Comic Books (Bounding Into Comics): Heroic Signatures President Fredrik Malmberg recently explained why he chose to make a deal with Titan Comics to publish new Conan the Barbarian stories despite receiving multiple requests from other publishers.

Conan (Paperback Warrior): John Maddox Roberts is a Vietnam War veteran that served in the US Army from 1967 until 1970. His first novel, The Strayed Sheep of Charum, was published in 1977. Specializing in historical mystery and adventure, Roberts authored the successful Ancient Rome series SPQR, published as 13 installments between 1990 and 2010. He also authored titles like Stormlands, Hannibal, Space Angel, Cingulum, Island Worlds, and Falcon. My experience with the author is his contributions to the Conan pastiche novels published by Tor.

Fantasy (Grognardia): Wellman also penned six stories about Kardios, a survivor of Atlantis, the last of which was published in 1986, just months after the author’s death. Though he first appeared in 1977, Wellman had apparently conceived of Kardios sometime during the 1930s, but had trouble selling him because Robert E. Howard had beaten him to the punch with Kull. However, Andrew Offutt (and, later, Gerald W. Page, Hank Reinhardt, and Jessica Amanda Salmonson) recognized the uniqueness of the character and it’s through their efforts that we can read about his exploits today.

Pulp (Pulp Superfan): A classic pulp sword-and-sorcery hero who has been revived for new stories is Elak of Atlantis. He was created by Henry Kuttner (1915-58), who wrote many pulp stories solo and with his wife, C.L. Moore (1911-87). Kuttner created and wrote Thunder Jim Wade and many short stories, but is not well known for any particular story per se. “The Graveyard Rats” is one notable work, and another is the story that was the basis for The Last Mimsy movie.

Fantasy (Cyborg Caveman): In honor of the recent passing of John Jakes, I offer this review of a less well-known work. Well, less well-known to people outside the genre, I suppose. I have wanted for some time to read his Brak the Barbarian, and in a dark synchronicity The Mark of the Demons came in the mail the same day I read of his death.

Crime Fiction (Vintage Pop Fictions): Fredric Brown (1906-1972) was an American writer of science fiction and crime fiction. Although he was a pretty big deal in the crime genre he is a writer whom I’ve overlooked until now. The Screaming Mimi, published in 1949, is one of his earlier crime novels. It was filmed in 1958 and in 1970 it was adapted (apparently “unoffically”) by Dario Argento as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. We’ll get back to Argento later.

Fantasy (Paperback Warrior): The Zanthodon series was created by science-fiction and fantasy author Lin Carter. Inspired by “hollow Earth” concepts by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne, the series explores the adventures of action-man Eric Carstairs and his zany employer Professor Potter as they navigate an immense underground world. The series ran five total installments, all published by DAW and now available through Wildside Press. Considering how much I enjoyed the debut, Journey to the Underground World (1979), I was excited to read the next novel, simply called Zanthodon (1980).

Horror (Cyborg Caveman): Specifically, the book was Stinger. I read Robert McCammon back during the winddown of the ’80s horror boom, Swansong, The Wolf’s Hour, Blue World, and A Boy’s Life (which I really need to review after my semi-annual reread), but not Stinger. I was excited to find something by a competent author whose work I had always enjoyed. So, let’s dive right in, shall we?

Conventions (Mystery File):  Speaking of “comic book territory,” Rusty Hevelin, organizer of the old Pulpcon, used to preach that we had to try and keep the comic book dealers out of pulps, because once they got in, then we could forget about reading the issues and selling to each other for reasonable prices. Because the comic dealers are into it as an investment, and the prices would sky rocket. Guess Rusty was right and he used to ban comic books from Pulpcon. But those days are over.

Conventions (Grey Hawkery): Greetings Greyhawk friends! I am back and with a quick report of my time at GaryCon XV at Lake Geneva, WI. This is my 5th time going in person, COVID notwithstanding. Last year we were still coming out of the pandemic, masks were a must, but now we’ve moved on and the con is stronger than ever. Let’s get into it…

Weird Tales (Tellers of Weird Tales): I have stayed away from writing a biography of Farnsworth Wright. Luckily, I found a source that will allow me to go on avoiding that task. My source is a biographical article in a series called “Titans of Science Fiction,” printed in the fanzine Science Fiction Digest, Combined with The Time Traveler, in Volume 1, Number 7, from March 1933.

RPG (Tenkars Tavern): Many of us have bemoaned the lack of viable alternatives to OneBookShelf/DTRPG for years.

Before OneBookShelf (actually, Roll20 now, if you look at your emails) merged with RPGNow, there WAS competition. Heck, DTRPG used to offer a “Free Game of the Week” (not a bad idea actually) in an attempt to lure customers to their site (some of these PDFs were protected by some weird Adobe security features that were a huge PITA). OBS kept RPGNow as a mirrored storefront of DTRPG for years.

New (Wormwoodiana): The latest issue of the M R James journal Ghosts and Scholars is now available. Issue 44 has been guest edited by Benjamin Harris.

This issue includes an essay on M R James as a Dramatist by Tony Medawar. MRJ wrote two plays for the choristers of King’s College Cambridge, performed in 1895 and 1896, and five Miracle Plays while Provost of Eton. Tony’s fascinating original research explores these.

Gaming (Walker’s Retreat): As the video explains, because most people don’t know that the Pinkertons are still around, Magic-Users By The Water (MBTW) hired the Goon Squad to do Goon things to a card channel guy because someone other than him screwed up. MBTW just managed to dampen down their last massive Public Relations screwup (the OGL incident) and are still trying to downplay both the recent movie failure as well as the recent Virtual Tabletop Top/Totally-Not-A-New-Edition-Guys double-dose of dumb.

Popular Culture (Wasteland & Sky): We’ve talked many times about Cultural Ground Zero or Dead Internet Theory in many of these spaces, but one thing we do not discuss is Dead Hollywood Theory, the theory that the former masters of our art and entertainment are not only not around anymore, but there is a constant attempt by those that remain to trick you that they in fact, are not.

One of the most recent examples of this was the revelation that Cartoon Network, once the home for children’s entertainment in mass media, no longer appeals to their main demographic.

Science Fiction (Kairos): Fight Space Vampires with the Lords of Creation

The Lords of Creation rule the Nine Worlds through its control of the ultra-advanced technology that has permitted the colonization of the entire solar System. More gods than men, the Lords of Creation have cheated Death itself. But although they rule the solar system with their god-like scientific knowledge, there are even more powerful forces to be feared lurking out in the dark depths of space.

Cinema (Jon Mollison): This is not a perfect film, and a few blunders prevent it from even reaching the level of “great”, but it is a film worth watching.  a psychologist interviews a death row inmate to determine if the inmate is demon-possessed or faking insanity to avoid the chair – which means I had the pleasure of going into the film with very low expectations.  We know before the lights dim that there’s a demon in there, after all.

Gaming Magazines (Grognardia): Issue #72 of White Dwarf (December 1985) features a cover by Lee Gibbons that’s striking not just for its style but also its subject matter. Over the course of its run, the subject of most of WD’s covers has been fantasy or science fiction, while this one clearly depicts a horror scene, perhaps even one from the Call of Cthulhu game. In any case, I like this cover quite a bit. It’s a reminder to me of all the excellent CoC content that appeared in the pages of White Dwarf over the years and kept me reading it for so long.

Appendix N (Goodman Games): In the storied list of Appendix N authors, there is one name that encapsulates nearly the entire course of modern American science fiction and fantasy: Jack Williamson. John Stewart Williamson was born on April 29th, 1908 in an adobe hut in what was then still the Arizona Territory. Seeking to better themselves, the Williamson family travelled by horse-drawn covered wagon to New Mexico in 1915, where Williamson recalled that they “homesteaded in Eastern New Mexico in 1916 after the good land had been claimed. We were living below the poverty line, struggling for survival.”

Pulp (Rough Edges): This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. FANTASTIC ADVENTURES was an odd mix of different kinds of fantasy stories with a science fiction yarn sneaking in occasionally. At this point in its run, it was edited by Howard Browne, a good editor and an excellent author in his own right. The cover of this issue is by an artist I associate more with science fiction, Ed Valigursky. He did a lot of covers for the Ace Double science fiction line, I believe.

Paperbacks (Glorious Trash): Son Of Famous Monsters Of Filmland

March, 1965  Paperback Library

I first discovered Famous Monsters Of Filmland when I was very young; it was probably around 1979 or 1980, and I would’ve been six or so. Coincidentally, the same age my son is now. My brother is seven years older than me and he had some recent or fairly recent issues of the magazine, somehow, and I remember looking through them. In particular I was really into the ads for the Don Post monster masks. I can’t recall which issues these were, but I’d love to know.