Guest Post | DC Flirts with Sword-and-Sorcery, Part Two: Horror Anthologies

By GW Thomas

Nightmaster failed to become DC's first sword-and-sorcery title, but DC kept trying in the horror magazines. “The Eyes of the Basilisk” (The House of Mystery #184, January-February 1970) was written by E Nelson Bridwell and drawn by Gil Kane and Wally Wood. The plot has the country of Karinek invaded by the deadly serpent. The king offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who can slay the basilisk. Many try, but fail. Two brothers, Ursus and Ulfar, go to defeat the monster using a polished shield. Ursus doesn’t look into the basilisk’s eyes, but in the shield. The terrible gaze freezes him and the serpent kills him. Ulfar goes to avenge his brother, lifting the shield and reflecting the monster’s gaze into its own face. The basilisk turns itself to stone and Ulfar becomes king. It is only at the end that we find out Ulfar is blind.

Kane and Wood’s presence here is significant. Wally Wood was the artist responsible for “Clawfang the Barbarian” (Unearthly Spectaculars #2, December 1965) five years earlier and he had drawn several pieces for his own fanzine, Witzend. He would go on to do both Hercules Unbound (1975) and Stalker (1975) for DC. Gil Kane would draw many sword-and-sorcery pieces, some based on Robert E Howard’s stories for Marvel in the pages of Savage Sword of Conan and Conan the Barbarian. Perhaps his best of all of them was his adaptation of “The Valley of the Worm” in Supernatural Thrillers #3 (April 1973).

DC’s next ploy to test the waters was to reprint three of Joe Kubert’s Viking Prince stories from the pages of The Brave and the Bold from 1955, in DC Special #12 (May-June 1971). More Viking Prince episodes would be used to fill out the backs of DC Special #22-25. These giant-sized magazines featured new stories about the Three Musketeers and old Robin Hood reprints.

Gil Kane tried again with “Sword of the Dead” in Adventure Comics #425 (December 1972). This time Kane wrote and drew the six-pager. The story concerns two warriors. The first is Evlig, a merciless killer who murders the family of the second warrior: John of Gaunt, a retired knight turned farmer. John suits up and finds Evlig. The two square off with lances, sending John to the ground. Evlig tries to finish him off, but John rises up and slays him. Only after Evlig is dead does John see his own slain body. His righteousness was so powerful, his spirit accomplished what his body could not. A few things come to mind about this tale. One: the villain’s name is so obviously a form of the word Evil, while John of Gaunt was an actual historical person. The idea of the dead who kills reminds me of Robert E Howard’s “The Man on the Ground” (Weird Tales, July 1933) where a Texas feuder also sees his dead body after a fight. Kane was a fan of Howard, so this isn’t surprising.

This was followed by DC's first sword-and-sorcery title launch: Fritz Leiber’s two best thieves in Lankhmar, in Sword of Sorcery (March-April to November-December 1973). Before the five-issue run, drawn largely by Howard Chaykin (another artist linked to the feel and look of sword-and-sorcery with his work for Marvel), Fafhrd and Grey Mouser first appeared in Wonder Woman #202 (September-October 1972) in an introductory episode that did little but pit them against Diana Prince. This tale was written by science fiction master, Samuel R Delany and drawn by Dick Giordano. Sword of Sorcery failed after only a few issues, as would titles like Stalker, Beowulf, Dragonslayer, and Claw the Unconquered. Success was to be found in the science fiction-tinged The Warlord by Mike Grell, running for 133 issues with new material up to 2008. You would think after all this trying, DC would have ended the sword-and-sorcery appearances in their horror titles, but this was not so.

“The Survivor” in Weird War Tales #15 (July 1973) was written by Jack Oleck and drawn by Gerry Talaoc. Oleck was a mainstay of the DC horror titles, and not surprisingly, he wrote more of the stories featured here than anyone else. Here is the first of two about Vikings. Lars Ironhand and his crew are stranded on a weird island where the monsters of Throna the Witch attack them. Defeating all her minions, Throna leads them to water. Drinking the liquid causes the Vikings to grow small in body but large in head. Lars, the last survivor, writes a warning to anyone else who might end up on the island and be changed by the water. By the time he finishes, he has changed into a monkey.

“King of the Ring” from Plop #23 (September-October 1976) is an unusual outlier that has to be mentioned. Written and drawn by Wally Wood, the strip is one of the first comic parodies of The Lord of the Rings in the manner of Harvard Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings. While not sword-and-sorcery exactly, the funny piece packs many of the highlights and characters of Tolkien’s masterpiece into only six pages. Woody uses silly variations such as Gondeaf for Gandalf and Snyder for Rider, etc. He has a crew of dwarves with names like Slappy, Droopy, Sleazy, Groucho, Harpo, Snoopy, and Shlepo. There is an incognito king who announces he is incognito, the frog-like Glum who wants his “sweetums,” Nazighuls, norks, Schlob, and the ring finally gets destroyed when Frodo shoves Glum over the edge. Wood ends it with the ring flying out of Mount Doom to Gondeaf’s hand. The wizard decides to keep the ring and be evil. Drawn with Wood’s best Mad Magazine-meets-The King of the World style, it is a classic parody.

“Valley of the Giants” was written by Jack Oleck with art by Jess Jodloman for Secrets of the Haunted House #6 (June-July 1977). Jodloman drew King Kull for Marvel’s Kull and the Barbarians (1973) and this experience serves him well in this tale of Vikings. Oleck has a ruthless band of Vikings - lead by Rurik - raid the English coast where an old witch prophesies that Rurik and his men would die by giants. A storm drives them to the African coast. There they attack and capture an Arab ship. One of the Arabs tell them of a fabulous treasure in a valley of giants. The Vikings kill all the Arabs to protect their ship and then press on into the jungle. Pygmies attack them with poisoned arrows. Rurik and his men die fighting the pygmies, but before they die Rurik laughs, knowing the giants of the prophecy are not their opponents but themselves.

“Bruce the Barbarian” in Unexpected #205 (December 1980) was written by JM Dematteis with art by Vic Catan. Bruce E Platt is an unpopular disc jockey who uses the occult to create a fantasy world in which he is a heroic barbarian. This alternate reality becomes so real that when his former girlfriend, Cornelia, comes to his apartment, he kills her by accident. When the cops come to arrest him, they find Bruce being tormented for eternity in a very real hell. This type of story, the fantasy fan as escapist-loser is one of my least favorite tropes, being the shallow reaction of non-fantasy fans: whether it is Harlan Ellison’s “Delusion For a Dragonslayer” (1966) or the anti-LARPing film, Mazes and Monsters starring a young Tom Hanks (1982). Dematteis would pen the final issues of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, so I suspect he’s not an anti-fantasy fan.

“Troll Bridge” in Unexpected #220 (March 1982) was written by Gary Cohn; art by Paris Cullins and Gary Martin. This tongue-in-cheek tale of a troll who works his way up to larger and larger bridges ends when he is tricked into wearing a magic cloak by the wizard Wendik the Trollsbane. The cloak sends him to another dimension where he finds a new home under the Brooklyn Bridge. This goofy tale appeals to me with its cartoony style that reminds me a little of Shrek and by not taking itself too seriously.

“No Penny, No Paradise” in Unexpected #222 (May 1982) was written by Robert Kanigher of Wonder Woman fame (as well as SF titles like Metal Men) and had art by Keith Giffin and Larry Mahlstedt. Not really a hardcore sword-and-sorcery tale, the plot follows Alexander the Great as he conquers Asia. Before his death, he reminds Philo to place a penny on his tongue. When Alexander arrives at the River Styx, Charon refuses him entrance into heaven because he has no penny. Alexander goes back to haunt Philo. The thief defeats him by placing a penny in his own mouth before dying. Alexander is powerless to stop Philo from crossing the Styx while he is damned forever. Giffin got his start with the later issues of Claw the Unconquered. Unfortunately he did not ink his own work. Malhlstedt’s inking lacks the weird flavor of Claw. The cover art was provided by Ernie Colon, the artist who created Arak, Son of Thunder with Roy Thomas.

With that final issue, DC Comics said goodbye to short sword-and-sorcery, but not all heroic fantasy. In 1982, the company had the unpopular Arak, Son of Thunder, Arion, Lord of Atlantis, Masters of the Universe tie-ins, The Warlord (no longer with Grell), The Atlantis Chronicles by Esteban Maroto, and the on-again-off-again Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld. By 1988 though, the ranks of DC would not include sword-and-sorcery. In fact, by the 1990s, only old cornerstones such as Conan, Elfquest, Masters of the Universe, and television fare such as Xena, Warrior Princess would be in evidence. The 1990s would not be kind to sword-and-sorcery. DC Comics, like everyone else, had tested the waters, but ultimately gone back to superheroes.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

A Cowboy, a Space Captain, a Private Investigator, and a Barbarian Walk Into a Bar... [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

That could be the beginnings of a really lame joke, but it's something more. All four of these characters, these separate genre icons, share something in common. They are all cut from the same bolt of cloth... the American hero.

The Cowboy grew out of the nostalgia for a Wild West that never really existed outside the imagination of Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show. You can see the beginnings of him in the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper (1820-1850s), but it is Owen Wister who gets credit for the first official Western novel, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902). After him come all the rest, from Zane Grey to Louis L'Amour, along with his near cousin, the Northern hero: Mounties to gold-miners in the fiction of writers like Jack London or Rex Beach. North or West, the trappings of the Western and Northern include the tough, solitary cowpoke who enforces his own stern code with a shooting iron or a hanging rope. Locales where you'll find him include the wilderness and smoky saloons.

The second of these true, American heroes is the hardy Space-faring Captain. Pinpointing an exact creator is a little harder, for science fiction heroes begin with John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs in February 1912 in "Under the Moons of Mars," acquiring all the fighting skill of the old romantic heroes, but then moving on to Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Hawk Carse, Eric John Stark, and the list goes on and on... Best of all of them was CL Moore's Northwest Smith, who hung around the seedy bars of Mars with his pal, Yarol the Venusian. These tough spacers drank segir, slept with alien chicks, and could shoot or punch their way out of any situation. They lead the way to the final icon, Captain Kirk of Star Trek.

The Private Eye was invented by Carroll John Daly in "The False Burton Combs" in Black Mask (December 1922). Daly may have been first, but his work was expanded by Dashiell Hammett, who had actually been a Pinkerton agent, and later by Raymond Chandler, who elevated noir pulp fiction to the highest level. The central hero is, of course, a private detective, who knows the mean streets and follows his own code of justice. This doesn't always match that of the police, who are often as corrupt as the criminals. Mystery tales date back to at least Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murder in the Rue Morgue" (Graham's Magazine, April 1841), but was made hugely popular by British author Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes in The Strand. The Private Eye was America's response to the effete murders in the vicarages over tea that the British cozy mystery was at the turn of the century. None of that middle class snobbery for the PI. He is a creature of independence, often found drinking in an illegal speakeasy.

The barbarian hero of sword-and-sorcery is our last of the foursome. The author who created him was Robert E Howard, in January 1929 with "The Shadow Kingdom," starring King Kull. Kull, like his replacement, and by far, the quintessential icon of S&S, Conan the Cimmerian, was a rough, deadly warrior, who claws his way to kingship. The barbarian is skilled with weapons, a hater of sorcery and evil magic, and a hero, but on his own terms and for his own price, which is often taken in gold, booze, or sex. He marches to the beat of his own drum, whether in a desert, a jungle, a filthy city with its steamy dens of iniquity. Conan walks a dark path and no furry little hobbits need apply.

So why do all these heroes exist, and why America? All of these characters are products of pulp fiction, whether in the early days when they were called weeklies, or in the later, true pulps. Magazine fiction since the 1880s had been driving genre with specialized types of reading. In America, this looked a little different than elsewhere, for North America was a land of pioneers. The sedate, well-established, Oxford-educated type good guy was seen as suspiciously too civilized for a land such as the US. American heroes had to be tough, whether they were in the Yukon or the Arizona desert or in imaginary lands or the quickly growing cities with the new problems of gangsterism and corruption. Only a hard man could walk the line between right and wrong.

World War II and later the Cold War would turn these heroes into sadly dated characters; no longer in style. They could have died in the pages of the pulps that folded and blew away by 1955. But was that really the case? Look at paperback sales in the 1950s and 1960s, and there they are again: the cowboy (Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour sold millions), the PI (whether he was Mike Hammer, Shell Scott, or Mike Shayne), the space captain (he fell on hard times in print but made it on radio and the small screen), and the barbarian (who sold millions of purple-edged Lancer paperbacks with the help of Frank Frazetta).

These characters all became icons, part of our collective culture along with the jungle lord and lady, the avenging swordsman, the secret agent, and the superhero. Love them or hate them, they all serve the same function: a plot Christopher Booker calls "Overcoming the Monster." The hero takes on the the "Big Bad" and wins, whether that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Beowulf. These heroes tells us we are not small, but can win; that our personal code is worth protecting, that there are reasons to charge "once more unto the breach." The hanging around in bars... well, what else is a hero going to do while waiting for that next adventure?

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Atlas' Barbarians of Vengeance [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Atlas Comics (also known as Seaboard) has a weird but brief history. The company was started in 1974 by Martin Goodman, the man who took Marvel to the top of the pile. Having sold Marvel for millions, he was ready to walk away, with his son Chip Goodman ensconced as editorial director at the "House of Ideas." When Stan Lee fired Chip, some believe, Martin took his money and began the rival company, giving it the nickname "Vengeance Inc."

Goodman's policy was simple: Copy everything Marvel. Steal their ideas, steal their people, with higher pay and creator's rights. This included their successful sword-and-sorcery title, Conan the Barbarian, which became two titles: Ironjaw by Michael Fleisher and Wulf the Barbarian by Larry Hama. Despite the fact that both Ironjaw and Wulf were wandering barbarian/princes, the two comics were as different as their underlying philosophies.

Ironjaw's creator, Mike Fleisher, had a bad boy reputation in comics. At DC he wrote such downer characters as the violent Spectre and the unattractive gunslinger, Jonah Hex. He left DC to join Atlas and create the barbarian Ironjaw, giving him the same name as the 1942 Lev Gleason Nazi villain from Boy Comics, even the same wide metallic mandible. Much has been made of the essay at the end of the first issue where the editor tells about Fleisher's method of writing Ironjaw, basing it on "what a real man, placed in that same situation, would do." Sadly, this drive for "realism" means Ironjaw is a robber, a rapist, and an idiot. He lacks Robert E Howard's brooding fatalism and comes off like an adolescent.

The first two issues of Ironjaw follow how he regains a throne he didn't even know he had lost. In a Hamlet-like scenario, the step-father had become king while the father was murdered. The baby heir Roland was supposed to be drowned, but instead was left among the rocks. He was found by the robber Tarlok, who raised the boy. Now a mighty fighter, Ironjaw seeks only gold, wine, and women. He ends up with the throne, but soon leaves it behind when he sees the job as monotonous and dull. In the third issue (May 1975), we see Ironjaw return home to his bandit brothers and rescue Tarlok from head-hunters.

Ironjaw #1 (January 1975) bore a Neal Adams cover. This is significant because Adams was the man who had produced the first covers for Marvel's Savage Tales and Savage Sword of Conan (strongly associating him with sword-and-sorcery) and because he was a relentless champion of creator's rights. Later he would be the point man on securing Jack Kirby his original art and getting the creators of Superman credit and money from DC. When the independents came along in the 1980s, he was active with companies like Pacific Comics. All that started here with Atlas, doing their best covers.

The interior art in the first issue was by Mike Sekowsky and Jack Abel. The look of the artwork was adequate, feeling a little like what Ditko had done for Warren back in 1965. Abel was one of the old crew of inkers from DC, having done Superman for years. Still, the look wasn't very Conan and Goodman wanted everything to scream Marvel. The second issue (March 1975) also had another Neal Adams cover, but the story art was done by Pablo Marcos. Marcos had been doing horror art for Skywald, Warren, and Marvel. This was his first chance to pencil and ink sword-and-sorcery and he made the most of it, producing very nice work that looked more like John Buscema's Conan than Sekowsky's did. Marcos would finish the run as artist. After Atlas folded he would become one of the regular inkers on Savage Sword of Conan.

Alternating with Ironjaw, Wulf the Barbarian #1 appeared in February 1975. Written by Larry Hama, it has a very different feel to Fleisher's downbeat work. Where Ironjaw is a Conan imitation, Wulf the Barbarian bears a stronger resemblance to JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, with its Trolls of Drakenroost and the evil sorcerer Mordek, who rules them. Young Prince Wulf of Baernholm sees his father and mother slain and swears a blood oath for vengeance. He's raised by Stavro, the king's man, but when Stavro is murdered, Wulf arms himself and pursues the killer, the same troll who had slain his mother. Using one of Stavro's juggling tricks, Wulf gets back the sword of his father and takes his first revenge. He rides off, swearing to kill the sorcerer Mordek next.

The artwork was penciled by Larry Hama and inked by Klaus Jansen, who as a young fan had written letters to Charlton's Adventures of the Man-God Hercules, eight year earlier. Now he had a chance to do his own sword-and-sorcery comic. The Hama-Jansen art looks similar to DC's Sword of Sorcery or Claw the Unconquered. It didn't look much like Conan the Barbarian, but since Ironjaw did, perhaps there was less pressure. After leaving Atlas, Jansen became inker for Frank Miller on Daredevil, a move that would establish him in comics forever.

In the second issue (April 1975) Wulf takes up with a swordswoman, a rogue, and a magician to kill a wizard who has plagued the land with drought. Like the Conan story "Rogues in the House," they enter the wizard's domain and confront horrors, including a giant water demon named Bel-Shugthra. Sacrificing one of his comrades, Wulf summons a fire elemental to fight the water demon. They flee and the tower explodes House of Usher style. Of all of Wulf's adventures this one is closest to Robert E Howard. (Well, Lin Carter and L Sprague de Camp anyway.)

By June 1975, Atlas was in trouble. The comics were not selling and Martin Goodman was losing writers and artists. The reason for leaving was not necessarily money, which Goodman had been generous with, but editorial tampering. All that promised freedom hadn't materialized when the owners looked at the sales figures. Goodman pushed for more Marvel-ness, and people left. This included both Michael Fleisher and Larry Hama. (Fleisher would write Conan the Barbarian from 1983 to 1985 before becoming a professional anthropologist. Hama would turn to acting, appearing in guest spots on MASH and Saturday Night Live, but would return to comics and create Bucky O'Hare.) In fact, all the titles were now written by Gary Friedrich. Friedrich had created Ghost Rider for Marvel and even the copy-cat "Hell Rider" for Skywald. He now had the big job of carrying on every title for the company.

June 1975 saw a strange experiment for Ironjaw. The Barbarians featuring Ironjaw #1 published a short 10-pager called "Mountain of Mutants," written by Gary Friedrich and drawn by Pablo Marcos. Ironjaw is set in a post-apocalyptic America and this story tells how mutants from the nuclear war were created. Ironjaw is captured by these twisted creatures, but his life is spared by their queen. He must fight a giant mutant in an arena to prove the worthiness of the human race. Along with this tale was a reprint of the first portion of "Andrax," a European comic written by Peter Wiechmann and drawn by superstar Jordi Bernet. It too supposes a world strangely changed by radiation with monstrous mutations. Sadly, since there were no future issues, the "Andrax" story line is left incomplete. The cover for this one-shot was drawn by Rich Buckler and Jack Abel. Buckler did not give up his gig on Batman at DC for this, but had been experimental in sword-and-sorcery comics with "The Bloodstaff"(Eerie #29, September 1970) and "The Shadow of the Sword" (Hot Stuf'#1, Summer 1974).

The changes at Atlas became apparent from the first cover. Wulf the Barbarian #s 3 and 4 had covers by Canadian newcomer, Jim Craig. Craig would pencil the last issue as well. His style is reminiscent of Joe Staton at Charlton. Even worse, the interiors art for Issue #3 was given to Leo Summers (who had drawn for Creepy) and inked by anonymous collectives like the "Atlas Bullpen." Issue #3 was written by Steven Skeates, who had created "Thane of Bagarth" at Charlton years before, then wrote for Warren and DC. Wulf and his new Moorcockian companion Rymstrydle rescue a lady from the Rat-Men and their kangaroo mounts only to find that she is destined to marry Modeo, the son of Mordek. They take her to her fiancé's tech-filled castle. Wulf almost kills Modeo until he finds out the machine master hates his father as much as Wulf does. Unfortunately, Modeo's been played for a fool and Mordek takes control of his giant robot. The good guys escape in a hot air balloon.

Issue #4 was written by Mike Friedrich (not Gary, no relation) who had only recently started publishing his independent comic anthology Star*Reach. After stealing a horse from a female brigand, Wulf falls in with Lord Makhel, an old friend of the family. The lord is afflicted with a curse, turning him into a blood-sucking fiend. The brigands attack again and Wulf is forced to kill his old friend when he transforms. The female brigand, Beatryce, escapes shouting behind her that she might one day be his queen. If more issues had been printed, we can assume Wulf eventually got his throne back and married Beatryce.

In the final issue of Ironjaw #4 (July 1975), Gary Friedrich begins the origin of Ironjaw's namesake. The adopted son of Tarlok grows up into a minstrel and his songs are turning all the bandit girls' heads. One of the bandits, Dektor, crucifies the minstrel (Conan style!), then mutilates his jaw with a hot sword. Carlotta, Dektor's betrothed, who has fallen for the minstrel, takes him to the witch Soran for medical help. The witch turns herself into a beautiful woman and falls for her patient. Not only does she save his life, but she augments his physique magically. She has a smith create his iron jaw to cover his disfigurement and allow him to speak. She also says she will take him to be trained in the martial arts so that he can exact his revenge on Dektor. The issue ends there, so we never get to see what comes about, but it's not hard to guess that Dektor will die and the witch will be spurned, Ironjaw riding away singing Lynyrd Skynrd's "Free Bird." Friedrich's approach to writing an Ironjaw story is not much different than Fleisher, except that he breaks up the flashbacks with some present day dragon-fighting.

But Atlas wasn't quite done with sword-and-sorcery yet. "Temple of the Spider" appeared in their black and white magazine, Thrilling Adventures Stories #2 (August 1975). This was written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Walt Simonson, who both knew plenty about sword-and-sorcery comics. Goodwin wrote the first and most important sword-and-sorcery stories for Warren between 1965 and 1967. Walt Simonson worked on Sword of Sorcery at DC in 1973 and then wrote and drew a sword-and-sorcery parody, "A Tale of Sword & Sorcery" for Star*Reach #1 (April 1974). In later years, Simonson would bring a sword-and-sorcery feel to Thor at Marvel.

The plot for "Temple of the Spider" follows two ronin, the young and impulsive Harada and the older Ishiro. They seek a treasure in the Temple of the Spider, but find instead a cave behind the shrine, filled with giant spiders. "Temple of the Spider" is intriguing because it shows Simonson's interest in Japanese manga, a style he partially adopts for this piece. Manga had not really hit America yet, with the first piece to appear in Star*Reach #7 (January 1977) with Sitoshi Hirota and Masaichi Mukaide's "The Bushi."

Atlas/Seaboard closed its doors fall of 1975. "Temple of the Spider" was later reprinted in Swords of Valor #3 (A-Plus Comics, 1990), a hint of what was to come in March 2011, when At Last Entertainment (started by grandson Jason Goodman) revived Wulf in a four-part mini-series written by Steve Niles and drawn by Nat Jones. The comic is dedicated to "the hard work of Martin and Chip Goodman." The new comic takes Wulf out of his barbaric world and places him in ours, chasing a hideous necromancer through dimensions. Ironjaw comes in halfway through and the two Atlas characters finally get to rumble together against some rather Cthulhian bad asses. Of all the comics produced at Atlas/Seaboard, only their sword-and-sorcery characters are remembered well enough to warrant reprinting or reviving.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Beowulf hates cephalopods

Read the whole story at Diversions of the Groovy Kind.

Marada the She-Wolf hates cephalopods

[Via The Beat]

I'm heading into a really busy weekend and I'm already behind, so I probably won't have much to post over the next couple of days. Just so's you know.

Fantastic swordsmen hate cephalopods

By Jack Gaughan [The Golden Age]

Fafhrd Hates Cephalopods

[Comic Megastore]

Conan Hates Cephalopods

[From Conan: The Island of No Return #2]

Barbarians Hate Cephalopods, Part Two

By Andrea Cammarata.

Barbarians Hate Cephalopods

Art by Frank Brunner. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Art Show: Muppets are Fantasy, Right?

An Unexpected Party



By Justin Gerard. [Illustrateurs]

Riddles in the Dark



By Dan Hipp. [Hey, Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!]

The Siege of Gondor



By Jerry Vanderstelt. [Illustrateurs]

Cave Seekers



By Mike Maihack.

Barbarian



By Clio Chiang.

Red Sonja

By Laurie Breitkreuz. [Brother Cal]

The City of Never



By Sidney Sime. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

The Muppet Avengers

By Caanan Grall.

Art Show: It's not the real thing. It's just a fantasy.

On the Rope



By Travis Hanson.

King Neptune



By Eric Kincaid. [Illustrateurs; who also has a very nice mermaid picture by Kincaid]

The Black Arrow



By NC Wyeth. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Conan



By Jean Pierre Targete. [Illustrateurs]

Dragon



By Berni Wrightson. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Beast Rider



By Travis Hanson.

The Sword of Ardenois



By Etienne Willem. [Illustrateurs]

John Carter of Mars



By Tom Fowler. [ComicTwart]

Captain Peanut Butter



By Jeremy Vanhoozer.

Canadian Space Girl



By Lucio Alberto Ruiz-Diaz.

October's adventure comics

This week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs is up at Robot 6. It's about all the great adventure comics coming out in October. We got treasure hunters, Viking demon-hunters, giant Nazi robots, ray guns, pirates, monsters, private eyes, a haunted house, and more Apocalipstix! October's going to be a great, great month.

Adventuregallery: The Other Mike May

Evening Balcony





Both by Matthieu Forichon.

Mystery of the Deadly Diamonds



By Michael W. Kaluta (via Golden Age Comic Book Stories).

Your 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Picture of the Day



By W. J. Aylward (via Golden Age Comic Book Stories).

Giant Squid



By N. C. Wyeth (via Golden Age Comic Book Stories).

Operation: Sea Peril!



By Howard Purcell.

The Storms of Windhaven



By Jack Gaughan.

Half-Elf



By Mike May. No, not me. I wish.

Angel



By Mike Maihack. Other angels at DrawerGeeks.

Two Worlds to Win!



By Jim Steranko.