Classic Covers: Frank Frazetta’s Lancer/Ace Conans
Second only to Robert E. Howard in importance in the development of the perception of Conan, Frank Frazetta’s explosively elemental take on the Cimmerian achieved instant cultural cache and has become the defining image not only of Howard’s most famous creation, but of the barbaric hinterlands of fantasy fiction itself. Frazetta’s frenzied depictions of havoc and battle, his iron-muscled killers taut with violent...
My Favorite Solomon Kane Tale: “Wings in the Night”
My Favorite Solomon Kane Tale: “Wings in the Night” by Robert E. Howard by Fletcher Vredenburgh “Wings in the Night” (1932), is one of Solomon Kane’s, Robert E. Howard’s swashbuckling Puritan, African adventures. In the face of darkness, he sees himself as Satan’s implacable foe. Kane’s a dour man, dedicated wholly to defeating evil and meting out justice. In two separate stories, he spends years hunting for the killers of...
Classic Covers: The Savage Sword of Conan
How do you skirt a restrictive comics code and make visual Conan stories with the requisite blood-pumping grittiness that is integral to Howard’s adventures? You make a magazine of course! Already popular in his initial comic book incarnation of Conan the Barbarian, Marvel introduced the more adult-oriented The Savage Sword of Conan in 1974, quickly achieving a wide circulation and, thanks to writer and editor Roy Thomas’...
Films of High Adventure: Robert E. Howard
The Films of High Adventure series examines the impact that the authors of Appendix N have had on the world at large. Be sure to check out the entire series, as we present the following article in celebration of the birthday of Robert E. Howard. Films of High Adventure: Robert E Howard by Bob Brinkman The wonderful thing about Appendix N is that the authors’ work often leapt off the page and into other mediums – such as film...
The Best Of The Conan Pastiche Novels
The Best Of The Conan Pastiche Novels by Howard Andrew Jones If I didn’t love the writing of Robert E. Howard I would probably never have bothered with any Conan pastiche. As a matter of fact, those Conan novels on store shelves in the ’70s and ’80s made me so skeptical of Conan that I didn’t try Robert E. Howard’s fiction until years later. I wrongly assumed that because the series looked cheap and...
Adventures in Fiction: Robert E. Howard
Our Appendix N Archeology and Adventures in Fiction series are meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page. There may not be a more iconic character in fantasy—and particularly sword and sorcery—fiction than Conan the Barbarian. From...
Where to Start With Robert E. Howard
Where to Start With Robert E. Howard by Bill Ward Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) was a giant and a father to giants, his literary creations so potent that they have informed popular culture and permeated mass consciousness down to the present day. But their very ubiquity can obscure and deceive – if two people strike up a conversation about Conan, are they actually talking about the same Conan? What’s going on with all of these...
Some of My Favorite Sword-and-Sorcery Monsters
Some of My Favorite Sword-and-Sorcery Monsters by Bill Ward Where would hulking barbarians and fantastic swordsmen be without monsters to pit their steel against? Sword-and-sorcery, that delicious combination of adventure fiction and supernatural horror, is as famed for its weird foes as it is for its self-reliant protagonists. And while it isn’t locked into strict adherence to formula, every writer of sword-and-sorcery since...
Ten Sword-and-Sorcery Tales For the Haunting Season
Ten Sword-and-Sorcery Tales For the Haunting Season by Brian Murphy On a blog such as this, I doubt I’m alone in my irrational love of Halloween, a holiday for me that, more than Thanksgiving or Christmas, evokes a Ray Bradbury-like level of nostalgia and anticipation. Here in New England, I find that as the leaves begin to turn and October shadows lengthen, so too do my thoughts drift from my natural sword-and-sorcery bent toward the...
Back The Robert E. Howard Art Chronology Kickstarter!
This Massive Four Volume Set Collects the Visual History of Robert E. Howard’s Work Robert E. Howard’s popular legacy and cultural cache is as much about the electrifying images associated with his fiction as it is with Howard’s two-fisted propulsive prose. The Robert E. Howard Art Chronology currently on Kickstarter tells the story of Howard’s fiction as it has been depicted and translated into visual art from...
Where to Start With American Fantasy Series
Where to Start With American Fantasy Series by Bill Ward While J.R.R. Tolkien may be the most famous and ubiquitous of fantasy writers, introducing generations of readers the world over to fantasy fiction through The Hobbit and influencing the way such stories are forever told with his masterwork, The Lord of the Rings, American letters has perhaps contributed more profoundly to the development of the modern secondary world fantasy...
Bran Mak Morn, The Doomed King
Bran Mak Morn, The Doomed King by Bill Ward Most new readers approach the work of Robert E. Howard from the perspective of his most famous creation, Conan. As is only natural, they tend to look at Howard’s other heroes in terms of their relation to the Cimmerian, and look for those elements that later make their way into the much more famous stories of the Hyborian age. Kull is perhaps the most well known ancestor of Conan for, after...
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