Comic Books (Comics Beat): Conan The Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone is one of the biggest surprises of the year. A bloody, thrilling pulp epic, with a razor-sharp sense of atmosphere and dread, the book has gotten a lot of attention as an explosive example of what Conan stories can do at their best.

Warhammer (Sargon of Akkad): They don’t know anything about 40k or Starship Troopers.

Comic Books (Screen Rant): Conan the Barbarian is already widely regarded as a classic Marvel Comics character, having been featured in his own solo Marvel book since the ‘70s, and even teaming up with Marvel’s other most hardcore heroes in Savage Avengers. However, Conan is actually an original character created by legendary pulp writer Robert E. Howard.

Awards (The Rageaholic): Razör Roasts The 2024 Game Awards!

Conan (DMR Books): What is the “natural man” Conan represents? The writings of science popularizer Robert Ardrey argue for an unblinking look at man as he is, as evidenced by man’s origins. Ardrey, after a successful career writing for Broadway and Hollywood, took an interest in science, and travelled to Africa to meet anthropologist Raymond Dart, who had amassed a collection of Australopithecus fossils.

Tolkien (Nerdrotic): Lord of the Rings: War of the RoHERrim. One Girl Boss to Rule Them All. I was really looking forward to this, turns out it’s nothing but a rights retaining disappointment.

Pulp (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Pulp heroes, the really popular ones, show up in other media. Movies, serials, and later TV, but usually Radio was first. Radio created the first Hero Pulp character, The Shadow. The comics came after, often published by the same companies that put out the Pulps. Street & Smith gave us both Doc Savage and Doc Savage Comics.

Cinema (ACOUP): This week (and next), I want to talk a bit about the recent release of Gladiator II. I had a lot of miscellaneous thoughts, which wouldn’t fit into an 1800-word review, so I thought I would pull those together here. There were enough of them that I’m also going to split this into two posts: this week we’ll look at chronology, battles and weapons and the next week we’ll discuss Rome, the Colosseum and the Severan Emperors.

Fiction (Black Gate): Besides editing the Friends of the Horseclans books (discussed here last week), Robert Adams also edited — along with others — two thick anthologies from Signet entitled Barbarians (1985) and Barbarians II (1988). Covers by Ken Kelly. I bought these when they came out because they each have a Robert E. Howard story, and I was an REH completist at the time. I liked both of these collections, although the concept of “Barbarian” is stretched very broadly.

Magazines (Feuilleton): Well, here we are at last… After years of waiting for scanned copies of The Golden Hind to turn up, now that they have done I’m still frustrated. The magazine was one of the many small arts periodicals being published in Britain during the 1920s. It had an erratic, eight-issue run from 1922 to 1924, and remains notable for being the second (and last) magazine to be co-edited by Austin Osman Spare.

D&D (Dungesons & Dragons Fans): Finding the perfect gift for a Dungeons & Dragons fan in your life can often feel like a quest of its own. After all, DnD is more than just a game, it’s a massive brand that covers everything from clothing and accessories, to cookbooks and artwork. Fans also have their own particular interests and collections that can make shopping a challenge.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Ken Lizzi): The Land of Hidden Men was originally titled Jungle Girl. I consider the new title a marginal improvement, though not ideal. Still, it does accurately hint that the story dabbles in lost world tropes. Our hero, Gordon King, is a man of leisure; a doctor with independent means and thus no need to practice his profession; a former college athlete specializing in the javelin throw. He enters a Cambodian jungle as an amateur archaeologist and is immediately lost.

Cinema (The Spy Command): Still, Bond fans may be interested in Taylor-Johnson’s latest project, Kraven the Hunter that’s coming out this month. Kraven is a Spider-Man villain. Sony, which has the Spider-Man film rights, co-produces recent Spider-Man films starring Tom Holland with Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios.

Fiction (Grim Dark Magazine): Sebastien de Castell is no stranger to Grimdark Magazine. Back in issue #28 of the magazine (we’re now on #38, so quite a while ago!) we published his short story “The Sword of Seven Tears”. He is most well-known for his epic Greatcoats series.

Comic Books (Conan Chronology): I wrote in my little “Welcome” post this past summer that I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to read every Conan story or if I would even finish, but finish I did, and it feels to me like it went pretty fast. Part of me is sad about that: I love middle chapters where you’re deep into an adventure but still have a lot to go. Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, Temple of Doom…

Art (Bristol Board): The Four Ages of Conan Portfolio, by Barry Windsor-Smith. The black and white prints are actually the second edition of the portfolio. the first edition was limited to just 30 copies, and each plate was individually colored by Barry, resulting in some very minor differences between each of the 30 existing copies of the first edition.

Authors (Adventures Fantastic): Today is December 7, and that means it’s the birthday of Leigh Brackett (1915-1978). Just a heads-up, this isn’t going to be a typical birhtday post. It’s going to be a little freewheeling, and I’m going to vent my spleen a bit near the end. Brackett is a major favorite around here. She started out in the pulps, writing what has become known as sword and planet with a hardboiled twist.

D&D (Grognardia): A common early complaint about Dungeons & Dragons was that the game’s three little brown books failed to provide much in the way of a cultural or social context for its “fantastic medieval wargames campaigns.” Correcting this perceived shortcoming was part of the impetus behind the creation and publication of several early RPGs that appeared in OD&D’s wake,

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Rough Edges): This novel takes place in the 22^nd Century. All communication between Western and Eastern Hemispheres has been cut off for more than two hundred years, following a catastrophic war that seemed on the verge of consuming Europe and threatened the Western Hemisphere as well.

Tolkien (Silver Key): I just got finished reading Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur. It’s a curious little volume, 233 pages, of which the actual centerpiece poem is incomplete and only comprises 40 pages. The rest is critical apparatus by Tolkien’s son Christopher.

Comic Books (Rip Jagger’s Dojo): Conan the Barbarian was a hit. Marvel was sopping up sales with the color comic and the black and white version. Barbarians were selling it seemed in 1975, so the call went out at DC to bring more barbarians to the table. And that’s how we got Claw the Unconquered. 

Fiction (We Love Translations): So, you’ve read Dumas’ masterpiece, The Count of Monte Cristo, and now you want to read his most popular novel, a meandering, swashbuckling historical adventure set in the 1620s. Originally serialized in 1844 in French with the title Les Trois Mousquetaires, this novel was written in collaboration with Auguste Maquet and was (very loosely) based on historical fact.

D&D (Black Gate): In our ‘It’s all about me, and if it’s not, I’ll take my ball and go home’ culture, what Gygax is saying is counter to that. However, RPGing is a past-time and something to be enjoyed. He’s talking about a mindset; a different way of thinking about your play. He’s not saying you should keep playing if you’re not having fun. He’s saying that you should still be able to have fun even if it’s not all about you. And you should be able to play well.

Shakespeare (Imaginative Conservative): The acceptance of Shakespeare’s Catholic sympathies and sensibilities animates “Shakespeare: The Magician and the Healer,” by Annie-Paule de Prinsac, who argues that the Bard disguised himself and his meaning in a mannerist mask, which simultaneously and paradoxically revealed truths indirectly and allegorically which it was illegal for him to reveal candidly.

Conan (Paperback Warrior): “The People of the Summit” features a twenty-something Conan taking a job as a mercenary to serve King Yildiz of Turan. Conan is provided the role of makeshift sergeant and ordered to lead a small army of Turanians into the Khozgari Hills in hopes to bribe and threaten the restless tribesmen from raiding Turan’s lowlands.

T.V. (Crane Shot): Movie star George Peppard (THE CARPETBAGGERS) turned to network television in the fall of 1972 as BANACEK, which rotated with Richard Widmark’s MADIGAN and James Farentino’s COOL MILLION under NBC’s WEDNESDAY MYSTERY MOVIE banner. Before that, however, Peppard gave the character of Thomas Banacek, a proudly Polish freelance investigator based in Boston.

D&D (Grognardia): Issue #69 of Dragon (January 1983) is another one about whose articles I have very strong memories. The strength of my memories is bolstered, no doubt, by the issue’s remarkable cover by Clyde Caldwell. Caldwell’s an artist about whom my feelings are generally mixed, but I’ve nevertheless got a fondness for this particular piece.

Fiction (Pulp Fiction Reviews): In 1969, Pinnacle launched the Bronze Age with the publication of Don Pendleton’s action thriller, “The Executioner.” Here was an outlandish, lone wolf hero much like the iconic avengers of the Golden Age. Not one to sit on their laurels, Pinnacle then debut Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir’s unique hero, Remo Williams in their novel, “The Destroyer.”

Men’s Mags (Rough Edges): When I was a kid, I happened to read Donald E. Keyhoe’s book THE FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL, and that sparked a huge interest in UFOs. I quickly went on to read other books about the subject by authors such as Frank Edwards and George Adamski.

Fiction (Grim Dark Magazine): Shadows of Pnath is the second of the Countess Zorzi novels in the Arkham Horror series. The Arkham Horror series is pretty much what I wish Call of Cthulhu had done with their fiction line decades ago, which is tell a popularized Pulpy adventure series where the investigators have a (small) chance of thwarting the supernatural horrors around them. The Countess Zorzi series is one of the Pulpiest with the Catwoman-esque protagonist and her sidekick, taxi driver Pepper Kelly.

H. P. Lovecraft (Gamespew): Ever wonder what it’d be like if a local amateur theatre company put on a production of The Call of Cthulhu? The answer is Blood on the Thames, a PC horror game that has you roaming Victorian London unravelling the murder of your husband.

History (Frontier Partisans): In the western theater of the conflict — the frontier — the war was far from over. In fact, the year 1782 saw a spasm of extreme violence that would mark the most terrible year of a brutal, savage struggle. The most recent episode in Brady Crytzer’s micro-history of a Pennsylvania frontier community, Robinson run, recounts two raids that occurred in that year.