To make it more fun I’ve added a poll. Click here to take it. Screenshot at right so you can see what options you have to choose from. But your original ideas are welcome below ... the weirder the better.
I’ll try to accommodate the top request.
When I heard the Deathstalker franchise was being revived for a 2025 release, I was in.
This film should have landed squarely with me, its target audience. It did not, sadly. I don’t consider it a bust, just off the mark, it pains me to say. Mildly entertaining when I was hoping for another Deathstalker 2 or perhaps another Army of Darkness. The Dreadites-- blood-red, spiky, skeletal warriors serving the evil sorcerer Nekromemnon—echo the Deadites of the latter film, but Deathstalker isn’t close to Army of Darkness or Evil Dead 2 for comedic value.
In the end I think Deathstalker fails because it lacks a comedic lead to pull it off. Daniel Bernhardt is very serviceable, certainly better than a lot of the thuddingly poor S&S leads of the 80s, but he’s not believable in the role of humorous hero, and not a John Terlesky or a Bruce Campbell.
So Deathstalker 2025 is in the end a semi-serious, semi-slapstick blend. If it doesn’t fail at both it doesn’t succeed at either, creating an uneven viewing experience—never rousing, never laugh out loud funny.
It’s far from the worst film I’ve seen. Entertaining in places, certainly better than a lot of the 80s S&S schlock I’ve watched over the years. It’s heart was in the right place… but I should have enjoyed this more than I did. It was not as good as I hoped. But of course YMMV.
What I did like:
What I didn’t like
TL;DR
Deathstalker 2025 has its charms and is probably something hardcore S&S fans and genre completionists will seek out regardless. Many seem to like it. There are certainly worse ways to pass a Saturday afternoon. For me it was a disappointing “meh” and a missed opportunity.
There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle drearily like the ice of the white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester’s bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh.
–Robert E. Howard, "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”
I love that quote (who doesn't?) from Robert E. Howard's Kull ... and I really dig this obscure but fun metal take from Arkham Witch.
Not exactly an artistic marvel of a song as the main riff overindulges in repetition ... but damn if I don't love it anyway. Great groove, gets the head banging. A boozy, dreamy, loose vibe to the whole thing that pairs well with the original hallucinogenic tale and its examination of philosophical questions regarding reality, identity, and existence.
Am I Kull?
This awesome little band wears its Weird Tales influences proudly. With songs like "The Lord of R'lyeh," "Dagon's Bell," "Crom's Mountain," and "Kult of Kutulu" you know what you're getting here.
Are these guys still a band? Last album, Demos from the Deep, seems to be from 2014 but let's hope so.
Happy Metal Friday.
What the phantom that stands before
A formless substance I claim no more
O shadowed soul, O ghost of me
I repent this philosophy
Am I Kull? Or his reflection dim
A shadow cast of that distant king
A strange whim of lesser form
A far flung dream on moonbeams born
Note: I use the plural “we” in this essay even though motivations for why anyone writes vary widely. I suppose I could just say “I” … but I strongly suspect others feel the same way. “We” facilitates connection and understanding.
If I go more than a day, maybe two, without writing, I start to feel ghostly. Incomplete, absent something vital I need to function as a human.
Writing infuses me with vitality. When I hit publish I am flush with spirit. My day is instantly better.
Pressing publish is key. Writing for an audience is qualitatively different than writing for yourself, for example a gratitude journal or a private essay that will never be read by anyone other than yourself. I do that kind of writing, and it’s important. But it’s ultimately not why I write.
The writing I enjoy combines subject matter mastery, self-discovery, and personal expression. I want people to experience the passion I feel for weird art, heavy metal, reading, and pop culture—the arcane arts that interest me. I hope my readers might learn something along the way, the distillation of my research and insight. And, ultimately (and maybe somewhat pretentiously, though I don’t really think so) I hope something I write might transform something in you. The way you understand the world, perhaps even yourself.
I don’t write fiction, but in my reading of fiction and biography of fiction writers I’ve come to see fiction as a window into the soul by writers who wish to be understood. Charles Saunders wrote blood-and-thunder stories of sword-and-sorcery adventure, but the character of Imaro said something about the author. Even writing “merely” to entertain says something of the writer, perhaps of the dissatisfying mundane world he or she inhabits or that entertainment and story provides something vital we need as humans.
For 99.9% of us, writing is not a vocation to pursue if you want to get rich. You can make a living off of it, though it won’t be the aesthete in a well-furnished Victorian garret romanticism sort of writing perpetrated by the Hallmark channel. Businesses need people who can write (or did, pre-LLMs. Now they need people who can prompt). I have a good job that is +/- 50% writing full time. It pays the bills, and sometimes I can even put a little something of myself into otherwise dry and technical pieces of the healthcare mid-revenue cycle.
I wish I could write creatively, like I do here, full-time. But it’s not happening. If I had to survive on what I do in the creative side of my life I’d be living under a bridge. I’m very fortunate that I don’t need income from Flame and Crimson or freelance S&S pieces to pay my mortgage.
But I do need to be understood. So I’m taking that a step farther with a very personal new book.
I’ve got a heavy metal-infused memoir in the edit/cover design stages. It will be published this year. I expect it to sell +/- 50 copies, though I plan to promote the heck out of it wherever I’m able. Not because I’m in it to make money. If it was about making money I’d be writing freelance blog posts and white papers for some healthcare website.
I want people to understand the life I’ve lived, the music I loved, the struggles I’ve endured, and still have, from time-to-time. I grew up with social anxiety and painful introversion. Being labelled as an introvert was once (and in some corners, still) used a pejorative. These traits harmed my relationships and put a few limits on my career.
But today I accept this part of me, perhaps even cherish it. If I were not an introvert I might not have ever felt the need to set pen to paper. I can say things in writing that I have a hard time saying out loud. Writing about my experiences helped me heal, and I hope perhaps the act of reading them might help others as well.
That’s the power of writing.
So yes, I write to be understood. Maybe you do too.
Keep writing.
--Jon Tattrie, To Leave a Warrior Behind
A talented author working in the second wave of sword-and-sorcery, Charles Saunders twice had his Imaro books under contract and in print by a publishing house … and twice had the series yanked from under his feet.
Partially as a result of these and other ill fortunes including shuttering of the newspaper on which he worked, Saunders died alone, near penniless. Worse, without family to claim his body he was buried in an unmarked grave.
That’s hard.
If that was your end, would you consider your life a success? Do you consider Saunders’ life a success?
You might not… unless you were to read To Leave a Warrior Behind (2026, McClelland & Stewart).
After which you’d answer that question quite differently. With a hell yeah. Saunders’ life might not look anything like the “success” you see on Instagram, but it was, nonetheless. Why?
He wrote some kick-ass S&S that we still read today.
He created a new (sub) sub-genre of fiction, sword-and-soul.
He had hundreds of admirers with whom he corresponded. Many friends, and as all fans of “It’s a Wonderful Life” know, no man is a failure who has friends.
And he will continue to be remembered thanks to this new biography.
Biography is what’s on the cover but probably the wrong word to describe To Leave A Warrior Behind. Biography often brings to mind dry text, heavily footnoted and indexed, the plain recitation of the facts of a life. To Leave a Warrior Behind is part compelling story of a fatherless boy, just like his greatest creation, Imaro, “son-of-no-father.” It’s part literary analysis of Saunders’ works. Part detective novel, from the search for an unclaimed body to the search for a missing past in the pages of hand-written letters. Part funeral dirge for the dying newspaper industry. And above all it honors Saunders the man, his unique life and literary and human legacy.
I don’t want to spoil all of that story here, as the book’s revelations keep coming, building chapter by chapter to a satisfying finish. By the end you will meet a Saunders you probably did not know.
But I do need to review it and so will reveal some of its contents here. You’ve been warned.
***
Tattrie knew Saunders, as the two worked together for years as newsmen at the Halifax Daily News. So the work includes a fair deal of self-biographical/emotional/personal reflections from the author, which I enjoyed.
Shuttering the newsroom at the Daily News hit close to home. I was fortunate in 2004 when I quit my full-time job at a newspaper whose best days were behind, but one I loved and for which I felt survivors’ guilt. Tattrie observes that leaving journalism for greener, safer, corporate pastures can feel like a sellout, and as an ex-journalist I agree. I admire people who stuck out the profession for the love of the game. People like Saunders.
Saunders never wanted to do anything with his life but tell stories, and that’s what he did, even when there was no money to be made.
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| This book is worth a small fortune. |
Because DAW held the copyright to the first three Imaro books, Saunders was in a bind, unable to offer them elsewhere.
The book shines in its Imaro deep-dive, which all sword-and-sorcery fans and historians (ahem) will appreciate. Tattrie gives the series its due like few places did, save for perhaps The Cimmerian and Steve Tompkins (who by the way Saunders later extolled in an essay published in Rob E. Howard: Two-Gun Raconteur). We get the beginnings of Imaro, jointly influenced by Tarzan and a black character in Andre Norton’s postapocalyptic SF novel Star Man’s Son—2250 AD. But Saunders’ number one influence was Robert E. Howard, through the Lancers. We get his first appearances in the Gene Day edited magazine Dark Fantasy, and the big break when Lin Carter selected an Imaro story for his Year’s Best Fantasy Stories (DAW, 1975). It was Don Wolleheim himself who encouraged Saunders to submit Imaro for consideration, and ultimately acceptance.
After DAW cancelled the series Saunders did not publish a single piece of fiction between 1990-99. He did write the screenplays for a couple admittedly terrible S&S films, Amazons and Stormquest, which allowed him to pay the bills. He also wrote a few works of nonfiction about local black history and boxing.
***
But beyond Saunders’ literary legacy we also get much on him the person. His college days during the rise of the Black Power movement. An attempted suicide in the 70s. The lifeline provided by his friends in letters, including the authors Charles De Lint and David C. Smith. With Smith Saunders mourned a joint loss of their early successes when their brand of “masculine fiction” fell from favor. We get the details of his marriage and its eventual failure. His work at the newspaper, Saunders’ raising his arms in triumph when CNNs’ Wolf Blitzer read on air his editorial about Canada sending ships to help the US during Hurricane Katrina. Lots of great details like this.
And we get Saunders’ fiction revival. His resurfacing after he was asked to submit a piece to the anthology Dark Matter. The republishing of his stories by Night Shade in the mid-2000s, which led Saunders to revisit the old Imaro stories and improve them. Tattrie walks us through Saunders’ work strengthening and deepening his characters, especially Imaro’s love interest Tanisha. “As he matured, Charles started treating fantasy not as a way out of our world, but as a deeper way into it,” Tattrie writes. Imaro begins to consider the feelings of others … “over time, core character traits reveal the man beneath the warrior.” Tattrie believes Saunders ultimately eclipsed Howard and his S&S roots by turning the focus of the stories from outer action to inner character revelation.
We get Night Shade’s disappointing cancellation of the series, but then the launch of Sword and Soul Media, and the first true visual depiction of Imaro on a cover that Saunders long imagined. In 2009, 25 years since his last new novel about Imaro, Saunders published his 4th and longest novel—Imaro: The Naama War, which brought with it a shift from the heroic fantasy of Imaro to a more epic storyline.
In short, To Leave a Warrior Behind is not just a biography, but important literary analysis. Analysis that along the way reveals striking parallels between creation and creator. Saunders, like Imaro, was deeply marked by the abandonment of his father and separation from his mother. Tatrie notes that he assembled the book by reading more than 250 letters over 50 years to a range of friends. Each letter was 3 pages, adding up to more than 700 pages of Charles writing about his life. In all that paper Saunders mentioned his father just once. When he fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War he largely left his mother behind, too.
Yet this is not a good guy/bad guy story… I’ll end my review here, I don’t want to spoil anything, as there are some big twists at the end. Read this book for yourself and you’ll walk away with brand-new insights into Saunders the man. I regret not meeting Saunders when I had the chance, but I feel like I did after reading To Leave a Warrior Behind. Which is about the highest praise I can give it.
I've got to give Nostradamus a proper go one of these days. Proper go as in, listening dozens of times to the album in full, locked in a room by myself with naught but beer, notepad and pen, and my thoughts.
Admittedly I was ... skeptical when Judas Priest announced it was putting out a concept album based on the life and works of the famous 16th century French astrologer and seer. It just didn't seem to align with the talents of a band that wrote "Living After Midnight" and "Painkiller."
And "Johnny B Goode" but we don't talk about that around here.
Lately though I've been paying closer attention to some of the songs from the album, and am discovering they're quite good. Check that... more than a few are epic, powerful, awesome.
In fact I'm starting to think they just might have pulled the damned thing off.
See for example "Revelations." This song kicks my ass. Crank it up this Metal Friday and it will kick yours, too.
I have the power
I have the choice
They'll hear my voice
For centuries
Yes, we will Rob.
In his biography Confess (highly recommended BTW, my review is here) Halford expressed a deep belief that the band knocked it out of the park with Nostradamus, though he acknowledges it's also the most divisive album in the band's oeuvre. Here's what he had to say:
I absolutely loved making it. It ended up as a double album and I am proud of every fucking word and note.... I think it contains some of the most accomplished lyrics I have ever written. I also believe it's one of the greatest suites of music in metal history. So there! I stand behind it 100 percent.
Listen and decide for yourself.
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| Kane vs. the Werewolf by Jeff Easley. |
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Not nearly enough Anthrax on the blog. Let's change that this Metal Friday.
I don't listen to a whole lot of this band these days, but back in the late 80s/early 90s they were very heavy in my rotation. "Among the Living" hit a sweet spot. Right in the midst of the thrash era Stephen King released the uncut The Stand. Which we all read, and discussed. And wondered if we'd survive the apocalypse. Not likely with the Walking Dude to contend with.
Pair The Stand with "Among the Living" and you've got a great time on your hands. This song gave Randall Flagg his due.
Anthrax had a knack for writing choruses with riffs that begged for a mosh pit to erupt. You get that here.
I'm the walking dude
I can see all the world
Twist your minds with fear
I'm the man with the power
Among the living
Follow me or die
We humans aren’t as lucky (or is it unlucky?) as Tolkien’s Elves, but Valinors of sorts are available to us, be they the green-gold stun grenade of a spring day, the Polaroid poignance of that one page it might be easier to skip in the photo album, or a chance hearing of a long-ago hit single that ruled the airwaves all during one of those cusp-between-adolescence-and-adulthood summers when possibility and probability were still in equipoise.
“It must be, instead, that there is something about Tolkien’s work that triggers a critical blindness or a perverse reflex to claim the opposite of the truth. I think I can identify one of the major factors. The standard, cliched twentieth-century rejection of any works of literature that depict humanity and its works as being substantially good and beautiful and thus worthy of preservation is to call them “fairy-tales,” with the implication that such are just simple, happy stories that only children would believe.”
A handful of podcasts have stayed in my rotation from the moment I first heard them. One of those is Weird Studies with hosts Phil Martel and J.F. Ford.
I don’t listen to every show; in fact I estimate I might skip half or more. I’m not interested in the Tarot, or the X-Files, or analyses of films I haven’t seen. But when it’s a topic that interests me, even obliquely, I’m in. Martel and Ford are college professors and possess not only a very high level of erudition and insight, but also a fine dialogue with one another. They have a level of glib I admire and a playfulness and earnestness I enjoy. I’ve listened to some dynamite shows on George Miller’s Mad Max movies, Algernon Blackwood, Blade Runner, and more.
So you can imagine my level of excitement when they dropped an episode on The Fellowship of the Ring.
This did not disappoint. Tolkien does not leap to mind when you hear the term “weird” … until you think of things like Old Man Willow, and trees full of anger, which is very much out of Blackwood’s “The Willows.” Or the Elves themselves, whose lives as immortals unbounded by time as we know it are utterly alien to men, or hobbits.
Here’s three cool things the hosts discussed I wanted to point out.
The Lord of the Rings is a postapocalyptic story. Of course it is! It’s so obvious I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. Probably because I tend to associate postapocalyptic with Thundarr the Barbarian, Mad Max or World War Z. But how else would you describe a fallen world that is Arda marred, damaged irrevocably by Morgoth, and suffered the drowning of Numenor by a vengeful Iluvatar? And whose characters stride through ruins of greater civilizations, and great Elven kingdoms that have been destroyed in war and whose remnants are steadily leaving for Valinor via the Gray Havens? One word might be, postapocalyptic.
It is deeply anti-modern and modern at the same time. By modern I mean of the literary movement. LOTR is a post WWI novel and of a time when old certitudes were stripped away by the devastation of the Great War. Its author was aware of everything that had come before him, and his choice to write with deliberate archaisms is a form of irony, a modernist technique. Tolkien was not some atavistic throwback but in tune with the times and a reader of the news and of “modern” fantasy of his era. Yet it’s also deeply unironic, intensely engaged with the world, and moral to its core. And anti-postmodern.
The Lord of the Rings is applicable to every reader, and challenges you. Reading it is perilous, because it offers moral clarity and forces you to consider tough choices. Can you exhibit pity, and mercy, on your enemies, because you cannot see all ends? Would you have the will to cast a (metaphorical) One Ring into the fire? For example on the use of AI, which grants greater power but requires environmental degradation, and has well documented deleterious impacts on learning and human flourishing?
What is your ring?
***
I disagreed with a couple of the hosts’ points. I’ve read enough Tolkien, and enough about Tolkien, to have my own views. Which is what anyone should strive for who truly loves a subject enough to return to it again and again. They assert for example that the work is not nostalgic, I argue that it very much is, though I think we are operating off two different definitions of nostalgia. They also assert that Aragorn is not rooted, unlike Bilbo or Boromir, but I note he is descended from Elendil and the Kings of Numenor and of the Faithful, and therefore rooted (at least in bloodline) very deeply.
Regardless this is the type of dialogue I yearn from when I’m reading something like LOTR. There is a dynamite soliloquy with about seven minutes to go prompted by a reading of Galadriel’s gift to Gimli that left one of the hosts choked up; the book does the same to me.
Listen to the episode here. I can’t wait for forthcoming parts on The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
I’m also in the midst of reading The Tower and the Ruin by Michael D.C. Drout which has also been great. More on that later.
The third issue of Arcane Arts went out earlier today.
I've gotten a couple of responses from readers who seem to like what I'm doing with the newsletter. Or at least they flatter me with hollow praise. I'm still figuring out exactly what I want to do with it, but it's becoming an informal way of sharing what I'm watching/reading/thinking about, with a little bit more of a personal touch than you might typically see on the blog.
What, you're not getting Arcane Arts? Fix that today by entering your name and email address in that widget at right.
Here is a link to the latest issue. A lot of fun S&S related updates in this one.
A quick subscribe and you'll never miss the next.
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| I marveled at its glory... and writhed at my suck. |
This past weekend I took a short dude’s weekend trip to Southington. None of us knew anything about this rather nondescript town in central Connecticut, save that it was a convenient halfway point between my buddy Scott, who lives in New Jersey, and the other three of us dudes from MA/NH.
Scott did some online scouting. Southington had a venue where we could throw axes, an arcade, and ample beer. The decision was made.
As it turns out GameCraft Arcade is not just any arcade. It’s a two-story homage to old-school gaming. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Double Dragon, Wizard of Wor, Asteroids, Tron, 1941, Castlevania, Joust, Frogger, dozens more of that ilk. So many that I decided to give the place a thorough scouting-out before plunking down my hard-earned coin.
And there it was. On the second floor, tucked way in the back corner, a holy grail for S&S enthusiasts.
Scantily-clad chicks. Skulls. Muscular warriors with swords and horned helmets. The snake pit. And the leering red demon himself.
Gorgar, in all its glory. The 1979 machine made famous by being the first-ever talking pinball machine. One I've written about before, here.
I stood back, admired the beautiful artwork. It begged to be played. And of course, I did.
Unfortunately not much to report there. I batted the ball around a few times. Tried my best to land it in The Snake Pit. Failed, and watched helplessly as it guttered over and over before I got much done on the scoreboard.
GameCraft also had other related pinball games, including Seawitch, Paragon, and Black Knight. Someone there appreciates the sacred genre it seems. Paragon and Seawitch are, like Gorgar, heavily inspired by the Frank Frazetta aesthetic.
Axe throwing was fun, and the venue supervisor who made sure we didn’t plant a heavy hatchet into our foot or our buddies’ back was a huge Lord of the Rings fan, with a sleeve of tattoos on one arm including a JRRT rune on her shoulder and the “One Ring to Rule Them All” inscription wrapped around her bicep. Much Tolkien nerdity ensued. I did not come home with a tattoo of my own though the thought crossed my mind and was liberally encouraged by the dudes. The Groggy Frog was a worthy (2? 3?) beer stop and we got a kick out of the waitress with the Poison half shirt who evaded my question about her favorite Poison song.
Anyway, should you ever be driving down I-84 and see signs for Southington it’s a worth a visit. Tell the Girl with the Gandalf Tattoo I said hi.
Anecdotally, readers of S&S listen to heavy metal in higher proportion than country or rap music. There are reasons for this.
The sound of S&S is heavy, and of battle. James Taylor cannot be the soundtrack of “Black Colossus.”
Another is the appropriation of sword-and-sorcery imagery by metal bands. Dangle Kings of Metal in front of a Robert E. Howard reader and you’ll get a grunt of recognition, if not appreciation, even though they might have never heard of Manowar. Some will go on to sample the music, discover that “Heart of Steel” is really fucking awesome song, and become a metalhead.
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| Ken Kelly and Manowar can be none more metal. |
Metal and sword-and-sorcery also share some deeper DNA …. a thematic attraction to the Outsider. Some examples fired off over a beer:
Judas Priest with “The Sentinel”
Whitesnake and “Here I Go Again.” Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
Helloween: I Want Out
Metallica: Escape (Life’s for my own, to live my own way)
Etc.
Metal does not have a patent on the outsider concept; rock has always contained its seeds. See Dion’s “Runaway” and Rolling Stones “Tumbling Dice.” But the combination of imagery+heaviness+outsider makes metal music a substantial overlap in the venn diagram of S&S.
Iron Maiden’s “Drifter” is another fine example. As Paul DiAnno sings:
Gotta keep on roaming, gotta sing my song… ‘cause I’m a drifter, drifting on.
I hope you drift into a fine weekend on this Metal Friday.
“Standardization is crushing the heart and soul, the blood and the guts, out of humanity and the eventual result will be either complete and unrelieved slavery or the destruction of civilization and return to barbarism. Once men sang the praises of ephemeral gods carved out of ivory and wood. Now they sing equally senseless praises to equally ephemeral and vain gods of Science and Commerce and Progress. Hell.”--Letter from Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, Oct. 1931
“I look back with envy at the greater freedom known by my ancestors on the frontier. Hard work? Certainly they worked hard. But they were building something; making the most of opportunities; working for themselves, not merely cogs grinding in a soulless machine, as is the modern working man, whose life is a constant round of barren toil infinitely more monotonous and crushing than the toil on the frontier.”--Letter from Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, Jan. 1934
It's July, 7 o'clock in the evening. The New England night is warm. I'm sitting in my car, windows rolled down. The moon and stars are glittering above … and I’ve got an evening ahead of Judas Priest style heavy metal.
The Priest* is playing Uncle Eddie's Oceanside Tavern in Salisbury. A dive bar teetering on shithole, but one I happen to love.
I drive out of the garage, press play on my curated Judas Priest playlist, and hear this:
This song takes me to some desert plain, the stars wheeling overhead on a trip to nowhere and everywhere all at once. Nowhere to go and no responsibilities ... and everything ahead. I've got a life to live.
But tonight is the next best thing. Route 110, a straight line to the New England coast, toward the salt tang and deep roar of the Atlantic ocean. Sour black leather and cold beer and dude companionship, with good-looking chicks and a dumpy bar as the backdrop.
Heavy metal until midnight.
I've done this. Have you? I hope so. There's still time.
"Desert Plains" is the ultimate driving song. You heard this guitar tone in the mid-80s but you don't hear it anymore. This is it in its full glory. "Heading Out to the Highway" is comparable but it lacks the slow, stoned, ethereal vibe of "Desert Plains." Listening to it puts me on an Arizona highway, one of those flat, level, straight to the horizon stretches where you press down on the gas pedal and roar past 80 ... 90 ... and just keep going.
With Judas Priest as the soundtrack.
* The Priest is a New England based tribute band to Judas Priest.
It had been more than 30 years since I last bought an issue of the original Savage Sword of Conan*, and almost as long since I read one cover-to-cover.
But just a few days ago I unboxed all my back issues and laid them out in their glory on my bar top. And began to thumb through the old pages.
Why now, after all this time?
I don’t quite know, but here’s a few possible explanations.
I’m tired of screens and digital art.
I’m an old newspaper guy and love the smell of newsprint and ink.
The covers are glorious.
But I also felt the draw of something deeper … an urge to reconnect with my past, which is what these comic books represent. They are a little bit of who I am. We are at least partially our things, or perhaps our things are an outward reflection of who we are.
I am a little bit Conan.
There is something awe inspiring about this picture. Beholding all at once the output of so many talented artists bringing to life an old pulp character now passed into myth, moves me.
The greatest creation of Robert E. Howard will endure forever.
Question: How many adventures can Conan go on?
Answer: Yes.
I have a lot of old issues of Savage Sword of Conan from its classic run, 1974-1995. I had forgotten how many, and surprised myself in this great unboxing. I own more than I thought, just north of 100 issues. Should you want to know the exact numbers:
1, 5, 6, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 69, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 92, 94, 95, 97, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112, 113, 115, 117, 118, 121, 125, 126, 127, 129, 133, 135, 137, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178, 184
And I have more than just SSOC.
You don’t hear a whole lot of enthusiasm for Conan Saga. It’s the red-head stepchild of Conan magazines, mentioned if at all as a vehicle for low-priced reprints.
There is a fair bit of truth to this. That’s what Conan Saga mainly did. But it wasn’t just SSOC reprints. The first nine issues are mostly reprints of Conan the Barbarian, black and white versions of the color originals—so original in a sense. Conan Saga also sprinkled in stories from Savage Tales and unexpected rares like “The Sword and the Sorcerers!” a non-Conan story from a comic I’d never heard of, Chamber of Darkness (1970), written by the great Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith. Here’s the synopsis:
A writer who is selling barbarian stories of Starr the Slayer that come to him in dreams plans to kill off Starr in the next story because the dreams are putting too much of a strain upon his health. On his way to the office, Starr assaults him out of an alley with accusations of assassin upon his lips. The writer is unbelieving, even to the point that Starr raises his sword and strikes him down. Starr wakes in his own world and relates a dream to his faithful minstrel wherein he struck down a grave threat to his life.
Cool. I’m going to give this one a read.
I believe the first nine covers by Barry Windsor-Smith are all first run originals. They make for beautiful keepsakes.
For me Conan Saga was a Godsend. I’ve said many times that SSOC was my gateway to sword-and-sorcery, and I was not lying—save that I forgot to mention the role of Conan Saga.
I guarantee you can track these down at a fraction of the price of SSOC.
I’ve also got other cool odds and ends, of the same savage ilk. Kull and the Barbarians #2. Savage Sword Super Annual. And a really cool full color Marvel Super Special #9, starring The Savage Sword of Conan in full color.
I love the text pieces on The Hyborian Legion and the Conan comics chronology.
… until senior year of high school and college. My disposable income shifted toward heavy metal, beer, and chicks and I stopped buying new issues.
The venerable magazine wrapped its incredible 21 year run with the July 1995 issue, just a few months after I graduated. I find it comforting that SSOC was there for me, all the way through college, as I left home to wench and swill ale on a grand adventure of which Conan himself would approve.
Savage.
*My brother bought me a couple of back issues a few years ago, including SSOC #1 which I recently broke out in honor of Robert E. Howard’s birthday. I have also purchased the first half dozen of the new Titan run.
That email newsletter widget on the side of the blog, over there ==> ?
I'm finally putting it to use.
The first issue of Arcane Arts: Dispatches From the Silver Key has hit inboxes.
Important note to would-be subscribers: CHECK YOUR SPAM FOLDER
If you used this form to sign up, you might not have received the first issue.
I know this because the platform, Kit, tells me which subscribers are confirmed vs. unconfirmed. I've got 12-15 folks who signed up, but haven't clicked "confirm" on the auto-email that kicks out to confirm you've keyed in the right email address.
If this sounds like you, or you did not receive the first issue, check your spam folder. If you signed up months ago and/your spam folder is empty, try subscribing again. You just need to confirm once and you're on the list.
Issue #1
I published the first issue via email but also to the web, you can read it here:
https://brian-murphy.kit.com/posts/what-s-brewing-with-arcane-arts-dispatches-from-the-silver-key-6
I'm still pondering what with I want to do with Arcane Arts, but suffice to say it will be something interesting and wizardly. I kick around some ideas in this first issue but welcome your suggestions here as well.
It's not meant to replace anything I'm doing on The Silver Key (hence, dispatches from). I see it primarily as a way to keep in touch with folks who might otherwise forget to return to this dusty corner of cyberspace. It makes the blog a bit more sticky.
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| Trapped in the web... of Arcane Arts. |
So much in Tolkien “hits different,” to use a popular catchphrase of the day. I think because it comes from a place of deep wisdom, so deep it is simultaneously jarring to the ear (no politician could ever utter such words) and timeless, as true today as it was in 1954 … or 1754, or will be in 2354. You are struck dead in your reading tracks, and perhaps like I do, pause to take a photo of the page.
Asks Eomer:
“How shall a man judge what to do in such times?” “
“As he ever has judged,” said Aragorn. “Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”
Doing something evil out of expedience does not make it any less wicked.
Here’s another, this time from Gandalf, speaking to Pippin about the hazards of looking into the seeing stones known as the Palantiri. Insert whatever autonomous technology you’d like here:
“Perilous to us are all the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.”
I’ve finished The Two Towers and have begun The Return of the King. I’m treasuring every page of the journey and taking my time with it.
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| Anyone else take pictures while reading? |
Somewhere around 1998 I stopped keeping up with new heavy metal. I could not tell you precisely why, only that I gave up the ghost somewhere between Megadeth’s Cryptic Writings (June 1997) and Bruce Dickinson’s The Chemical Wedding (September 1998). It had nothing to do with those fine albums, just where I was with my widening life and shifting interests. And possibly, the rise of nü-metal (God I hate even typing those words, and the ridiculous umlaut, which those bands don't deserve).
No need for mourning, I had a good run. I fell in love with metal around 1987 and for a decade devoured everything I could: classic NWOBHM, thrash, progressive metal, power metal. Even though I very much preferred Maiden, Priest and Metallica I was a sponge, promiscuously consuming the new bands my friends recommended, or whatever caught my ear on Headbanger’s Ball or 107.3 WAAF.
Until suddenly, I stopped.
What does that mean? I have huge gaps that will likely never be filled. An undeveloped metal palette, unable to appreciate the full breadth and complexity of the genre (which to the uninitiated has massive variety, from top 40 bubblegum hair metal bands to incomprehensible wall of angry sound death metal).
Yeah, I’ve got holes. One of which is shaped like an “O.”
Anyone here an Opeth fan?
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| Queuing up for the unknown... |
I saw these guys last night at the Orpheum in Boston and started filling in some gaps.
Now I’m not a total Opeth rube; I’ve heard snippets of them here and there. I certainly knew of them. I can’t say the same for opening act Katatonia, the first bars of which I heard in my friend Dana’s car on the drive in.
In case you’re wondering both are Swedish metal acts that have been around since the early 1990s. But looking back it all makes sense; Opeth’s debut album Orchid was not released in the United States until June 1997, somewhere around the start of my new and (nü) metal absence.
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| Love that stylized "O" |
Did I enjoy the show? Yes. Interestingly both bands have death metal roots, a subgenre I don’t enjoy, but Opeth is now properly classified as progressive. They can get quite heavy and lead singer Mikael Åkerfeldt busted out the cookie monster growl on many songs. But the majority of their stuff was chill-ish, heavy and with a great groove but overlaid with clean, mellow, even soft-spoken vocals.
I’d classify Opeth as atmospheric and moody prog metal, creating a vibe akin to entering the vast pagan forests of pre-Christian Europe. I dug Katatonia too, which had a similar feel, and a damned cool backdrop of a deer with sentient eyes wreathed in ghostly flame.
I can’t give a proper review of course because I knew no songs and still don’t. Instead I chose to focus on the sound and the experience. It was nice seeing more (and more attractive) chicks than a typical metal show.
Am I going to become a raging Opeth fan? Will I track down their back catalog, binge Opeth YouTube videos, join an Opeth Reddit page?
No.
But maybe I’ll check out Ghost Reveries (2005), which Dana recommended after I inquired about his favorite album.
We’ll see. I do know it made for a fun and different and interesting night.
Dig around in your past, see the band of which you're unfamiliar, if the opportunity presents itself.
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| Dana (at right) and I. |
I don't know about you but my TBR pile is the size of a telephone pole. I have a towering pile of books I want to read, or re-read, and have only one life in which to do it. I'm pretty selective in my book purchases but when I see something interesting, I add it to my TBR. The list outpaces my reading, and so grows ever larger.
There is no formal mechanism for how I prioritize what to read next. I can only say that some books make their way to the top of this figurative telephone pole faster than others.
Here's two that hit my mailbox in the past week and promptly jumped the queue.
I have read a fair bit of literary criticism and have reached the conclusion that storytelling and voice matter, even in this medium. Dense, academic jargon makes for a lot of work; even if it's got something illuminating to say the juice isn't worth the squeeze if comprehension becomes the equivalent of deconstructing a mental jenga puzzle.
Michael D.C. Drout wrote one of my favorite Tolkien essays for The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On, a personal and revealing piece about the impact that work had on him during a trying time in his life as a young boy at the height of the Blizzard of '78. I found it both illuminating and emotionally powerful, relatable on multiple levels (among them I lived through that blizzard). And so when I heard he had completed The Tower and the Ruin I knew I had to have it.
Right now I'm in the middle of The Two Towers and desire a companion to share in my reading. I'm hoping The Tower and the Ruin and a pint of beer will reaffirm the magic that is uniquely Tolkien's.
To Leave a Warrior Behind is the story of the late Charles Saunders, author of Imaro. Saunders passed away in May 2020 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Halifax, Canada. His life and S&S contributions seemed destined for obscurity, but a group of friends and fans sprang for a gravestone. The project funded in 24 hours.
Now it seems we also have a proper biography. Jon Tattrie worked side-by-side with Saunders at the same newspaper for years. I've been hearing good things and am looking forward to reading this as well.
I'm sure I'll get around to reviewing both.
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| Tom with a couple of covers... he signed these for me. |
Thanks to Dave Ritzlin for allowing me the space to introduce the work and for sharing a lot of Tom's fantastic artwork.
That's talent folks, by a good guy who is still with us and still working.
Order Tom's book today in print or digital. I've got a copy myself and it looks sharp, with full color interior artwork illustrating a compelling personal story of self-discovery and overcoming addictions. With a lot of wild and memorable adventures along the way.
A new video by Brandon Sanderson puts a finger on a point I’ve felt but hadn’t quite articulated.
I’m not a Sanderson fan so please divorce that from your counter-arguments. I’ve never read anything by him and have no plans to. His brand of fat, endless fantasy turned me toward S&S. I don’t care about his beliefs or politics.
I do know he’s dead-on here.
Sanderson explains why AI art is not art in this new video. It is worth the 18 minutes of your time.
Try to imagine a world where anyone can summon a movie or a book or an image with a few prompts.
There is no artistry in this. Certainly no struggle. No failure, no triumph. The result is a flattened, disengaged landscape where we’re all staring at our screens, consuming without thought.
When I wrote Flame and Crimson I pieced together a narrative of sword-and-sorcery that did not exist, or at least was not articulated in that manner. So I embarked on a journey 5+ years to tell that story.
I researched and read. Wrote and threw away a lot of my writing. I made missteps and went down cul-de-sacs that I had to abandon. Some days were agony. A couple times I despaired if I’d ever succeed. But I did.
And along the way I learned, and grew. Both my thinking and my writing.
At the end I experienced an intense and lasting source of accomplishment and pride that has not dissipated.
I became a better person.
None of this occurs when you just prompt a machine.
Gatekeeping is a curious counter-argument I’ve some make. “You hate AI because you’re a gate-keeper!”
One YouTuber has made this argument (I won’t link to him; I’m not a fan). But his argument is that Sanderson is a gate-keeper, and this person can’t wait until the gates are thrown open and he can make movies out of his books (which are quite likely AI written) with a mere $200 annual AI subscription.
What this person has let slide clear over his smooth brain is that he isn’t “making” a movie. And the one he “creates” will not be watched.
If anyone can create a movie with prompts, none will be popular. We'll all be able to "create" our own entertainment and keep ourselves endlessly amused, to our own quirks and specifications. There will be millions of movies “made” each day. I'll leave it up to you whether this is a good thing, for the artist trying to make a living or our species as a whole.
When did learning a craft, and the act of performing challenging work, and overcoming obstacles, become gate-keeping?
Writing is accessible to anyone who wants to learn it. Some are of course more naturally gifted or faster learners, but almost anyone can become a good writer, in time.
Think of what becoming a good writer does to you, as a person.
Think of the skill acquisition. The feeling of accomplishment when someone compliments you on your writing, not a machine’s. Think about how many books you’d have to read to become a good writer, and how that reading would change you, expand you as a person.
This is what Sanderson is arguing here. The point of art is not the outcome, which is the receipt, but the struggle of making and how it transforms you as a person. The journey is more important than the destination.
And he’s exactly, 100% dead-on.
I am not a luddite; I use technology all the time like everyone else. I’m not even anti-AI. I’m just anti-AI for the arts.
This is what art is all about, and why it must belong to people, not machines. Using AI to create art for you is not making art. It’s little more than turning on a television set, and about as transformational.
Our name is on the cover of the book we write; even if it sells no copies you have accomplished something amazing. I high-five anyone who takes the time to create.
We are the art.
Thanks to Brandon Sanderson for his clear articulation here.
(Note: I was given an advance reading copy of this book, which comes out next week.)
It was a life of little but feeding, fighting, and fornicating, but Avok found it a good one. Which was just as well, because he could neither recall nor conceive of any other.
--Against the Demon World, Dave Ritzlin
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| Yes, that demon has a spiked metal head. |
Dave Ritzlin’s new novel Against the Demon World is this.
It’s the second standalone novel by the publisher of DMR Books, and the first full-length work of his I’ve read.
If you like classic old-school muscular S&S, you’ll like it.
***
The story opens with two dudes in leather kilts and boots going on an ogre hunt. Straight in, no foreplay, into a well-rendered fight scene. Their names are Kratorr and Avok. Hard, muscular, badass. They fit the story.
Ritzlin tells the tale with a straightforward, easy to read prose style, sprinkled with some Clark Ashton Smith like vocabulary: Fuliginous, trilithon, strophium, sanguineous. But just lightly sanguineous, like sprinkled drops of blood. He’s also not afraid to use exclamation points.
And “thews,” which appears in these pages early and often.
Against the Demon World wears its influences on its sleeve. REH, ERB, CAS, and Lin Carter, predominantly. We have a CAS-esque Fount of Invigorating Flame. But the overall feel seems to owe most to Burroughs, with the demon-world a fantasy stand-in for his red planet of Mars. Weird races everywhere, weird tech. Half-living sky ships with pterodactyl-like wings.
We get Manowar references. The god Agloran, aka. “The Hammer,” whose worshippers honor him with the Sign of the Hammer. We even get a “leave the hall!” commandment, barked at the cultists of Iljer. Us Manowar fans will know.
And of course, it’s loaded with S&S tropes. Demon worshipping cults? Orgies? Blood sacrifice? Check, check, check. “Human sacrifices were required for said rituals, as they invariably are where demons are concerned.” An unironic observation by Dave. Thunderdome like gladiator fights? Check these, too.
Who is our man Avok? He’s a hybrid Conan and Thongor. He worships Agloran at a Crom-like distance, and abides by a rough moral code of behavior (he dislikes stealing from honest men and doesn’t force himself on women, though he certainly accepts their ardent advances).
The plot is basic: Avok finds himself an unwilling pawn in a war between the barbaric free peoples of Cythera vs. the Cult of Iljer (“Hail Iljer!”). The latter wishes to convert and enslave all of Nilztiria’s free races. Avok’s sister’s entrapped immortal soul is the ransom, keeping Avok compliant. The conflict widens; Avok is pressed into something much more than typical S&S self-interest; returning runaway slaves trapped in the demon world to their homes in Nilztiria, where they can live freely and walk in daylight.
But make no mistake, this is beefy men’s fiction, all the way. Easy reading. Action-packed. Mortal peril, demon-summoning, fight after fight. Fun! And funny:
Heltorya leaned forward, scrutinizing Avok with her lush jade-green eyes. “What is that jutting from his body? It appears erect.”
Avok glanced down at his crotch before realizing she was referring to the tentacle. It must have sprung to life recently without his awareness.
Nilztiria is a loose anagram for Ritzlin which I assume is deliberate. Dave gives his created world color and life through epigraphs leading off each chapter, written by a sorcerous chronicler. I like this device; it offers short dabs of world-building flavor that never detracts from the action. If Nilztiria feels a little generic, the demon world of Uzz is wildly imaginative. Here are egg-headed snake monsters, demons like spiky monkeys, wasps the size of mantichores wielding weapons in their tails. Gorgeous demon women who bathe in the distilled tears of their prisoners? Yep, that too.
Here’s a description of one of my favorite demons:
This bestial specimen possessed the head and arms of a black bear, and a pair of squamous limbs which resembled headless snakes emanated from its hips. The lower half of its body was coated entirely in some type of scummy fungus. As it pulled itself aboard, it opened its jaws to emit incongruously high-pitched peals of laughter.
Avok’s chief opponent is Nelgasthros, a demon with a spiked metal head (this appendage can be used to parry sword blows. Cool). When Avok wants to ram his vengeance down the demon’s throat, his love interest quips that will be difficult, as Nelgasthros lacks a visible mouth. “Then I’ll make a few holes in the bastard’s head,” Avok replies.
This is fun stuff, entertainment as fiction’s purpose (which by the way was Burroughs’ mantra).
We read these kind of stories because they’re fun. Dave never takes grim matters too seriously:
They were certainly an odd-looking crew, Avok thought: nearly two dozen hairy, disheveled men and women who appeared as if they knew not the touch of civilization, alongside a proud, noble lady whose captive was a full-bosomed demoness, all following a man with a thrashing tentacle extending from the base of his skull. Avok could not help but laugh, for it was his nature to find humor in the absurd, even when struggling to overcome grave danger as he was now.
I appreciated Dave’s small but steady injection of humor. We get high school locker-room, bro-like conversation about how to attract a woman. Avok is an unwilling mediator in a fight between two bickering women, one a princess, the other a demoness, rife with petty jealousies and insecurities and sexual tension.
Avok stifled a chuckle. In a way, he was living out every man’s dream, sharing a bed with two beautiful women. When he returned to Cythera, he might boast of the feat to his friends. True, one was unconscious due to an injury, and the other was an evil monster, but he could leave out those details.
As is often the case with villains I found the demoness Heltorya the most compelling character. She possesses no morality, and views life (if she is even capable of self-reflection) as a thing upon which she can sate her lusts, consume and spit out the remnants.
“So the only measure of a living creature’s worth is how you can exploit it?” asked Avok.
“Of course,” said Heltorya. “Is that not self-evident?”
***
OK, Enough Talk!
(BTW this line from Conan the Destroyer appears in the book; I use it here to cut to the chase).
Against the Demon World is muscular and fun. Good Saturday afternoon reading with a 6 pack of Miller High Life type of fun. At a breezy 200 pages and a top-notch cover illustration you won’t go wrong.
If you don’t like this muscular style of S&S, great—there’s plenty elsewhere to be found.
Kudos to Dave for telling a good story and for keeping this brand of S&S alive longer than any other publisher.
