It is often said that Robert E. Howard’s Conan is an anti-hero. This is true depending on how one defines anti-hero. In the Classical terminology an anti-hero meant a person lacking in courage and valor unlike Achilles or Hercules who were heroes. Conan has his faults but he is definitely not lacking in those traits. He is anti-hero in the more modern sense of a morally ambiguous badass.
Read MoreThe general aim of this article will be to compare those two pieces, especially by looking at how they both employ themes of deception, obsession, and forbidden knowledge (or knowledge accompanied by falsehood and/or menace).
Read MoreIn May DMR Books will release the anthology Terra Incognita: Lost Worlds of Fantasy and Adventure. This project was masterminded by Doug Draa, editor of Weirdbook Magazine. Doug assembled an all-star team of writers, including David C. Smith, Howard Andrew Jones, Adrian Cole, and John C. Hocking.
Read MoreThis week: Robert E. Howard, Frank Frazetta, Tarzan, Age of Sigmar, Arthur Rackham, Hyperborea, and more.
Read MoreThis week: A new Conan novel, Elric, Jim FitzPatrick, H.P. Lovecraft, John Severin, Beowulf, pirate films, and more.
Read MoreI discovered Fritz Leiber, Mike Mignola, and sword-and-sorcery at the same time. I was a teenager in the suburbs of Houston when I picked up the collection Ill Met in Lankhmar by White Wolf Publishing at a Barnes and Noble. This was a double collection that includes Swords and Deviltry and Swords Against Death.
Read MoreThis week: Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Elric, Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, Swords Against Darkness, Bernie Wrightson, Andre Norton, Stonehenge, and more.
Read MoreWe lost Bernie Wrightson five years ago yesterday. What a talent. What a titan. Within the field of horror art, he simply had no equal.
Read MoreTom Barber was one of the more striking, talented artists working in the sword-and-sorcery renaissance of the 1970s and early 80s. He painted the covers of many classic paperbacks of the era, including the likes of the Robert E. Howard collection Black Vulmea’s Vengeance (Zebra), three volumes of the Lin Carter paperback revival of Weird Tales, and Adrian Cole’s Dream Lords series.
Read MoreJim FitzPatrick is uniquely qualified to illustrate the entire history of Ireland as the Irish have told it to themselves for over four thousand years. For the last half-century and more, he has done just that.
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