Bad News for American Solomon Kane Fans...

Jim over at Grognardia has a post that highlights a recent French review of the -- as yet unreleased in the United States -- new Solomon Kane movie. The crux of the review is the the film is neither a good adaptation of Robert E Howard's character, nor is it a particularly good film in its own right.

Crap! This bodes ill.

My obsession with things Howardian will require that I watch the film when/if it is finally released in the United States, but I have greater reason to dread the inevitable viewing. In case you are wondering, my obsession is so potent that I have not only seen Conan, Conan: The Destroyer, Red Sonja, and Kull: The Conqueror on repeated occasions, I own them on DVD and watch them from time to time looking microscopically for glimpses of something remotely Howardian.

This is harder to do with some of the films than it is with others. Thankfully, there is always The Whole Wide World -- a delightful biographical Howardian film.

At the end of the post at Grognardia Jim asks, "What is it about Robert E. Howard that makes Hollywood want to tell its own stories with his characters rather presenting the ones he himself wrote? I'm sure there are other authors whose works have repeatedly suffered as much as Howard's have but I'm hard pressed to think of any at the moment."

I think there are a couple of reasons for the lack of presentation of Howard characters as they should be presented -- in their proper Howardian glory.

First, any Conan movie has to fight against decades of Frazetta's visual representations, and their descendants, of the character. Frazetta's art is stunning, but it doesn't very well match the actual descriptions of the character. Other characters present this problem to a lesser degree as they have fewer popularly resonant images to combat. They also have less popular resonance at all, which constitutes its own problem. A problem that typically leads to an, "I need to provide an origin and context" syndrome.

Second, movies are the perfect length to depict novellas. A 30,000 word story fits nicely in a 90 - 140 minute framework. One could make a nice movie out of The Hour of the Dragon, but any adaptation would likely suffer from "I need to provide an origin and context" syndrome. Fans of the Howard fiction know that the first Conan story, The Phoenix on the Sword, takes place late in the Barbarian's life and drops the reader right into an existing milieu. All we get for context is a beautifully written excerpt from The Nemedian Chronicles giving us a sense of place/time. The vast majority of Conan tales, and Solomon Kane tales, are shorter than novella length and leap from one time and place to another. The fireside story feel of this phenomenon is enjoyable for the reader, but doesn't make for a well structured film.

All one has to do is look at the Stone script for Conan: the Barbarian to see what happens when you combine disparate short stories -- themselves clouded through the de Camp lens -- and fuse them together with your own connecting narrative. One gets Conan fighting a Kull villain -- though to be fair the Kull villain is to Kull as Thoth Amon is to Conan.

The translation of a patchwork of short stories into a 90 minute narrative isn't easy, and it comes with its own temptations -- temptations that Hollywood has fallen into far too many times. It would take a talented, and devoted, writer to bring Howard's great Barbarian to the screen. Even then, there would be those who would quibble with the interpretation.

Imagine how many people felt a need to shout, "someone on the internet is wrong" when I wrote that Frazetta's Conan is artistically beautiful but textually inaccurate. I hold strongly to that opinion, but I imagine there are Howardians who would take me to task for such an opinion.

Howard, and Lovecraft, have yet to see an excellent Big Budget adaptation of their properties.

I lament that the upcoming Solomon Kane film will likely be horrible, but I will watch it none the less. It cannot be worse than Kull: The Conqueror.

Who do you think competes with them for the prize of most awfully adapted?

Solomon Kane (2009) Has Yet to Secure US Distributor -- Come on Pulp Fans!

Earlier this year, I wrote about the upcoming SOLOMON KANE film. According to the film's production company (as of 11/24/2009) no company has purchased the rights to distribute the film in the United States.

It is time for us pulp fans to get the message out and build some buzz for this film. It may, or may not, live up to Howard fan expectations, but we must get the full big screen experience.

If you want a couple of talking points to respond to questions about the character, here were my thoughts:

If you were to take a random sample of Americans and ask them to name a hero created by Robert E Howard, arguably the creator of the Sword and Sorcery genre, their most likely answer would be Conan the Barbarian. For the past forty years, since Lin Carter and L. Sprague De Camp resurrected the hero for mass consumption, Howard's man of gigantic mirth and gigantic melancholies has appeared in a wide variety of media for public consumption. People have encountered Conan, or some approximation, in film, video games, comic books, television shows, and numerous pastiches written by more recent authors. Never mind the fact that the Conan of popular culture bears only passing resemblance to Howard's barbarian, the character has become a deeply ingrained part of the American Mythos.

From time to time some devoted soul, will attempt to resurrect another of Howard's heroes in the hopes that they too will become a part of the American psyche.

A little over a decade ago we saw the release of Kull the Conquerer starring Kevin Sorbo. Kull was a proto-Conan and the first published Conan stories is a re-writing of a Kull tale. The film meandered between the swashbuckling stylings of a Harryhausen Sinbad film and the camp of the Batman television series, and in doing so failed to capture the character or any real audience.

There have also been attempts to bring Howard's dour and deadly Puritan, Solomon Kane. In the 70s, Marvel Comics released a number of Solomon Kane comics, recently Dark Horse has done the same. In fact, Dark Horse is publishing the reprint trades of the Marvel books. In the 90s, Baen Books released a collection of Howard's Solomon Kane stories with and introduction by Ramsey Campbell. Campbell also used the Bael edition as an opportunity to "collaborate" with Howard in a manner similar to de Camp and the Conan tales. Del Rey released a beautiful edition of the Solomon Kane tales, with wonderful artwork by Gary Gianni, in 2004 -- an edition still in print -- that collects all of the original tales with a few exclusive story fragments. The Del Rey edition is Kane as Howard wrote him. Solomon Kane has even been the subject of the excellent The Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane role playing game by Pinnacle Entertainment.

Kane is among my favorite Sword and Sorcery heroes. His combination of a forthright pursuit of justice and his unforgiving personality makes for an interesting take on the "religiously motivated" hero. Howard describes him as, "a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan...A hunger in his soul drove him on an on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things...Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect -- he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane." Like so many of Howard's heroes, Kane was -- like Howard himself -- One Who Waled Alone.

Kane's star is certainly rising in the popular psyche, but how great a place the Puritan will hold will greatly depend on the upcoming film starring James Purefoy as the title character. If the preview is any indication, the character of the film will not be Howard's character "made flesh," but Purefoy's Kane might just be Howard's character in spirit.

One Who Walked Alone: Solomon Kane Preview

If you were to take a random sample of Americans and ask them to name a hero created by Robert E Howard, arguably the creator of the Sword and Sorcery genre, their most likely answer would be Conan the Barbarian. For the past forty years, since Lin Carter and L. Sprague De Camp resurrected the hero for mass consumption, Howard's man of gigantic mirth and gigantic melancholies has appeared in a wide variety of media for public consumption. People have encountered Conan, or some approximation, in film, video games, comic books, television shows, and numerous pastiches written by more recent authors. Never mind the fact that the Conan of popular culture bears only passing resemblance to Howard's barbarian, the character has become a deeply ingrained part of the American Mythos.

From time to time some devoted soul, will attempt to resurrect another of Howard's heroes in the hopes that they too will become a part of the American psyche.

A little over a decade ago we saw the release of Kull the Conquerer starring Kevin Sorbo. Kull was a proto-Conan and the first published Conan stories is a re-writing of a Kull tale. The film meandered between the swashbuckling stylings of a Harryhausen Sinbad film and the camp of the Batman television series, and in doing so failed to capture the character or any real audience.

There have also been attempts to bring Howard's dour and deadly Puritan, Solomon Kane. In the 70s, Marvel Comics released a number of Solomon Kane comics, recently Dark Horse has done the same. In fact, Dark Horse is publishing the reprint trades of the Marvel books. In the 90s, Baen Books released a collection of Howard's Solomon Kane stories with and introduction by Ramsey Campbell. Campbell also used the Bael edition as an opportunity to "collaborate" with Howard in a manner similar to de Camp and the Conan tales. Del Rey released a beautiful edition of the Solomon Kane tales, with wonderful artwork by Gary Gianni, in 2004 -- an edition still in print -- that collects all of the original tales with a few exclusive story fragments. The Del Rey edition is Kane as Howard wrote him. Solomon Kane has even been the subject of the excellent The Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane role playing game by Pinnacle Entertainment.

Kane is among my favorite Sword and Sorcery heroes. His combination of a forthright pursuit of justice and his unforgiving personality makes for an interesting take on the "religiously motivated" hero. Howard describes him as, "a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan...A hunger in his soul drove him on an on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things...Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect -- he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane." Like so many of Howard's heroes, Kane was -- like Howard himself -- One Who Waled Alone.

Kane's star is certainly rising in the popular psyche, but how great a place the Puritan will hold will greatly depend on the upcoming film starring James Purefoy as the title character. If the preview is any indication, the character of the film will not be Howard's character "made flesh," but Purefoy's Kane might just be Howard's character in spirit.

Solomon Kane at IGN.com

More Print Periodical Woes and Some Good News Too.

Before I write about a couple of items that I think are great news for those who like games etc., I would like to point out that we have another casualty on the print periodical front. My last post was about the future of print newspapers. In it, I mentioned that Premiere magazine and Disney Adventures had been canceled and would likely only exist in digital format.

I didn't mention, though I should have, that both Dungeon and Dragon magazine ended publication this month in an event that caused great stir in the gaming community. I should have mentioned Dungeon and Dragon if only to point out that when magazines with circulations over half-a-million are going digital only, it should not have surprised gamers that Dungeon and Dragon (who have a much lower circulation) should move to that format.

That said...it appears that Inquest Magazine, the magazine for the collectible card game hobby, is also closing its shades with no word whether it will go digital or not. There are a lot of great things about this here digital revolution, but watching all these magazines fold up isn't one of them.

NOW FOR THE GOOD NEWS.

There are several games coming out in the near future which make me absolutely giddy.

First, there will be a new edition of the Tales of the Arabian Nights boardgame. Z-Man Games will be releasing the new edition some time next year. Tales is one of those crazy games which cause ridiculous bidding wars on ebay. The game can cost upwards of $200.00, on a good day. I remember playing this game with my friend Roger Frederick a couple of times and marveling at how much fun we had.

Second, Fantasy Flight Games will be doing new versions of Cosmic Encounter and Borderlands as well as a Twilight Imperium adaptation of the old Avalon Hill Dune boardgame.

If only I had unlimited time to play games.

Oh, and the Solomon Kane roleplaying game will be shipping this October. I really can't wait for this gem. I wish I was one of the lucky few who purchased it at Gen Con.