Previous Posts In This Series:

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

This writer’s previous post on Uther (as REH, perhaps, envisioned him) – born Eutherius, possibly in Orleans, and a witness at the age of eleven to the crucial Battle of Chalons against Attila’s Huns — dealt with his background, his world, and the situation in which he found himself as a young man. The Huns were no longer a menace, but the Franks to the north, Visigoths to the south and wild Saxon pirates along the western coasts, made the word “secure” a joke. Aegidius was the ruler of the “Roman Kingdom” north of the river Loire, centred on Soissons, and he needed help badly. It came to him from an unexpected direction.

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REH had his individual ideas on most subjects, and expressed them with vehemence. Hearing of George Bernard Shaw’s proposed visit to the U.S.A., he wrote, “Very condescending of him. He’s probably a genius. He’s also a poseur, an egomaniac, and a jackass.” Writing about King Arthur, as discussed by Cormac Mac Art and the Dane Wulfhere, Howard had his own ideas on that subject too.

REH’s Arthur is “a shock-headed savage with a love for battle.” Cormac goes so far as to tell Wulfhere, “One of your Danes might seem a gentlewoman beside him … he has a hungry sword! It’s little gain we reivers from Erin have gotten on his coasts!”

Since Cormac touches his scars reminiscently as he says this, it’s reasonable to think that some of those scars were given to him by Arthur or Arthur’s followers when Cormac was a chief of Gaelic reivers. And since Wulfhere responds, “Would I could cross steel with him,” he apparently never has, so it follows that Cormac hasn’t encountered Arthur again in all the time he’s been sailing with Wulfhere.

This Arthur, who claims the name or title Pendragon, in fact seems to be an adventurer out of nowhere with no known, or anyway mentionable, parentage. Cormac says to Wulfhere (in the fragment, “The Temple of Abomination“), “Pendragon — ha! He’s no more Uther Pendragon’s son than you are. Uther was a black-bearded madman — more Roman than Briton and more Gaul than Roman. Arthur is as fair as Eric there. And he’s pure Celt — a waif from one of the wild western tribes that never bowed to Rome.”

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To the casual eye, Robert E. Howard was a writer of two-fisted, macho fiction where women were relegated to the role of gossamer-veiled damsels requiring rescue and some off-stage shagging from his mighty-thewed heroes.

There are such women in Howard’s stories, of course, particularly in the weaker Conan tales. But Howard drew some extraordinarily vivid female characters, among them the immortal Belît, Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, Red Sonya and Agnes de Chastillon (Dark Agnes, Sword Woman).

These women were able to stand and fight among men, indeed insisted on being treated as equals by their male counterparts, thus winning their admiration. Coming from a pulp writer and amateur boxer from 1930s Texas, such proto-feminist characters must come as a shock to the uninitiated.

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Or, “A Pedantic Nitpicker Strikes Again.”

BOOM! Studios brings you an epic story by CONAN creator Robert E. Howard published in comic book form for the first time ever!

His name is Cormac FitzGeoffrey, and he has no master. As a wandering warrior born and bred on the battlefield, Cormac is a renowned fighter, a ruthless adversary, and a man who is no stranger to the ways of bloodshed and violence. Cormac counts his friends on one hand, so when he learns that his most recent liege has been murdered, nothing will stop his quest for revenge. By oath, a path of vengence will be marked by the blood of his enemies. Sword swinging, beserker action only the way Robert E. Howard and BOOM! Studios could deliver. Featuring covers by fan-favorite THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN artist Joe Jusko and SLAINE artist Karl Richardson!

A month after the initial news broke of Cormac Fitzgeoffrey’s comic debut, Comic Book Resources has nine pages from the comic online. Since the Hiberno-Norman terminator is one of my favourite creations, I was eager to feast my eyes on what BOOM! Studios brought to the table. Now, I have a few problems with what I’ve seen so far, but in comparison to certain other comics claiming to be inspired by Howard, it’s like Michael Alan Nelson was channeling REH himself.

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REH’s stories and fragments that feature Gaelic pirate Cormac Mac Art are set in the mid-to-late fifth century A.D., when the Saxons were settling in Britain. It’s the time of Hengist, King Arthur and Vortigern, all of whom are mentioned, as is Uther Pendragon. The stories also turn on the presence of Vikings, Danish Vikings at that.

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Friend of The Cimmerian G.W. Thomas is publishing Masters of Adventure, a public domain anthology. It is fully illustrated by M. D. Jackson and the multi-talented Mr. Thomas himself.

The title isn’t exaggerated since the line-up is simply incredible, as you can see for yourselves in the table of contents. I think that ‘Grandmasters of Adventure’ would not have been a too strong a superlative.

“Ms. Found in a Bottle” by Edgar Allan Poe
“Smith and the Pharaohs” by H. Rider Haggard
“The Brazilian Cat” by A. Conan Doyle
“The Grove of Astaroth” by John Buchan
“Tarzan Rescues the Moon” by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“A Thousand Deaths” by Jack London
“A Tropical Horror” by William Hope Hodgson
“The Breath of Allah” by Sax Rohmer
“The People of the Pit” by A. Merritt
“Wings in the Night” by Robert E. Howard

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The Robert E. Howard Foundation has just announced a new volume by Rob and Bob Roehm on Brownwood during the ’20s and ’30s which looks at Two-Gun Bob’s relationship with this Texan town. It is entitled The Brownwood Connection: A Guide for Robert E. Howard Fans.

Robert E. Howard and his mother moved to Brownwood in the fall of 1922. He couldn’t complete the eleventh grade to qualify for college admission at the Cross Plains school (it stopped at tenth grade in CP back then). Brownwood is also the town where Howard met his friends Truett Vinson and Tevis Clyde Smith. Howard was first published at Brownwood High School in The Tattler, the school’s paper.

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Previous Posts In This Series

1.   Donn Othna in “The King’s Service”

2.   Donn Othna: From Chalons to the Gulf of Cambay

3.    The Foreign Rajah of Nagdragore

4.    REH’s Lost Kingdom of Nagdragore

Caveat: This is supposition and fancy, embroidering on a fragment of Robert E. Howard’s.

When Donn Othna and his Saxon captors sail storm-driven and battered into the harbour of Nagdragore on the Gulf of Cambay, after a voyage for which epic is an understatement, the Briton’s sword hums faintly. Donn Othna explains that it sings because it’s coming home. “It was here that my sword was born from furnace and forge and wizard’s hammer, dim ages ago. It was once a great saber belonging to a mighty Eastern emperor … ”

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Previous Posts In This Series:

1.   Donn Othna in “The King’s Service”

2.   Donn Othna: From Chalons to the Gulf of Cambay

Constantius, the adventurer who has made himself a king on the Gulf of Cambay in REH’s fragment “The King’s Service“, is the second major character after the Briton Donn Othna. Constantius is highly interesting, but his antecedents are harder to work out than Donn Othna’s. He’s clever, even brilliant, ambitious, and skilled at playing his opponents against each other and exploiting their weaknesses. (He admits with candour that while this is effective at keeping him in power, it’s hurtful to the kingdom.) Despite his own failings and flaws, he has intense personal magnetism, a power of fascination, even towards men — but it’s something women can’t withstand to save themselves.  He’s doubtless bragging when he says any woman is like wax in his hands; still, the results are impressive.

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Previous Posts In This Series:

1.  Donn Othna in “The King’s Service”

2.  Donn Othna: From Chalons to the Gulf of Cambay

3.  The Foreign Rajah of Nagdragore

Robert E. Howard was fascinated by the unexplored back alleys, byways and more obscure shadows of history. Even his mere fragments and outlines are filled with tantalizing hints and throwaway ideas that would be good for an entire series. I can imagine how he’d love the advances in archaeology and historical knowledge that have been made since the 1930s. 

Take his fragment, “The King’s Service.”  The main characters, the fighting Brythonic Celt, Donn Othna, and the flawed-but-magnetic adventurer-become-rajah, Constantius, are worth a detailed article each. So is the background, Howard’s invented Ruritania-in-India, the realm of Nagdragore.

Back in the 1930s, lucky Robert Howard could simply say, “The glories of Nagdragore have been forgotten for a thousand years. Not even in the misty gulf of Hindu legend where a hundred lost dynasties sleep unheeded, does any hint of that vanished realm linger. Nagdragore is one with a thousand nameless ruins … ”

These days people may ask a bit more. We tend to wonder, when we’re not being swept along by Howard’s prose, just where Nagdragore might have been. If it existed. Under another name, maybe. And REH does give some specific indications.

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