The Dark Man, The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies No. 1 (1990)

Previous Installments:
Collecting REH: Fanzines and Chapbooks, Part 1
Collecting REH: Fanzines and Chapbooks, Part 2

As the Howard-mania of the 1970s began to die down by the following decade, the deluge of small press and fan publications slowed to a trickle. The venerable Amra ceased publication in the early 1980s, but REHupa remained, still producing its mailings on a regular basis. REH fanzines did not vanish altogether, though, and several new small presses continued to print Howard-material related through the 1980s and 1990s. By the turn of the millennium, Howard and his characters began to creep back into the public consciousness with the publishing of the Wandering Star limited editions and their mass-market Del Rey reprints, as well as a popular new Conan comic book series by Dark Horse. With this renewed interest in the Man from Cross Plains, new journals and publications began to appear and even a few once-defunct periodicals returned from the grave. This article will give a brief overview of some of these publications from the last three decades, but for a more comprehensive listing of Howard-related publications, I once again refer the reader to the Howard Works site, or Paul Herman’s print bibliography, The Neverending Hunt.

As mentioned above, several new small publishers cropped up in the 1980s. One of the first was Gibbelins Gazette Press, based out of Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1982 they released The Ghost Ocean, a collection of poetry edited by Rusty Burke and Vernon Clark. The Ghost Ocean had a print run of 360 numbered copies, the first 50 of which were hardbound. This was followed by The Ballad of King Geraint in 1989, featuring the long title poem. It had a print run of just 70 copies and is very difficult to find. These two Gibbelins Gazette publications run around $75-125 when they come for sale.

Another small press that appeared in the 1980s was Thomas Kovacs’ Dark Carnival Press. Although based out of Zurich, they produced several English-language items of Howard ephemera, beginning in 1983 with The Rhyme of the Three Slavers. This was a simple broadside sheet printing the title poem. 250 copies, numbered and signed by Kovacs were produced for the Raven Club. Another of these broadside sheets, Neolithic Love Song was produced in 1987 with only 36 copies printed, also signed and numbered.

In 1986, Dark Carnival printed two chapbooks, The Spears of Clontarf, containing the title story, and Writer of the Dark, a collection of stories and verse. The first printing of The Spears of Clontarf had an ivory cover, with 80 copies produced, plus an additional 20 numbered copies that were distributed at Howard Days that year. A second printing of 20 copies with a buff-colored cover and a copy of The Rhyme of the Three Slavers broadsheet bound-in was produced in 1993. There were 500 copies of Writer of the Dark produced — 200 have a reddish-orange cover with an illustration of a rat, 200 have a tan cover with no rat (80 of these were destroyed in a flood), and 100 remain as unbound sheets.

One of the more prolific small presses during this period was Robert Price’s Cryptic Publications, an HPL-oriented publisher based in North Carolina. Cryptic produced a series of chapbooks throughout the 1980’s containing a number of stories and poems, all with cover art by Stephen Fabian. The first was Bran Mak Morn: A Play and Others, published in 1983 with a print run of 425 copies (25 signed by Glenn Lord). This was followed by Two-Fisted Detective Stories in 1984, with a print run of 500 copies. Of these there were 50 numbered copies, 26 lettered copies, and 20 presentation copies, all signed by Price and Fabian. These two were followed by The Adventures of Lal Singh (1985), Pay Day (1986), Lewd Tales (1987), The Coming of El Borak (1987), North of the Khyber (1987), and The Sonora Kid (1988). The print runs for these last six are not stated. Most of these Cryptic booklets range in price from $25-75. Cryptic also published a good bit of Howard material in some of its periodicals such as Crypt of Cthulu, Risque Tales, and Revelations from Yuggoth – check Howard Works for a complete listing.

Two-Gun Raconteur No. 12

Another Lovecraft-oriented publisher, Necronomicon Press, who had printed two REH chapbooks in the 1970s, returned in 1989 with Robert E. Howard: Selected Letters 1923-1930, edited by Glenn Lord, Rusty Burke, and S.T. Joshi. The second volume, Robert E. Howard: Selected Letters 1931-1936 followed in 1991. Although, individual Howard letters had been published here and there, this two volume chapbook set was the first time most the important letters had been collected together, and it would remain so until the REH Foundation’s recent publishing of the Collected Letters. Copies of the Selected Letters sell for around $75-125 each.

Between 1990 and 1996, Necronomicon published Robert E. Howard’s Fight Magazine Nos. 1 through 4. These colorful chapbooks reprinted a number of Howard’s boxing yarns and today they sell for $20-40. In 1997, they published Ghor, Kin-Slayer, The Saga of Genseric’s Fifth-Born Son. This booklet was project begun in 1970s by Jonathon Bacon, in which a story fragment by Howard was completed by seventeen well-known fantasy writers, each taking a chapter, with the final project a full-length novel. Contributors to the project included Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner, Charles Saunders, A.E. Vogt, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and other notable authors. The collaborative work was originally going to be serialized in Fantasy Crossroads, until that periodical ceased publication in 1979. This chapbook is the first time it was published in its entirety, and it usually sells for around $20.

Some other notable chapbooks published in the last couple of decades include No Refuge, published by Rusty Burke in 1989. It contains a letter from Howard to Lovecraft and has a print run of 30 numbered copies. Also, Flight, published by Stolte in 1992 had only 20 copies produced. Prices vary widely on these last two as they are so scarce. A Man-Eating Jeopard was published in 1994 by Alla Ray Morris in Cross Plains, and reprinted in 1998 — it sells for $30-40. In 1999, Paul Herman published The Complete Yellow Jacket with a print run of 100 numbered copies and 8 lettered presentation copies (it was reprinted in 2001). It contains Howard’s contributions to the school newspaper of Howard Payne College.

Several Howard-related journals and amateur press publications began in the 1980s and 1990s and some are still being published today. From 1985 to 1988, Cryptic Publications produced three issues of Cromlech, The Journal of Robert E. Howard Criticism. This scholarly journal contained numerous articles and reviews, with contributions by Charles Hoffman, Robert Price, Marc Cerasini and others — issues sell for around $30 each.

Deluxe editions of the Cimmerian Vol. 3, No. 7 (2006)

Necronomicon Press began publishing its own REH academic journal, The Dark Man, The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies, in 1990. The early issues were edited by Rusty Burke and had contributions most of the top REH scholars of the time. Necronomicon ceased publication of the journal after issue number 4 in 1996, but it was revived in 2001 with issues 5 and 6, published by Mind’s Eye Hyper Publishing/Iron Harp and edited by Frank Coffman. With issue 7 (2004), publication of the journal was taken by Seele Brent publications. It continues to this day under the editorial leadership of Mark Hall and is one of the leading publications for Howard scholarship. The early issues of The Dark Man, sell for $20-30 and the more recent issues are available for around $10-15.

Two of the fanzines that were first published in the 1970s, Dennis McHaney’s Howard Review and Damon Sasser’s Two-Gun Raconteur, were revived in recent years with the renewed public interest in Howard. Howard Review resumed publication with issue 8 in 1988, though it was only distributed to REHupa members. Issue number 9 appeared in 1991 with a print run of around 60. Number 11 appeared in 1998, though it was cover-dated 1995. The last issues, 12 and 13, appeared in 2004 when publication was once again ceased. It is not clear what happened with the tenth issue, unless one of McHaney’s other publications was intended to be number 10.

Damon Sasser’s Two-Gun Raconteur resumed publication with issue number 5 in 2003. It has been in continuous publication ever since, with the last issue, number 13 being released last year. Two-Gun Raconteur contains regular contributions from Sasser, Morgan Holmes, Brian Leno, Danny Street and others. Issues of the revived TGR sell for around $20.

Another new publication that has emerged in recent years is Joe Marek’s The New Howard Reader. Beginning with issue 1 in 1998, The New Howard Reader contains numerous hard-to-find stories, poems, and letters by Howard. They all have very small print runs and usually run $50-75 each. Another recent REH journal was of course the print version of The Cimmerian. Published bi-monthly by Leo Grin from 2004 to 2008 (and monthly in 2006 in honor of Howard’s centennial), The Cimmerian contained contributions from some of today’s best-known REH scholars. Each issue had print run of 225 numbered copies, of which the first 75 were a deluxe edition. In 2009, Grin destroyed all the remaining unsold copies, making the journal even more scarce. Copies of deluxe edition issues usually sell for around $30 and regular editions for around $20.