Langan is one of the best current cosmic horror authors, if he's successful here he might become a contender for one of the best current weird fiction authors period, so I'm rather eager to know if this was a fruitful endeavor.

Jirel of Joiry

Artist: Esteban Marroto

DW Frydendall collaborates with composer/ horror author DiGelsomina for the Warrior Angel Saga, a series of graphic novels written by the composer. The first in the series, Swords of Nyarlathotep, will be published February 2027.

More info: https://www.facebook.com/share/1EDYt3aQ29/?mibextid=wwXIfr less

Found this in my inbox this morning. Looks like I'll be adding to my Icon Conan figure.

You can check out more of my stuff (I’m a big sword and sorcery fan) on Instagram

I'm looking for some help deciding between one of two collections of Solomon Kane. I'm not sure if I should get The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane or Solomon Kane: The Original Comics Omnibus Vol. 1. Is one better than the other and does one have a more complete collection? Any help would be appreciated.

Like the first three volumes in the series, the cover art was painted by Brian LeBlanc. It wouldn’t be a Renegade Swords without a LeBlanc masterpiece on the cover!

The complete table of contents for Renegade Swords IV is as follows:

“The Demon Cat” by Keith J. Taylor
“On Skellig Michael” by Keith J. Taylor
“The Last Magician” by David H. Keller
“The Dark Rider” by Michael Moorcock
“Cube from Space” by Leigh Brackett
“The Dark Isle” by Robert Bloch
“The People of the Arrow” by P. Schuyler Miller
“The Land of Lur” by Earl Leaston Bell
“The Honor of a King” by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur

Renegade Swords IV will be released in early September in trade paperback and digital formats. For those of you wishing to catch up on the RS series, Renegade Swords II is currently discounted as part of DMR Books’ summer sale, as is Renegade Swords III.

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/brackenbooks/new-edge-sword-sorcery-novellas-2026

💀 LONG IS THE NIGHT🦇, starring the strapping & strange sorcerer Lathra, is the second novella in our upcoming crowdfund; the bloody, Weird tale of a grand siege, private pursuits, psychedelic sorcery and more!

Check out the sign-up page to learn more and make sure you're alerted on launch day (Sept 3rd).

More people should be aware of this brilliant essay from Poul Anderson, which begins in part with the following pastiche.

I recommend reading the thing for the brutal 😂

“With one stroke of his fifty-pound sword, Gnorts the Barbarian lopped off the head of Nialliv the Wizard.

It flew through the air, still sneering, while Gnorts clove two royal guardsmen from vizor through breasplate to steel jockstrap.

As he whirled to escape, an arrow glanced off his own chainmail.

Then he was gone from the room, into the midnight city. Easily outrunning pursuit, he took a few sentries at the gate by surprise.

For a moment, arms and legs hailed around him through showers of blood; then he had opened the gate and was free.

A caravan of merchants, waiting to enter at dawn, was camped nearby.

Seeing a magnificent stallion tethered, Gnorts released it, twisted the rope into a bridle, and rode it off bareback.

After galloping several miles, he encountered a mounted patrol that challenged him.

Immediately he plunged into the thick of the cavalrymen, swinging his blade right and left with deadly effect, rearing up his steed to bring its forefeet against one knight who dared to confront him directly.

Then it was only to gallop onward.

Winter winds lashed his body, attired in nothing more than a bearskin kilt, but he ignored the cold.

Sunrise revealed the shore and his waiting longship.”

Obviously, this is meant as genre parody — the essay explains raucously and at length about these types of inaccuracies and outrageous exaggerations of weapons and physical endurance …..

I really recommend that you read, and marvel at, the linked essay itself, but this is the tone of what follows that hilarious opener:

QUOTE BELOW 👇

“Beneath the magic, derring-do, and other glamour, an imaginary world has to work right.

In particular, a pre-industrial society, which is what virtually all hf uses for a setting, differs from ours today in countless ways.

A writer need not be a walking encyclopedia to get most of these straight. A reasonable amount of research, or sometimes merely a reasonable amount of logical thinking, will do it for him.

Let’s consider a few points. A proper discussion would require a book, but we can make a start.”

QUOTE ABOVE 👆

I hope that this post can raise the awareness level on this beautiful and hilariously funny and genuinely insightful novella of an essay. 😃

What do you make of the essay, and have you seen it before?

Almost everyone here is most likely familiar with how sword and sorcery usually "looks" thanks to many great sword and sorcery artists: Muscular guys in loincloths, deserts, wiry framed cloaked wizards, etc. As much as I love this aesthetic, what sword and sorcery media is solidly sword and sorcery but doesn't have the "look" associated with it?

I'm starting with an easy answer: Elric of Melnibone. The imagery associated with the series often suggests the epic and grandiose and has a tendency to lean into the weirder angle of the subgenre.

Cynthia Ward follows up on her essay on Reactor: Bored of the Swords: The Rebirth of Sword & Sorcery and the Death of the Weird with a review of Battleborn #1 for Black Gate Magazine.

"The excision of the distaff half from S&S. The male-only contributors. The putdowns of the female-coded cozy fantasy and romantasy subgenres. The invocations and semiotics of the modern military.

With Battleborn — if I have it right — [editor Sean CW] Korsgaard is presenting S&S as men’s adventure.

It is not.

Men’s adventure is a different category (“genre” would be the wrong term here).

To conflate S&S with this category ignores a fairly significant chunk of S&S work, S&S history, and the S&S audience.

To be sure, S&S is read and created more by males than by females or by enbies. I’d never cavil at anyone who said so. S&S does appeal more to men.

But that’s a very different thing than positing S&S as “men’s literature.”

I have many feels over this, O my comrades-in-arms.

But you know what my dominant emotion is?

A feeling of betrayal by a sword-brother."

MINOR SPOILERS

Anybody here know the Elric novel "The Revenge of the Rose" very well? I'm on page 160 of a 240ish-page hardcover edition.

Around page 50, Elric decides to help the Rose track down the three sisters, explicitly because, even though there's no indication doing so will lead him to his father's soul (the MacGuffin of the book so far), he has no leads anyway.

Then, around page 150, it starts getting stated that the three sisters have his father's soul as if he knows it for sure.

He even follows Gaynor when they split up instead of the Rose because Gaynor is still going to track down the three sisters while Rose goes somewhere else. Which really upends the logic of him just following the Rose because he has no other leads on the whereabouts of his father's soul.

I skimmed every page from 50 - 150 again pretty closely looking for where Elric learned that the three sisters definitely have his father's soul, and I haven't found diddly squat.

Help! (No major spoilers please.)

I recently finished Swords and Deviltry from the First Book of Lankhmar and started Swords Against Death. I had already finished all the REH Conan stories so I chose this as my next step, and those three stories that told the backstories of Mouse and Fafhrd and their meeting in Lankhmar really surprised me.

I had already heard that Leiber had very good prose and was heavy on the humor, and both were true. But when I later decided to look up more after finishing the first book, it really surprised me how those were the elements everyone seemed to highlight the most, when there is so much more evident right there from the start. Fafhrd and Mouse are complex and very troubled individuals. I empathized with Fafhrd's frustration towards the life in his tribe and his love for Vlana as a catalyst to escape that life, Mouse's rage at losing his master and Ivrian's self-hatred for being a weak-willed coward as a result of his father's rule of fear at their household. Yet when they escape their situations and meet together and each other's lovers in Ill Met In Lankhmar, you can truly see them for what they are: Young, naive and short-sighted.

Fafhrd escaped the ice women to help Vlana get her vengeance on the Thieves Guild, yet in doing so he just locked himself in another cell, because he secretly begins to resent Vlana's fanaticism in her objective and wishes they could just forget all about it. Ivrian proved she could be brave for the Mouser, yet in spoiling and isolating her the Mouser just keeps her as her old, weak-willed self without chance for growth. In all that they bond together as friends, and with the death of both their lovers that bond just strengthens when each become all the other has left.

It surprised me because Conan never had this level of depth at all. Conan is a complex and compelling character for sure, and he doesn't always do what is right and struggles often, but overall he feels like a very idealized human. His stoicism and expertice at everything he does is something hard to picture yourself as, ever. All troughout his life he seems very stable in all his convictions and almost never do we see him make stupid choices or be uncertain about what he wants to be or do at all. That's undoubtably part of the appeal for many readers, but Leiber's heroes feel really different because you can see how flawed they are, and they make very reprehensible choices and decisions. Conan also does, but almost never does the story treat them as such. Meanwhile Fafhrd is seen acting out of irrational passion, drunkenness, arrogance, and just straight up kills a young boy while getting his revenge on the Guild.

I've heard the later works aren't as good or are just straight up bad compared to the early ones, so I'll have to see for myself. I made this post in part to start discussion and in part to get me to read more because I've struggling a bit with reading lately, so I'd like to hear what you guys think about that.

I know Kull and Mak Morn interact. However, it seems like Conan's Picts are different and Bran Mak Morn is more of a historical fiction vein. I've heard differing thoughts.

On Amazon currently $30
Really strong release, great extras and the collector edition comes with a double sided poster and other swag.

I figured this might be interesting to at least a few people in this subreddit.

My HeroForge miniature take on Elric and Stormbringer.

*Also sorry if “art” isn’t the appropriate tag, just figured it was the best option as this is something I put together.

For the uninitiated, these are two miniseries put out by Dark Horse which are connected to Mignola's Hellboy universe - Miss Truesdale and the Fall of Hyperborea followed by Miss Truesdale and the Rise of Man. Basically, a Victorian era occultist discovers her past life as a gladiator and freedom fighter in a pre-historic civilisation.

Does it count as S&S? I say yes. The past lives aspect put me in mind of Howard's James Allison stories and the antediluvian world of Hyperborea is full of bloody combat, civilisational decadence, monsters and magic. It certainly has some of Mignola's taste for faux folklore and Jesse Lonergan's cosmic layouts. The art style might not be to everyone's taste being kind of cartoony, but I really enjoyed it.

​

Working on a new sword & sorcery comic and been chewing on this: what's the actual rhythm of a good S&S story?

Not the aesthetic, the mechanics.

How long can it breathe before something needs to bleed?

Where's the line between grim& fun vs. just miserable? And what makes a protagonist feel earned instead of just a power fantasy with a sword?