The first new barbarian fantasy hero of the 1960s was John Jakes’ Brak. John Jakes (1932-2023) got his start in the science fiction pulp magazines in 1950. He was in lower tier titles including Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Planet Stories, Imagination, If etc. He branched out into western fiction and crime fiction magazines through the 1950s. His first book (The Texans Ride North) was in 1953.

He got in the historical novel craze, what L. Sprague de Camp called “Chariot Opera”, as “Jay Scotland” starting in 1959 with I, Barbarian (Avon Books). He had a total of six historicals, generally with Ace Books 1959-1963. Then the historical novel trend wound down.

He became part of Cele Goldsmith’ stable, editor of Amazing and Fantastic in the early 1960s. Science fiction was not so dominant as it was in the 1950s. There was a shift in popular culture towards horror and the supernatural. You also had the Italian peplum movies with Hercules, Maciste, Goliath, Ursus etc at the time. Sword & sorcery was ready to return.

The first Brak story was “Devils in the Walls” in the May, 1963 issue of Fantastic Stories of Imagination. Brak is a barbarian exile from the steppes looking to make his way to the fabulous Khurdisan to make his fortune. He is big, tall, blond haired with a long braid. The first scene in which he appears, he is on the slave auction block, captured while sick. A lady buys him for the task of dealing with a supernatural infestation.

Jakes’ brings in H. P. Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones in the form of Yob Haggoth. Brak is no superhuman.

Brak returned in a two part novel “Witch of the Four Winds” in the November and December issues of Fantastic. He is a slave again. “When the Idols Walked” was another two-parter in “When the Idols Walked” where again, you guessed it, Brak is again a slave.

Three more stories would follow in 1965 before Ziff-Davis sold Amazing and Fantastic. The magazines would return later in the year as reprint publications.

L. Sprague de Camp would reprint “The Girl in the Gem” in the anthology The Fantastic Swordsmen (Pyramid Books 1967). The first Conan collection from Lancer Books Conan the Adventurer in September 1966 and the following volumes in 1967 were very successful. Other science fiction publishers scrambled to get sword & sorcery out ASAP.

John Jakes got a fix-up for Avon Books in July, 1968. Brak the Barbarian contained five stories that ranged to novella length. “The Pillars of Chambalor” and “The Silk of Shaitan” originally in Fantastic were included as sections in the book. Jakes got a Frank Frazetta cover.

For some reason Brak moved to Paperback Library which had published three of Lin Carter’s Thongor novels. Brak the Barbarian Versus the Sorceress (April 1969) was an expanded reprint of “Witch of the Four Winds.” It has had a Frank Frazetta cover.

A new novel followed in September 1969, Brak the Barbarian Versus the Mark of the Demons. A very late 1960s sounding title. The cover was by Mark Leonard who was doing covers for Paperback Libary now.

The Conan paperback boom ended in the early 1970s. Jakes had some “science fiction” novels from Ace in the early 1970s. Then John Jakes became a best selling author with the Kent Chronicles starting with The Bastard in 1974. This series was huge. I remember seeing people all over the place reading it. Jakes sparked a boom of American colonial fiction in the mid-70s around the Bicentennial.

There was also a sword & sorcery boom in the late 1970s. Zebra Books reprinted a lot of Robert E. Howard, many with Jeff Jones covers. Pocket Books reprinted the three previous Brak books in 1977 and reprinted When the Idols Walked for the first time. These reprints had covers by Charles Moll and Clyde Caldwell. John Jakes might have been the biggest American author at this time.

The scattered Brak stories not incorporated into the previous books were collected as The Fortunes of Brak (January 1980) showing the continued power of the Jakes name.

There was still a little momentum in the late 1970s sword & sorcery boom into the early 1980s. Tower Books, a real bottom level publisher reprinted the four Brak books with really bad covers by Uldis Klavins. Big, fat fantasy subsumed the fantasy field in the 1980s and Brak was vanquished to the used bookstore shelves.

Pulp Hero Press did reprints a few years back.

Brak is possibly the most plodding barbarian hero in fantasy. He is actually rather like how Chip Rommel played a side of befuddled beef in Conan the Barbarian 1982. Brak is constantly beat up, enslaved, and taking abuse. He generally gives pay-back by the end of the story but things happen to him. He does not dominate a situation like Conan. Jakes’ villains are often more interesting than his heroes. Jakes is a rather pedestrian writer. Great for soap opera historicals that made him popular. He is the anti-Tolkien in the use of words. Ridicule can be heaped for characters and creatures Fang-Fish and Manworm.

Karl Edward Wagner once referred to Brak in Fantastic Stories of Imagination as a harbinger of atrocities to come.

John Jakes wrote his motivation for writing Brak:

“When the first Brak tale saw print, its appearance was followed shortly by a letter to the magazine that had published it. I have lost my copy of the letter since, but I recall its inferences quite clearly – and painful ones they were for an author.

The reader’s letter expressed the opinions that Brak was but a pale ghost of mighty Conan and, what was worse, had probably been conceived either out of ignorance of Conan, or with full knowledge and therefore out of sheer cupidity.

To the first part of the charge I plead delightedly guilty. That teller of marvelous tales, Robert Howard, did indeed create a giant in whose shadow other ‘hero tales’ must stand and sometimes, admittedly, suffer.

But be ignorant of all of his work? Or believe that readers would be hoodwinked, and not feel the pulse of common blood which riots through all the warrior who inhabit the world of sword and sorcery?

No.

My motive for giving birth to Brak and his parallel univers on an old black iron Underwood was much simpler. There just are not enough stories of this kind to go around any more; mot enough, anyway to please me.  To help fill this dismal gap well or badly – I hope never  indifferently– my barbarian, with the long yellow braid and the light of the south horizons glittering in his eyes, was born.”

He was a Robert E. Howard fan moved to write his own fiction. I can’t fault him for that.