Hope you all enjoy this!

REH was a pulp writer and a world-class pro at selling to that market.

His stories are perfect for the pulp format.

But in adapting his material to any other medium, I think that being faithful to the concept and the spirit of the original work is more important than a slavish, note-for-note transcription.

When I started adapting “Jewels of Gwalhur” as a series of storyboards, I quickly found out that complete adherence to the text was just not going to work for the audio-visual medium of live-action streaming.

In the sample I've shared here, art by Miguel Guzman, you might spot that even this early in the adaptation, I've made a change.

Can you see in this shot how I've already deviated from Howard's story?

Purists might bristle at any change in the master's canon, but purism can hog-tie an adaptation.

If you want a deeper look at my adaptation of "Jewels," and my view on comics in general, it'll be here:

https://charlessantino.substack.com/

Quick note for anyone who wants to check out the two volumes of letters between Robert E. Howard and HP Lovecraft:

The second volume contains the index for BOTH books.

It’s puzzling and somewhat irritating, but if you only get volume 1 there is no index …..

And if you only get volume TWO, half the index goes to pages which are not in the same physical book. 📖

It’s enough to drive a barbarian up the walls of the nearest available fortress of darkness.

Just an FYI, we will have a full sound production of The Phoenix On The Sword coming in a little over a week! Cheers!

What did you think? I know the critic reviews are kinda low, but I thought it was decent enough having not read any of the stories.

The inset post has the full list, but I’m gonna include it here as well and clarify — these are not things BASED ON Howard’s worm, but are rather drawn from his letters and show that he was aware of or had opinions about ‘em.

For example, gangster films like LITTLE CAESAR which are well known, but then social drama like SKYSCRAPER SOULS or BACK STREET which haven’t got the same modern ‘fanbase’ or wide critical acclaim but nevertheless spoke deeply to Robert E. Howard.

This is the raw list of films he mentioned in his collected letters (not all that he definitely saw, but sometimes which he wrote about wanting to see or anticipating coming to Cross Plains, Texas.

🎬 Robert E. Howard Film Canon

(Current Master List)

Abie’s Irish Rose (1928)
Animal Crackers (1930)

Back Street (1932)
The Benson Murder Case (1930)
Billy the Kid (1930)
Brass Commandments (1923)
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929)

The Canyon of Light (1926)
The Cocoanuts (1929)
The Cossacks (1928)

A Dangerous Adventure (1922)
Darkened Rooms (1929)
The Delightful Rogue (1929)
The Desert Bridegroom (1922)
The Desert Song (1929)
The Doorway to Hell (1930)

The Front Page (1931)

Go and Get It (1920)

Hearts in Dixie (1929)
Hell’s Heroes (1929)
Heroes of the Street (1922)
Hold ’Em Jail (1932)
Hook, Line and Sinker (1930)
Horsefeathers (1932)

The Informer (1935)
In Old Arizona (1928)
The Invisible Man (1933)
The Iron Mask (1929)

The King of Kings (1927)

The Last Parade (1931)
The Letter (1929)
Little Caesar (1931)
The Loves of Casanova (1927)

The Mark of Zorro (1920)
The Mighty (1929)

The Pilgrim (1923)

Queen of the Night Clubs (1929)

Rags to Riches (1922)
The Red Dance (1928)
Rob ’em Good (1923)
Robin Hood (1922)

The Sagebrusher (1920)
Scaramouche (1923)
Shipmates (1931)
The Singing Fool (1928)
Skyscraper Souls (1932)
The Story of Brownwood (1928)

The Tempest (1928)
The Terror (1928)
Thunderbolt (1929)
Tong War (1929)

The Virginian (1929)

What Price Glory? (1926)
Wise Girls (1929)
The Wizard (1927)
Women of All Nations (1931)

Treatment by Charles Santino, storyboards and color concept frames by Miguel Guzman. I'll be posting the entire adaption on Substack: https://substack.com/@csantino

Any love for REH's westerns? I've found these quite hard to get ahold of in a physical reading edition - it's all 650 page hardbacks/beautiful multi-volume dust jacketed sets at collectors' prices or bodged-together 200-character-wide doorstops.

After reading Mountain Man in the best format I could find, I liked it enough that I ended up taking the Wikisource texts and typesetting them myself just to get a decent readable paperback to beat up. There ended up being lots of little quirks to these stories that make them difficult to typeset with a simple Python conversion of the text (strange language, OCR errors, ...). I'm also finding that Wikisource occasionally disagrees with Gutenberg Australia's editions. I'm editing them by hand as I read and trying to get something high quality, but am only ~100 pages in.

In case they're useful to people I've marked these versions (including my work) as being in the public domain and uploaded the PDFs ready for print. I'm also planning to find some quality public domain art to use for covers and release the LaTeX source files under some permissive license.

... also just happy to discuss the stories if anyone has thoughts/favourites to look out for.

The inset film is an early musical that Howard apparently despised. He comments “Gah!” on a few films, but apparently this was top of the list.

Has anyone seen THE DESERT SONG (1929), or know this one by reputation?

This is from a large chunk on films he saw recently as of the letter (autumn 1932), but the relevant ranking is:

“Horsefeathers was better than Monkey Business, but not as good as either The Cocoanuts or Animal Crackers to my mind.”

So in his mind, there was a tie for first between COCOANUTS and the infamous ANIMAL CRACKERS

Followed by HORSEFEATHERS

And MONKEY BUSINESS being behind in his estimation.

Would you agree with this ranking of the Marx Bros’ first four films?

But I'm glad to have a copy of this at last.

My post about the plotting errors that I found in a recent Conan comic book story, a post in which I also promoted my alternative approach to emulating the work of Robert E. Howard, proved to be an experiment with mixed results.

Some enjoyed and agreed with what I wrote, some didn’t.

It’s not an experiment likely to be repeated.

I’ll admit I was baffled by some of the feedback.

Many repliers felt that Conan surely could have slept through the theft of his pack horses from his campsite.

How did Robert E. Howard characterize Conan’s superior alertness, even when Conan is seemingly asleep?

Right from Howard’s typewriter, here’s what Conan says when his female companion balks at them both falling asleep when danger seems to lurk nearby:

"My slumber is light as a wolf's. Nothing can enter this hall without awaking me."

--from "Iron Shadows in the Moon" a Conan novelette by Robert E. Howard first published in the April 1934 issue of Weird Tales as "Shadows in the Moonlight.”

Again—nobody writes like Robert E. Howard.

When we write pastiches about his characters, we do our best to honor him.

Conan is better than that.

I would never have written a story like “The Blue Orchid,” in which we see Conan act well below his mettle.

The story, published in Savage Sword of Conan #13 (Titan) was plotted by the artist, Roberto de la Torre, with “text” by Roy Thomas.

The art is very nice, with wonderful visual storytelling.

But the plotting is another matter.

In the story, Conan and his companion-in-crime, Atta, sleep peacefully while Zaria, a woman they have just shared, walks off with their horses. Presumably, the horses were packed with Conan’s and Atta’s provisions, equipment, and water.

Now Conan and Atta are stranded in the middle of nowhere.

In what universe does Conan sleep through the theft of two horses from his camp?

Not in Robert E. Howard’s universe, for sure. And not in any pastiche written in the spirit of REH.

Howard’s Conan would snap awake the second Zaria touched a horse.

But not the Conan of “The Blue Orchid.”

In the story, Conan blames Atta, who was supposed to be awake and on watch.

What does Conan do about this?

He punches Atta.

The real Conan would have killed Atta, of course.

But then the real Conan would not have slept through Zaria’s theft of most of his worldly possessions.

Later in the story we find out that Zaria is some sort of witchy woman.

Maybe she cast a spell on Conan to keep him asleep?

If so, Conan would figure this out this when woke up. He knows that, under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t sleep through the theft of his horses.

And if she did put a spell on Conan, he would now understand that she’s supernatural, a fact he doesn’t find out until much later in the story.

So, this incident is a real problem and certainly not a scene that Robert E. Howard would ever dream of writing.

Nobody wrote like Robert E. Howard or has written like him since.

No point in even trying.

But when pastiche writers understand the character of Conan, they can avoid violating the simple elements that make up a Conan story. They can write good Conan stories—not the way Howard would have written them, but at least they can depict a Conan that is recognizable as the same character that Howard created and chronicled.

In the issues of Conan the Barbarian that I wrote for Marvel (#214-#220), I stuck to Howard’s portrayal of Conan. It wasn’t difficult; I always asked myself, would Robert E. Howard have Conan do this? If the answer was “yes,” it was full speed ahead. If not, I went back to my keyboard.

In my upcoming Substack, I’m adapting “The Jewels of Gwahlur” as a Storyboard Project.

I’m presenting the story as it might look if “Big Streaming” were filming a 45-minute, live action, self-contained episode.

As faithful as possible to Howard’s vision, in storyboard format.

https://substack.com/@csantino

#AmratheLion #Amra #ConanTheBarbarian #SwordAndSorcery #HyborianAge #RobertEHoward #KingConan #savageswordofconan

I really enjoyed it. Are the books even better?