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Post by brutalis on Aug 1, 2016 9:45:57 GMT -5
Having asked about ERB i cannot let his stalwart brother in arms REH go without notice. My first exposure to Howard was through Marvel comics: Savage Sword of Conan #26 and Conan #16. Adaptations of Howard stories. From there came more Marvel with Kg Kull and Solomon Kane. Then the Lancer paperbacks where i got to finally have a true taste of Robert E. Howard's worlds. To this day i am a Howard enthusiast. Reading over and again his Conan's, Kull's and Kane. When did you first notice the kingdom's of REH?
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 1, 2016 10:09:08 GMT -5
My first exposure would have been the Conan movies in the 80's. Of course at the time I had no idea who created the character and only later, probably while browsing an issue of Savage Sword of Conan, did I learn the name Robert E. Howard.
I held off reading the books for years because I'd learned that many of his stories were altered by later writers, or appropriated for pastiches, and this never set well with me. That said, my first Conan book was a collection by Robert Jordan. Not bad, but nothing compared to what I'd later read in the original stories. It wasn't until the excellent Del Rey collection that came out in 2003 that featured all of his Conan stories, in chronological order (unedited no less) that I first read REH. I'm glad I waited and was able to experience REH in his purest form. I have all of the REH Del Rey books at this point save for the El Borak collection and the horror collection. I adore his Conan work, and the whole concept of the Hyborian Age, but I found Solomon Kane to be a surprisingly poignant. I have a thing for tragic, solitary characters. Overall, Conan is his best work, but Kane comes very close to me and might be slightly more interesting to me as a character.
Funny enough, I'm about to start re-reading The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. I love the illustrations by Mark Schultz and think that Rusty Burke, Patrice Louinet and all the contributing Howard scholars did a fantastic job on this series.
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Post by tingramretro on Aug 1, 2016 10:23:30 GMT -5
I discovered the characters through Roy Thomas's work at Marvel, and Roy's Conan is still the definitive version for me.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 1, 2016 11:26:06 GMT -5
Same here : Roy Thomas's Conan the barbarian at Marvel. The first issue I remember reading was #19, which remains one of my favourite comics ever. I was hooked very quickly and started collecting the comic (als, only in a translated version at first). There was very little Howard in print in French at the time (mid '70s) but the stories The scarlet citadel and The mirrors of Tuzun Thune could be found in an anthology devoted to the best stories from Weird Tales. In 1976 I got my hands on the three Conan books from Éditions Spéciales, which translated the Lancer paperbacks Conan, Conan the adventurer and Conan the warrior. spoil tags because of mild nudity : No joke : I pretty much learned English so I could read Howard's work. The first book in English I read from cover to cover was Solomon Kane : Hills of the dead. So thank you, Mr. Howard! |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 1, 2016 11:29:26 GMT -5
I found REH through Roy Thomas as well... and later got all the actual Howard stories (including the De Camp completed ones) on ebay.. I have the 60s paperback ones with Frank Frazetta covers, which are nice, but they're kinda beat up and low quality to start, so I suspect they may fall apart if I tried to read them again... I have to get the big trade collections that came out a couple years ago at some point.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 1, 2016 11:29:49 GMT -5
Double POst (sorry!)
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 1, 2016 13:43:19 GMT -5
(Reprinted from the 50 Years Ago thread.)
A friend of mine introduced me to the Lancer paperback Conan series that began in 1966 with Conan the Adventurer. (I still have that book; it doesn’t specify the month it was issued, though.) Maybe I was reading that Conan collection that summer and just didn’t have as much money to spend on comics.
I distinctly recall buying Conan the Adventurer (for all of 60 cents… but remember, that was five comics, which might well have been a month’s buying for me) in one of the stores where I bought my comics.
I think for some reason that it was the late summer, though. Conan the Warrior and Conan the Usurper came out in 1967, and I know I bought them and the succeeding titles as quickly as they came out. Just wish I could remember for sure if it was the early summer of ’66 when I got started. (I know it was no later than 1967, that’s for sure.) God, were they great!
What red-blooded 12-year-old could have stopped reading "The People of the Black Circle" after this opening paragraph?!
"The king of Vendhya was dying. Through the hot, stifling night the temple gongs boomed and the conchs roared. Their clamor was a faint echo in the gold-domed chamber where Bunda Chand struggled on the velvet-cushioned dais. Beads of sweat glistened on his dark skin; his fingers twisted the gold-worked fabric beneath him. He was young; no spear had touched him, no poison lurked in his wine. But his veins stood out like blue cords on his temples, and his eyes dilated with the nearness of death. Trembling slave girls knelt at the foot of the
dais, and leaning down to him, watching him with passionate intensity, was his sister, the Devi Yasmina. With her was the wazam, a noble grown old in the royal court."
And a few of Conan’s first words:
"Don't make a noise, or I'll send the devil a henchman!"
"You are Conan?"
"Who else? You sent word into the hills that you wished for me to come and parley with you. Well, by Crom, I've come! Keep away from that table or I'll gut you."
I was hooked.
Addendum: The best stories, were the originals.Even as a kid, I could tell the difference. The pastiches were less primitive in tone and description.
Most memorable stories for me were (in no particular order) "Red Nails," "Rogues in the House," and "Wolves Beyond the Border," and of course, "A Witch Shall Be Born."
I was thrilled when the comic came out, but o0nce the Smith run was over, capped by the great Tarim Saga, I have to say that it became a pretty repetitive read.
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Post by Red Oak Kid on Aug 1, 2016 14:44:32 GMT -5
The original Marvel Conan comic book was the first time I had ever heard of REH. Around issue 12.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 1, 2016 17:03:31 GMT -5
I know that I was aware of the Conan comic and had a few issues well before I knew about REH. But I never bought any of the Conan comics regularly and the issues I had came from garage sales.
So again, really, I learned about REH from his written work. It was not at all unusual to find the Ace Conan books floating around during late grade school, junior high and high school. By late junior high or high school I'd read most of REH's work that was published in paperback by that time.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 1, 2016 17:03:42 GMT -5
Read some Conan novels first then the Marvel comics.
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Post by String on Aug 1, 2016 17:34:15 GMT -5
My first exposure:  |
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Post by Red Oak Kid on Aug 1, 2016 18:42:34 GMT -5
I should add that I learned about REH the man, in an early issue of a Marvel B&W magazine. Perhaps Savage Tales #2 or Savage Sword of Conan or Kull and the Barbarians. They had a text page with a bio of REH and a photo of him. That photo of him in the felt hat was sort of misleading since he looked to be middle aged, yet in reality, he died young.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 1, 2016 19:34:58 GMT -5
Howard was only 30 when he died. There were eerie parallels between his life and mine for a time (thankfully those days are over) so I think I'll always feel a bit of a connection with him. He also didn't look like your average "geek genre-writer" and probably could have held his own in the taverns of Aqualonia!  |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2016 9:57:00 GMT -5
I was reading Howard before the comic started. Who could resist the covers on those Lancer paperbacks?   And right from the start I could tell the original Howard stories were better than the pastiches. Favorites - Queen of the Black Coast, The Black Colossus, Beyond the Black River. (Hmm. I sense a theme. Or possibly a motif.) I was drifting away from comics; at one point, I think I was down to just the Fantastic Four. Then Marvel did Conan, and I had to buy that. Which probably helped me drift back into comics. When Zebra was publishing damned near everything Howard had ever written (along with pastiches of any character they could find somebody to write about) I was buying it all. While I liked Solomon Kane, Kull, and even Cormac Mac Art as characters, it was still the Conan stories that really stood out for me. Great story-telling, great action, just the right touch of fantasy. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 2, 2016 10:14:15 GMT -5
(...) He also didn't look like your average "geek genre-writer" and probably could have held his own in the taverns of Aqualonia! Absolutely! I remember some ridiculous articles on Howard, published in the 1970s, where he was depicted as a small kid who got picked on at school and who retreated in a world of fantastic heroes where he could vicariously get revenge on his tormentors. WHAT BULL$H*** !!! Howard was a heavy set guy who enjoyed sports and practiced boxing. It's true that he was seen as something of an odd duck, because he had no "proper job" : he wrote stories for a living. But that's as far as it went regarding persecution. I'm glad that recent biographies have corrected the wrong impression left by people like L. Sprague de Camp (who didn't even know Howard). |
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