A milestone in support of the Legacy of Robert E. Howard happened recently within the pages of Dark Horse Comics’ Conan the Cimmerian title. Issue #9 marks the one hundredth appearance of  the fantastic comic strip THE ADVENTURES OF TWO-GUN BOB by Jim & Ruth Keegan.

In all of Dark Horse’s Robert E. Howard inspired comic books (Conan and all its various offshoot books, Solomon Kane, Kull, Pigeons from Hell, etc.), Jim & Ruth’s absolutely brilliant half-page comic strip detailing the life of REH has been present. Each strip uses either the words of Robert E. Howard as its text, or the words of people who actually knew REH, like Novalyne Price Ellis or Tevis Clyde Smith, as the basis for the mini-story line.

When Jim & Ruth combine their wonderful cartooning skills with the actual words of REH, the result is today’s most important pop culture presentation of the man who was Robert E. Howard. I’ve said this before, and I will continue to sing the praises of 2GB. The service and entertainment that Jim & Ruth provide all of Howard fandom with Two-Gun Bob cannot be adequately measured.

If you have not picked up a Dark Horse comic with THE ADVENTURES OF TWO-GUN BOB, shame on you! Jim & Ruth Keegan have indebted all of us with their marvelous talent, and as fans of REH, we all need to support this important work that spreads the Gospel According to , well - Two-Gun Bob!

Indy sez Check It Out!

I’m going to continue to stick to my guns here regarding the 21st Century as being the very best time ever to be a fan of Robert E. Howard. The soon-to-be-done year of 2008 was yet another productive one in furthering the Legacy of REH. Here’s a bit of an opinionated re-hash of how the year went for Ol’ Two-Gun, and no doubt I’ll be missing something, so let me know and I’ll revise.

First, in light of the forum I am presently using, the two main REH internet blogs continued on, here and over at The Cimmerian. Lots of meat and interesting posts, and I’m giving shout-outs to the main posters, Morgan Holmes and Steve Tompkins. Both just educated and entertained the hell out of me. The paper versions of both REHupa and The Cimmerian steamed ahead; Leo’s been going great guns for five years now, and REHupa‘s just started their 37th year of continuous production.

Damon Sasser continued his postings over at the REH:Two-Gun Raconteur site, and a couple of times scooped all of us. Bill Thom maintains the info-packed site over at HowardWorks, the Conan.com forums continue to have lots of posts, and even rehinnercircle remained strong until just this month. The Robert E. Howard Foundation website recently got a kick-ass new look, thanks to Leo Grin and Rob Roehm. And Frank Coffman is reviving his electronic journal apa REHEAPA as well.

Howard Publishing carried on in fine form. With the addition of the ninth volume, The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard to Del Rey’s ever-growing REH library, REH is now easily found in major bookstores. This has always been a major sticking point with me, and to look in any brick and mortar bookstore now, anyone can see at least a half a row of majestic Robert E. Howard BOOKS. Fan-freakin’-tastic!  (One book scheduled for 2009 is The Desert Adventures – all right!) And found next to the Del Reys are the real paperback-sized Cosmos Publishing editions, in a five book series of Howard stories selected from the ten book Wildside series of PD Howard from Weird Tales. Howard books for eight bucks! Woo hoo! And, the Wildside series still shows up in some bookstores, as do the Bison editions.

The other major Howard publishing is coming from the REH Foundation Press: Vol. Three of The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard is now out, completing this massive project. Howard scholarship is at new heights, thanks in large part to making his letters available. If you want to know Howard, read his letters. Look for the Complete Poetry in 2009. Subterranean Press stepped up to carry on in the tradition of Wandering Star by offering deluxe editions of Howard books. Legal stuff prevented them from doing the third CONAN volume, so they did a bang-up job with KULL. Paul Herman updated THE NEVERENDING HUNT in what will be a neverending project, Crom willing!

Semi-pro publishing slowed up a bit in 2008. The Cimmerian kept up its bi-monthly schedule and continued to be the premiere REH journal around. But unfortunately, the wonderful REH:Two-Gun Raconteur only appeared once (due in part to Hurricane Ike smashing Damon Sasser’s house!) Jim Van Hise got back on track with Swords & Fantasy, but it’s got to be difficult doing labors of love in these trying economic times. Sigh. The Dark Man was sadly again too dark, and one can only hope we’ll see this fine scholarly Howard journal again.

Craziness seemed to take over some of Howard publishing this year. A self-proclaimed Howard scholar named Francis DiPietro brought out a POD Howard biography called The Supreme Moment. This was a hodge-podge collection of words cobbled together from various already-written Howard biographies and on-line musings about Ol’ Two-Gun, typed out slap-dash - along with a complete reprint of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Silver Eel (huh?) – with wild-ass Howard-was-a-homo theories thrown in for good measure. America – land of free speech – love it or don’t read it! Yikes! Mr. DiPietro also tried his hand at Howard publishing, bringing out two collections of Howard stories that he just rewrote a wee bit to string them together. If you blinked you missed ‘em, because Paradox Entertainment thankfully put the ki-bosh on that nonsense! Dodo Press, some goofy UK POD place, decided to cash in on the Howard boom for a bit, providing 50+ REH “books”, available through Amazon, consisting of two or three Howard stories slapped between covers of the most ridiculous art ever stolen, for the ridiculous price of $10! That shit “mysteriously” vanished as well. Mercenary bastards!

The book that had most of the hard-core up in arms this year actually had pure Robert E. Howard Conan stories in it. It was the introduction to this book that had a number of us ready to tar & feather ol’ Arnie Fenner, he of the 1970′s Howard fanzine boom infamy. “and their memory was a bitter tree”- Queen of the Black Coast and Others is an oddly-titled collection of eight Conan stories (public domain of course) placed in a book with some of the Frank Frazetta paintings and a new cover by Brom. Ok, while we really didn’t need a new Conan book – the stories are all out there – why did Fenner have to sound like such a putz in his introduction, demeaning the very writer of the book he’s trying to sell you? Plus, the reproduction on the Frazetta paintings was horrible, and this from a guy who does those nice Spectrum art books. We’re all still scratching our heads and grousing about this one…

On the other publishing front, Dark Horse Comics is continuing full-tilt on their Howard library of titles. They halted their Conan comic at issue #50(?) then started it up again at #1 as Conan the Cimmerian. 2008 proved to be a good year for REH volume in the comics, as DH also brought out SOLOMON KANE and KULL in an ongoing limited series. Horror writer Joe Lansdale wrote a sequel (huh?) to Howard’s magnificent Pigeons from Hell and brought that out in comic form, forgetting to tell me that it wasn’t an adaptation of Howard’s story, but that it was his take on how the story should be updated. WHATever…!!!!!! I was going to say that’s what I get for reading comic books (and I should mention that all of these comics are very boringly written…), but I’ll tell you the real reason I buy the Dark Horse REH comics:

THE ADVENTURES OF TWO-GUN BOB by Jim & Ruth Keegan. With the exception of the actual stories written by Robert E. Howard, The Adventures of Two-Gun Bob is the most important bit of REH in Pop Culture ever printed. Jim And Ruth have their marvelous continuing comic strip printed in every edition of a Howard-based comic from Dark Horse, and there is nothing else available in print that reaches more people and preaches the gospel of REH better, and nothing that humanizes him better to hundreds of thousands of people who might not take the opportunity to learn about REH. It is absolutely brilliant.

Movies based on Robert E. Howard characters are becoming a reality. The Solomon Kane movie is in post-production, but I just read recently it might get pushed back to Labor Day for a release. The Conan movie is also underway with a complete script, and Fred Malmberg of Paradox Entertainment has said a director may be named in January, with production set to begin in June. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Funcom’s AGE OF CONAN MMOG computer/X-Box/etc. game continues, but I know zero about it. It professes to portray Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age in great detail, but I’ve always found the greatest Howard details are the ones in my ever-greying noggin. There are also a pile of REH audio CD’s available on Ebay of which I know nothing – again, I’ve got my own versions rattling around upstairs here.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the up close and personal Robert E. Howard events that took place in 2008. We had a Birthday Bash at his House back in January, and Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains in June was another resounding success. As they’ll both be repeated in ’09, y’all come! The fine folks of Cross Plains honored Joan McCowen earlier this month, the fine lady who was instrumental in getting Howard Days (and lot of what we’re doing here) going back in 1986. We can never thank her enough.

But, as this is MY blog, I CAN thank all of you for helping to keep the lamp lit for the one and only Robert E. Howard, a feller in Texas who wrote some pretty damn good stories a few years ago, and left them for you and me to read and talk about and have some fine fellowship over. Shall we?

Happy 2009, y’all.

We are alerted by Paul McNamee, over on the REH Forum, to an article in the Telegraph, “Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know,” in which it is reported that the newly elected President “collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics”!  Will the mighty Cimmerian find a place in the White House library?

OK, I’ve been going around and around tonight with Joe Lansdale. He’s really pissed at me, and with me being “The Friendly REHupan”, I can’t really put up with myself being mean or having someone think I am, so I’ve spent the last hour doing some damage control with personal e-mails with him. I hope it works, but this should be the last I’ll say about Dark Horse’s Pigeons from Hell. I hope.

Anyway, Joe explained to me that his version of PFH is a sequel to Howard’s story. That’s how he wrote it, and that’s how he explained it to me. And y’know what? He’s right – It totally works. I sometimes need things spelled out for me, and this time it all clicked. Joe Lansdale’s version of Pigeons from Hell, written as a sequel, makes total sense. He borrowed little bits from Howard’s original story, and if I back away from being a Howard hard-ass for a bit, I can appreciate this work. And I do.

While I wish this “sequel” business had been explained either on the cover or somewhere within the comic, I’m not above backtracking and saying this comic got a lot better for me. Sorry, Joe.

So I won’t try to promote – or demote- this comic as being a Howard story, because it’s really not. But as a sequel, with Howardian elements, I’m good to go.

So I will.

 

Ouch.

Got a personal e-mail from Joe Lansdale his own self, and he thinks I’ve gone over into personal insult with my comments about Dark Horse’s PIGEONS FROM HELL adaptation, which Joe Lansdale wrote. (See below).

Well, I don’t believe that I did insult him personally, and we could go ’round and ’round about that forever, so I’ll just end my postings about the Pigeons from Hell comic with what I wrote to him:

Hi Joe:

While I can’t and won’t apologize for what I think of Dark Horse’s Pigeons from Hell, and I obviously don’t understand what you are trying to do with Howard’s story, I can apologize to you if I have offended you personally.

That was not my intent at all, and I will say I’m truly sorry if my words have hurt you.

Well, it’s not gonna get any better, this abomination of a comic book re-telling of a Robert E. Howard story. Uh, sorry, did I say “re-telling”? I meant to say re-tarding.

Props to Brian Leno for keeping us up to date with a short review of the third installment of Dark Horse’s PIGEONS FROM HELL four-issue run of Joe Lansdale’s meatgrinding of Howard’s classic horror story. Hard-core Howardist that Mr. Leno is, he reports being “actually stunned” at how far from Howard’s story this comic adaptation has gotten under the heavy handedness of Mr. Lansdale.

I’m told that Mr. Lansdale is a big-time horror writer himself. Having no direct experience with reading anything he’s written (except his really REALLY bad stint on the Dark Horse CONAN comic), I’ll have to let that slide. All I know is that he’s totally butchered Howard’s story for this comic, and states it’s his homage to Ol’ Two-Gun. Sheesh. The Dark Horse gang has been pretty good about the props they’ve given Robert E. Howard over the last few years, but they have totally screwed the pooch on this one.

But hey, on a lighter note, I had the opportunity to chat with Pigeons from What the Hell’s artist Nathan Fox at the Wizard World Chicago ComicCon this past Saturday. He even sketched the above doodle (a giant monster eating pigeons???) in the copy I decided to pick up, and I do like stuff like that. I gave him some of my Howard credentials and told him, ‘Y’know this story is nothing like Howard’s Pigeons from Hell’. I should’ve asked him if he’d ever read REH’s original, but instead I complimented him on the good job I think he did with what he was presented – except for the “ghosts”. He said those weren’t ghosts, but transparent entities of some sort, and said he had some trouble making those work. I told him he’d be great at a straight up adapatation of Howard’s original story, where there were no “ghosts”. Duh.

Like so many of us, I’m a lot meaner through a faceless medium like a blog or message board than I am in person. Just as long as I never meet Joe Lansdale.

Let me start out by saying I would have bought these comics anyway, because they each contain another entry in Jim and Ruth Keegan’s magnificent The Adventures of Two-Gun Bob. That being said, Dan Rosenfelt of Paradox Entertainment showed up at Howard Days in Cross Plains with a box full of the Dark Horse Comics’ “adaptation” of Robert E. Howard’s PIGEONS FROM HELL, numbers 1 & 2 of the four issue “adaptation”.

This “adaptation” of Howard’s story, which Stephen King has called one of the greatest horror stories of the 20th Century, was penned by Joe R. Lansdale. Well, maybe “penned” is not an accurate term — more like: carved it with a dull knife from the body of Howard’s original tale, and then reassembled it in a bloody meat-loaf shaped like a turd. (Over on the rehinnercircle board, Brian Leno calls this comic “excrement”, so I can’t take total credit for comparing it to crap.) But I can say that it is unbelievable what has been done to this story, as it is UNRECOGNIZABLE as Robert E. Howard’s PIGEONS FROM HELL. “Adaptation” indeed!

Mr. Lansdale says, in an afterword in #1: “…the thought was it might be nice to update it a bit, introduce new readers to the story, and perhaps lead them to the original tale and all things Howard.” Wait, it gets worse: “…I was doing an adaptation of Howard’s story, not Howard’s story literally”. Huh?! “Like it or not, I let Landsdale slip in.” Well, no, you let Lansdale totally destroy and then re-write Howard’s story, adding the overworked Hollywood cliche element of Kids Find a Deserted House in the Swamp and Get Killed One by One by Sub-human Monsters. Plus, he throws in “ghosts” that look like my 8 year-old granddaughter drew them! And, he adds in a bunch of other crap, like hip dialogue and cell phones (!) to pad the story out for what will be four comics’ worth of torture, at least for this ol’ Howard Purist.

Maybe not so oddly enough, I actually like the non-ghost parts of Nathan Fox’s artwork. Nice brushwork throughout, even if there’s a slight Renn & Stimpy feel to the depictions of the five (!) characters who come to the house. Drawings of the house and swamp and pigeons are excellent. The guy’s a good cartoonist, and I think his work would look great in a straight adaptation of this story.

So, reluctantly, I’ll buy the final two installments of this comic, flip through it, shake my head at what Mr. Lansdale thinks is a “love letter to one of my formative writers”, and go straight to Two-Gun Bob. That’s the only reason to buy this comic.