Sword and Sorcery Cliche No. 2: Barbarian Bikinis [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I believe the movie was Spartacus (1960) with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. In an early scene, the trainer of the gladiators is showing the new recruits how to kill an opponent. Using a large paintbrush, he dabs on color in three spots, explaining these are the three most vulnerable places on the body. With a cruel switch he cuts at the throat, the belly, and the knees. Why do I mention this? Because if you look at Red Sonja's steel mail bikini you'll see it covers none of these.

Red Sonja was created in 1973, not as an adaptation of a Robert E Howard character, but as an amalgam of Howard's Sonya of Rogotino, CL Moore's Jirel of Joiry, and just plenty of sexy '70s goodness. And who am I to argue with the commercial results of selling sexy babes to fan boys everywhere?

But it raises the question: where did such ridiculous armor come from? Whether it is Sonja's steel attire drawn by Frank Thorne or the equally common fur version for less divine opponents painted by Frank Frazetta? The fur and steel bikini is our second sword-and-sorcery cliché and it has its own history, of course.

The 1960s was a time of expansion, even explosion, for fantasy, whether in print or on the silver screen. It was also a time of changing ideas about sexuality, freedom, and identity. So for every feminist staking out more territory for women there was a paperback with a sexy lady on the cover or a movie with a semi-clad starlet in it. In this way, Ray Harryhausen was one of the first filmmakers to have a beautiful young woman as the centerpiece to the film. Not that he had to animate them. Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC (1966) was quite capable of wearing her own fur bikini. This was not a sword-and-sorcery film, but when Harryhausen would produce later films like The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974) or Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), he was sure to include Caroline Monroe and Jane Seymour in revealing Arabic garb.

In the paperback world, an area of increasing expansion since World War II, artists like Gray Morrow produced numerous fantasy scenes for novels costing only ten cents to a quarter. His work was solid, but nothing compared to the furor that Frank Frazetta would create when he began painting covers for the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs for ACE and the story collections of Conan for Lancer. Here women wore as little as possible, regardless of whether they were on the sands of an alien planet or in the snows of Cimmeria. This sounds as if I am putting down Frazetta's work. Nothing could be further from the truth. To look at a Frazetta is to peer into a frozen moment of action and magic. His work sold as many books as the thundering great words of Howard or Burroughs.

Frank Frazetta (1928-2010) was a classically trained painter. Unlike the goofy-looking SF covers of a decade before, Frank's images were so believable, so real in the moment of time in which they happen. You didn't stop to say, hey, isn't that gal a little cold standing there in the snow as she's about to be eaten by wolves? That was the power of Frazetta's brush. A power so enchanting that Betty Ballentine published best-selling collections of his work. I can't imagine the '70s without those volumes containing his paintings and sketches.

Whether they captured your imagination or not, Frazetta did perpetuate the fur bikini-ism of Harryhausen, as lesser artists jumped on the Frazetta bandwagon. What Frank could pull off in a flurry of excitement, they could not. And so the cheesy sword-and-sorcery gal with the impossibly huge sword became a favorite of artists making their money at SF conventions (along with that other fave, the gal with the incredibly large bust and a smoking laser rifle).

The transition from fur to steel occurred quite by chance. Red Sonja appeared for the first time in Conan the Barbarian #23 (February 1973), drawn by Barry Smith with a full shirt of mail and sexy hot pants. But Smith left after Issue #24, and Roy redesigned the character's attire when simple dumb luck put an image in front of him. This was an unsolicited, single page, black-and-white illustration by Spanish artist Esteban Maroto. Unlike American (or British, if we included Barry Smith) comic artists, Maroto brought a Roccocco flourish to his art. The bikini Red was wearing looked more like something you'd hang on your porch to catch the wind than a suit of armor.

Roy Thomas saw the potential and so the first issue of Savage Sword of Conan (August 1974) bore a Boris Vallejo painting with steel bikinied Red Sonja and Conan fighting a crew of undead warriors. (These Boris Conan covers are oddly important to me for as a fourteen year old I had a T-shirt emblazoned with a Boris decal that declared to the world my status as a sword-and-sorcery nut. I never quite got around to having a Frazetta painted on my van though.) The look had arrived. Red Sonja, wearing steel coins where any reasonable person would want thick leather and metal armor, danced across Marvel publications, sword in hand. Artists like Frank Thorne would draw Sonja in regular sized comics, attend conventions with steel-bikinied fangirls (including Elfquest's Wendy Pini) and even do his own racier version of Red called Ghita of Alizarr in the '80s.

We are stuck with the fur and steel bikinis. They are part of sword-and-sorcery's history. (As is the terrible movie version of Red Sonja starring Brigitte Nielsen from 1985. Strangely, Brigitte never wore the ridiculous steel bikini but a Romanesque leather corset with fur trim. Not sure why this was so. Red's steel attire was part of her draw. Plenty of cosplay costumes proved it was possible to make such a garment. Perhaps Nielson refused to wear it?) I like to think that we can set this cliché aside now, laugh at our simplicity back in the day, and return to something closer to what Catherine Lucille Moore conceived with her Lady of Joiry back in 1933. But if Dynamite Comics, the latest copyright holder of the She Devil with a Sword, is any indication, I'd better not hold my breath.

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.

The Sword of Charlton, Part 2: Anthologia [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Charlton beat Marvel and DC to the sword-and-sorcery punch when they released Adventures of the Man-God Hercules and his back-up sidekick, "Thane of Bagarth" in 1967-68. But this wasn't the last of the sword-and-sorcery tales at Charlton. Like the Warren titles Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella, and DC's House of Mystery and Witching Hour, Charlton's "mystery" lines would irregularly feature a sword-and-sorcery tale starting with "The Promise" in Ghostly Tales #101 (January 1973), written and drawn by San Ho Kim. A Korean soldier fleeing the Japanese takes shelter in a house with twin sisters, agreeing to marry one of them. The ten Japanese soldiers die by the sisters' swords, the first sister disappearing to return to her grave. It is only then that the soldier sees who he has married. The second sister is terribly scarred. The soldier kills his new wife and flees through a graveyard. A cold, dead hand grabs him from a grave, allowing Japanese soldiers to find and kill him. Some claim "The Bushi" by Sitoshi Hirota and Masaichi Mukaide in Star*Reach #7 (January 1977) was the first manga to be published in America , but "The Promise" predates it by four years, making it a significant contribution by Charlton.

With Conan in full swing, the heroic fantasy content at Charlton becomes more definite with Midnight Tales #4 (July 1973) and "The Tower Maiden," written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Tom Sutton. A hero named Harvard battles his way through demons and ogres to get to a maiden in a tower, only to find she is made of wax. He takes her anyway, figuring he can use her as a candle. The best thing about this flippant tale is Tom Sutton's artwork, perhaps the best sword-and-sorcery drawing in Charlton's run.

In the same issue was "The Wizard's Wife" written by George Wildman and drawn by Wayne Howard in his usual mock-Wally Wood style. Alekhine, a wizard-prince, goes in search of a worthy wife and falls for the un-magical Melanie, the daughter of a baker. His family protests but the problem is solved when Alek realizes that Melanie doesn't bake bread but magical babies. Howard deserves a note here in terms of creator's rights. His name was featured on every cover of Midnight Tales. The idea of a hat trick of stories based on a theme as well as the characters in the frame of the comic were all his idea, and he was credited for it, a first in the comics industry. Howard inked Val Mayerik's Thongor in Marvel's Creatures on the Loose #26 that same year.

"Who?" in Midnight Tales #5 (September 1973) was written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Joe Staton. Keen the Barbarian is challenged to figure out which of three women is the real Sylvia. The other two are demonesses who plot his death. The story feels like a sword-and-sorcery parody with the barbarian crying over his broken sword and the man riding with three versions of the same woman on his horse. Joe Staton uses a swipe from "The Spell of the Dragon" from Marvel's Chamber of Chills #2 (October 1972), a story featuring John Jakes' Brak the Barbarian, the probable victim of the satire. Nick Cuti would write the lion's share of sword-and-sorcery strips up to 1976.

"Sludge" in Midnight Tales #7 (June 1974) was again written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Joe Staton. An incompetent wizard named Sorbius discovers a protoplasmic creature named Goo. The wizard promises to defend the city from invading barbarians with the blob-like creature. The battle is lost because Sorbius manages to make a successful love potion, and Goo and Sorbius' daughter, Regina, fall in love, missing the battle.

Midnight Tales #11 (February 1975) was the most sword-and-sorcery-filled issue of all, having only heroic fantasy tales in it. These three started with "Orion," written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Don Newton, in which Zeus' gamekeeper destroys a rival for the hand of Clora by giving false witness. Clora gets her revenge by spurring Orion to shoot one of Zeus' deer for her. The deer turns out to be Clora, a were-deer, and Orion faces execution for his underhandedness.

"Jason" also written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Joe Staton, rewrites the tale of Jason and his Argonauts. They land on an island inhabited not by a one-eyed cyclops, but Argus, a giant with a thousand eyes. To rescue a captive woman and her baby, Jason challenges the ogre to a duel on a sunny day. The Argonauts blind the creature with their shiny shields. It is only after they have killed the giant that they find out the woman is the giant's wife and the baby, like his father, is many-eyed. Nick Cuti got his start in sword-and-sorcery with "The Caliega" (January 1970) in Vampirella #3 and would go back to Warren in 1976, penning one last sword-and-sorcery tinted tale, "E Train to Flushing" (Creepy #94, January 78) with old-time Charlton artist, Dick Giordano, before moving onto editing at DC and then cartoons in Hollywood.

"The Oracle", written and drawn by Wayne Howard, is a tale of Leah, a girl who can forecast the future. As a child she sees Socrates' death by hemlock. She learns she can not change the future, only see it. Because of this she spurns friendships, but falls for the handsome athlete, Menelaos. She sends him away, refusing to accept his marriage proposal. When she thinks she sees him falling to his death, she is wrong. He is only diving off some rocks. Declaring her love, they wed, Leah fortelling their happy family.

"The Malediction" from Ghostly Tales #114 (April 1975) was written and drawn by Pat Boyette. This clever tale has a ruthless warlord and his advisor trapped in a tower because a guardian monster lurks outside. Boyette keeps you guessing whether the creature is real or only a figment of the imagination, created by a spell.

"The Fly" in Midnight Tales #13 (June 1975) was written and drawn by Wayne Howard. Lord Simon lures away Sarena, the beautiful daughter of the wizard Aldon. When she refuses to marry him, he kills her. Ever since Simon's visit to Aldon's swamp he has been plagued with flies. He has his servants kill all the bugs in the castle. Aldon appears for his revenge, turning Simon into a fly. When a servant sees him, he is quickly squashed.

"Distress" from Scary Tales #3 (December 1975) was written by Paul Kupperberg with art by Mike Zeck. Typical to Charlton formula, a warrior climbs a tower in pursuit of a damsel and gets bitten for his trouble. In this case, the damsel is a vampire. Kupperberg would later create Arion, Lord of Atlantis for DC in 1982 and write the adaptation of Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away in 1985.

Midnight Tales #16 (January 1976) features "Ambia," written and drawn by Wayne Howard, an interesting anomaly, a sword-and-sorcery tale without a horror-style surprise ending. The tale chronicles Ambia's war against the evil Vandalkragg, a domain of ogres and monsters. She defeats them by running a guerrilla war against the fiends and finally killing Zagga, their king, herself. This tale was most likely inspired by Wally Wood's The King of the World that was published in parts as early as 1968. Wood was inspired by The Lord of the Rings and Howard's tale also has a Tolkien feel.

"Oberyll," also written and drawn by Wayne Howard, appeared in the same issue. In Atlantis, the harpies of the Fire-Lord steal victims for sacrifice. The king will do nothing to protect his people, but a hero steps forward: Oberyll. The shipwright, armed only with a dagger, goes to the volcano mountain to see what becomes of the taken. Finding only death, he escapes, but damages the fire fortress, setting off a terrible chain reaction. He flees back to the city to warn the people to build ships and flee, but the king has him stoned, and all the Atlanteans die.

"Thief's Gold" in Monster Hunters #5 (April 1976) was written by Joe Gill and drawn by Carlos Vila. A wizard desiring gold has to sacrifice the local villagers to feed a dragon conjured by an ancient god. After the sacrifice, the god sets the dragon on the wizard. It is a slight and frankly disappointing story.

"A Fitting Wife" from Monster Hunters #7 (September 1976) was written by Joe Molloy and drawn by Enrique Nieto. A cruel general tries to take a witch for his harem and gets turned into a dog. After getting changed back, the general takes the witch to his caliph for punishment. The witch beguiles the caliph and the general goes to the torture chamber. The next morning the caliph is found turned into a pig.

The straight sword-and-sorcery stories were done by 1976. It strikes me as odd that one artist who was so important in the early Warren magazines never did any sword-and-sorcery for Charlton. This was Steve Ditko. Unlike Tom Sutton, who did one strip, Ditko gravitated towards modern horror. Perhaps he felt he was done with sword-and-sorcery, having drawn and written Stalker for four issues at DC in 1975 with pal Wally Wood.

By the 1980s, Charlton was on shaky ground financially. To generate some cash they reprinted most of the Hercules issues in Charlton Classics #1-9 (April 1980-August 1981) along with select tales from the anthologies, including "Orion." "Jason," "Oberyll," "The Fly," "Sludge," and "Sir Lancelot and the Haunted Tower." Thane of Bagarth also received two reprint issues in 1985. But before the company folded, it did produce one last set of sword-and-sorcery inspired stories, each containing a fair amount of science fiction elements. These included "Prophecy of Doom" in Charlton Bullseye #3 (September 1981), written and drawn by Ian Carr. In this tale, Janus and Grundar go up against the sorceress Queen Shalastra, with the magic-user losing. The rest of the issue contained science fiction stories.

Charlton Bullseye #5 (January 1982) featured only one story, "Warhund," written by Brad Mielke and drawn by Charles Truog. Warhund races home because his father is dying, but along the way he discovers the truth about his lineage (being descended from space visitors) and his mission to protect the entire planet. The lettering in this issue was poorly done, a sign of Charlton's decline.

Charlton Bullseye #9 (September 1982) gave us "Bludd," written by James Waley and Gene Day and drawn by Gene Day, Vince Marchesano, Peter Hsu and Viktor Laszlo. Bludd, a Viking mercenary trades places with a man from the 31st Century to become a champion against the tyrant Armageddon. The story was begun in 1976 by Gene Day, but as the writer/editor explains the story it was originally planned for Orb, an independent comic that published mostly horror and SF. The editor compares it to Thundarr the Barbarian (which was created after the comic), a sad similarity that is all too true. When the magazine folded, most of the leftovers went to Mike Friedrich's Star*Reach and Ron Van Leeuwen's Andromeda, but "Bludd" lingered on unfinished. It was finally completed in 1982 by the gang. The story was published the month Gene Day passed away. Gene was important to sword-and-sorcery comics largely as a mentor to sword-and-sorcery parodist, Dave Sim, with his Swords of Cerebus.

And so sword-and-sorcery was done at Charlton. But there were plenty of other companies doing short sword-and-sorcery tales including Heavy Metal and Epic Magazine, "Slaine" in 2000 AD along with foreign language comics like Cimoc and Skorpio. Sword-and-sorcery comics continued merrily along in the Marvel mainstream as well as in independents like Warp's Elfquest and First's Michael Moorcock's Elric and Hawkmoon, but they all owed a debt to that poor cousin, Charlton, who lead the way.

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.

Fantasy, Oh, Fantasy, Where Art Thou Gone? [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The 1960s saw an explosion in heroic fantasy fiction with Ballantine's The Lord of the Rings and the Lancer Conan paperbacks. Suddenly barbarians and hobbit-like creatures were everywhere. In novels, collections, anthologies and comic books. It was a wonderful decade for fantasy readers. But by 1979, things were changing and soon a desert would be born.

What caused sword-and-sorcery to disappear after the 1980s? I believe it was a combination of things. First, publishers like Belmont were pumping out quick knock-offs to try and grab some of the riches. Books like Quinn Reade's The Quest of the Dark Lady (1969) did nothing to improve what was already seen as a limited sub-genre. Magazines like Heavy Metal (starting in April 1977) did even less, muddying the waters with a weird blend of sword-and-planet and sex. The bestseller, The Sword of Shannara (1977) by Terry Brooks also showed that even really bad Tolkien imitations could make fortunes. Why write short stories of lone barbarians when fat novels about elves and dwarves could sell millions of copies?

Secondly, the role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons (1974) had narrowed the idea of fantasy, pairing Conan and Middle Earth to create a homogenized version of what should have been a genre without limits. Elves and barbarians fight side by side in Gary Gygax's game world. The younger fantasy fans were ultimately gamers and many became writers as well. These include Raymond E Feist, RA Salvatore, Garth Nix, David Langford, Michael Stackpole, and many others.

Thirdly and irreparably, was the movie Conan the Barbarian (1982). What should have been a high-water mark that propelled sword-and-sorcery into the mainstream consciousness, the film was the best of a steadily sinking list of films that are so awful they soon became direct to video. Not until Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001 would another major fantasy film wave be created.

So things were pretty bad. What's a writer of heroic fantasy to do? Well, one of the few arenas left for sword-and-sorcery fiction was the gaming magazines. Yes, D&D may have caused some of the problems, but gamers still enjoyed heroic fantasy and published it alongside articles on fighting goblins and dungeon scenarios to play with your friends.

The biggest was TSR's The Dragon Magazine, which began in June 1976 and is still running in some form today. The issues of most importance are the paper ones: #1-359 (June 1976-September 2007). These were the ones that featured fiction. The list of authors who appeared is long but looking at the names I see trends:

The first is old-timers making an appearance. These included Rob Chilson, L Sprague de Camp, Harry O Fischer, Fritz Leiber, and Gordon Linzner. These stories were welcome, but not many. There were also novelists including excerpts to promote a new book: Terry Brooks (Shannara excerpt) and Andre Norton (Quag Keep excerpt). The most interesting of the old timers was Gardner F Fox, comic book veteran and now sword-and-sorcery writer with a long series about "Niall of the Long Journeys" starting in issue #2 and interspersed to #55 (July 1976-November 1981). Ben Bova, science fiction editor extraordinaire, also wrote a series on legendary heroes set in historical Britain between issues #236-311 (December 1996-September 2003).

The second group are names that have since become well-known in other publications like Asimov's, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and paperbacks. These stars of present day publishing include Thieves' World editor Lynn Abbey, Aaron Allston, Neal Barrett Jr, John Gregory Betancourt (future editor at Weird Tales and Wildside Press), Elaine Cunningham, Diane Duane, Esther M Friesner, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Brian A Hopkins, J Gregory Keyes, Jean Lorrah, George RR Martin (Game of Thrones superstar), Ardath Mayhar, Paul J McAuley, John Morressy, Joel Rosenberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (future editor of F&SF), Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Charles R Saunders, Steven Saylor (international bestseller with the Roma Sub Rosa mystery series), Darrell Schweitzer (future editor of Weird Tales), Lisa Smedman, Jeff Swycaffer, Steve Rasnic Tem, Harry Turtledove (sf and fantasy bestseller), Robert E Vardeman, and Lawrence Watts-Evan.

The third group are names we know from later days when the AD&D universe would sprawl out into paperbacks about the Dragonlance saga with its dragons and drow elves. These include Adam-Troy Castro, Troy Denning, Ed Greenwood, Tracy Hickman, Paul Kidd, Roger E Moore, Douglas Niles, Mel Odom, Jean Rabe, RA Salvatore, and Margaret Weis. Many of these books were bestsellers in their own right.

The second major gaming magazine was UK's White Dwarf, which ran from June/July 1977 to this day, but did not use a lot of fiction. The little it did feature was the humorous fantasy of David Langford (along with non-fiction by future fantasy star Garth Nix and the cartoon Conan parody "Thrud the Barbarian" by Carl Critchlow).

Probably the best magazine in terms of quality was Sorcerer's Apprentice, which ran for 17 issues from the Winter 1978 to a final issue in 1983. SA published the very best of fantasy authors with Robert E Vardeman, Charles de Lint, Tanith Lee, Janet Fox, Manly Wade Wellman, CJ Cherryh, and Fred Saberhagen. Roger Zelazny reprinted several of his Dilvish the Damned stories and even wrote a new one, "Garden of Blood" for issue #3. Karl Edward Wagner did likewise with his eternal swordsman Kane. Michael Stackpole, a future fantasy bestseller, wrote many of the non-fiction articles and acted as editor.

The last of the bunch was Ares, a magazine that focused on games besides AD&D. It ran from March 1980-1984 for 16 issues plus two specials. It featured fantasy fiction by M Lucie Chin, Jayge Carr, Ian McDowell, and Poul Anderson. The best sword-and-sorcery stories were "Inn At World's End" and "The Whispering Mirror" by Richard Lyon and Andrew Offutt, part of their Demon in the Mirror series that Timescape published.

November 1982 saw the gaming world enter the world of sf publishing when TSR, owners of AD&D bought Amazing Stories, Hugo Gernsback's original SF magazine. They would hold the copyright until 1996. Its new editor was George Scithers, who as a fanzine editor of Amra had been godparent to the term "sword-and-sorcery," born out of discussions between Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock. He won two Hugos for his editing at Asimov's before moving onto Amazing. The George Scither years at Amazing (1982-1986) held a nice balance between sf and fantasy with stories from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Nancy Springer, Tanith Lee, Pat Murphy, David Langford, Lisa Tuttle, Diana L Paxson, Rosemary Edghill, Jayge Carr, Darrell Schweitzer, John Gregory Betancourt, Harry Turtledove (as Eric G Iverson), and Esther M Friesner. Many of these authors had appeared in The Dragon previously. Scither would leave in 1986 to re-emerge as the editor of another important magazine revival, Weird Tales in 1988, one of the last places to sell sword-and-sorcery in the 1990s.

The '80s saw a few bright flashes but over-all a dwindling in sword-and-sorcery. In paperback, the Thieves' World shared world spawned several books and there were also the Red Sonja novels by Smith and Tierney, Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Tomeo Gozon series, reprints of Elric, and new anthologies such as Sword and Sorceress by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The magazine markets for short sword-and-sorcery were pretty much depleted by 1980, with the folding of Ted White's reign at Fantastic and the last of Lin Carter's Year's Best anthologies. Fantasy was moving away from adventure and derring-do towards a softer, more literary kind. It also re-branded its name, no longer using sword-and-sorcery as a tag. The gamers went one way and the litterateurs another. The 1990s were coming and that desert I mentioned stretched out ahead, with only Conan pastiches and Xena: Warrior Princess left to remind us there had been a sword-and-sorcery boom twenty years before.

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.

Ted White's Fantastic: Short Heroic Fantasy [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction began its life as The Magazine of Fantasy. By the second issue the words "and Science Fiction" had been added. Why? Because no pure Fantasy magazine had ever made it past five issues. Weird Tales had been more Horror than Fantasy. Unknown published John W Campbell's version of Fantasy, but a brand for Science Fiction readers, almost an anti-Fantasy at times. Cele Goldsmith and the long-running Fantastic knew this too and the mix had always been heavier to the SF side. During the early 1960s Goldsmith cultivated Sword and Sorcery writers like Fritz Leiber, bringing him back to magazine publishing with new Fafhrd and Grey Mouser tales. She also brought in new writers like John Jakes with Brak the Barbarian and Roger Zelazny with Dilvish the Damned. This continued until June 1965 when Goldsmith (now Lalli) left the publication when Fantastic was sold to Sol Cohen, with a change from monthly to a bi-monthly schedule.

Laili was replaced by Joseph Ross (Joseph Wrzos) who inherited a huge stockpile of stories from the old days of the Pulps. Fantastic became a reprint magazine, its first new issue containing only one original story, the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tale "Stardock". Ross published the small reserve of Fantasy tales purchased before the switch that included Avram Davidson's classic novel The Phoenix and the Mirror and "The Bells of Shoredan" by Zelazny. Amongst the reprints was the Pusadian tale "The Eye of Tandyla" by L Sprague de Camp (from Fantastic Adventures, May 1951). But Ross wasn't long for the position, being replaced by Harry Harrison and later Barry N Malzberg. Both Harrison and Malzberg would leave over the reprints that plagued the magazine. They wanted to edit a magazine of new, modern Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Fantastic needed a new editor. One who could present both quality Science Fiction and Fantasy. Cohen was willing to sell his reprints in other formats and leave the new editor to his work. A choice was found with Robert Silverberg's help: junior editor from FaSF, Ted White. For ten years White would create a magazine that featured intriguing works of Fantasy as well as decorate it with great artists including Jeff Jones, Mike Kaluta, Ken Kelly, Harry Roland, and Stephen Fabian (and occasionally Joe Staton's pieces that remind me of DoodleArt). And this with the major handicap of low pay, for Fantastic offered its writers only one-cent a word in a marketplace that usually paid three to five cents. By cultivating new writers and snapping up gems where he could, White offered stories that often were chosen for the Year's Best Fantasy collections and even won the occasional award.

White's debut was April 1969 and its contents were not spectacular, chosen by others. The only hint of what was to come was Fritz Leiber's review column on ER Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros. It would have to wait until December 1969 before a truly interesting Fantasy would appear. This was Piers Anthony's Arabian Nights inspired Hasan, which Anthony supported with an essay on Arabesque Fantasy.

April 1970 saw another Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tale, a series dating back to Goldsmith but one that White was happy to continue. "The Snow Women" is a tale of Fafhrd's youth set in the cold north. Two more would follow in later years, "Trapped in the Shadowlands" (November 1973) and "Under the Thumbs of the Gods" (April 1975). At this time Leiber was collecting his tales into the first collections of Lankhmar and the new material would later be included.

Also in the April 1970 issue was John Brunner's "The Wager Lost by Winning," part of his Traveller in Black series, of which he would continue with "Dread Empire" (April 1971). Brunner, a British author known for his Science Fiction, created something different in these tales of the odd little wizard who roams the world, and they would win him a place in the Thieves' World alumni eight years later.

June 1971 featured a new non-fiction series, "Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers" by L Sprague De Camp. This series of articles looked at classic Fantasy authors including Robert E Howard, HP Lovecraft, Fletcher Pratt, William Morris, L Ron Hubbard, TH White and JRR Tolkien, running off and on until 1976. These pieces offered intriguing insight into the lives and trials of Fantasy writers, leading de Camp to write the first major biographies of both Lovecraft (Lovecraft: A Biography), 1975) and Howard (Dark Valley Destiny, 1983).

February 1972 saw the first of the Michael Moorcock stories to appear in Fantastic, with "The Sleeping Sorceress" starring the albino superstar, Elric of Melnibone. Later the same year, Count Brass featuring Dorian Hawkmoon would appear in August 1972. Both characters would become one as Moorcock melded his multiverse together to include everyone from Elric to Sojan to Jerry Cornelius.

White published the magazine versions of several good heroic fantasy novels during his decade: The Crimson Witch (October 1970) by Dean R Koontz, which feels more like Sword and Planet, like Ted White's own "Wolf Quest" (April 1971), "The Forges of Nainland are Cold" by Avram Davidson (Ursus of Ultima Thule in book form) in August 1972, The Fallible Fiend by L Sprague de Camp (December 1972-February 1973), part of his Novaria series, "The Son of Black Morca" by Alexei and Cory Panshin (Earthmagic in paperback) in April-July 1973, The White Bull by Fred Saberhagen (November 1976) who was moving away from the robotic Berserkers to become a Fantasy bestseller, and The Last Rainbow by Parke Godwin (July 1978). All of which would populate the book racks of the 1980s.

August 1972 saw the beginning of a series of new Conan pastiches by L Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. "The Witches of the Mist" (August 1972), "The Black Sphinx of Nebthu" (July 1973), "Red Moon of Zembabwei" (July 1974), and "Shadows in the Skull" (February 1975), all of which form Conan of Aquilonia. Lin Carter groused in his intros to Year's Best Fantasy about this book, which had been stuck in legal limbo with the collapse of Lancer. Finally free, it appeared serially in Fantastic then in paperback in 1977.

Several other Sword and Sorcery series got a new start or a first start in Fantastic. Lin Carter wrote new tales of Thongor's youth with "Black Hawk of Valkarth" (September 1974), "The City in the Jewel" (December 1975) and "Black Moonlight" (November 1976). He also offered posthumous collaborations with masters Robert E Howard in "The Tower of Time" (June 1975) - a James Allison reincarnation story - and with Clark Ashton Smith in verbose Mythos-heavy pieces, "The Scroll of Morloc" (October 1975) and "The Stair in the Crypt" (August 1976). The February 1977 issue featured an interview with Lin Carter that was informative about his days on the Ballantine Fantasy series and other Fantasy goings-on in the 1960s and 1970s.

Brian Lumley published some of his first Primal Lands tales, part Lovecraftian horror, part Sword and Sorcery in Fantastic. These included "Tharquest and the Lamia Orbiquita" (November 1976) and "How Kank Thad Returned to Bhur-esh" (June 1977) . Lumley's Fantasy harkens back to Weird Tales and the works of HP Lovecraft's Dreamlands and Clark Ashton Smith's sardonic fantasies.

Another good start was made by Australian writer Keith Taylor, who wrote about wandering singer and swordsman Felimid mac Fel. These stories were the embryonic form of the book Bard, which Taylor began under the pseudonym Denis More. "Fugitives in Winter" (October 1975), "The Forest of Andred" (November 1976), and "Buried Silver" (February 1977) form the first part of the series that went on to contain five volumes with further tales in the new Weird Tales in the 1990s.

Other heroic fantasy pieces included "The Holding of Kolymar" (October 1972) by Gardner F Fox, "The Night of Dreadful Silence" (September 1973) by Glen Cook, destined for fame with his Black Company in the 1980s, "Death from the Sea" by Harvey Schreiber (August 1975), "Two Setting Suns" (May 1976) by Karl Edward Wagner, part of the Kane series , and "Nemesis Place" (April 1978) by David Drake, featuring Dama and Vettius, Drake's two Roman heroes.

Not all of White's choices were Sword and Sorcery. He published the wonderful "Will-o-Wisp"(September-November 1974) by Thomas Burnett Swann, "War of the Magicians" (November 1973) by William Rostler, "The Dragon of Nor-Tali" (February 1975) by Juanita Coulsen, "The Lonely Songs of Loren Dorr" (May 1976) by George RR Martin (long before Game of Thrones) and "A Malady of Magicks" (October 1978) by Craig Shaw Gardner, beginning the popular humorous Fantasy series featuring Ebenezum.

By the end of 1978 Fantastic was on a quarterly schedule and losing readership. White had grown more dissatisfied with Sol Cohen, wanting to take the magazine into the slick market. He also wanted a raise. January 1979 was his last issue before he left to edit Heavy Metal magazine. He was replaced with neophyte Elinor Mavor. Another period of reprints followed and the look of the magazine declined. Mavor was finding her feet with new authors like Wayne Wightman, Brad Linaweaver and artists like Janny Wurts. She published Stephen Fabian's graphic story "Daemon" (July 1979-July 1980), but the only gem to appear before amalgamation with Amazing Stories was the two part serial of The White Isle by Darrell Schweister, with illustrations by Gary Freeman, in the April and July 1980 issues. A last gasp of wonder before Fantastic was gone. It was the end of an era, but too few even knew what was lost. Other magazines would attempt to do what Ted White had done, through self sacrifice and continuous networking, but none would ever be such a haven for short heroic fantasy again.

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.

31 Werewolves | Ladyhawke

I don't usually think of Ladyhawke as a werewolf movie, but it totally is, even if it deviates from the standard legends and tropes in significant ways. Set in medieval times, it's about a knight (Rutger Hauer) who's been cursed by an evil bishop (John Wood) so that he becomes a wolf every night. The reason for the curse is that the bishop was once spurned by a woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) because she was in love with the knight. She's cursed as well and becomes a hawk every day, so that the two lovers can only ever see each other's human forms for a heartbreaking moment at dawn and dusk when they're both in mid-transformation. Matthew Broderick is also in the movie as a young thief who befriends the doomed couple, and Alfred Molina plays a wolf-trapper.

It's an interesting take on the werewolf theme. There's a bit of the traditional metaphor for unrestrained passion going on and the knight accidentally wounds the thief while in wolf form. And as often happens in werewolf fiction, neither the knight nor the lady remember anything that happened while in their animal forms. That's especially significant for this tale, because it's a deliberate part of the curse that even though they can travel together, they can't enjoy the experience. If lycanthropy is a metaphor for indulging passions, I like the suggestion that we can't even enjoy them properly when we're in the midst of being consumed by them.

Misty swordsmen hate cephalopods

By Geoff Taylor [Pulp Covers]

Naked kragen hunters hate cephalopods

[Via alittleblackegg]

The LXB recasts awesome movies

The League of Extraordinary Bloggers has finished recasting their favorite movies and there are some great ones in the bunch. A few of my favorites:

• Beastmaster starring Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Biel [The Lair of the Dork Horde]
• Flash Gordon starring the cast of Avengers [AEIOU and Sometimes Why]
• Krull starring Chris Hemsworth and Jennifer Lawrence [Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks]
• Masters of the Universe starring Matthew McConaughey and Mila Kunis (I guess they can't all star Chris Hemsworth, and McConaughey's an awesome, surprising pick) [Shez Crafti]

Brian has the whole round-up at Cool and Collected and there are lots to look at: from Three Amigos and Anne of Green Gables to Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Shoot to Kill. Check 'em out!

Amulet, Books 1 and 2

While I'm counting up results from the Bond vs Bourne comments, how's about a quick reading recommendation?

I’m two books into Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet series of graphic novels and am plenty impressed. There are a lot of stories in the world about kids and a newly single parent who move to a remote, run-down, inherited estate where they discover a family secret involving dangerous magic. I love that concept more than I usually enjoy the stories that come from it, but Amulet is living up to its potential.

For Emily and her brother, Navin, the magic takes the form of an amulet that gives its bearer strange powers. Unfortunately, another power craves the amulet and abducts the siblings' mother, transporting her to a fantasy world that’s been overrun by evil elves. The kids go after her and meet their great-grandfather, a dying man with a walking house full of small and cute, but courageous robots. As the kids plan to rescue their mom, they’re also trying to understand this world and why they’ve been pulled into it. Kibuishi does an awesome job filling it with awesome, steampunky architecture and a cast of talking animals and fantasy creatures. I hesitate to compare anyone with Miyazaki (and Kibuishi’s art is stylistically very different from Studio Ghibli’s), but the setting and the epic scope remind me a lot of films like Castle in the Sky and Spirited Away. It's a world I'm very much enjoying and looking forward to spending more time in.

Fafhrd Hates Cephalopods

[Comic Megastore]

10 Movies I Didn't Care For in 2011

47. Immortals



It sure was pretty, but the story made no damn sense beyond the general outline of the plot. All form; no substance.

46. Season of the Witch



I really wanted to like this movie; partly because I wanted to see a spooky story about a lone warrior taking on the medieval church, but also because I wanted to like Nicholas Cage in a movie again. I can't talk about why I disliked this without going into spoilers, so I'll just say that I wasn't at all pleased with either the major plot twist or the way the climax was executed in general. There's some nice mood in this movie, but it supports nothing.

45. Killer Elite



It's partially disguised by the device of having an antagonist who's not entirely a bad guy, but there's no hiding that it's filled with cliché after action-movie cliché, starting with the former assassin who's new, peaceful life is threatened when he's forced to perform One Last Job. So many actors that I like - especially Yvonne Strahovski - wasted.

44. Tower Heist



There were a couple of hilarious moments that weren't spoiled in the trailer, so that's good. I even liked a lot of the characters; especially the ones played by Michael Peña and Matthew Broderick. But the hitch in the heist was lame and led to an unbelievable and unsatisfying conclusion. And though Eddie Murphy was funnier than he's been in a live-action film in years, this wasn't the role to spotlight his comeback. He's playing essentially the same function that Jamie Foxx did in Horrible Bosses, but Foxx was funnier. Way funnier.

43. Your Highness



So unfunny. The only redeeming quality is Natalie Portman's butt.

42. Unknown



Not anything like Taken, which is what it wanted you to think it was. Characters do things for no good reason and January Jones' performance is unwatchable. Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger are fun to watch together though and it sure was nice to see Aidan Quinn again, even in something like this.

41. The Ides of March



Great performances, but the movie's only message seems to be that Politics Suck. I already knew that.

40. Hugo



I feel guilty about putting Hugo behind Cowboys & Aliens, but let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Hugo presented itself as a steampunk story with a central mystery about an automaton and a secret key. That's the movie that I went to see, but it's not the movie that Hugo is. Hugo is a love letter to the history of cinema; a concept I can get behind, but not while I'm waiting for mystic doors to open and reveal an awesome world of clockworks and magic. I'm interested in seeing this again and re-evaluating it for what it is, but until then I'm stuck with disappointment.

39. Cowboys & Aliens



Some of my favorite fimmakers got together and hacked out this SyFy original movie. The low point in several people's careers. And yet, they're all people I love.

38. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides



I've already talked about this one at length, but the gist of my complaint is that it's cartoonish and doesn't follow through on the themes or characterizations from the first three films. What saves it is Penélope Cruz' complicated character and its just being a Pirates of the Caribbean movie with all the jungle/island/sea adventure that comes with that (even if it doesn't make a lot of sense).

Stuff I Wrote: Hunt the Winterlands

I contributed a story to this fantasy anthology. It's a shared-world anthology with all the writers creating stories in a harsh, snow- and ice-covered land. Mine deals with a tribe of Snow Elves (a race that I probably didn't invent, but have never heard of before), focusing mostly on a young mother and her talking baby. Only, just like human babies, Snow Elf babies aren't supposed to talk either, so it kind of freaks her out and makes her wonder if something horrible has happened. Which it kind of has.

Anyway, it's available on Amazon both in print and for the Kindle and I hope you'll check it out. If you don't feel like checking it out now, it's also in my store and there's a permanent link to that on the sidebar. Much thanks.

24 movies I missed in 2010

The list-making bug caught up with me yesterday, so I'm not going to be able to leave it alone with just songs and comics. Over the coming week I'm going to post about every 2010 movie I saw. All 52 of them. In order from least favorite to most.

But as I made the list, I was also reminded of all the movies that I wanted to see this year, but never got around to for a variety of reasons. So, by way of explaining why you won't see Toy Story 3 or Harry Potter 7.1 on the big list, here are - in alphabetical order - all the movies that I wish I could've caught in the theater in 2010. Some of them (Harry Potter) I hope to still see on the Big Screen, but I'll have to wait for most until they hit the Netflix.

I'm tempted to comment on why I want to see each of the following movies or - better yet - why I missed them, but I'll resist that. If you really want to know why any of these appear here, I'll be happy to go into detail in the comments.

Pass the Comics: Dr. Voodoo leaps!

Dr. Voodoo on a Battle in the Cliffs



Dr. Voodoo started life as a jungle character, but he seems to have crossed over into the fantasy genre here thanks to some time travel. [The Comic Book Catacombs]

Dagar the Invincible at the Castle of the Skull



In addition to skull-faced warriors, Dagar also fights a sabre-tooth tiger and a bone-trunked mammoth skeleton. [Gold Key Comics!]

Art Show: I'd fly with that guy.

Stranski



By Lorenzo Etherington.

Nonplayer



By Nate Simpson.

Writing is Hard: How Not to Write

This week's been threatening to get away from me since it started and yesterday it finally did. So there'll be a couple of more posts than usual today to make up for it.

How Not to Write About Africa



As a guy who loves jungle stories, but is sensitive to the racism in many of that genre's tropes, I found this article extremely helpful.

How Not to Write the Blurb for a Fantasy Novel



Maybe this is just me, so tell me in the comments if it bugs you too, but there's something that'll turn me off a fantasy novel every single time, even when the cover is as gorgeous as this one by Dan Dos Santos. From the Amazon Product Description for The Questing Road: "Acolytes to a dark god have crossed the gulf between worlds to abduct an innocent tariling..."

The italics are in the description, but they also highlight the word that stopped me cold. I've got no idea what a "tariling" is and I hate having to read the rest of the blurb to find out. Reading a blurb should be about discovering if I want to buy a book, not solving a mystery. In this case, I gather that a tariling is a cat-like creature (though the blurb likes the word "felinoid"). Couldn't it have just said that right up front?

I guess there must be an audience that enjoys being plunged cold into a world where everything has to be deciphered from the get-go, but I'm not part of it. I appreciate a fully realized world with its own languages and cultures and creatures to discover, but I prefer to be introduced to the strangeness gradually, not playing catch up from the first page. Or the cover blurb.

Art Show: Path to Goblin Village

Norway



By Bill Presing.

The Best Robot Pirate Airship Birthday Ever



By Jeremy Vanhoozer.

Our Newest Deep Sea Attack Ships



Artist Unknown, but the design is being put to good use by Admiral Calvin.

After the break: Namor, jungle girls, Kong, Zatanna, Death, Red Sonja, Xena, and some goblins.