Comic Books (Glitternight): This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at Sun Girl, a Marvel character from back when the company was called Timely Comics.

Fantasy (Ken Lizzi): It is unsurprising that The Hollow Hills is generally lacking in suspense. We readers — even more than the narrator, Merlin — know the broad brush strokes of what is going to happen. The fun comes from the variations, from Stewart’s refashioning Geoffrey of Monmouth’s improbable legend into a plausible narrative. And, as with Book I, The Crystal Cave, much of the enjoyment comes from the Easter Egg hunt.

Tolkien (Nerd of the Rings): The Twelve Houses of Gondolin.

Westerns (Western Fiction Review): This very fast-moving story begins with a one-man massacre, and it’s not just people he kills. Livestock is slaughtered too and a line shack destroyed. And the killing spree doesn’t end there. One of the acts of this dead man is to kidnap a young woman to bring Marshal Colby Jackson to him and it isn’t long before Jackson is gunned down.

Cinema (Fandom Pulse): Are Action Movies making a comeback?

D&D (Jon del Arroz): Dungeons & Dragons is not selling. The player’s handbook, dungeon master’s guide, and monster manual have all failed to reach levels of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.

Tolkien (Tolkien & Fantasy): In July 1964, L. Sprague de Camp sent J.R.R. Tolkien a copy of his anthology, Swords & Sorcery, which had been published in December 1963. It is a collection of eight stories, with an introduction by de Camp, and colored cover art and eight interior black and white illustrations by Virgil Finlay.

Popular Culture (Kairos): As much as the baby boomers fought to overturn and rebel against and eventually destroy the American culture that existed before them, one thing that I have always found interesting is how much the same champions of counterculture that sadistically dismembered their heritage and mocked every tradition their parents have gifted them, but at the same time romanticize this same culture they worked so hard to undo.

Science Fiction (Black Gate): After posting about The Borrowers by British author Mary Norton (1903 -1992) last week, several people mentioned other books and movies with similar kinds of themes — little people living in the houses of big people. I thought I might take another post to discuss a few other examples from my own book collection.

Fantasy (Silver Key): Tanith Lee is such a storyteller. She’s a writer of atmosphere and romance and decadence and depth who accomplishes this with an economy of words that astonishes. She seems to have an unfailing instinct for what is boring (what to leave out), what keeps the story moving (what to emphasize).

Cinema (Art of the Movies): You will have no doubt seen that the preview for 28 Years Later went viral because of the Cillian Murphy zombie, but that wasn’t what got my juices flowing. Instead, it was exactly what a trailer should be.

Forthcoming (DMR Books): The release of Swords of Steel IV is right around the corner. Now it’s time to unveil the cover art, courtesy of Bebeto Daroz!

Edgar Rice Burroughs (John C. Wright): Our own Brad Torgersen was discussing whether or not THE GREAT GATSBY should be assigned reading to schoolboys. He was chided by snobs telling him schoolboys should take their literature like they take their cod liver oil, because it is good for them.  Mr. Torgersen then read this letter into the record. Please note the date.

Robert E. Howard (Michael K. Vaughn): The Best of Robert E. Howard: Is it Really the Best?

Pulp (Black Gate): No one else is doing the kind of superb work Stephen Haffner is, bringing pulp authors back into print in gorgeous archival-quality hardcovers that are within reach of the average collector. His latest release is The Complete Ivy Frost, which gathers together all eighteen stories of Donald Wandrei’s pulp supersleuth Professor I. V. “Ivy” Frost, one of the most popular characters to ever appear in Clues Detective Stories.

Art (Muddy Colors): Pete Beard has posted a new video exploring the art of Fortunino Matania. Enjoy.

Radio (Escape-Suspense): Somehow, despite all of their successes, neither Escape nor Suspense was able to claim that they had produced “the scariest episode” from the golden age of American radio. That distinction belongs to the series Quiet, Please for their episode, “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” It is still considered the best in radio horror.

Robert E. Howard (Lawrence Person): More books from that large Robert E. Howard purchase. Howard, Robert E. Always Comes Evening. Underwood Miller, 1977. First edition thus, a reprint of the Arkham House edition #116 of 200 leatherbound copies signed by artist Keiko Nelson,

Documentary (Frontier Partisans): Netflix will drop American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden on Monday, March 10. It is the third in a series by the same team, following excellent multi-part docos on OJ Simpson and the Boston Marathon Bombers. The format and content of the docos is riveting, and I am looking forward to their take on a story that I have long been immersed in.

Art (DMR Books): I’ve been a fan of the artist known as Brom for a solid thirty-five years. Imagine my chagrin when I learned Lord Brom celebrated his sixtieth birthday a few days ago—on the ninth, to be exact. It’s past time to give him his due, but he is getting due’d anyway.

Pulp (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffman Price collaborated on a dozen pieces for the Pulps and fanzines. These range from the non-fantastic Dragoman Saga for Oriental Stories to one segment of the giant round-robin known as Cosmos to novels for the better paying magazines like Argosy. Of course, my favorites are the stories they did for Weird Tales.

Fiction (Rough Edges): Late in his career, Harry Whittington wrote several historical novels under the pseudonym Blaine Stevens. ISLAND OF KINGS is the final book to appear under that name, and in fact, it may be the last book that Whittington wrote.

Art (Heavy Metal): If you had told me I would end up painting for a living when I was 17, I would have assumed you meant houses or cars. The idea of creating a representational image out of pigments suspended in linseed oil was so far removed from what I thought I was meant to do in life.

Fantasy (Black Gate): Roger Zelazny was unquestionably one of the great American fantasists of the 20th century. That’s not to say he was perfect. His woman characters were often 2-dimensional, and he paired an unwillingness to work with an outline (“Trust your demon” was his motto) with a fondness for projects that really needed an outline.

Comic Books (Cyborg Caveman): “Fabulous first issue!” the cover cries, which is as good a place as any to start this blog’s new “First Issue on the First” feature. As you’d expect, the plan is to review the first issue of a comic on the first of each month. Note that this is first issues, not first appearances, because this is most definitely not the first appearance of Vanth Dreadstar, only the first issue of this space-opera series from Epic Comics.

D&D (Grognardia): This is another poll whose results whose results will greatly interest me. I had just turned 10 when I discovered Dungeons & Dragons during the Christmas break of 1979, but all my neighborhood friends, who formed the group with which I regularly played, were younger than I was, by a year or two. I eventually came to know roleplayers who were older, like a friend’s brother and his buddies, but we never gamed with them very often.

Horror (The Obelisk): The phrase “Lovecraft’s cat” has become a meme, and a viral one at that. Ever since his debut in “The Rats in the Walls” (1924), H.P. Lovecraft’s familiar feline has entered the online lexicon as a playful way to say the unnamable. Well, now, in Anno 2025, Bizarchives stalwart Mr. C.P. Webster (The Horror Beneath) has taken it upon himself to wrestle with the Lovecraft family cat.

Horror  (Lovecraft E-Zine): Valancourt Books is a hidden gem in the world of small presses. For years, they’ve been steadily building an impressive catalog of “Gothic, horror, and supernatural fiction”, bringing readers chilling tales and forgotten classics.Here’s a link to their Robert Bloch books.

History (SandRhoman History): The Galloglass: Ireland’s Axe Wielding Mercenary Class

Fiction (Book Graveyard): He is most well-known for his character Imaro, a warrior of the plains of Nyumbani, a fictional version of Africa. Imaro is often compared to Conan and Saunders has said how he was influenced by Robert E Howard, but Imaro was also a reaction to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan.

History (Patristix): Introducing the Book of Kells.