Wild, Fanciful, and Often Trippy

I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to suggest that the covers of science fiction and fantasy novels have gotten much less imaginative over the years. By the mid-1980s, the writing was already on the wall and the wild, fanciful, and often trippy covers that simultaneously attracted and frightened me as a kid were on the way out, to be replaced by an endless parade of Michael Whelan, Darrell K. Sweet, and their imitators. This is no knock against Whelan, who's a great artist, but there is a certain predictability to even his best work that I frequently find disappointing. Come to think of it, predictability might well be the defining characteristic of post-1970s SF and fantasy art, itself a reflection of the mainstreaming and commodification of these genres. (Cue my inevitable dig at much of the oeuvre of Larry Elmore.)

Science fiction and fantasy were still (relatively) fringe interests in the 1960s and '70s and the artwork from the period reflects that. Take a look at these three different covers to the paperback releases of Michael Moorcock's The Stealer of Souls, starting with the Lancer edition of 1967:

I have a certain fondness for this cover, because my local public library still had a copy of the book on one of its spinner racks, where I first saw it. Jack Gaughan, best known for his work on the unauthorized US printings of The Lords of the Rings, is the artist of this piece, depicting Elric in battle against the reptilian demon Quaolnargn, summoned by Theleb K'aarna as part of a plan to separate the Melnibonéan from Stormbringer, while the spectral visage of (I assume) Yishana watches. 

The 1968 Mayflower edition took a completely different tack:

Bob Haberfield, who'd go on to do the covers of many more Elric novels, is responsible for this one, which is a terrific example of the kinds of covers I remember well from my youth. Unlike Gaughan's Lancer cover, this one has no obvious connection to anything that occurs in the novelette. That's pretty much par for the course in the late '60s and throughout the 1970s.

Finally, there's another Lancer edition, this time from 1973.

This piece is by Jeff Jones, who had an extensive career as a comics illustrator and I think that shows in the cover. I'm not entirely sure what it depicts, though my guess is that it might be the naval assault on Imrryr from The Dreaming City, with the monster being a Melnibonéan dragon. In any case, it's a very dynamic piece that grabs the attention, which is exactly what the covers of science fiction and fantasy covers used to do. 

The Fantasy Trip

In the course of seeking out information on an unrelated topic, I came across the following image:

In case it's not obvious, this is a portion of a sheet of LSD blotter paper. Blotter paper frequently featured artwork, often psychedelic, occult, or fantastical in nature. Given that, I suppose it was inevitable that there'd eventually be blotter art directly inspired by – or, as in the case above, directly taken from – specific works of fantasy. 

From what I've been able to gather, this blotter paper came from Mexico in 1980 or '81. This matches the period when Marvel licensed its popular Conan the Barbarian comic to Editorial Novaro. This was actually the second time Marvel had licensed the character in Mexico, the first being a decade earlier, when Editorial La Prensa published the series under the title Vulcano el Barbaro. Because the blotter paper identifies the character as Conan rather than Vulcano and features the artwork of John Buscema rather than Barry Smith, the early '80s timeframe makes the most sense. (The history of Conan in Mexico is actually quite an interesting topic. Perhaps I'll delve into that in a future post).

Strictly speaking, none of this has much relevance to the history or play of RPGs, but it's one of those oddities that appeals to me that I like sharing. This makes me wonder if there's ever been any blotter paper with artwork taken from D&D or another roleplaying game … 

RIP Richard Corben (1940–2020)

I feel very fortunate to have grown up when I did. The period between the late '60s and the early '80s was one of remarkable esthetic ferment, a brief artistic Indian Summer sandwiched between the exhaustion of the post-War years and the creeping corporatism of the Reagan era. As the old creative order crumbled, a period of reckless experimentation and wild invention took hold, the ultimate results of which were decidedly mixed – and, arguably, failures, given what followed in the decades to come – but which nonetheless produced some powerful art and artists. Among them was Richard Corben, who died on December 2 at the age of 80.

Growing up, Corben was not an artist with whom I was directly familiar. I didn't know his name but I knew his art. As a kid, there was a drugstore within walking distance of my house. My friends and I used to go there quite regularly to pick up candy bars, baseball cards, and comic books. There were a couple of spinner racks, one for DC and one for Marvel, in that drugstore and my friends I would spend a lot of time flipping through them, occasionally even buying copies to take home with us. 

Not far from the spinner racks were three or four shelves of magazines, back in the days when print periodicals were still alive and well. While none of us spent as much time looking at those shelves as we did the spinner racks – unless Life or Time had a cover story about Star Wars, though Starlog was a more reliable source for stories of that sort – it wasn't at all uncommon for our eyes to stray there occasionally, casting furtive glances at the brash, burning covers of Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella and, of course, Heavy Metal. 

I don't recall who among us was the first one bold enough to pick up one of those "adult" comic magazines and open it up. Whoever it was, doing so was both frightening and exhilarating, the kind of perverse charge one only gets by doing something forbidden. Though it's been more than four decades, I remember well feeling that we "shouldn't be doing this" and trying to convince my friends that the latest issues of Spider-Man and The Avengers were much more interesting than those strange, unsettling black and white comics hidden behind the hypnagogic covers of Heavy Metal. 

I was wrong, of course, both about the fact that we shouldn't be reading these comics and that those superhero comics were more interesting. A big part of that was the presence of Richard Corben's distinctive artwork. As I said, I don't think I ever heard Corben's name mentioned until much later – sometime in college, I'd expect – but his style was unmistakable and it had a powerful, unsettling impact on my imagination. Corben's art is highly exaggerated, almost to the point of caricature, and it's oddly this quality that somehow makes it seem more realistic, if that makes any sense. There was a surreal sensuality to Corben's art that was at once titillating and revelatory, especially to a sheltered, preteen suburban boy like myself. More to the point, Corben's art was completely unlike what I'd seen in the pages of mainstream comics: moody, idiosyncratic, and powerful. This was not made-to-order illustration but rather the product of an individual communing directly with his own grotesquely buxom Muse. 

Interestingly, Corben reappeared a little later in my life – again, I didn't realize it at the time – on the covers of the US editions of the Fighting Fantasy books. He did the first half-dozen or so volumes, including The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and I was fascinated by those covers. Though obviously geared toward a more child-friendly audience than his work on Creepy or Heavy Metal, those covers were clearly his work. The same paradoxical, cartoonish hyper-realism is present, along with small hints of darkness and even salaciousness. They're terrific stuff and I have a hard time imagining contemporary children's books with covers of this sort. Like I said, it was a weird and wonderful time to grow up.

Oddly, despite my fascination over the last decade or more with the esthetic and cultural cauldron out of which the modern fantasy genre and, by extension, roleplaying games arose, I don't think I gave much thought to Richard Corben until a few years ago, when I stumbled upon some issues of Mike Mignola's Hellboy comic that he illustrated. I understand he did illustration work for other similarly well known comics in his later years, though I've never seen them myself. When I learned he had died a few days ago, I was unexpectedly moved by it, as if his death signaled something more than just the demise of an octogenarian in ill health. That probably says more about my own skulking senescence but I felt it nonetheless. A unique artist is gone; we shall not see his like again.

We Need Large Groups

Number of Players: At least one referee and from four to fifty players can be handled in any single campaign, but the referee to player ratio should be about 1:2- or thereabouts.

–Men & Magic, Volume 1 of Dungeons & Dragons (1974)

Players: The more the merrier!

–Metamorphosis Alpha (1976) 

Any number of people can participate in a campaign or scenario, although generally 40 players should be treated as a maximum. Optimum game size (based on the ability of the referee to control and interact effectively) is from three to ten persons.

–Characters and Combat, Book 1 of Traveller (1977) 

When I first took up the hobby of roleplaying, my neighborhood circle of friends consisted of seven people, a number that often increased, such as when one friend's cousin from Minnesota spent the summer with him or when we met up more distant school acquaintances to do something together. Consequently, my earliest experiences of playing RPGs, especially Dungeons & Dragons, include being surrounded by a sizable number of people. I've talked before about the local gaming meet-ups and the the number of participants at most of the games there. Those games were raucous, lively affairs – even anarchic by many measures – but I enjoyed them a lot, which is why I regularly reflect on them on this blog. 

I found myself thinking about this recently, because, due to a concatenation of events, my House of Worms campaign hasn't met for the last couple of weeks. That's highly unusual. There are eight players in the campaign and it's rare that more than a couple of them are unavailable on a given week. That's one of the joys of a large group: there are always enough people to play.  That means more than one might think, since it's only through regular, continuous play that a campaign can be built up and survive for years. And, as a commenter on another post rightly said, long campaigns are "indeed the acme of the hobby." Anything else is, in my opinion, a mere shadow of what the hobby is capable of.

In the past, I used to make all sorts of excuses as to why my groups consisted of only three or four people and some of them might even have been valid explanations rather than facile rationalizations. I can't do that any longer, as it's become increasingly clear that I'd been missing out on the chaotic creative energies that can only be unleashed by a larger group of players. I've had fun with small groups certainly and I'd even argue that, in some contexts – an espionage campaign à la Top Secret, for instance – they make more sense than large ones, but, as a general rule, I think large groups are vital to the success of a RPG campaign. Indeed, I'd go further and suggest that RPGs were created with large groups in mind.

At some point, though, a shift happened and smaller groups became the norm. I'm not quite sure when it happened or why. A quick survey of games from the early '80s, during the height of RPGs' first instance of faddish popularity, reveals that the subject of the size of a gaming group is rarely addressed at all. When it is, such as in, for example, in Tom Moldvay's Basic Rules, there's a certain hedging of bets:

At least two persons are needed to play this game, though the game is most enjoyable when played by a group of four to eight people.

It's a far cry from OD&D's four to fifty players but still skewing toward a size that is large by the standards of later eras, when smaller groups seems to have become more common – at least that was my experience during the later '80s and into the 1990s. 

The other thing I have observed, especially during this year, is that having a large group of people with whom you regularly game, even if it's only virtually, as it is for most of us these days, is a much needed antidote to the social isolation we might otherwise feel. My House of Worms crew, with whom I've spent many hours, have helped keep me on an even kilter and contributed much to my general level of emotional well-being, which is exactly what any worthwhile entertainment does. Further, the presence of so many different people, with different playing styles, ideas, and temperaments has not only made the campaign richer and more varied than it otherwise would be, it's also, I think, made me a more patient, tolerant, and open-minded person. That's no small thing, particularly in an age when so many of us voluntarily wall ourselves off from others and then despair of loneliness. 

Get out there and play with more people and more regularly. It's good for the hobby and it's good for you too.

Spinner Rack Memories

The most magical place I've ever visited was the Middle River Public Library in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. As a child, I must have gone to the library every couple of days, looking for new books on dinosaurs and planets and frogs, three subjects very near and dear to my heart. I learned to write my name – no mean feat! – specifically so that I could get my very own library card. Though small, the Middle River Library had a surprisingly good collection of books that appealed to me. It was here, for example, that I first came across EC Comics and H.P. Lovecraft and these early experiences left me with a lifelong love of horror in all its forms.

Because the library was small and thus had limited space for shelves, there were spinner racks all over the place. Generally, the racks were used for small and light volumes, like magazines, comics, and paperback books. In the 1970s, when I was a child, fantasy and science fiction were much more likely to be published as paperbacks than as hardcovers. Consequently, these spinner racks abounded in books of this sort, a significant portion of which were originally printed in the 1960s, during the explosion in interest in these genres. I spent a great deal of time at those spinner racks, turning them slowly to admire their covers and sometimes grabbing a few books to take home with me.

Even now, more than four decades later, I can remember vividly the covers of some of the books I saw there, so long ago. Perhaps the most memorable were the Lancer/Ace Conan collections edited by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. With one exception, these collections were all published between 1967 and 1971 and contained a mix of Robert E. Howard's original stories – mostly in altered form, unfortunately – and pastiches by other authors intended to fill in the "gaps" in the chronology of Conan's life. Frank Frazetta provided the cover illustrations for most of these collections, some of which are forever burned into my memory.

I know I grabbed a few of them, like Conan of Cimmeria and Conan the Adventurer, solely on the strength of their covers alone. I have only dim recollections of the actual contents of these collections; I must confess that it took me several more years before I developed a fondness for Conan or REH. Even so, it was a beginning, a first foray into the world of sword-and-sorcery, and it probably contributed to my eventual deep dive into the genre during my teen years. There's a lot to criticize about the Lancer collections on the editorial side – my feelings about De Camp in particular are not positive – but there's no denying that, along with Marvel's comics, they introduced a lot of people, myself included, to the Hyborian Age. I'm very grateful for that introduction

Claw the Unconquered

Back in the mid-80s, my friends and I were very briefly – but intensely – enamored of TSR's Conan Role-Playing Game by David Cook. At the time, I don't think any of us were all that familiar with Conan outside of Marvel's comics or the Schwarzenegger movies, the second of which had come out the summer before the RPG was published. (I had read some of the Lancer Conan books by this point, but they didn't make a huge impact on me)  As I recall, the game had a fun and easy to use character generation system that produced appropriately pulpy characters. One of my friends generated a character who had a physical deformity – a claw on one hand – that was the result of a curse or black magic or something similar. He called the character Talon, which, at the time, I thought was pretty clever, and had many adventures during the Hyborian Age.

Many years later, I learned of the existence of Claw the Unconquered, DC comic that ran for only a dozen issues, beginning in June 1975. Like my friend's character, Talon, Claw is afflicted with a curse – an ancestral demonic pact, we eventually learn – that results in members of his family having a bestial claw in place of his right hand. I don't know if my friend ever read Claw and based his character on it or it's a case of independent invention.

Claw's real name is Valcan, an outlander who has come to the realm of Pytharia, seeking fame and fortune.

Let say right now that the art in Claw is excellent, nearly the Platonic form of what I associate with the comics of my youth. That's not surprising, since it's the work of the late, great Ernie Chan (credited as Ernie Chua, at the time), who worked on many comics during the time, including Conan the Barbarian for Marvel. The writer was David Michelinie, best known for his time at Marvel Comics, a few years later.

Claw's titular appendage is something Valcan hides with a red gauntlet, largely because of the reaction it elicits in others, as we learn early in the first story.

The ruler of Pytharia is named Occulas of the Yellow Eye, who dwells within Castle Darkmorn. As a young prince, Occulas learned of an omen that "the hand of justice," which is "webbed like a dragon's paw," would one day threaten his rule. Concerned for his future, Occulas scoured the world looking for anyone who bore such a mark. Eventually, his agents succeeded, finding the farmer Kregar, who possesses a hand like that foretold by the omen. They first accuse him of treason and then slay him, along with his wife, leaving their infant son an orphan. I trust no one will be surprised to learn that that infant grew up to be Valcan, who was apparently raised by some mysterious individual, who found him shortly afterwards. 

Naturally, when a now-older Occulas hears of a demonic-handed outlander wandering about the streets of his capital city, he takes a keen interest in him and places a bounty of 10,000 dreknars on his head and right hand. 

Truthfully, it's a solid set-up for a sword-and-sorcery comic. Since the title only ran for twelve issues, I assume it nevertheless failed to catch the reader public's imagination. As is so often the case with unsuccessful characters like this, Claw has made cameo appearances in other comics over the years, including in the pages of The Warlord. I wonder if part of the reason for the comic's demise was its perceived similarity to the incredibly popular Conan the Barbarian and The Savage Sword of Conan over at Marvel. If so, I can understand that, given the visuals, but it's a shame nonetheless, since, even in the very first issue, it's clear that Michelinie intended to take the series in a very different direction than did Roy Thomas with his own magazines. At the same time, the 1970s is a graveyard for failed fantasy comics and the fact that Claw the Unconquered is among the dead says little about the quality of its core concept.

Death Dealer

If I had to choose a single piece of artwork that summed up the feel of "fantasy" around the time I discovered Dungeons & Dragons (1979), it'd be this one.

Painted by Frank Frazetta in 1973, Death Dealer has got to be one of the most iconic – and imitated – pieces of sword-and-sorcery artwork ever created. I'm not sure when or where I first saw it. If I had to guess, I'd imagine I saw it as a poster somewhere, perhaps in a hobby shop, though it's also possible I encountered it in a record store, since Molly Hatchet's debut album used this image as its cover. Wherever I first saw it, the painting is unforgettable. 

A friend of mine growing up was so taken with Death Dealer that it was a regular point of reference for his descriptions of his D&D characters – "He has a horned helmet like the Death Dealer," etc. I also seem to recall that he purchased a Ral Partha miniature that had clearly used Death Dealer for "inspiration" and insisted that it be used for his character.  Who could blame him? It's a remarkable painiting.

Lords of Chaos

Thanks to a kind reader, I now have a few copies of the early gaming fanzine, Lords of Chaos, whose first issue appeared in Spring 1977. The 'zine was produced by N.C. Shapero, who was a contributor to Lee Gold's Alarums & Excursions and the creator of the Other Suns RPG. It takes its name from Shapero's gaming club in Belmont, California. 

When time permits, I'll write a few posts about the 'zine and its contents. I'm particularly interested in the 'zine's contributors, some of whom eventually went on to work for prominent RPG companies of the era. I suspect too that I'll gain some further insights into the California gaming scene, since I'm fascinated by regional differences in the way RPGs (and wargames) were approached in the first decade of the hobby. 

More later!

Weird Maps V

     In Sneffels Joculis craterem quem delibat
     Umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende,
     Audax viator, et terrestre centrum attinges.
     Quod feci, Arne Saknussemm.

Which bad Latin may be translated thus:

"Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; which I have done, Arne Saknussemm."

The passage above comes from Chapter 5 of Jules Verne's 1864 novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth. I cite it because comic writer Mike Grell, creator of The Warlord (about which more later today), claimed that it's the source of the name of the hollow earth setting of the comic, the Inner World of Skartaris. 

I have a great deal of fondness for the concept of the hollow earth. It's utterly absurd from a scientific standpoint, of course, but it's fun and a part of many foundational pulp fantasies, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs's Pellucidar (which J. Eric Holmes clearly admired as well). In 1990, the late Aaron Allston wrote a pretty clever Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting based on the concept, showing that, even as late as that date, the pulp fantasy literature from which the game sprang had not yet been forgotten. 

Solomon Kane vs Dracula

I have often said – too often, most likely – that the period from the late 1960s to mid-70s was one of incredible creative ferment. That Dungeons & Dragons appeared during this time is not at all surprising, especially when you consider everything else that was going on at the time. Just take a look at comics from the era to get an idea of what I'm talking about (including their influence on early D&D). 

Marvel Comics played an outsize role in this period of artistic upheaval. One of the reasons for this was the company's willingness to push boundaries in the pages of its black-and-white comic magazines, such as The Savage Sword of Conan. Because these offerings were magazines rather than comic books, they weren't subject to the Comics Code Authority's rules, allowing writers and artists to produce things that wouldn't otherwise have been allowed at the time. (The distinction between a "magazine" and a "comic book" is a complicated and somewhat arbitrary one in this context, but, for historical reasons, it was a real one)

Besides Savage Sword, Marvel published Dracula Lives!, which premiered in June 1973 and ran for a total of thirteen issues (plus an annual). The magazine was sort of the grown-up companion to The Tomb of Dracula and featured some of the same creators (most notably, Gardner Fox). Roy Thomas, whose lasting fame is based to a great extent on his work on Conan the Barbarian, was a regular contributor to Dracula Lives!, starting with its very first issue. His contribution to issue #3 (October 1973) is of particular interest to me (and, I hope, readers) because it features not just the Count himself but also Robert E. Howard's Puritan swordsman, Solomon Kane. Even more significantly, it answers that age old question, "Who would win?"

The story, entitled "Castle of the Undead," begins with Solomon Kane beset by wolves in a Transylvanian forest.

Wounded, tired, and surrounded, Kane is near defeat – until he is rescued by a mysterious stranger.

The stranger is, of course, Count Dracula, who explains that he had raised the wolves from cubs and it was only his familiarity with them that enabled him to survive where Kane nearly did not. Kane thanks him for aid and explains that he is in Transylvania seeking a young woman named Rosella Carson. Rosella is the daughter is a friend back in England and he has vowed to return her safely to her father. Dracula claims to know nothing of Rosella but offers Kane a place to stay the night. Kane accepts and promises Dracula any boon he asks in payment for his having rescued him from the wolves.

When Kane awakens just before dawn, he finds himself assailed by "a vision of sensuality incarnate, whom he memorably rejects.

Dracula has enthralled Rosella Carson, making her one of his vampire brides. Horrified, Kane confronts her and is left with no choice but to slay her, which he does by piercing her heart with his shattered walking stick. Soon after, he goes to find the Count, who, it turns out, is waiting for him, sword in hand.

Kane duels Dracula and seems to gain the upper hand. Despite the vampire lord's skill at arms and preternatural strength, Kane overcomes his defenses and stabs him. Dracula topples backward and laughs, for Kane does not yet fully understand the "rules" that govern the undead's damned existence. Dracula gets up and mocks the Puritan for a fool. Kane is not so easily beaten, though, and, as the Count ridicules him, he reaches for his coin purse and tosses the silver coins within at the vampire.

With this maneuver, Kane gains the upper hand. He reaches for a nearby axe to chop off Dracula's head. Before he can do so, the Count craves the boon Kane had earlier promised him: to spare his life. Honorable and upstanding even when dealing with a spawn of Hell itself, Kane agrees. A good Christian gentleman, he will not break any oath he made and relents. Dracula mocks him one last time for abiding by his moral code and the story ends.

Once one gets past the initial absurdity of these two literary characters meeting and fighting, "Castle of the Undead" isn't half-bad. It's not great literature, to be sure, but I think it's broadly in keeping with the spirit of Howard's Kane stories, if not necessarily Stoker's Dracula. Indeed, I'd say it's a better original story than the 2009 Solomon Kane movie, which wasted James Purefoy, not to mention probably the only chance we'll get for an adaptation of the character. Say what you will about Roy Thomas – and many have – but he certainly understood REH and his characters better than have anyone in Hollywood over the last half-century.

Chainmail Bikini

After so many entries in the Pulp Fantasy Library series, I sometimes forget the books and the stories about which I've already written. This happened recently when I started writing a post on Robert E. Howard's "Sword Woman," featuring Agnès de Chastillon – Dark Agnes, as she is sometimes called – only to discover that I'd previously written one on this very story more than a decade ago. The reason I wanted to make a post on this story is that it's often reported that Marvel's Red Sonja is based not just on the similarly named Red Sonya of Rogatino but also on Dark Agnes. 

Of course, the matter is complex. None of Howard's yarns about Agnès de Chastillon appeared during his lifetime, though he shared drafts of them with fellow writer C.L. Moore. In fact, Moore was so enthusiastic about Dark Agnes that she was inspired, at least in part, to create her own fictional swordswoman, Jirel of Joiry. In any case, a "posthumous collaboration" between REH and Gerald W. Page resulted in the third Dark Agnes story being published in the neo-pulp magazine Witchcraft & Sorcery in early 1971. That story, entitled "Mistress of Death," served as the basis for "Curse of the Undead-Man," the first (original) story to appear in Marvel's The Savage Sword of Conan" in 1974. 

The Savage Sword of Conan is itself a fascinating topic worthy of further discussion, not just for its role in further popularizing Robert E. Howard's most famous literary creation, but also for its influence on later fantasy entertainments of all kinds (including RPGs – remember that OD&D appeared almost contemporaneously with its inaugural issue). For present purposes, what's important is that Savage Sword was initially published not by Marvel Comics directly but the related company of Curtis Magazines. This meant that, among other things, Savage Sword did not have abide by the strictures of the Comic Code Authority (which, at any rate, had already revised its rules several times in the early '70s). Unsurprisingly, Roy Thomas – and, more importantly, his artists – were freer in adapting Howard's stories, particularly when it came to violence and sexual or occult content. Equally unsurprisingly, this made the comic one of the most popular and successful of the decade.

So it was into this environment that we first see Red Sonja in the garment for which she is most famous – the chainmail bikini, as it is commonly known.

Recall that Sonja had previously appeared in issue #23 (February 1973) of Conan the Barbarian and it's to this prior adventure that she refers here. Recall, too, that when Sonya appeared in that comic, she dressed rather differently.

Still not the most practical armor perhaps, but at least her arms and chest are protected. So what happened? Why the change in the character design? 

According to Roy Thomas, it was Spanish artist Esteban Maroto whom we have to thank for this innovation. The story goes that Maroto submitted a piece of artwork to Thomas that depicted Sonja in this now-famous outfit. Thomas loved the look and ordered John Buscema to use it as the basis for Sonja's appearance in "Curse of the Undead-Man," while Maroto got to illustrate a back-up story featuring the Hyrkanian warrior woman entitled simply "Red Sonja." Also worthy of note is that the cover to Savage Sword, depicting Conan and Red Sonja fighting side by side against a horde of undead, was done by Boris Vallejo, back before he had become fantasy caricturist and demonstrated some genuine talent.

Growing up in the '70s, it was almost impossible to escape Red Sonja. She was featured regularly in advertisements for Marvel comics during the period and, alongside Conan himself, forms a big part of my early awareness of sword-and-sorcery as a distinct literary genre. To this day, I've never actually read a single one of her own titles; she's always been a secondary character in Conan's comics. Still, she's an important part of the pop cultural history that feeds into the history of roleplaying games, so I may need to familiarize myself better with her as a character. Even if you're not interested in her as a comic character, her creation touches on the interplay between publishing and fans, as well as changing mores regarding what was acceptable content for comic books. Those are some rich veins to mine for anyone interested in the prehistory of RPGs, so this probably won't be the last time you'll see the chainmail bikini in these pages.

Stalker the Soulless

The 1970s were a time of both great instability and great creativity at DC Comics, with new characters being created at a rapid pace and then discarded just as swiftly. This was particularly true of those characters created to capitalize on the growing popularity of sword-and-sorcery themes and concepts, few of whom lasted more than a handful of issues.

A very good example of this is Stalker, premiering in June 1975. Created by Paul Levitz (perhaps best known for his work on The Legion of Super-Heroes) and Steve Ditko (of Spider-Man and Dr Strange fame), Stalker only lasted four issues before being unceremoniously canceled. It's a pity, because there are some clever ideas in the comic that, given time, might have developed into something of lasting interest. As it is, Stalker is, at best, a curiosity for those of us chronicling the history of fantasy themes in pop culture.

Stalker takes its title from its protagonist, who begins as a nameless urchin from the streets of Geranth near the Cold Wastes. Dreaming of one day becoming a great warrior, he seeks out the temple of the god of evil and war, Dgrth – try pronouncing that – and offers the deity his soul in exchange for his martial blessing. Dgrth not only agrees but appears before the young man to give him the power and skills he desires – as well as the moniker of Stalker.

Dgrth is true to his word: Stalker is now a potent warrior of unmatched skill. Unfortunately, he soon finds that he takes no pleasure in his blessing. Dgrth, it seems, has already taken his soul and, with it, his emotions and everything that made him a human being. 

Enraged, Stalker decides to storm Dgrth's hell to force another audience with the god and there to demand his soul be returned to him. After many trials, he succeeds in facing the god of war once more, who explains to him that what he seeks is impossible, for Stalker's soul has already been absorbed into his very being. So long as evil and war existed, he was invincible and there was thus no way for Stalker to reclaim his soul. Rather give up, Stalker instead takes Dgrth's words as a challenge.

It's actually a pretty good setup for a sword-and-sorcery comic, as Stalker travels across the world, attempting to find a way to stop wars and defeat evil without in the process strengthening them – quite a task for a soulless man whose only powers are of a violent nature. The whole thing has a vaguely Moorcockian vibe, which is helped somewhat by Ditko's signature style. Stalker the Soulless is no Elric, to be sure, but, as heroic anti-heroes go, he's much more interesting than Kane. 

Like many of these discarded fantasy heroes from the 1970s, Stalker has apparently made small appearances in DC comics over the years, though I know little of their contents. If anyone knows more about the subsequent history of the character, I'd be interested in knowing about it.

Interview: Chris Holmes

Today's interview was a real treat for me. Chris Holmes, son of Dr J. Eric Holmes, kindly agreed to answer my questions about his own experiences with roleplaying, as well as the life and works of his father, whose Basic Set was the very first RPG I ever owned. 

1.  How did you first become involved in the hobby of roleplaying?

My favorite game as a kid was Clue; it was the only game I could beat my older brother at. It was also the closest thing to an RPG in America in the sixties.

Sometime in 1975 by brother Jeff told my Dad and I about a game his friends from the alternative high school were playing.  He thought we would like it even more than he did and he was right. He arranged for Dad and I to join a game run by two high schoolers. The rules they used were developed by Cal tech students and were called Warlock. Warlock used a complicated combat system with percentile dice and a magic system with more spells than OD&D and spell points; it was all a bit overwhelming. We had enough fun that first confusing night that Dad wanted to buy his own set of the rules. The high schoolers directed him to Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica. There he bought the 3 brown books plus Greyhawk and Blackmoor, Chainmail and two copies of the Warlock rules and lots of dice and minis.  He was rather frustrated at his first attempts to learn the rules from the books, but eventually made his own hybrid of the two rule systems. He was well prepared to be a Dungeon Master because his bookshelves already contained most of “Appendix N” and he had already had his first success as a pulp writer. When, a couple of weeks later My friends and I entered his first dungeon we were about to have the most fun of my teenage years.

2.  Was your father an avid player of games generally or was it because of the fantasy component that he was interested in trying Warlock?

Dad was a good chess player; he had a beautiful set he bought in Japan on leave during the Korean War. He didn’t play many other games until he discovered D&D. After attending his first GenCon he got interested in wargames and other strategic, miniature, and even play by mail games. In the 70’s we played the Dungeon! board game and Cosmic Encounter. Later we played miniatures wargames with Romans vs. Picts and Vikings vs. Britons. He painted Aztec, Egyptian and Zulu Armies but I don’t think he ever played me with them. We also loved Snit’s Revenge and The Awful Green Things from Outer Space by Tom Wham.

3. On the matter of Appendix N, who were your father's favorite authors? He wrote a novel set in Pellucidar, so he was clearly a fan of Burroughs. Do you recall others whom he liked?

I believe his favorite was Lovecraft, but he didn’t talk about favorites very much. His collection was very similar to Gygax’s, I imagine. Dad had an almost complete set of Clark Ashton Smith stories published by Arkham House. He had a large collection of ghost stories and adventure stories as well as a lot of science fiction. He had a complete collection of Robert E Howard in paperback, most of Burroughs, Andre Norton, and many others. Another author he collected who didn’t make it on to Appendix N was William Hope Hodgson, a favorite of Lovecraft’s. He began collecting Weird Tales and other pulp magazines in high school. He also had a small collection of Big Little Books and a huge collection of mostly Marvel comic books.

4. What do you recall about that first dungeon adventure with your friends?

Dad had most of the visual aids he would use for dungeon mastering prepared for our first game. We all had minis and he had something to represent every monster we encountered. He drew the corridors around our figures in grease pencil on a clear sheet of acrylic. The dungeon was massive in scale; this was because it was home to a purple worm. We quickly learned to run away from some of our foes.  The adventure as I recall was very similar to the description in The Maze of Peril. The encounter with the weresharks was our second or third game; we could not have been more than second level. I still don’t know how we survived our encounter with those were creatures, but it was the most fun I have ever had playing a game.

5. Did any of the events or characters of Maze of Peril derive from your father's D&D campaign? Were Zereth or Boinger based on player characters?

Boinger and Zereth were my first characters. Boinger’s silly name came from his high Dexterity and Zereth’s dour personality grew out of his low Charisma. Both characters were refined by my father but I feel like I am their co-creator. Murry the mage was my friend Eric Frasier’s character.

6. You mentioned weresharks. You drew one of the early illustrations of this monster to accompany your father's description of them in Alarums & Excursions. What was the origin of this creature? 

Weresharks were Dad’s creation. They were based on Hawaiian folklore. The Polynesian shark man retains a shark mouth on his chest in the myth, which is not a detail my Dad kept. His monsters had arms and legs that allowed them to crawl upon the land and grab in addition to biting. He also gave them the immunity to conventional weapons.

7. At what point did your father decide to undertake the writing of a Basic Set for D&D? Was it on his own initiative or was he approached by TSR to do it?

It was fairly soon into his experience as a dungeon master that he mentioned his idea for a “Beginner’s Guide to Dungeon’s and Dragons." I’m not going to say what year, because I don’t trust myself with dates. I believe he wrote them a letter and I think Gygax called him back. They arranged over the phone that Dad would write the rules for free and he would receive TSR products for life as payment. I do remember talking with him about a Beginner’s Guide and agreeing it was a good idea, but I didn’t think there would be much market for it. As we know, I was wrong by over a million copies.

8. The Basic Set has a number of distinctive features, such as the ease with which magic-users can create scrolls and the use of the Dexterity score to determine initiative in combat. Were these rules your father used in his own games?

I don’t recall anyone using the scroll writing option, though I would certainly encourage it among first and second levelers playing Basic.

The Dexterity for initiative order was something  we used even before Dad wrote the Basic rules.  He may have adapted it from rules on spell casting initiative from either Original D&D or Warlock or thought it up on his own. I remember liking that rule as a teen because both Boinger and Zereth had the highest dexterities in our group. Nowadays, I have every one role a D6 for initiative and use Dexterity as a tie breaker. I do this to keep the players from feeling bitter about their low Dex. I don’t think it made it into the rules, but each round had magic, missiles, and melee in that order.

Speaking of Dad’s gaming style: he did use a 4-sided die for damage from daggers and missiles. I wish he had added that rule, but I think he was trying to be as faithful to the original rules as possible.  He also had a rule I liked where if your character was killed, they were given a dying blow.

9. After the Basic Set, did your father continue to write roleplaying game materials? Other than books like his 1981 Fantasy Role Playing Games or "Confessions of a Dungeon Master," he doesn't seem to have written anything more relating to the hobby. Is this correct or am I overlooking something?

I think “Confessions of a Dungeon Master,” the article he wrote for Psychology Today may have been as important as the Basic Set. It was not only a very early defense of the hobby at I time it was under attack, it also anticipated its acceptance as a beneficial activity.  

He did a chapter on the Cthulhu Mythos with Rob Kuntz for Deities & Demigods in 1980. He wrote four “Boinger and Zereth” stories for the Dragon magazine; three of which were published. He followed them with the novel, The Maze of Peril, which unfortunately did not find a major publisher. It came out in 1986 from Space and Time. He wrote a few more articles and letters all of which are chronicled in Tales of Peril in Zach Howard’s excellent bibliography. I think he approached Gary Gygax to write a forward to Maze of Peril and was ignored, though that may be a false memory. We were both bitter about the rejection of the story “Witch Doctor” by Dragon. He was also commissioned at this time to write a Conan novel by L. Sprague De Camp. That unpublished novel as well as a posthumous collaboration with John Coleman Burroughs were what occupied him till the end of his life. Since some of Dad's D&D fans are also fans of his pulp writing, I want to say it seems likely that Red Axe of Pellucidar and Danton Doring will be published. The fate of the Conan Story is less sunny.

10. Did your father continue to play D&D and other RPGs for the rest of his life? For that matter, do you still roleplay?

My father spent a few interesting years in the 80’s in Shiprock, New Mexico raising his daughter. He did not get a D&D group together again. Eventually, his son would be old enough to play Warhammer with him. I played a few games with Dad and my younger brother on my visits, like my superhero game and Call of Cthulhu. He continued to collect and paint miniatures for most of his life along with his other collecting hobbies.

I befriended a new group of players who played the Warlock rules for a while. We also invented a superhero game and a Road Warrior inspired game. When I lost touch with them, I briefly started a Call of Cthulhu campaign. Although I enjoy playing with my wife, I have yet to find a group of players, much less a DM that could replace my original group. I have come very close to my initial player joy at the North Texas RPG con. I love playing with both the new and the original members of the OSR and also talking to them on podcasts. Recently, I have been playing in a Zoom game with my childhood friend Eric Frasier. I run a Basic game currently with teens from the Boys and Girls Club.

NOTE: Tales of Peril: The Complete Boinger and Zereth Stories of John Eric Holmes is available from Black Blade Publishing. Instructions for ordering a copy are available here.

Wizard Funk

One of the happiest developments of the last decade of gaming is the resurgence of fanzines. Dungeon Crawl Classics played a huge role in this resurgence and Goodman Games deserves a lot of credit for encouraging and promoting 'zines of all sorts. Fanzines are a great way to actively participate in this shared hobby of ours. There are now 'zines for nearly every game and taste and I highly recommend looking into some of them. I have no doubt you'll like what you see.

Earlier this month, the second issue of the digital-only fanzine, Wizard Funk, was released. It's a lively black and white offering, an homage to the APAs of the 1970s, right down to the typewriter-style fonts. The content is a mix of amateur fantasy art and RPG material. There are adventures, monsters, magic items, dungeons, rants – the whole range you'd expect to find in a 'zine emulating the spirit of the early days of the hobby. Best of all, each issue costs only $1, which is a steal, particularly for issue #2, which is 48 pages long and features lots of fun gaming content, as well as an interview with Allen Hammack.

I'm so happy to see products like Wizard Funk. They evoke everything that's best in the hobby and I hope we'll see more issues in the future. If there are any fanzines you would recommend, please post them in the comments. I'd love to know about more!

Beowulf, Dragon Slayer

When looking back on the past, it's vitally important to be aware of our unconscious biases. Comic books are a good case in point. From the vantage point of the early 21st century, we might not realize just how big comics were as a medium. Characters with little or no name recognition today, such as the Rawhide Kid, regularly moved more copies of their comics each month than do iconic characters like Batman or Spider-Man today.

I bring this up as a prelude to a question whose answer I wouldn't have known until very recently. The question is "What Marvel comics character headlined a second comic before Spider-Man?" Before answering, allow me to add one more detail: throughout the 1970s, The Amazing Spider-Man was quite consistently Marvel's best selling title. Given that, which superhero could possibly have been so popular that Marvel decided to launch a second series starring him? The answer: Conan.

Though not its best selling title, Conan the Barbarian, penned by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith, was nevertheless one of Marvel's most popular comics throughout the 1970s – so popular that, in 1974, a second title, Savage Sword of Conan, was launched. Together, they played roles in making Conan the Cimmerian a household name, as well as introducing new generations to sword-and-sorcery literature. It is no exaggeration to say that the 1982 John Milius film would not have been possible without these comics having appeared first, not to mention many other aspects of contemporary Conan fandom.

Looking on the success of Conan the Barbarian, DC Comics made numerous attempts to replicate it, one of which was Beowulf, Dragon Slayer, which premiered in May 1975. Written by Michael Uslan and drawn by Ricardo Villamonte, Beowulf is a strange comic. Issue #1 starts with what appears to be an attempt to retell the Old English epic, but it quite quickly veers off into comic book territory thanks to the inclusion, of among other things, Nan-zee, a supposed Swedish Scylding warrior who instead looks like one of the less memorable of Conan's many female companions. What makes it all the more amusing is that the issue includes a piece by the author, in which he touts the literary value of the comic.

Needless to say, Beowulf, Dragon Slayer did not prove to be as successful as Conan the Barbarian, lasting only a half-dozen issues. Of course, during those six comics, our Geatish protagonist faced off against not only Grendel and his mother but also Satan, Dracula, the Minotaur, and extraterrestrials masquerading as gods – this was the 1970s, after all. This undoubtedly sounds far better than it actually is, unfortunately. Instead, Beowulf is largely forgettable. The comic is noteworthy primarily for being one in a long line of attempts by DC to find their version of Conan. From what I understand, the character has reappeared in recent DC publications, though one wonders why. 

Warlocks of the Dark Star

Here's an advertisement from the back of Book of the Dragons, written by D.H. Casciano and M. Fisher and appearing in 1977. Warlocks of the Dark Star did eventually appear in 1979 and was apparently a hex and chit style wargame in which one player takes the role of the magic-using Warlocks and the other takes the role of the scientific Technoids. The theme of science/technology vs magic remains a staple of fantasy even today, but it seems to have been enjoyed a high point during the 1970s, with Ralph Bakshi's Wizards being a noteworthy example of it. 

Regardless, this advertisement – and the book from which it came – is a reminder that the history of the hobby is replete with dark alleyways and forgotten lore of the sort that Jon Peterson has been busy chronicling for some time now. How many of us have ever heard of the Attack International Wargaming Association, for example? There are many more companies like it, producing original RPG material with very limited budgets and small print runs. Their products, though perhaps not as well known or influential as, say, Dave Hargrave's Arduin books, are another reminder of the reckless ferment that characterized the first five years of the hobby