Robert E. Howard: Bringing Brawn to The Weird... Completing The Triangle

I've always thought of the Big Three of Dark Pulp to be Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard.  I might be off in this supposition, but to me, those three stand elite from all others that blazed the trail in those heady, creative days before the Second Great War.

It was an era when books, magazines, comics, and radio filled up the space in one's brain now occupied by television, multi-media noise, and electronic clutter.  Fantasy entertainment had to be earned via active involvement (outside of the cinema, which wasn't doing much in the way of the fantastic and strange back then).  Imagination was crafted, not given, and was bolstered by such pulpy gems as Adventure, Amazing Stories, Black Mask, Dime Detective, Flying Aces, Horror Stories, Marvel Tales, Oriental Stories, Planet Stories, Spicy Detective (SPICY DETECTIVE?! YES!! I so love that this exists), Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Unknown and, of course, Weird Tales, which brought HPL, CAS, and REH to the masses (such as they were).

In terms of physical stature and creative scope, H.P. was the bookish outsider, the fragile and sickly New England gentleman who reached beyond the very conception of the cosmos through his startling imagination, taking him places he'd never dare go in person, and creating new vistas and entities of  horror rooted deeply in xenophobic, sexual, and social fears.  Cosmic terror.  Nameless dread from beyond rooted time and space.  A cold, disinterested universe, roiling with ageless creatures of chaos birthed before our reality blinked into existence.  Humanity as a fly speck upon the bleached desert of a billion strange realities.

Robert E. Howard - "Two-Gun Bob" - was the beer swigging southern brawler, as bold and gritty as the plains of west/central Texas, who seemed to relish crafting characters and lands based on his reverence for physical strength and primal violence.  Barbarism.  Battle.  Bloodshed.  Noble death.

While he also explored a few classically "Lovecraftian" tales, REH is best know for his hulking heroes, all ropey muscle and swinging blade. "Thews."  Conan the Cimmerian, Bran Mak Morn, Kull of Atlantis - smashing skulls, cleaving torsos, and bedding maidens, with a sort of brutish innocence found in a humanity unencumbered by civilizing laws.  A celebration of the steel inside human flesh.


Clark Ashton Smith always seemed to bridge the gap between the two disparate pen pals and admiring contemporaries, both stylistically and physically.  One part dipped in the squishy and squamous of Lovecraft, another part bathed in the blood, sweat, and iron of Howard's newly minted "sword and sorcery."  A third part pulpy, poetic sci-fi all his own.  CAS lived a frugal, yet rugged existence in the hill country of Auburn, California.  More Renaissance Man than Mountain Man (yet both just the same), who divided his time between sculpting, painting, poetry, dazzling wordsmithery, and other artistic pursuits.  He was refined, but also sturdy.  A deft creator of high fantasy and sword and sorcery, while also a master, in his own right, of true cosmic horror, sci-fi, and weird fiction.

I've discussed HPL and CAS a bit here at The Cosmicomicon already, but I haven't yet delved into Robert E. Howard.  Part of that is due to my creative focus at the moment, which is very much in the House of Lovecraft, buttressed (*snicker*) by Columns of Clark Ashton.  But the other reason is based on my own ignorance.  Sure, like any starry eyed 70's child with a rapid and searching imagination, deeply steeped in fertile and seemingly limitless womb of Dungeons& Dragons, comics, and Dragon Magazine, not to mention the genre-establishing art of His Highness Frank Frazetta, I've always grown up with an awareness and zeal for Conan the Cimmerian.  How could one not?  He was the epitome of the Invincible Noble Savage.  The non-super yet impossibly heroic SuperSavage who lived by basic principles of honor, strength, and deadly justice.  He was an Old West gunslinger who brandished a blade instead of a six shooter.  He was all I wanted to be as a kid, aside from a bit of book learning and some general standards relating to modesty and hygiene.  Conan was the pre-history Ultimate Warrior before the WWF was a glint in Vinnie McMahon's greed-bulged eye.

He was Conan, and he was all Robert E. Howard.  What an achievement.  What a contribution to fantasy.

The strangely (at the time) black 'n white artwork, magazine-size comic Savage Sword of Conan looms large in my mind during my comic frenzy years of teenage years.  This was in the days before the explosion of truly graphic "graphic novels," and the unbridled violence and blood lust of "comic book character" thrilled me to the marrow.

Soon came John Milius' gritty film Conan The Barbarian, starring a my state's current governor (and a Viking Jew Fro that will last throughout the ages), looms as one of the "biggest" films of my childhood, even though the production values became a bit suspect as I aged into adulthood, when magic dimmed in the face of cut-rate props and costuming).

But, I plan on changing all of that in the coming months.  I've heard the clarion call of the battle horn from beyond The Black River, and will attend to my deadly duty.  Digesting "The Hyborian Age" and "Almuric" in the last week has re-lit my fire to reacquaint myself with with this giant, pugilist of a writer, with a legacy of stellar work and legions of extremely loyal fans.

As we gear up for the coming new Conan movie, lets all remember to pay homage to the the Brainfather of it all - Robert E. Howard. He was respected and admired by all of the Pulp Masters, especially HPL, who carried on an extensive epistolary relationship with REH for years.  They were tight.  Tight in a way that is surprising to me, based on their individual personalities.  But nothing bonds the blood tighter than a shared love of the strange, the threatening... the Weird Horror.

So, I raise my froth rimmed goblet to you, Robert E. Howard.  Long may your words ring out, like the sound of clashing steel on the battle plain, till the last glint of human savagery is sucked from this mortal coil.  The time will come.  But in the mean time, let us remember the words of your best-born son:

Mongol General: What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

Advice to live by, my fine feathered friends.

Okay... Off with you.  Jog on.

I'm reading... I'm remembering...

Zombies from the Old School - Clark Ashton Smith

This morning at the gym, while fighting a pitched battle against five consecutive days (and counting) of starch and gravy, I read "The Isle of the Torturers," by Auburn, California's favorite wizard of the weird, Clark Ashton Smith (first published in the March, 1933 edition of Weird Tales).

In the story, the young king of Yoros is one of the scant few survivors of an astral plague ("The Silver Death"), and in his attempt to flee to a secluded safe haven across the sea, ends up being washed ashore on the Isle of Uccastrog, better known amongst sailors and whispering wanderers as the Isle of the Torturers.

After watching five glorious weeks of the superb, refreshingly elegant "The Walking Dead," I've lately been in a zombie state of mind, and so was struck immediately by CAS's often use of zombies in his 1930's dark and fantastical fiction, particularly in his expansive collection of Zothique Tales, first conjured in 1932, which comprised of sixteen finished stories, a poem, and a one-act play, all taking place on the doomed continent of Zothique.

According to Black Gate Magazine:

In a letter to H. P. Lovecraft, Smith gave a tongue-in-cheek description of Zothique:

I have heard it hinted in certain archaic and obscure prophecies that the far future continent called Gnydron [Smith's abortive early name for the continent] by some and Zothique by others, which will arise millions of years hence… and will witness the intrusions of things from galaxies not yet visible…

Very cosmic horror.  Very Lovecraftian.  Very Clark Ashton Smith.

My morning discovery of "The Isle of the Torturers," and the appearance of bloated, flayed zombies in dire need of eyelids (no spoilers here, folks), reminded me of "Empire of the Necromancers," which was the very first CAS tale I'd ever read, and which immediately hooked me into Smith fandom forever with its combination of fantasy, sorcery, and brutal, charnel house horror (first published in the September, 1932 edition of Weird Tales).

After being immersed nearly exclusively in Lovecraft, discovering Clark Ashton Smith opened a whole new vista into the horrifying and bizarre, and bridged a needed gap between my youth spent in the thrall of fantasy adventure, and my adult sojourn down the darkest halls of cosmic horror and speculative fiction.

And - to stay on topic - "Empire of the Necromancers" has an entire KINGDOM of magically re-animated zombies (and mummies and skeletons), who aren't necessarily your garden variety, brain-dead shamblers.  Some of these staggering dead are long term thinkers, and possessed of a generational pride not often found in contemporary zombie fare.

Luckily, there's still so much yet to be read, and I'm very much looking forward to digging deeper into CAS's Zothique Tales, and in so doing, am sure to find more extraordinary stories of crypt-crawling ghouls, toadish monstrosities, extraterrestrial monsters, and even a bit of high fantasy.  And freakin' zombies.  That's the magic of this man, who hopefully will some day get his due, like his devoted brothers-in-arms - H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard - are just now beginning to receive.