Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane omnibus

‘Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane’ omnibus

Marvel Comics, January 2020

Christmas-time is approaching, that time of the year when splurging on a high-end book is a bit more likely. So it is that I'm taking a look at a comics omnibus that will set you back about $75, more or less. 

‘Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane’ omnibus (624 pp., Marvel Comics, January 2020) compiles all of the stories featuring this character that were published by Marvel, both in its black-and-white comic magazines and in its four-color comic books. 

The omnibus leads off with ‘Skulls in the Stars’, from Monsters Unleashed issue No. 1, August 1973, and ends with the two-part ‘Death’s Dark Riders’ from issues 219 and 220 of The Savage Sword of Conan (March-April 1994).

Like the other Marvel omnibuses, this one is well-produced on glossy paper stock with crisp reproductions of both the black-and-white and color artwork. I obtained a variant cover edition that apparently is distributed through comic book shops; my vendor was Westfield Comics of Madison, WI. They shipped the book in a well-padded box, and it arrived without any damage.

Prior to this omnibus, you could get the black-and-white Solomon Kane stories via the 2009 Dark Horse compilation The Saga of Solomon Kane. Unfortunately, this trade paperback is long out of print, and copies in reasonably good condition have asking prices ($50 for a Very Good copy) well over its original $19.95 cost. So, in some ways, you’re better off spending the extra money to get the Marvel omnibus.

Of the comics collected in ‘Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane’ omnibus, those first appearing in the black-and-white magazines (Monsters Unleashed, Kull and the Barbarians, The Savage Sword of Conan) during the early and mid- 1970s are clearly the best. 

Ralph Reese’s fine penmanship on the inaugural tale, ‘Skulls in the Stars’, is amazing, and a reminder of how dedicated those old-school artists were to their craft even though it was destined to be poorly printed on mediocre-grade paper. 

With artists like Alan Weiss, David Wenzel, Mike Zeck, and Howard Chaykin also contributing their talents, the early years of the Solomon Kane franchise well stand the test of time. The writing, handled by Marvel stalwarts like Roy Thomas, Don Glut, and Doug Moench, suffers at times from having to compress the narrative into a small set of pages, leaving many panels overloaded with text. But that’s how it was back in the 70s, when any use of the nowadays common technique of ‘decompression’ would have provoked stern words from the editorial staff.

The six-issue limited series color comic book that Marvel produced in 1985-1986, ‘The Sword of Solomon Kane’, is competent enough, but in my opinion doesn’t approach the level of excellence displayed in the early, black-and-white content.

But there's no getting over the fact that the Solomon Kane stories that appeared in The Savage Sword of Conan during the early 1990s, when the magazine was in decline and Marvel assigned its less talented artists to illustrate it, are underwhelming.

The back pages of the omnibus provide some of the one-page and two-page articles about Howard and his Solomon Kane stories that were featured in the black-and-white books, as well as in Marvel's color comics. These are useful starting points for anyone who is unfamiliar with the Kane mythos. Also in the back section of the omnibus are pin-up pages, and some examples of original artwork pages. 

Summing up, the rather mediocre nature of the material from the 80s and early 90s means I can’t declare this book a must-have. However, if you are a fan of Marvel’s old black-and-white magazines, the heroes of the Robert E. Howard canon, or simply someone who likes the skilled work of the 1970s era of comic book artists, then investing in the ‘Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane’ omnibus may be worth your while.  

Book Review: A Rumor of Angels

Book Review: 'A Rumor of Angels' by M. Bradley Kellogg 

2 / 5 Stars

'A Rumor of Angels' (277 pp.) was published by Signet in June, 1983. The cover art is by Keith Eugene Johnson. This was the first published novel for Marjorie Bradley Kellogg, who went on to write a number of sci-fi and fantasy novels during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

The novel is set in 2027, 30 years after Earth has opened an interdimensional portal to a sister planet, called Arkoi. Arkoi is everything Earth is not: underpopulated, pastoral, unpolluted, and inhabited by a race of pacifistic humanoids known as the Koi.

The Terrans have exploited the passivity of the Koi to begin colonization, through the establishment of the noisome city of Menissa. However, expansion into or over the enormous mountain range that borders Menissa has been halted by a mysterious phenomenon: aircraft fail to operate, and those Terrans who try to penetrate the mountains on foot either vanish, or return in a fugue state so severe they must be institutionalized.

Political activist Jude Rowe is serving a lengthy sentence in a Terran maximum security prison for trespassing in a government office, when she is offered a deal: in exchange for her freedom, she is to travel to Arkoi and join an expedition to traverse the mountain range and discover who - or what - lies within the interior of the planet. The assignment is perilous: there is a good chance that she will vanish, never to be seen again...........her bones left lying on a un-named mountainside. 

Making the best of a bad situation, Jude takes the deal, and finds herself reliant on a self-serving Terran intelligence agent, and an embittered alien named Ra'an, for her survival. Will Jude succeed where others have failed ? And if she does succeed, will what she learns about the Koi force her to take sides in a conflict to determine the fate of Arkoi ? 

Although 'A Rumor of Angels' takes its time getting underway, the initial chapters are reasonably engaging. However, after the Big Revelation is disclosed - ninety pages into the book - the narrative starts to lose focus, morphing into a human - alien romance story belabored with seemingly interminable passages of psychodrama. 

The world of the Koi is presented in so idyllic a manner as to veer into the saccharine (for example, when we first are introduced to the Koi character 'Elgri', he strides out of the warm, fragrant woodland accompanied by a retinue of chirping and gamboling forest creatures, like Bambi from the 1942 Walt Disney movie). 

I finished 'Rumor' thinking that its major sub-plot, in which a team of human colonists and Koi rebels organize a clandestine resistance against the rapacious Terran authority, was the more rewarding part of the novel. This sub-plot lends some much-needed momentum and suspense to the closing chapters, but unfortunately, in these same closing chapters it has to compete with the climax of a particularly overwrought melodrama.

Summing up, 'A Rumor of Angels' likely will only appeal to those who prefer a character-driven narrative that explores the necessary journey through various psychological crises that must be made to arrive at an affirmation of the self, and one's position in society. If your tastes run to more brutish and primitive sci-fi narratives, then it's best you stay away from 'Rumor'. 

Ben Bova R.I.P.

R.I.P. Ben Bova

November 8, 1932 - November 29, 2020

Ben Bova passed away on November 29 at the age of 88. In addition to authoring a large number of sci-fi short stories and novels, and nonfiction articles on a variety of scientific topics, he was an influential editor for Analog and Omni magazines.

While I can't say I have an extensive experience in reading and reviewing Bova's novels, I found his Young Adult novel City of Darkness, published in 1976, to be a memorable entry in the the science fiction of the 1970s.

The Fantasy Book by Franz Rottensteiner

The Fantasy Book
by Franz Rottensteiner

'The Fantasy Book' (160 pp.) was published in 1978 by Thames and Hudson, UK.

Franz Rottensteiner (b. 1942) is an Austrian critic, editor, and essayist on topics of 'fantastic' literature, including science fiction and fantasy. 'The Fantasy Book' is a companion volume to Rottensteiner's 1975 book The Science Fiction Book: An Illustrated History and follows the same format of interspersing text with black-and-white, two-color, and full-color graphics.

'The Fantasy Book' opens with an Introduction in which the author contemplates various definitions (made by European academics and writers) about what constitutes 'fantasy' literature. The book then provides, in chronological order, an overview of the topic from its beginnings in the Gothic era of the 18th century, on up to the late 1970s. 

In Rottensteiner's view, fantasy not only includes the Tolkein-esque stories nowadays most associated with the genre, but also horror literature, as well as experimental or avant-garde literature typified by writers such as James Branch Cabell.

While in his Introduction Rottensteiner states that he does not intend the book to represent an academic or scholarly analysis of fantasy literature, in many ways the book is indeed an analysis of 'literary' fantasy, and possesses a correspondingly pedantic tone. 

Much attention is given to books (Melmoth the Wanderer, Dracula, Alice in Wonderland, Out of the Silent Planet, etc.), that, by modern standards, fit comfortably into the category of mainstream or 'classical' literature.  

There are some sections that deal with fantasy as a component of pop culture, such as a discourse on sword-and-sorcery, and the influence on the genre exerted by pulp magazines such as Weird Tales and Unknown. These sections will be more recognizable, and more rewarding to modern-day readers, that the other content in 'The Fantasy Book'. 

Rottensteiner's devotion to works issued during the 19th and 20th centuries by rather obscure authors from Eastern Europe likely will have limited appeal for 21st century readers. As well, in hindsight the works from the 'Magic Realists' of Mexico and South America that are showcased in 'The Fantasy Book' never achieved much traction in the popular culture of the Anglophone countries (where fantasy now is a formidable commercial juggernaut), and with the passage of time, such books nowadays only are accessed by the fast-dwindling 'highbrow' readership. 

In fairness to Rottenstein, at the time he wrote 'The Fantasy Book', likely he was not aware of the gradually-increasing profile of the fantasy genre in the U.S. and what it portended. For example, 1978 saw the first appearance in mass-market paperback of Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane, which demonstrated that Tolkein-esque 'epic' fantasy could be commercially successful in a way that Lin Carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy series had not. 

Also garnering increasing attention at that time were the fantasy novels of Katherine Kurtz, Anne McCaffrey, Tanith Lee, Lynn Abbey, and Carolyn Janice Cherryh, all of whom were drawing a readership much wider than that engaged by the sword-and-sorcery and science fiction genres. 

The implications of the success of the Donaldson novel were not readily apparent in 1978, but within the next two years, it became clear that the Lord Foul franchise was the catalyst for the expansion of the genre throughout the 1980s. In so doing, it redefined the concept of the fantasy novel into the massive, series-based tomes that nowadays weigh down bookstore shelving.  

As a critic and reviewer, Rottenstein is quite opinionated, and his treatment of some of the leading Anglophone figures in the genre is less than effusive. For example, on Tolkein and The Lord of the Rings, Rottensteiner states:

.......though its present reputation may well be temporary, The Lord of the Rings will eventually be included in the long list of works of fantastic literature which will always be cherished by some connoisseurs; not, perhaps, a major work, but never to be entirely forgotten  - a book like J. B. Cabell's Jurgen, Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, or Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer.

 

Summing up, while necessarily dated in its treatment of the subject, and overly preoccupied with works that nowadays are considered to be marginal in terms of their fantasy affiliation, 'The Fantasy Book' will be a helpful resource for those interested in the wider landscape of the genre as it stood in the late 1970s. 

How Carlos Castaneda Made Up Don Juan

How Carlos Castaneda Made Up Don Juan

from Laid Bare, by John Gilmore

John Gilmore (July 5, 1935 - October 13, 2016) was an actor, director, sleaze paperback author, true crime author, and chronicler of Hollywood Excess. Laid Bare, his 1997 memoir of his career during the 1950s and 1960s, is filled with anecdotes and reminiscences about a variety of fellow actors and L. A. citizens and is well worth reading.

On pages 206 - 207 of Laid Bare (Amok Books, 2003), Gilmore describes what his friend Jim Davidson had to say about rooming with Carlos Castaneda in L.A. in the early 60s:

Along with another mutual friend, kid Golden Gloves champ Manny Samon, and a ‘Mexican’ named Carlos Castaneda, the three had sort of stumbled into a dumpy guest house behind some apartments near L. A. City College……Carlos – in love with moonbeams – wrote poems to a female college teacher who’d said he showed promise.....Samon was the first to hook up, driving off with a big black cleaning lady after trying to hang himself in the shower. He tied the rope to the fixture, but being chunky and thick-boned, he only managed to pull the pipes from the wall.

With no shower, Jim and Carlos moved into a front apartment managed by another friend, Frank, a would-be writer working at the VA crazy house. Sharing the cramped quarters throughout the year, the two had little space for furniture. “Carlos would sit around on these tatami mats,” Jim said, “with those big chubby legs crossed, trying to look like a Buddha. We’d hang around a little all-night restaurant up in Hollywood……

“Carlos liked to tell tall tales all the time,” Davidson said, “personal things, making things up. He was a creative guy with a vivid imagination, but made up these ridiculous stories, and I’d call him on it, but he said it made him feel important. He made up a story about some Indian like Tonto, only this guy was a medicine man. He’d tell a couple of girls we talked to about this Tonto character, like he had this close friend who was weird and important. None of the girls were impressed enough to do anything with Carlos…..

“This medicine-man Tonto was just like some imaginary playmate you make up when you’re little,” Jim recalled. “When we started at UCLA, it was Tonto who was sharing his secrets with Carlos. We’d sit around this little apartment on Madison while he wrote his thesis about this Indian character. We had another friend with a doctorate in literature who accused Carlos of being a liar and a phony, and found himself in agreement with the anthropology department, which became furious when they found out Carlos’ tale seemed to be nothing more than a piece of fiction.

“One girl really liked Carlos, but she was a chinless Olive Oyl. He was trying to call her one night when some guy got mad at him for hogging the phone and pulled Carlos off it and slapped him.

“Carlos came back and sat on the tatami mat crying, sitting on pillows without his pants on. His short, bare legs were chubby and brown, and he looked at them, poking at his legs, and said he was a nothing. “I’m nothing,” he said. “I’m just a little brown man.”

….

”People who told the truth were fools, Carlos said. He believed lying was more creative than telling the truth. There was never any such person as Don Juan,” said Jim. Even the name was Carlos’ joke about his inability to get laid. The whole Indian thing was just his imaginative wanderings – like he’d wander at night, never sleeping much. He’d just sit around making up stories to get people to think of him as an intelligent and important person.

“After he got that stuff published, he got some fat checks and moved to Malibu, had a big security system set up, and you couldn’t even see the house. He said, ‘Nobody is going to slap Carlos Castaneda……’ He told me he didn’t care that UCLA thought he was a fake, or that anyone thought he was a fake. He was going to keep on lying because a superior man never tells the truth – he tells what he wants to be the truth.”

...

“There was no depth to Carlos,” said another friend, a PhD. “He wouldn’t go out on lecture circuits because he was afraid of being challenged. His theory of the superior man who lies was okay as an individual position behind a security wall at Malibu Beach, but on the podium he feared those who could dig into his lies. When UCLA found out there was no medicine man, they kicked him out. It was all fake….”

1977: The Year I Stopped Reading Comics from Barry's Pearls

1977: The year I stopped reading comics

from 'Berry's Pearls of Comic Book Wisdom'

An interesting post made last year at the Barry's Pearls of Comic Book Wisdom website. His observations about the impact in '77 of Marvel's price increases, the constant recycling of reprints, the steep drop in the quality of the art and writing, and the poor caliber of the black-and-white magazines, are spot-on. 

Marvel's current editorial and business office staff would do well to read this article..........

Book Review: The Cloud Walker

Book Review: 'The Cloud Walker' by Edmund Cooper

5 / 5 Stars

'The Cloud Walker' (216 pp) was published by Ballantine Books in April, 1973. The striking cover illustration is by John Berkey.

I first read 'The Cloud Walker' in 1973, and at the time I thought it was a great book. How well does it hold up when read a second time, 47 years later ?

Quite well, in fact.

The novel is set several centuries after two consecutive nuclear wars have returned civilization, and the British isles in particular, to a medieval existence. In Britain, the Luddite Church serves as the national authority and is deferred to by the seigneurs who have carved the island into their personal fiefdoms. 

Believing technological progress to be responsible for the downfall of the First and Second eras of Man, the Church views the construction of machines as sinful. Any man who violates the teachings of the holy Church and its precepts is targeted for extirpation.

In the seigneur of Arundel, young Keiron Joinerson is apprenticed to the painter, Master Hobart. Keiron's talent promises him a bright future as a portraitist to the landed gentry. But Keiron's real ambition is heretical: he wants to fly.

With the aid of a crumbing book printed in the days of the First Men, Keiron begins experimenting with the construction of hot-air balloons. Well aware of the Church's proscriptions, he hopes to evade inquiry by disguising his efforts as a form of elaborate toy-making. But even as he progresses in his understanding of flight and flying machines, Keiron (mockingly referred to as 'Keiron head-in-the-air' by his fellow villagers) draws the unwelcome scrutiny of the Church........and with it, the likelihood of being burned at the stake........

Of the three or four novels by Edmund Cooper (1925 - 1982) that I have read, 'The Cloud Walker' is his best and does much within its small span of only 216 pages. 

Cooper does a number of things right here. The plot is straightforward, and the chapters short and to the point. The narrative is suffused with a foreboding atmosphere, one derived from the ever-present threat posed to the main character and his allies of condemnation, and execution, by the Luddite Church. For dialogue and exposition, Cooper skillfully uses a prose style that evokes the mind-set and beliefs of a medieval-era England without being so stylized as to be opaque. And by introducing a major plot alteration at the novel's mid-way point, the story remains engrossing right until the very last page.

Summing up, 'The Cloud Walker' not only is the best of Cooper's sci-fi works, but among the best sci-fi novels of the 70s. This novel is well worth searching out. I note that while the mass market paperback version is steadily increasing in price, the 'Edmund Cooper SF Gateway Omnibus', which includes 'The Cloud Walker' as one of its three titles, remains affordable.

Thorgal: The Archers, part Two

Thorgal: The Archers

By Van Hamme and Rosinski

1985

Part Two