The Drab Garb of Solomon Kane

Comic Book Resources has posted an interview with Dark Horse Comics editor and writer Scott Allie, discussing his upcoming series about Robert E Howard’s Solomon Kane.

As Allie notes, “Of the three main Robert E. Howard characters — Conan, Kull, and Kane — Kane's the one that exists in an actual historical era — the end of the sixteenth century. He's a Puritan adventurer with a military history and he's driven by a sense of vengeance.”

Howard’s stories and poems do indeed place Solomon Kane at the end of the sixteenth century. He was present when Sir Francis Drake executed Thomas Doughty in 1578, and served under Sir Richard Grenville when his ship the Revenge single-handedly fought a 53-ship Spanish fleet in 1591. Both of these were real events.

But pictures of Solomon Kane always show him in the clothes of the mid-to-late 17th century, as in Gary Gianni’s fine illustrations (above and below) to the 1998 edition of The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane.


In real life, men in the late Elizabethan period looked like this:



The appearance of fighting men who could not afford to have their portraits painted has been reconstructed like this:



I am not sure where the depiction of Kane as a 17th century version of the Shadow started. There does not seem to have been a single moment when a definitive version of Solomon Kane was created (unlike Howard’s better known character, Conan, whose appearance was fixed by Frank Frazetta’s paperback covers in the 1960s, which marked a sharp break from the short-haired, blandly handsome version who appeared in illustrations to the original publication of the stories in Weird Tales). The way that Gianni portrayed Kane was consistent with the appearance of the character in various Marvel comics of the 1970s and 1980s.




The Marvel version, in turn, drew on the covers painted by Jeff Jones for 1960s small-press book collections.




But, as you can see, the Jones version is quite vague in its details. Those are the earliest pictures of Solomon Kane that I have found. If there were any illustrations to his appearances in Weird Tales, I would love to see them, but I haven’t yet.

So far as I know, only one artist has given Solomon Kane a distinctly different appearance: Howard Chaykin in a story for Marvel’s Savage Sword of Conan.


But I find it hard to recommend this version. The tabard and hooped rugby-jersey sleeves seem neither in period nor in character.

So why is Kane always depicted anachronistically? Partly, I think, because the word “puritan” always throws up images of roundheads, pilgrim fathers and Salem witch-hunters, although it was in use, mostly as an insult, earlier than that. But in part, it is just that, even when toned down (as in Shakespeare in Love), Elizabethan menswear, with its stiff doublets and hose, pantaloons and ruffs, looks distinctly silly to 21 century eyes.

Will Dark Horse take up the challenge of creating a different but historically appropriate Solomon Kane? Or will they stick with the familiar, easy but anachronistic version? We’ll have to wait and see.


Pictures and panels
Illustrations by Gary Gianni to Robert E Howard The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, Wandering Star Books and Del Rey/Ballantine Books, 1998

Anonymous Sir Walter Raleigh and his Son, c 1591, National Portrait Gallery, London, reproduced in Francois Boucher A History of Costume in the West, Thames & Hudson, 1966

Isaac Oliver The Three Brothers Brown, 1598, Collection of Lord Exeter at Burlington House, photo by Courtauld Institute of Art, reproduced in Francois Boucher A History of Costume in the West, Thames & Hudson, 1966

Plates by Richard Hook for John Tincey The Armada Campaign 1588, Osprey Books Elite Serries no 15, 1988

Solomon Kane “The Hills of the Dead”, script by Roy Thomas, adapted from the story by Robert E Howard, art by Alan Weiss and Neal Adams, Kull and the Barbarians issue 2, Marvel Comics, July 1975, reprinted in The Savage Sword of Conan issue 16, Marvel UK, February 1979

Solomon Kane “The Prophet!” by Ralph Macchio (scripter), Mike Mignola (penciller), Al Williamson (inker), Joe Rosen (letterer), Bob Sharen (colourist) and Carl Potts (editor), (The Sword of) Solomon Kane issue 4, Marvel Comics, March 1986

Jeff Jones, cover illustration to Robert E Howard Red Shadows, Donald Grant books, 1968, scan taken from the Howard Works website

Jeff Jones, cover illustration to Robert E Howard The Moon of Skulls, Centaur Press, 1969, scan taken from the Howard Works website

Jeff Jones, cover illustration to Robert E Howard The Hand of Kane, Centaur Press, 1970, scan taken from the Howard Works website

Solomon Kane “Rattle of Bones", script by Roy Thomas, adapted from the story by Robert E Howard, art by Howard Chaykin, Savage Sword of Conan issue 18, Marvel Comics, April 1977, reprinted in The Savage Sword of Conan issue 20, Marvel UK, June 1979

Reviews: Blade, Countdown, Cover Girl, Madame Mirage, Rex Libris

Blade issue 9, “The Big Fight” by Marc Guggenheim (writer), Howard Chaykin (artist), Edgar Delgado (Colour), VC’s Ron Wooton (letters) and Aubrey Sitterson (editor), cover by Marko Djurdjevic, Marvel Comics, May 2007, 21 pages of strip, US$2.99

That’s a pretty but rather misleading cover. This issue isn’t a World War Hulk tie-in (thank goodness), and no vampire guardsmen in bearskins appear (alas). I’m not really sure that Russian Constructivist graphics and German Black-Letter type spell “London” to me, but maybe they do to an American readership.

Because Blade is still in London, investigating the secrets of his family, and their relationship to the Order of Tyrana. It seems that one person who can help him is Union Jack. Cue self-referential joke.

"… a key member is a guy named Union Jack. (Which might sound as weird to the Brits as us calling a guy 'American Flag.')"

(That’s assuming, of course, that any of us readers still remember Chaykin’s American Flagg, given how long it has been out-of-print.) Conveniently, Union Jack is back at Blade’s hotel, trying to kill his side-kick Hannibal King.



This comic is a competent, professionally written and drawn issue which advances the overarching plot and gives us a decent fight scene. Even so, it does all feel a bit thin. This is not just because the page count has been dropped by one temporarily to accommodate a text recap page (as of next month, the letters page is being dropped instead). The remaining pages typically contain only four or five panels each, sometimes less, and those panels don’t contain an extraordinary amount of text or detailed imagery either. It's almost as if it was being scripted for a digest or manga page size. It’s worth a read, but be prepared for it to be a short one.

(Obligatory, pettifogging complaints by an Englishman about American comics set here: the story claims to take place in Soho, but, unlike in this comic, you can’t actually see the River from Soho, let alone Tower Bridge, which is miles away. And the Cenotaph is on Whitehall. I’m going to assume that the flat-cap and Model-T flashback scenes are set in the 1920s, so that’s OK.)


Countdown issue 51, “Look to the Skies” by Paul Dini (writer), Jesus Saiz (pencils), Jimmy Palmiotti (inks), Tom Chu (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Mike Marts (editor), cover by Andy Kubert, Townsend and Dajeco, DC Comics, May 9 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

What a disappointment! When I heard that Paul Dini was going to be the lead writer on the new weekly comic from DC, I was quite optimistic. Not only should Dini’s experience in the animated DC superhero shows have prepared him for the job of guiding a team of writers, but his TV track record showed that he could take the convoluted, angsty and increasingly gore-soaked DC Universe and transform it into accessible fun for a general audience.

So what’s the first thing we see here? Blood dripping from a naked man suspended from a meathook through his midriff. And the main plot revolves not just around DC’s barnacled continuity, which is bad enough, but around drawing attention to the contradictions in that continuity. Honestly, did Dan Didio’s mother never tell him that it won’t get better if you pick it?



Jesus Saiz’s artwork can best be described as serviceable. I just wish it were in service to a better story.


Cover Girl issue 1, “Hollywood Shuffle” by Andrew Cosby and Kevin Church (writers), R M Yankowicz (artist), Pablo Quiligotti and Brian Miroglio (colourists), Ed Dukeshire (letterer) and Marshall Dillion (editor), cover by Rafael Albuquerque, Boom! Studios, May 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$3.99

This debut issue is mostly set up. Aspiring actor Alex Martin capitalises on press coverage after he rescues a woman from a car crash (he neglects to mention that he caused the crash in the first place). But the women is being followed by mysterious men in suits and shades, and soon vanishes. Then the men in shades try to kill Alex, so the studio where he is now working hires a bodyguard, Rachel Dodd, the “Cover Girl” of the title.

It’s hard to see yet whether this will run well, given that the title character only appears on the last page. So far the writing is crisp and amusing, with a few good one-liners, and the art does its job perfectly well. As with the only other Boom! studios comic I have read, Mr Stuffins, the whole package feels like it might be more at home on TV than on the comic page. It also shares a muddy colour palette – though nowhere near as overwhelming and monotonous as on Mr Stuffins. But brown seems an odd choice for the dominant colour for a light thriller set in Tinseltown.



Even so, this is entertaining enough for me to want to check out the next issue.


Madame Mirage First Look by Paul Dini (writer), Kenneth Rocafort (artist), Blond (colours), Troy Peteri (letters) and Rob Levin (editor), Image Comics/Top Cow Productions, May 2007, 7 pages of strip, US$0.99

I like the idea of a taster issue like this, but it’s hard to draw any conclusions yet about whether the full-length comic will be any good. It’s a shame that the set-up turns out to be superheroes again, but the shadowy art holds out some hope that the treatment will have more of a pulp flavour than usual. Rocafort’s work is highly stylised (Madame Mirage is about nine heads high, for example), but this may be a sensible choice if he has to present a heroine so inappropriately dressed for running around shooting people.

I’ll probably give the first issue a chance, but if anything this has dampened my expectations rather than raised them.




Rex Libris issue 8, “Escape from the Book of Monsters!” by James Turner, SLG Publishing, May 2007, 32 pages of strip, US$2.95

Our two-gun librarian hero is trapped inside the Book of Monsters and has to fight his way out. Meanwhile, back at the Middleton public library, monsters are escaping from the book and attacking Hypatia and Circe.

Basically, this is just a string of monster fights with great one-liners, pretentious literary and philosophical references and in-jokes about traditions of comics captioning. Just my cup of tea.

Turner’s blocky computer-generated greyscale artwork looks like nothing else on the racks, and fits the surreal tone of his stories perfectly. In addition to the main story, the inside and back covers are packed with absurd humour. The whole thing is great value for anyone who doesn’t have a fetish for colour printing.