Conan be wearing one? Well, there is a precedence in Sikhism: the Kara, a steel bangle, is one of the five Articles of Faith central to Sikh spirituality, and is commonly worn on the right arm. The Kara is symbolic of the Sikh’s duty, that all work done with their hands should be faithful to the words of the Guru. While even this might be far beyond Frazetta’s intention–and I’m most certainly not going to argue that Conan was a Sikh–I think it’s a cool little coincidence, especially since Howard depicted Sikhs as phenomenal badasses. This mixture of Eastern and Western visual hallmarks adds to the exotic nature of the Hyborian Age.

Conan wears three belts: one is a thin leather support for his knife, while the other two are far heavier and sturdier, with ornamental buckles, plates and studs dotting the leather. The knife is very interesting, because it’s another element which is strikingly eastern in style. To my eyes, it strongly resembles a Jambiya, traditionally associated with the people of Yemen. Another weapon it is very similar to is the Kirpan: another of Sikhism’s Articles of Faith. Kirpans are considered to be items of mercy or defense, rather than weapons of attack like the Tulwar (which Conan also used in “The People of the Black Circle.)” Together with the earrings and “Kara,” there are some very definite eastern influence in Frazetta’s Conan.

There’s an interesting conundrum to be had regarding the straight sword, plunged so fiercely into the detritus of war. Without knowing exactly how long the blade is, it’s difficult to ascertain where it would fit in the Oakeshott typology, (Type XIV, XXI or XXII seems the closest) though since the grip is too short to be any use as a hand-and-a-half or two-handed sword, it’s reasonable to assume it’s a single-handed weapon. Working from the hilt, the blade itself may be either unusually short, or embedded very deeply into the detritus, even to half the blade’s hilt or more –  probably the latter, since this is Conan. The cross-guard is rather fanciful, but compared to other fantasy swords it’s practically modest.

However, the oddity is more oblique than the sword itself — it’s the scabbard. The scabbard hangs from Conan’s right hip, and appears to have been slung around the back slightly. However, it doesn’t look like it fits the sword Conan’s holding in his left hand: the sword is apparently straight, but the scabbard appears to be subtly curved, designed for a blade more akin to a sabre or tulwar. What’s going on here? Has Conan discarded his sabre, perhaps broken in battle, and taken up a straight sword instead? That seems unlikely, with Howard’s eastern tales marked by their lack of straight blade — but then, where did that straight blade come from?

Then again, there’s no reason it can’t be a curved blade itself. Though it appears to be straight, the sword’s blade simply must be buried quite deeply in the muck: like the Kirpan, perhaps it takes a light turn, as subtly implied by Frazetta’s brush-strokes. I think it’s possible enough: the curve isn’t as pronounced as in a Shamshir or Tulwar, but it looks like it could fit with a Tulwar or Saif. If it is a curved blade, then it’s somewhat unusual for having two sharp edges, something that is generally the domain of straight swords. Whatever the nature of the sword, it’s pretty iconic — one can already see the foundations of the infamous Atlantean sword.

Links to the Stories

The proliferation of Eastern visual cues makes a lot of sense when one remembers the stories contained in Conan the Adventurer. “The People of the Black Circle” is set in exotic Vendhya, the Hyborian Age ancestor to ancient India; “Xuthal of the Dusk” (here using Farnsworth Wright’s awful title “The Slithering Shadow”) is set in a city seemingly founded by wanderers from the Blue East. The piratical elements are certainly appropriate for “The Pool of the Black One.” Only “Drums of Tombalku,” De Camp’s completion of the Tombalku Fragment, doesn’t seem to fit. So Frazetta’s illustration might work for three of the stories based on Conan’s attire and gear: are there any other clues?

There’s much more to the picture than Conan himself. The most obvious, at least to straight males, is the woman in the lower right of the painting. At first glance, she appears to be one of the typical “cheesecake pinups” designed purely to titillate the teenage boy looking to sneak a paperback under his jacket to read at school. Certainly Frazetta was unsurpassed in his depiction of feminine voluptuousness, and given how great he was with anatomy, it would be a bit of a waste to paint his women — and men, for that matter — with obstructive clothing.

This woman is naturally no exception: she has the trademark Frazetta belly, generous hips, and the unmistakable doll-face. There is a little more hardness to her: her knees, hips and shoulders are a little rangier than in others, and her face is a bit harder than other Frazetta babes. She’s a Luana if ever I saw one. But there’s something else different about this brunette that separates her from the scores of copycats of this particular painting: her expression.

That is not an expression of gentle supplication to the big strong man, or frightened terror of some unseen terror, or cowed adoration of the manly hero. Her face is confident, determined, utterly unconcerned with the gore, corpses and flames all around her. It’s remarkable that she seems completely uninterested in the skulls, corpses, bloody weapons and flames engulfing the area. Something tells me this isn’t the first time she’s been surrounded by blood and fire. Her arms are snaked around Conan’s legs, true, but to my eye, it looks less like the clutching of a terrified child or lovestruck kitten, but more like a python ensnaring its prey, or a leopard nuzzling her latest kill. The idea of her being the spoils of Conan’s victory seem somewhat less certain looking into that face. Is it she who is Conan’s possession… or is it Conan who belongs to her?

The identity of the woman is unclear. The Howard characters I believe she resembles most closely are Yasmina of “The People of the Black Circle” and “Thalis of “Xuthal of the Dusk.” There is also a possibility for Sancha of “The Pool of the Black One,” but she lacks the olive skin of that Zingaran beauty.Yasmina, too, appears to be fairly pale of skin: references to her “pale, upturned face,” “white hand,” and “white limbs.” This is consistent with later Indian society, where the female royalty were sheltered from the sun. Stygian noblewomen are pale, whereas the commoners are dusky: it’s logical that the situation in Vendhya is similar. The golden armlets on the girl’s left arm might be a sign of nobility, and one could view the expression of Yasmina’s indomitable, imperious attitude. Thalis also had golden jewelry, and that expression could easily portray her feline desire to master Conan. Out of the two choices, Thalis seems to be the closest fit. It seems somewhat appropriate that for all the action in the story, the greatest threat might be the the cat-like woman on the prowl for a mate — or a slave.

The woman is the only other figure in the painting, excepting the owner of that dripping arm in the lower left. In the background, there are images that may be visual representation of themes or threats in the stories. The mysterious skulls in the background are some: are they symbols of the death Conan has wrought over the years, or the prospect of death looming over Conan himself? Every day, Conan lives for the moment, and seeks not beyond death, and for all Conan’s exploits, the ever-present cynicism of Howard forms a dark cloud over proceedings. Yet Conan has his back to the shadows of death, showing utter disregard for his own mortality.

The smaller of the two skulls appears to be hooded. Could this be symbolic of the danger of dark sorcery and the practitioners of the black arts? It is also hovering over a castle-like structure in the distance. I think it’s possible this hooded skull might represent the Master of Yimsha, hovering over his castle on the mount. There is also a twisting hoop connecting the two skulls, almost like the trunk of a gargantuan snake — perhaps the one the Master transforms into in the climax of “The People of the Black Circle.” It could also be a tentacle, like the ones which flayed Conan half to death in “Xuthal of the Dusk.”

An important element which isn’t as noticeable on Frazetta’s second version, but very striking on the Lancer cover, is the field of fire separating Conan in the foreground from the background. Fire naturally signifies many things: battle, conflict, lust, energy, excitement. The subtext is very clear: a line of fire dividing the barbarian hero and the girl from the black sorcery can only mean division by conflict. This happens in a few stories, and it’s notable that Conan would consider flight from some terrors were a girl not in need

There are other mysteries in the painting beyond those I’ve discussed. For instance, at Conan’s left calf, there is what appears to be a length of chain. What on earth is that? Are they broken shackles, another future element of Conan the Barbarian, or is Conan holding a flail just out of view? Then there’s… well, what Conan’s wearing under his belt. Is it the dreaded fur loincloth, leather breeks, or silk shorts? Why are there dry skulls and ribcages seen alongside freshly-slain corpses — did the human warriors have some rather literal help from their ancestors?

All things considered, this first, spectacular Conan cover by Frazetta does not depict a particular scene, as he would for Conan the Usurper, Conan the Cimmerian and Conan. I’d guess that since he just started with Conan, he went with a more thematic illustration, as opposed to a true depiction. All the same, the eastern influences are highly suitable for the first two stories in the collection. If a future Frazetta/Howard combination anthology put the picture next to “The People of the Black Circle” or “Xuthal of the Dusk,” I’d say it would fit just fine.

Triumphant Over All

The above picture is one of the many examples of Frazetta’s impact on the popular depiction of Conan. This is a makeup test produced by Prosthetic Renaissance, and apparently commissioned by Warner Brothers, for a Conan film when they still held the license. The slavish attention to detail in the picture is nothing short of staggering. All the details from the painting are present, and they even got an (apparently) popular pornographic actress to pose as the girl. One wonders what would’ve happened if the project went forward, and we got a Conan who literally looked like he stepped off a Frank Frazetta painting — though with the limitations inherent in makeup, it might’ve been for the best that this came to nothing. This makeup would’ve been great for a single shot, but Conan’s many other expressions would undoubtedly suffer. Much as I’d love to see a Frazetta-esque Conan onscreen, I’d rather see a Conan who could move his eyebrows.

There are many others. Frazetta’s Conan was utilized in a number of foreign posters for Conan the Barbarian, in a variety of ways. Some early posters simply used the original painting unchanged, save for some text and framing. One particularly egregious poster simply copied the original, but blacked out the face — one might assume this was before Arnold was attached to the project, were it not for the fact his name is right at the bottom. One of my favourites was the German poster, which basically took Frazetta’s painting as a starting point — only this time, Renato Casaro painted Arnold’s head onto Conan’s torso, and used the same pose for Valeria as in the more famous US poster. It’s about as close to Frazetta as the film ever got.

Frazetta’s Conan also made the leap into the third dimension. Clayburn Moore released an exceedingly popular (not to mention expensive and limited to fifty pieces) bronze sculpture based on the painting, pictured left. The essential Frazetta documentary Painting with Fire included a fantastic computer generated 3D representation of the painting, complete with movements and roaring flames in the background. Many fans of Frazetta are numbered among such CG artists, as seen in this fantastic loose rendition by Marcus Jackson.

The painting has a preeminent position even in Frazetta’s ouvre. It adorns the cover of the two-disc special edition of Painting with Fire, and is frequently discussed when Frazetta’s name comes up. The original Lancers have long been superseded by the Del Rey volumes when it comes to the pure Howard text, which is really all that matters to Howard fans. Yet without taking anything away from Messrs Schultz, Gianni and Manchess, Frazetta was one of a kind, and the Lancers will always be famous as introducing Frazetta’s interpretation of Howard’s irrepressible barbarian to the world.

So, whether one looks at the details within the painting and tries to ascribe some sort of significance as I have in this article, or if you simply view it as a fantastic painting, it’s clear the cover of Conan the Adventurer is incredible, and possibly one of the most recognizable, influential, and popular book covers of the 20th Century. Like Howard, I believe Frazetta’s work can be enjoyed on multiple levels. It’s a sign of great art, to engage the visceral and the mental sides of the audience. If nothing else, one cannot argue with the former.

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.

I understand LOFP’s argument. Outside of a few fantasy diehards, does anyone really care whether a book is urban fantasy or sword and sorcery? Probably not. To your average Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele reader, a guy with a sword fighting a dragon is fantasy, case closed, regardless of whether it’s Conan ramming a poisoned spear into the mouth of a dinosaur-like beast (Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails”) or Bard shooting a black arrow into the hollow of Smaug’s left breast (J.R.R Tolkien’s The Hobbit).

What I find more interesting is whether such definitions are inherently harmful. It’s possible that drawing such distinctions may promote genre ghettos: New authors may feel compelled to sacrifice creativity in order to fit into the rigid conventions of a genre like swords and sorcery, for example. Authors that set out to write a sword-and-sandal novel may sell themselves short by leaving out genre-bending elements like boots, or sacrifice literary aspirations upon the altar of pulp escapism. E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros is a great novel for many reasons, among which may be the fact that it it’s not easy to pigeonhole.

You can also argue that such distinctions breed elitism and in-fighting. Some Tolkien fans sneer at Howard’s tales as lowbrow or repetitive; many Howard fans thumb their nose at Tolkien and consider him pretentious and boring. The late Steve Tompkins was passionate about finding common ground between Tolkien and Howard, not their differences. He saw works like “Beyond the Black River” as a tributary of the broader, older stream of ancient tales like The Iliad. Maybe Steve was right.

In the end though, after weighing the arguments for and against, I still like drawing distinctions in my fantasy. Here’s why:

1. They allow fantasy readers to make meaningful recommendations. If I know someone who adores Leiber and Howard I’m not going to push The Belgariad or Dragons of Autumn Twilight upon him; I’ll steer him towards Joe Abercrombie or David Gemmell instead.

2. They help potential buyers know what they’re getting into. You can look at a cover depicting John Carter, Prince of Helium, gazing into the eyes of Dejah Thoris against a Barsoomian background and decide whether it’s a book you want to read, or a publisher could make things easier and call it a sword and planet novel. Magazines like Black Gate or Heroic Fantasy Quarterly print very different types of stories than the rosewater Realms of Fantasy; by self-identifying as heroic fantasy or swords-and-sorcery they’re not misleading rabid fans of The Mists of Avalon.

3. Discussing pedantic differences can be fun. I enjoy mental book-shelving exercises and arguing about classifications that very few care about (Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series has two protagonists: does that mean it’s not swords and sorcery? Is L. Sprague de Camp’s The Tritonian Ring sword and sandal or swords and sorcery?). Little understood as they sometimes are (even by self-acclaimed experts) I cringe at the misapplication of these terms. Hobbit director Guillermo del Toro called Tolkien’s body of work “swords and sorcery,” a near-unforgiveable gaffe if you take this stuff seriously.

Although he’s often the subject of scorn by Robert E. Howard fans for his stint as a Conan pasticher, Lin Carter wrote one of the more lucid definitions of sword and sorcery I’ve encountered in his anthology Flashing Swords (#1):

We call a story Sword & Sorcery when it is an action tale, derived from the traditions of the pulp magazine adventure story, set in a land, age or world of the author’s invention–a milieu in which magic actually works and the gods are real–a story, morever, which pits a stalwart warrior in direct conflict with the forces of supernatural evil.

That seems to be a pretty-spot on definition to me, and it was written in 1973. Carter also wisely credits Fritz Leiber for coining the term Sword & Sorcery, and Howard for founding it. Again, I think he’s spot-on here. His essay speaks eloquently about Howard’s influence and the genre’s beginnings in the pulp men’s magazine Weird Tales.

Jessica Amanda Salmonson added some inspired thoughts of her own on heroic fantasy in her anthology Heroic Visions. She notes that we can see heroic fantasy’s nascency in works like the Aeneid, the Faerie Queene, Gilgamesh, and Beowulf, which makes it one of mankind’s oldest forms of storytelling. Writes Salmonson: “The plain truth is that the finest stories throughout and before recorded history have been heroic fantasies; many of the finest stories yet to be written will be heroic fantasies also” (for the record, though, I still find “heroic fantasy” rather unsatisfying terminology. It encompasses too much. Or maybe I’m just a hopeless nerd).

So in the end, for all their exceptions, conflations, and mischaracterizations, give me my steampunk, my historical fantasy, and my dying earth. Plain old “fantasy” just doesn’t cut it.

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.

I feel for Mr Bassett: though I had a veritable demonic legion of problems with Solomon Kane, it irks me that the film hasn’t gained a US release when there are so many less worthy films which have, certainly plenty that haven’t scored nearly as high on Rotten Tomatoes (as of this writing, only two of the week’s top ten at the US box office have a higher score ). I also think American Howard fans deserve the choice to see what the fuss is about on the big screen, rather than rent a DVD or wait for it to come on the television.

So, I can feel the enthusiasm pouring out of him as he talks about a very brief, but special, review:

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time you’ll probably know that I am GIANT Michael Moorcock fan. He is the reason I love fantasy and certainly one of the reasons I became a film maker instead of a vet. Reading his Eternal Champion series as a teenager the thought in my mind was always: “Oh boy I’d just love to see this as a movie one day.” – and that was before I had any inkling of wanting to be a film maker. Without Moorcock I wouldn’t have discovered Robert E Howard, who is one of Moorcock’s own great influences. So it was an absolute thrill to read that he wrote this about Kane in his own forums: Hugely flattering and thrilling for me. Now I just need Ridley Scott to say something similar and I’ll retire.

Oh Lord. I have a, shall we say, ambivalent attitude to my esteemed fellow Brit. What did Mr. Moorcock think of Kane?

“LOVED Solomon Kane. One of the best supernatural adventure stories I’ve ever seen, true to the spirit and mood of Howard, great camerawork and editing. James Purefoy was perfect as Kane.

Why this hasn’t got substantial American distribution I don’t know. I would work with Bassett any day on the strength of this film.”

True to the spirit and mood of Howard. Would that be the same Kane who was “Howard’s most reflective character” that somehow does the least reflecting of any Howard hero? Would that be the same “spirit and mood” of those Kane stories that were about “the end of empire” in a setting which marks the dawn of the colonial period and the rise of the British Empire, arguably the greatest empire in human history? I guess I’ll have to agree to disagree with Mr Moorcock on his opinions on Kane, which are certainly rather different from my own.

This talk of Howard adaptations being “true to the spirit and mood of Howard” is something that perplexes me somewhat.  How does one gauge the fidelity of a work to an author’s “spirit and mood”?  Those words seem frankly rather subjective, and reliant on one’s interpretation of the story. Some might read a Conan tale — say, “The Tower of the Elephant” — as a rollicking adventure with a little philosophy thrown in to ruminate over, or they could interpret it as a deeply philosophical fable about humanity, cosmic tragedy and eldritch vengeance, or they could read any number of things depending on what they bring to it.

It’s often stated that Conan the Barbarian is “true to the spirit and mood of Howard,” and again, it’s a very subjective matter, and it’s hard to actually disprove it given its subjectivity. If your definition of “the spirit and mood of Howard” is nothing more than a story involving fighting aplenty, strong sword-wielding heroes, nasty sorcerers and pretty damsels, then I guess I can’t argue that Conan the Barbarian — and Solomon Kane — are not true to that. However, in my mind, all those elements are simply not enough. Tons of Sword-and-Sorcery stories have actions, manly men, dastardly villains and nubile girls. If those are all you look for, then what separates Howard from the likes of De Camp, Carter, Nyberg, Jordan, Jakes, Eddings and Brooks? Thus, Conan the Barbarian is about as “true to the spirit and mood” of Thongor of Lemuria as it is to Robert E. Howard’s Conan. Probably more true.

At the risk of repeating myself yet again, what makes something “true to the spirit and mood of Howard” shouldn’t be the stuff that links him to countless other Sword-and-Sorcery authors, it should be what makes him different. The classic stuff that’s been around since The Dark Barbarian and beyond: the conflict between barbarism and civilization both on the social and individual level, heroism and defiance in the face of a bleak and unforgiving cosmos, the duality of man versus the ape, the cyclical nature of human cultural development and disintegration. This is basic, Howard-for-Dummies level material.

With Solomon Kane, there are many themes quintessential to the character that aren’t necessarily present in other Howard heroes: Kane’s struggling with the id-driven wanderlust which his ego justifies as a divine mission; the conflicting pagan and Puritan halves of his soul and how they affect his actions; his resolute and unshakable faith in God and his own abilities even in the face of eldritch horrors; the sense of utterly relentless drive to protect and rescue an innocent he barely knows. A percentage of the themes are present — that last one, at least, though since Kane is saving his own soul it loses a lot of its impact — but they are undermined by themes contradictory to the character in the film. As surely and heavily as the contradictory elements of Conan the Barbarian outweigh the complementary elements, so the elements that are Kane are suffocated by those that aren’t, especially those that are antithetical.

So, surprise surprise, I can’t say I agree totally with Mr Moorcock. Still, I won’t dispute that Purefoy was pretty damn good as Kane, and the film was very well shot and nicely edited. Finally, here’s an interesting thought from Bassett on Moorcock’s appraisal:

Of course I am hoping to be working with Michael Moorcock on something in the future. Exactly what, I’m not going to say just yet as there’s a long way to go before anything might happen. But today, if this is as good as it gets, count me a happy bunny.

Now this intrigues me. What “something” could this be?  Is it, possibly, the Untitled Elric Saga Project listed on the Internet Movie Database? If it is, that’s seriously cool.

Bassett is a massive fan of Moorcock’s, obviously, and it’s evident Moorcock was very impressed with Solomon Kane. This leads me to also wonder about a Moorcock project directed by Bassett at some point in the future. Given what I’ve seen of Bassett’s work, Moorcock strikes me as a much better fit than Howard: their heroes are similarly dark and gloomy, their narratives are severe, they both have a warts-and-all love/hate relationship with their Britishness. A Bassett-helmed Elric might be ambitious, but one must remember Peter Jackson had similarly humble origins before being handed the massive budget for The Lord of the Rings, as did John Favreau before Iron Man and Guillermo del Toro before Blade II. I can see the cult popularity of Deathwatch, Wilderness and even Solomon Kane being a good foundation, perhaps after a few more productions, for a bigger motion picture down the line.

I’d be all for it. I’d rather see Bassett working on a big-budget Stormbringer or even a non-Elric like The Knight of the Swords than see him continue his reinterpretation of Solomon Kane in the possible sequels, not just for critical reasons, but because I think it’d be a film I’d be enthusiastic to see. Moorcock is a great untapped source of literary adaptations outside one notable disaster, and with recent popularity of Tolkien and Howard in Tinseltown, the possibility of the Eternal Champion on the big screen seems ever closer. Another notable difference is if he has any funny ideas about the film, Moorcock will be able to correct him personally. Maybe they’d even get Moorcock to do the script himself.

A fan fulfilling a dream, working with one of his heroes. That’s a feelgood result.