Blog Archives

Forthcoming (Indigogo): Battleborn is a printed fantasy magazine dedicated to presenting all-new sword & sorcery fiction by the finest modern masters and rising stars in the subgenre, as well as reprinting the very best of genre classics and hidden gems for a new generation of readers? D&D (Dungeons and Dragons Fan): Whether you’re a veteran […]

Weird Tales (M Porcius): The May 1941 issue of Weird Tales is like a monument to the genius of Hannes Bok, with a Bok cover and an interior chockablock with Bok illustrations of horrible monsters and alluring ladies.  So this issue of D. McIlwraith’s magazine is already getting the MPorcius Seal of Approval even before I […]

Horror (Paperback Warrior): She appears in several horror anthologies and digests with her frightening tale “The Phantom Coach”. The story first appeared in All the Year Round in 1864 as “Another Past Lodger Relates His Own Ghost Story” with the author unnamed. My version of the story is in The Phantom Coach: Thirteen Journeys into […]

Fiction (Black Gate): I heard about Charles Nuetzel, who’d written some Howard-like and Burroughs-like tales. I’d stumbled on his book called Warriors of Noomas. After a search on the net, I found an email address and sent one flying into the void. I wasn’t sure he was even alive, but he answered and we became […]

Magazines (Twilight Zone Vortex): –Klein provides biographical information on the winners of the magazine’s third annual short story contest, and describes the characteristics which made their work stand out from the other submissions. Klein next highlights the Twilight Zone quiz created by high school senior Gary Frisch, and the interview with actor Burgess Meredith conducted […]

Art (Fine Books Magazine): Frank Frazetta’s pen-and-ink  Famous Funnies No. 214 Buck Rogers cover original art which portrays Buck Rogers sailing through space topped Heritage Auctions‘ Comic & Comic Art auction, selling for $1,035,000. Cinema (Midnight’s Edge): The trailer for the new Red Sonja movie starring Matilda Lutz has been released, and while the movie […]

James Bond (Art of the Movies): Ian Fleming regarded the secret service as a “dirty trade,” and he knew better than most what he was talking about. As a Naval Intelligence man, he rubbed shoulders with his fair share of secret agents and was familiar with their business. Indeed, Fleming himself had a hand in […]

Comic Books (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Esteban Maroto made a splash in America when he drew Red Sonja in a steel bikini for Marvel then “Dax the Damned’ series for Warren Publications. Maroto would draw many other comics for the black & white publisher but he caught fire with Dax. This opulent but depressing series began […]

Review (DMR Books): Willard ‘Will’ Oliver’s Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author has been out for a couple of months now. I have read it. It is excellent. Now that I (hopefully) have Internet connectivity that allows more than an hour of online work every few days, I’m going to […]

Art (Art of the Genre): Tim Kask (heal quickly man!) once let me know with both barrels just how hard it was to get fantasy artists in the 1970s for the likes of Dragon Magazine, because basically there weren’t such an animal.  Contrast that with today, and you can’t walk your fingers an inch over […]

Fantasy (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Continuing our series of Sword & Sorcery Firsts we are technically still in the Pulp Era until 1954 or so a few of the following happened in a Pulp magazine. The Digests take over shortly thereafter. Fantasy Fiction as a whole, whether it is S&S or not, has faded from much […]

Pulp (Comics Radio): We come to the last work of prose fiction in the January 10, 1926 issue of Adventure. This one is a novella titled “He Shall Have Best Who Can Keep,” by Gordon MacCreath. Writing (Kairos): Breaking Bad distinguishes itself from most modern storytelling in many respects, not least of which being its deliberate […]