I was checking on new releases and noticed that Dark Horse Comics released a trade edition collecting all five issues of Conan and the Songs of the Dead last month. I bought this series last year when it came out. I normally don’t buy comic books. The last that I ever bought were the Joe R. Lansdale/Tim Truman Jonah Hex comics over 10 years ago which I really enjoyed. The idea of Joe R. Lansdale writing a Conan story, even as a comic was intriguing to me. I used to read a lot of Joe R. Lansdale years ago but got away from him as reading time dried up. So I eagerly picked up the first issue last July. By the end of the second issue, I had an uneasy feeling that this was not going to be a fine moment. I have ended up writing a 1200 word review of the comic series for the upcoming issue of Damon Sasser’s Two Gun Raconteur in which I go into detail on what I thought was wrong. Let me just say here that it looks like Joe Lansdale watched the movies Conan the Destroyer and The Mummy Returns and then sat down and wrote the script for the comic book.

A few weeks back, I attended the Windy City Pulp & Paperback Show where I met up with a friend of mine. The comic book came up in conversation and he did not like it at all either. The irony is he has one published Conan pastiche novel to his credit and is easier on non-Howard penned Conan stories than I am. The scatological humor was totally out of place and did a lot to ruin it for him. I have been asking around a little and so far I have not found one person who liked this five part comic book series.

This has taught me a lesson. Just because a writer may be good in one field does not mean he or she will transfer to another genre well. Lansdale has mentioned his influences as the California writers such as Bradbury, Matheson, and Beaumont. Robert E. Howard just is not part of his writer’s genetic make up. Lansdale is more interested in showing irony with touches of black humor than telling an adventure story. Sword and sorcery has requirements in order to bring it off and not all writers are up to it. This was not a good comic series. Did anyone like it?

There is a reprint of a book that may be of interest to fans of Robert E. Howard. Last year, Dover Publications brought out an inexpensive edition of The Prose Edda: Tales from Norse Mythology by Snorri Sturluson. What makes this book of interest is the translator: Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, PhD. Who the hell is Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur you ask? Brodeur (1888-1971) was an instructor in English Philology in the University of California. He wrote books such as The Art of Beowulf, Arthur: Dux Bellorum, and The Pageant of Civilization. Brodeur also wrote fiction for two magazines: Adventure and Argosy-All Story Weekly. In those magazines he wrote a number of stories set in Medieval and even ancient times such as “In the Grip of the Minotaur” (Proto-Vikings vs. Minoan Crete) and “He Rules Who Can” (Harald Hardrede in the Varangian Guard). Brodeur is a kind of proto-Tolkien being a philologist turned fiction writer. Brodeur even turned the Finn & Hengist story from the Germanic folkwandering period into a story for Adventure (“The Honor of a King”). Tolkien later tinkered with that fragment. Brodeur even joins the ranks of proto-sword and sorcery writers as his retelling of the Volsung Saga (“Vengeance”) has Odin making an appearance, probably the first and last time that happened in the pages of Adventure.

The Robert E. Howard bookshelf lists two issues of Adventure containing Brodeur stories: the March 10, 1922 issues contains “Red Night,” and May 20, 1922 contains “For the Crown.” The circumstantial evidence is familiarity with Brodeur though he is never mentioned in any letter by Howard. It is hard to imagine Howard not reading Brodeur as he wrote stories about the Vikings, Normans in Sicily, and a series about a troubadour swordsman in 12th Century southern France. Brodeur’s medieval Aquitaine and Provence remind me a lot of Howard’s Aquilonia.

Brodeur’s translation of the Prose Edda goes back to 1916 for the American-Scandinavian Foundation. There were several printings, I have the fourth from 1946. For years this would have been the translation available to people including REH. There is no mention by him of reading the Eddas, though he does mention Norse sagas to H. P. Lovecraft in a letter from 1931. If he had read the Eddas, it would have been Brodeur’s translation. So for only $8.95 you can have a nice edition of an important book and Dover (www.doverpublications.com) has a special deal if you order this book with their edition of the translation of The Poetic Edda.

Rusty adds: REH mentions Sturlason’s Heimskringla to Lovecraft in a 1935 letter. See the entry for Sturlason in the Bookshelf.

Wow, I hadn’t intended this much time to elapse between blog posts! A combination of working on taxes in March, writing an essay for a symposium for the April issue of The Cimmerian, and then following up with something for the next issue of Two Gun Raconteur ate up two and a half months.

Anyway, to get back to the story begun in Part 1: Around 1985, there was an extinction event for sword and sorcery fiction. Things just dried up — other sorts of fantasy were taking over. Remember all those cheesy fantasy novels based on Irish mythology from that time? The Del Rey formula fantasy characterized by the likes of Terry Brooks, Stephen R. Donaldson, and David Eddings was dominant. There were some Robert E. Howard reprints at the time by Ace. They had small print runs and spotty distribution. Luckily at this time, Cryptic Publications under Robert M. Price was steadily producing chapbooks bringing out never before published stories of Robert E. Howard. I bought them all with the exception of Bran Mak Morn: A Play and Others which was already out of print. In the late 80s, Karl Edward Wagner was editing the Echoes of Valor anthologies for Tor. Wagner was bringing out pulp era sword and sorcery loaded with information in the introductions. A mutual friend (the late Virgil Utter) told Wagner about my interest in pulp sword and sorcery and Wagner sent me a post card. In that post card, Wagner told me he planned a fifth and sixth volume if the first three volumes sold well enough.

I decided to take a job in 1990 in Corsicana, TX. I had lived in the Rust Belt growing up on northwestern Pennsylvania and had gone to school in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and worked in Allen Park, Michigan. I wanted a change of scenery. Within a few weeks of moving to Texas, I drove over to Cross Plains one Saturday in August, 1990. A kind resident there got me in touch with Billie Ruth Loving and Margaret McNeel. They showed me the Howard House and property. I then drove down to Brownwood to pay my respects at REH’s final resting place. A couple of months later, I received a note from Project Pride that some members of REHUPA where going to be at the house. This was late October just before Halloween. There was a little cookout at the Howard House and I met Rusty Burke, Bo Cribbs, Patrice Louinet, and Lionel Lomdiuex. Rusty told me about REHUPA and how I should join. A few months later, I received a spec copy from Bill Cavalier. I was in contact with Bo Cribbs having bought a fair number of pulps from him (Planet Stories for the most part).

In 1992, I moved back to Pennsylvania. I joined REHUPA right at the 20 year anniversary. From then on, I was plugged into all things Robert E. Howard. Mailings had letters from L. Sprague de Camp, information from Glenn Lord, and the various zines by many characters. In Summer 1993, I met Bill Cavalier, Tim Arney, Marco Praete, and Vern Clark (the Eric Cartman of Howard fandom).

The 1990s were not a great period for Howard publishing. The Tor Conan pastiche novels were ubiquitous while Robert E. Howard was absent. Baen did have the Robert E. Howard Library which had horrible Ken Kelly covers and those funky silver spines. The books had poor distribution and seemed to do little in building interest in Howard. It was a case of the same old same old. During this time, I became the Official Editor of REHUPA. It was a pain to tell the truth collating the mailings every 2 months. Something interesting happened — the internet. More and more of us were getting online. Then there was a Robert E. Howard discussion group at the old xenite.org. Ed Waterman set up some information on REHUPA online. Jim Van Hise’s book, The Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard included my address for people who were interested. All of a sudden, I was getting inquiries from people on how to get on the Conan T.V. show, how to get their Conan pastiche novel published etc. This burned me out and in 1999 I passed things back to Bill Cavalier as O.E.

Things began to turn in the year 2000. A new small press, Wandering Star, was promising a new series of Robert E. Howard hardback books lavishly illustrated. Members of REHUPA were privy to these plans as Marcelo Anciano would send examples of art by Gary Gianni for the Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn volumes. Wandering Star sparked a new interest in Robert E. Howard. Before long, you had the Wildside books, Girasol Collectibles, the Del Rey trade paperbacks, Bison Books collections all making Robert E. Howard available to a new generation of writers. The Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp pastiche stories and novels were finally excised like removing a lamprey eel. Things are looking good. Writers such as David Gemmell, Paul Kearney, George R. R. Martin have come out and expressed their admiration for Howard’s fiction. There have been some duds — who can forget the awful Conan of Venarium by Harry Turtledove or the execrable Songs of the Dead scripted by Joe R. Lansdale for Dark Horse Comics last year? And then there is the specter of John Milius forcing another clueless Conan script for the movies. Let’s hope that never happens. But things are good from this vantage point looking back 27 years.

I’ve recently been interested in the “internal chronology” of the Solomon Kane stories, and one of the repeated assumptions I keep bumping up against is the notion that the poem “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” should be dated to 1610, based on the fact that Elizabeth I, “Good Queen Bess,” died in 1603. There are a couple of very good reasons to challenge this assumption.

The poem appears to record a visit by Kane to a tavern in his native Devon at some time after most of his recorded adventures: the seventh and eighth stanzas of the first-published version (Fanciful Tales, Fall 1936) seem to allude to “The Moon of Skulls,” “The Hills of the Dead,” “Wings in the Night,” and possibly “The Footfalls Within.” And stanzas three and four specifically refer to Sir Richard Grenville’s last fight aboard the Revenge, which we know to have taken place the evening of August 31 through the dawn of September 1, 1591. “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming,” then, must take place after this date.

But what has the death of Queen Elizabeth to do with any of this?

"Where is Bess?" said Solomon Kane.
     "Woe that I caused her tears."
"In the quiet churchyard by the sea
     she has slept these seven years."
The sea-wind moaned at the window-pane,
     and Solomon bowed his head.
"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
     and the fairest fade," he said.

Elizabeth I was called “Good Queen Bess,” it is true, but “Bess” was at the time probably the most common diminutive form of “Elizabeth.” (It is still used, but less commonly now than others such as “Liz” or “Betsy.”) There were at least two well-known contemporaries of Elizabeth I who were also known as “Bess”: Elizabeth Hardwick or “Bess of Hardwick” and Elizabeth Throckmorton “Bess” Raleigh, the wife of Sir Walter. Undoubtedly there were thousands more, including any number of nice Puritan girls and bawdy tavern wenches.

As I say, there are two good reasons for believing that the Queen was not the “Bess” to whom Kane referred.

In “Hawk of Basti,” Jeremy Hawk asks Kane if “good Queen Bess” still rules, and then, detecting a shortness to Kane’s reply, says “You never loved the Tudors, eh, Solomon?” “Her sister harried my people like beasts of prey,” Kane replies. “She herself has lied to and betrayed the folk of my faith….” This does not sound like a man who is speaking of one whom he left in tears (unless it were tears of rage, in which case it hardly seems likely he would later feel regret).

An even stronger reason, though, is in the poem itself: “In the quiet churchyard by the sea she has slept these seven years.” The resting place of Elizabeth I is in Westminster Abbey — in a vault inside the abbey, not even in the churchyard, never mind that London is not “by the sea.”

So “Bess” must remain an unidentified woman, probably of Devon, who loved Solomon Kane but could not compete with his lust for adventure. And “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” must be assigned a date after September 1591, but otherwise indeterminate.