r/SwordandSorcery

TL/DR: A mixed bag of stories featuring the classic pulp fantasy/sword and sorcery characters Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser told in chronological, not publishing, order.

There’s a lot here. This omnibus collection collects three collections: Swords and Deviltry, Swords Against Death, and Swords in the Mist. Together they cover the backstory, meeting, and first few years of adventures for Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

For those who don’t know, these are two classic pulp fantasy/sword and sorcery characters who first appeared in the 1939 story, “Two Sought Adventure”. Fafhrd is the giant of a northman with the soul and temper of a skald. Mouser is a short cosmopolitan rogue with a slick tongue and a little bit of magical skill (“tall and small” has a long history). Mostly created by Fritz Leiber, this pair has been a huge influence on fantasy for decades, and maybe invented the Thieves Guild trope as we know it.

Swords and Deviltry includes a backstory novella each for Fafhrd (“The Snow Women”) and the Grey Mouser (“The Unholy Grail”) that work as their origin stories. A third story tells of their first meeting (“Ill Met in Lankhmar”) and also introduces the notorious thieves guild of Lankhmar. A short introduction sets the scene and tone of the world of Newhon.

Overall this is the most solid collection. The stories have the density of the era, in this case it’s 1962 and 1970, and it serves the tales well. They’re nicely atmospheric with a generous sprinkling of words not in common use today, which adds to the whole feel.

Swords Against Death is an expanded and revised collection previously released as “Two Sought Adventure”. There’re ten short stories here, dating from 1940 to 1970. All are good but some better than others. Several are all about Fafhrd and Mouser’s perilous ocean voyage to the far side of Newhon (like Columbus thought he was going to do from Europe to Asia) and their overland return home. These all had their moments (and one or two fantastic ideas), but I enjoyed the ones taking place in and around Lankhmar (“Thieves House”, “Claws from the Night”, and “Bazaar of the Bizarre” in particular) much more.

Swords in the Mist collects stories from 1947 to 1968. I thought this the weakest of the group. “The Cloud of Hate” and “Lean Times in Lankhmar” I enjoyed greatly. Here we meet the cult of Hate and the monster it can manifests, and Issek of the Jug, which includes an epic scene of Fafhrd mistaken for the miraculous presence of one of the gods in Lankhmar (as opposed to the gods of Lankhmar which are a totally different sort of being).

“Their Mistress, the Sea” takes them on another voyage and here’s where I thought things went off. In fact, from this point on through I was tempted many times to just stop. TMtS and the two that follow it, “When the Sea-King’s Away” and “The Wrong Branch”, felt by the numbers predictable. The last, “Adept’s Gambit”, longer than the others by far, is, I think, the reason why.

With “Adept’s Gambit”, Lieber moves Fafhrd and the Mouser to our world in ancient times. Lankhmar become Tyre. Their is an extensive adventure that (happily) sums up a series of fetch quests to get to the set piece of the climax. This was written in 1947 and a move to make FaGM multiversal heroes, something built upon in later stories but apparently that came out of nowhere for “Adept’s Gambit”. The three that preceded it in this omnibus were written in 1968, 1960, and 1968. The ones from 1968 feel like they were written out of a need to explain why our heroes changed worlds (and personal histories).

In short, this is a mixed bag of stories. You may wish to find one of the individual collections to see if old-school, pulpy, sword and sorcery fantasy is even for you. If it is, there’s a lot to love in this omnibus. There’s just also some things I found to be skimmable.

Won this in a drawing a week or so ago, and, after I finished it, I wanted to give my quick thoughts. Clocking in at a little over 300 pages, I think the best way to describe this would be "Kind of like A Song of Ice and Fire, but with more humor." The menace of the villains hanging at the fringe of our story, the mysteries that elude our protagonists all paired with the scope of this world and the tantalizing teases of what awaits in Book 2 should be more than enough to get readers hyped for Book 2 of Gods, Gold & Goblins!

I think everyone in this subreddit has asked "what elements make Sword & Sorcery," and what separates the subgenre from the rest of fantasy. While your mileage may vary on what does and doesn't count, I suspect anyone in here looking for a good, entertaining yarn won't be disappointed by this book. It doesn't feel exactly like what the founding fathers and mother laid down in the genre, but then, I don't want it to. I want the genre to evolve and grow into something new, but still familiar as part of the same wellspring. I think Roguerun does that. I hope you all will like it.

I was on a real 70’s, 80’s sword and sorcery kick and picked these up. The Frank Frazetta art really hooked me. Out of print so a little spendy to get ahold of, but they sure have that vibe I was after.

The poem first appeared two years after Howard's death, in Weird Tales (August 1938), and first reappeared at the end of Skull-Face and Others (1946). I found its rejection of literary immortality especially moving, if so far misplaced.

Yes, furry conan, I regret nothing when making this.

I was inspired in making this drawing from a conan figurine by Kidrobot

REH: Lone Star Fictioneer #1 is a rare collectible Robert E. Howard fanzine published in Spring 1975 by editors Byron L. Roark and Arnie Fenner under Nemedian Chronicles. The publisher, Nemedian Chronicles, only printed 500 hand-numbered copies. Very few of those original 500 copies have survived in good condition.

The Issue Includes editorials, essays, artwork & Portfolios with illustrations by artists including Roy Krenkel, John Severin, Steve Fabian, and others. Thought I would share a few pics of my numbered 459 of 500 Fictioneer #1 addition to my S&S Barbarians Among us Collection. I'm a huge Fabian, Severin fan.

The closing line on the back cover is taken from an incomplete literary fragment written by Howard.

Interesting note: When comparing the line on the back cover to the Howard's original fragment it appears the line was altered from the original fragment.

"They" to "He", "have" to "has", "their" to "his" and punctuation was also altered.

Back cover of fictioneer 1 - "He has given his breath to grey old Death, and yet, he cannot die." - I read it as a tribute to Howard the man himself, perhaps Implying even after Howard's death his body of work continue to thrive. Perhaps that was the publishers intent.

Fragment -

The hangman asked of the carrion crow, but the raven made reply:
"Black ride the men who rode with Death beneath the midnight sky,
"And black each steed and grey each skull, and strange each deathly eye.
"They have given their breath to grey old Death, and yet they cannot die."

- Death's Black Riders -Robert E. Howard

Not sure when the change occurred. will be reaching out to Gary Romeo to inquire.

Posted in response to a comment from a post of the first app Thusla Doom appearance.

This set of books came in the mail today. I tracked it down and bought it based on another community member posting an image of the cover of volume 1, saying he was reading it. If he hadn't done that, there's a very good chance I would never have found out about something this obscure, on an independent press in limited run from 1991. I find that distressing.

I think it would be great if the community here had a general surge share the more obscure stuff in their collections, not just to show off (which is reason enough, in my opinion, for rare lore), but to simply let other community members become aware of something they might not ever know existed otherwise. Not necessarily in this thread, but just as a general push moving forward.

Lore only persists when archived AND shared.

Chamber of Chills Issue 2 offered us reader two great stories.

The first story was "The Monster from the Mound" adapted from Robert E. Howard's "The Horror From The Mound". It was scripted by Gardner Fox, art by Frank Brunner and Roy Thomas as Editor. Set in Texas, the story involved a cursed burial mound and a vampire.

The second story in the issue was John Jakes "Brak the Barbarian" - "Spell of the Dragon".

John Jakes first created the pulp fantasy character Brak the Barbarian for a short story published in the March 1965 issue of Fantastic Magazine. Jakes was a dedicated fan of Howard who specifically wanted to write stories in the same spirit as Conan. Jakes stated he created Brak because "There just aren’t enough stories of this kind to go around any more; not enough, anyway, to please me” - John Jakes.

Brak was both a tribute to Howard’s Conan, and a response to the scarcity of heroic fantasy available to readers during the early 1960s.

Brak was depicted as a blond broadsword wielding barbarian from the frozen north who was cast out and banished by his own people for questioning the existence of traditional war gods. Unlike his kin, Brak was an unbeliever who does not worship any gods. The comic story, was plotted and scripted by Brak’s creator John Jakes, with art by Val Mayerik and Joe Sinnott.

In July of 1974 Savage Tales Issue #5 reprinted "Spell of the Dragon", and Savage Tales issues 7-8 featured a two-part adaptation of John Jakes’ Brak story "The Unspeakable Shrine," with Doug Moench scripting and Steve Gan illustrating. After Savage Tales #8, there were no further Brak comic adaptations or appearances.

I love having this comic in my Sword and Sorcery Barbarians among us collection. - You find Barbarians in the most peculiar of places.

Flipping through an Azpiri art book, I came across an image unhelpfully captioned "cover for a book about Conan." Turns out the cover is for La canción de las espadas: fantasía heroica en Robert E. Howard, by Javier Martín Lalanda (1983), an early Spanish study of Howard's heroic fantasy.

Here are the passages that struck me most. The quotes are machine translated (I don’t speak Spanish); the headings and summaries are mine.

1. Howard’s heroes as American self-made men

> Howard, a man uncomfortable with his own age, created characters who were precisely what he himself could not be: adventurer, swordsman, traveler, pirate, mercenary, king. And he gave them the specifically American character of the self-made man. > > Thus an entire world emerges that reflects the external demons to which he was subjected: wild beasts are dangers; priests and rulers, forever telling us what we must do, are the impositions of society; and the sorcerers who fight the hero—sometimes attempting to win his submission—are false prophets offering easy roads and prosperous goals at the price of personal degradation and the loss of one’s humanity.

2. Conan commodified after death

Lalanda argues that later adaptations overemphasized machismo, aggression, and eroticism, simplifying Conan into a marketable icon.

> Conan—individualistic but not antisocial, no friend of laws, anarchic in tendency, always jealous of his rights—has become yet another consumer product within the devouring machinery of our “Western” culture. He who had no master, whose only god was distant Crom, has after his “death” become a slave, monopolized by Conan Properties Inc.

3. Sorcery as a metaphor for exploitative power

Lalanda distinguishes the magician, a person possessing power, from the sorcerer, who turns that power toward domination.

> For Howard, a magician is a man with power, or “a man of power.” If he directs that ability toward his own benefit without regard for others, or uses others in his “lust for power,” he becomes a sorcerer. The distinction between the two is social and moral, and the boundary separating them is not especially clear. > > People in our own real world fit this very broad definition of sorcery. Perhaps Howard thought something similar: that the structures of power and oppression change their forms but are never destroyed, as though subject to a universal law of conservation.

4. The city as death

> In the Conan series we find the barbarian’s, the nomad’s, contempt for the great urban centers, mingled with superstition. For in the end they represent death: they repress life and imprison it within four walls. > > Howard reflects the spirit of barbarians who, before becoming acculturated, would not dare sleep within cities they had conquered, preferring the security and freedom of their huts outside the walls.

Discussing the dragon in Red Nails, which the inhabitants of Xuchotl supposedly revived from fossil bones:

> Death has been made into life.

5. Barry Windsor-Smith versus Buscema

Lalanda sees two different conceptions of Conan.

> From the panther-like agility, restlessness, and search for destiny that one senses behind Barry W. Smith’s Conan—a reflection of the artist’s personal world, which coincides, at least in Conan, with Howard’s—we arrive at the security and calm of the lion that emanates from John Buscema’s Conan. > > I prefer B. W. Smith’s Conan because I believe he preserved the bond linking the Cimmerian hero to Howard’s other characters, whereas Buscema regarded Conan as different from the others, something he made evident in his drawing.

Panther versus lion.

6. The Howard hero as a modern berserker/outlaw

> Howard’s heroic fantasy, considered character by character, constitutes a homage to the berserker of modern times: the “fallen” warrior who has lost his social recognition and therefore placed himself beyond society’s commandments, practicing an autonomous morality and governing himself according to his own precepts.

He then runs through the pattern:

• Kull, raised among wolves and tigers;
• Conan, born amid war and never renouncing his uncivilized nature;
• Bran Mak Morn and the Wolf Clan;
• Turlogh wearing wolf skins;
• Cormac Mac Art, “the Wolf”;
• Esau Cairn becoming almost an animal on Almuric;
• Agnes de Chastillon revealing her untamed nature when society tries to impose a husband on her.

My takeaway: Civilization periodically needs a man it cannot itself produce.

7. What Lalanda seems to mean by "Sword & Sorcery"

Lalanda doesn't give a single definition of Sword & Sorcery, but he describes it as a subset of heroic fantasy and implies these elements:

• a warrior protagonist
• a world grounded enough for the supernatural to feel like an intrusion
• sorcery that is dangerous, alien, and morally charged
• action and personal resistance rather than cosmic helplessness
• a strong affinity with outlaw heroes

Lalanda also discusses Julius Evola at some length, particularly in connection with ancestry, heroic action, and immortality; I’ve omitted that material here for reasons of scope.

I’m especially curious whether any of these ideas—particularly the city as death, sorcery as exploitative power, and the Howard hero as a socially obsolete berserker—were already common in Howard criticism by 1983.

More info/links:

John's art was also used for the cover of White Dwarf issue 82 which supported the release, more on that here: https://exploringwarhammer.substack.com/p/a-key-document-in-the-history-of-7b0

More on the cover here too; https://awesomeliesblog.wordpress.com/2024/11/10/cover-story/

I recently picked up this issue of 70's independent comic Star Reach which includes an Elric story which I don't think appears in any of the recent Titan collections. Art by Bob Gould, very much in that groovy Barry Smith/Tim Conrad mold. Cracking Jeff Jones cover.

Haven't posted in quite a while so I thought why not jump back in with a new art book pickup from one of my favourite artists on one of my favourite S&S series.

Most will be familiar with Amano's work on Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D, and in this sub's case, his work on Elric but hopefully there is some Amano art here that some will be less familiar with.

Federico Mele (F. Mele) Graduated from the International School of Comics in Pescara and then from the Roman School of Comics. In 2022 he published his first comic book as a sole author, The Fall of Macbeth, with Fanucci Editore. Shortly Thereafter he began a collaboration as an interior and cover artist with Todd McFarlane Productions / Image Comics for the US market on titles such as Spawn, and Knights vs Samurai *(*Which I have not read as of Yet). Mele currently teaches color, painting, inking, and storytelling at the Roman School of Comics.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8, was published by Mirage Studios in July 1986. The Issue is considered a famous crossover amongst the TMNT community of folks with issues selling roughly 135,000 copies and featuring a guest appearance by Cerebus the Aardvark.

The F.Mele Frazetta homage cover was created in 2023 showcasing Mele's artwork without logos or barcodes, and was strictly limited to a low print run of only 250 copies. Though a Frazetta Homage, Mele's style composition and use of color also reminds me of another great Sword and Sorcery master artist's Covers (Vallejo) who contributed covers to Curtis Savage Sword of Conan when I was young.

You can find Barbarians in the most peculiar of places!!! - I greatly enjoy having this Frazetta Homage addition in my Sword and Sorcery Barbarians Among Us collection.

Edit / Fellow Reddit'r Captain Corum provided a comment referencing this Mele Homage cover to a Frazetta John Carter painting. - (Perhaps Swordmen of Mars?) The Captain did not mention which painting in response was referring too, so I am unsure.

Since I see a Barbarian in Mele's Frazetta Homage , AND since Cerebus the aardvark himself was a barbarian , mercenary parody of Conan the Barbarian. I will still keep this issue in my S&S Barbarians Among Us collection where (for me) it just seems to fit quite nicely . - Thanks Capt.

Steve (Stephen) Fabian became a professional artist at age 44. He graduated from high school in 1948, went to work in a factory, then Joined the Air Force. While serving Steve began reading how-to books by illustrator and art instructor Andrew Loomis and began sketching teaching himself to draw.

After he left the Air Force in 1952 Steve worked as a Lab technician for DuMont Laboratories, and later for Curtiss-Wright and Simmonds Precision Products. When Simmonds laid Steve off at the age of 44 in 1974 he found himself at a crossroads.....

He decided to try and make a living with his art work, and it soon took off. He went on to create illustrations for fiction magazines like Witchcraft & Sorcery, Amazing Stories, and Galaxy publications. He created hardcover art for a reprint of Robert E. Howard's "The Vultures".

Fabian became well known for his detailed black and white illustration art in the science fiction and fantasy genres, contributing cover art for major publishers, magazines, and comics. He worked extensively with pen and ink, using cross-hatching and fine line-work to create dramatic, moody compositions.

At Marvel, Fabian worked as a freelance illustrator, providing interior and cover art with specific illustrations in "Savage Tales" and "Savage Sword of Conan" and pencil work on various comics during the 1970s. During his lifetime Fabian published collections of his artwork to include The Howard Collection.

Though sometimes overlooked in Conan artist discussions Steve's distinctive art left an impression on SSOC collectors like myself. Though Steve was quite prolific in the art industry (everything from Heavy Metal Mags, to Spider-Man, to Dracula lives) his legacy in comics will always be largely tied to his elegant contributions for SSOC.

In his lifetime Fabian won numerous Art awards - The British Fantasy Award for Artwork 1978 for his illustration “The End of Days,” that appeared in Chacal #2. Nominated three times in the Best Artist category, winning a second time in 1985. Nominated for seven World Fantasy Award for Best Artists between 1975 and 2000, eventually winning a Life Achievement Award from the organization in 2006. He was nominated for the Best Fan Artist Hugo in 1970 and 1971 and for the Best Professional Artist Hugo seven times between 1975 and 1981. Fabian was also nominated for the Balrog Award for Best artist each year from 1979 to 1982. Fabian beat out Dave Carson and Rowena Morrill for the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist in 1980.

Here is my collection copy of SSOC 6 showcasing Fabian's work.

Stephen Fabian - one of the great self taught (yet sometimes overlooked) Artists who entered the profession late in life, but left an indelible mark in the world of Science fiction, Sword and Sorcery, and Fantasy genres with his artistic contributions.

Proud to have Fabian's artwork as part of my Sword and Sorcery Barbarians Among Us Collection.

Note 1: I digitally doctored Steve's RBCC back cover covering up the women breasts to get past Puritan Reddit flagging Autobot.
Note 2: For those unfamiliar with RBCC, It was a way Comic collectors could buy, sell, and trade vintage comic books via mail. Think Pre-internet, Pre-online comic stores, Pre-Ebay.

The flyer was created By Alfredo Alcala for the 1980 show. It depicts Mr. Alcala's creation "Voltar" who's first appearance predated Marvel’s versions of Conan by seven years. Flyers such as these were never intended to last. - Glad someone had the presence of forethought to preserve this bit of history. Pleased I had the opportunity to add this original Flyer as a unique addition for my Sword and Sorcery Barbarians Among Us collection.

You find Barbarians hanging out in the most peculiar of places.

Today is the last day to receive a discount code for 20% off the $25 cover price of this 160 page anthology of original comics and art.

I bought one myself and heard the publisher, Kurt, say the discount ends at the end of September.

cromthebarbarian.com