Foreword

As the stories in this book will prove, Robert E. Howard was a writer who could make any genre his own, and even create a new genre when circumstance called for it. In these pages, you’ll encounter stories of fantasy, horror, adventure, and humor. Taken individually, they are a real treat to illustrate. Taken as a collection, however, they present a unique challenge.

Our art director, Marcelo Anciano, made it clear that our job was to find a way to unify these stories, rather than schizophrenically shift art styles to suit the mood or character of specific tales. We had to find a common visual cue that could carry us from the ancient Hyborian kingdoms of Conan, through the Elizabethan world of Solomon Kane, to the battlefields of the American Civil War and the hills of 1930s Afghanistan. Robert E. Howard’s deeply held philosophy of absolute, rugged individualism was the obvious common thread. No matter the genre, Howard wrote of individuals standing tall against the forces that would oppose them–seen and unseen, natural or otherwise–preferring to be crushed into the ground and flattened rather than to give so much as an inch.

The trick is how to express this in pictures.

Last year, on a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, we saw a small painting by Thomas Eakins. It was a study of a bearded man set against a neutral background, his face and torso falling away into darkness. Despite the simplicity of presentation, the figure had a look of majesty that was nothing short of biblical. Eakins had carved out his subject in harsh light and deep shadow—a yin and yang of values combined to create elegant graphic shapes that told a complex story in one striking design.

It was this simple image that gave us our direction for the illustrations and fed nicely into our existing fascination with the streamlined poster style of the 1920s and ’30s (Howard’s own era). This approach was pioneered and best exemplified by the German master Ludwig Hohlwein (a devotee of the “Beggarstaffs”), whose graphic simplicity could make even an illustration for a lady’s hat monumental. We tried to stay true to this artistic legacy of form and design: concise and bold with a minimum of strokes, the physical power of the individual immediately recognizable at a glance.

Of course, our efforts are not the point. We’re all here for the words of Robert E. Howard. So, it’s time to sit back, and prepare for REH to put steel in your arms and fire in your eyes.

Jim & Ruth Keegan
Studio City, California
January 2007