Robert E. Howard Days 2013

REHupa recently announce the guest of honor at the 2013 REH Days in Cross Plains, TX.

Timothy Truman, best known for his work on Grimjack with John Ostrander. In 2006 Tim Truman took over the writing from Kurt Busiek on Dark Horse Comics Conan series.

Here are two of the graphic novel formatted Conan series I have in my personal collection that Tim Truman worked on . . .

Here is some of his work on GrimJack . . .

He was also a writer on the Star Wars series published by Dark Horse. Here is an image of the omnibus from that series . . .

I'm looking forward to meeting him and getting him to sign a few items.

New Reading Material

Here are a few items I'm about to begin reading over the next few weeks:

While I have owned this book for several years now, this will be my first stab at getting around to reading it. I'm looking forward to these stories. I've heard nothing but good things about them, so it's now time to read them.

The above is volume 12 in the Dark Horse Conan series. I'm excited about reading this because Roy Thomas (of Marvel Comics fame; the original Conan comic book writer) is the writer on this graphic novel.

Pictured above is the latest REH: Two-Gun Raconteur journal. This journal has an original work by REH (The Diablos Trail). The issue is dedicated to Glenn Lord and the cover art is Cormac Mac Art and Wulfhere by Terry Pavlet. The journal contains articles by Jeffrey Shanks, Michael L. Peters, Rob Roehm, and there is some verse by Barbara Barrett.

Looks like I've got a load of fun reading planned for the near future. I'm chomping at the bit to get started. Cheers!

Robert E. Howard in a letter to HP Lovecraft

“My tastes are simple; I am neither erudite nor sophisticated. I prefer jazz to classical music, musical burlesque to Greek tragedy, A.Conan Doyle to Balzac, Bob Service to Santayana, a prize fight to a lecture on art. I read the pulp magazines and enjoy them. I laugh uproariously at slap stick comedy in the movies. I respect men’s religion whether I believe in it or not.”

Happy Birthday

Today is Robert E. Howard's 107th birthday(January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936). I'm not going to delineate a short biography, that has been done countless times. This is a post simply to tip my hat to the greatest pulp writer ever. In fact, here's to one of the greatest writers to ever sit at a typewriter (or take up pen) and write. Happy birthday REH!

New Year, New Resolution, Small Note

I have not given up on this blog, though that seems to be the case. Life has merely happened and I've allowed certain "things" to dictate my time. With this month marking a new year, and me wanting to put forth new efforts, and Robert E. Howard's birthday being this month, I am hoping to mark off time to place greater effort on this blog. So, be looking for upcoming posts. Cheers!

The Comic Book Store and Robert E. Howard

It's Wednesday today, which means new comic day. So, I take my usual trek to my local comic book store to buy the issues which I collect. I sported one of my many Robert E. Howard T-shirts to the shop. It sparked a nice conversation with one of the workers at the shop.

He asked me if I had ever heard of the REH Days event in Cross Plains. I chuckled and told him this story. He thought that was pretty cool and said a friend had told him about the REH Days. He explained that they have wanted to attend for some time now. I suggested he follow through on that wish and explained that even if he was merely a small fan of Robert E. Howard, he would love REH Days.

It's nice to meet other REH fans.

Sentiment: An Olio of Rarer Works

I purchased this the other day from Robert E. Howard Foundation web site. I'm looking forward to digging into the collection. The book is described by the Foundations as such:

The volume is the Howard collector’s dream, containing those hard-to-find stories from various small press publications from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. No longer will readers have to seek out copies of Pay Day, Lurid Confessions #1, or The Dark Man #2; all of the Howard content in those volumes, and many more, is included here.
Also included are many items seldom seen by collectors. “The Rivals” makes its first appearance outside of a Foundation Newsletter; all three issues of Howard’s amateur press publication, The Right Hook, are presented in their entirety; and many other hard-to-find pieces have finally found a home in Sentiment. For most of these items, this is their first publication in book form. Many of the pieces in this collection are juvenilia.

The great thing about this volume is that it contains all of Howard's attempts at being a writer. Most writers who live to control their legacy do not allow material like this to be published. I mean seriously, do you see any extremely early works in print by the great novelists of the 20th century? John Steinbeck? William Faulkner? How about Ernest Hemingway, or Virginia Woolf? Nope. This is the reason I'm excited about this purchase. Here is a chance for Howard fans to look behind the curtain, so to speak, and see the boy who eventually becomes the greatest pulp fiction writer to take up pen and write.