And The Legend Chuck Dixon gave you Conan. The real Conan, the barbarian Conan, the Cimmerian Conan, the public domain Conan, the Conan about whom Robert E. Howard wrote, not the latter-day copyrighted Conan created by L. Sprague de Camp Conan, about whom one critic wrote: “L. Sprague de Camp is an insufferable hack and his choices both in writing his own criticism and curating this collection are baffling”, and most definitely not the Hollywood Conan.
Now you have multiple options to get your hands on Chuck Dixon’s Conan, but keep in mind that only the Arkhaven store will provide you the ebook along with the paperback edition. We’ll be placing our order for shipment to the fulfillment center tomorrow, so this is a good time to take action if you’re interested.
Bounding Into Comics interviewed The Legend about his latest novel.
Speaking with Bounding Into Comics, Dixon explained why he wanted to write this story, “I wanted to write a straight up war story of Conan’s time as a mercenary. But I also wanted to throw in a Lovecraftian monster as well as a depiction of dark sorcery in the Hyperborean Age with all its dire consequences.”
Dixon also relished the challenge to write in what he describes as Howard’s bravura style, “I was totally immersed in Howard’s bravura writing style as an adolescent. I liked the challenge of creating a new Conan story written in that style.”
He added, “So much of Howard’s prose relied on the reader to create vivid images in their own imaginations as they read. I really wanted to see if I could inspire that same brand of wild visuals.”
Meanwhile, the Dark Herald reviewed THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL at Arkhaven.
During the 1980s, Baen Books decided to do the world a massive favor and publish a huge library of Robert Howard stories in their original un-De Camped form. I was struck by the unexpected quality of Howard’s work. I’d heard a lot of criticism of Howard’s original stories by De Camp, Stephen King, and several others. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. It had nothing at all to do with Howard’s prose and everything to do with politics. Although in King’s case, it could have been opinions generated by the mountains of coke he was snorting back then.
Howard was more than capable of subtly and subtext; his Conan was a complex hero. While taciturn and stoic, he would never leave a helpless innocent to the hands of those who found joy in cruelty.
Robert Howard had a great respect and indeed love for ancient history. He wanted to tell stories set in remote antiquity, but he also wanted them to be accurate to period. This presented him with a fundamental problem. In his hometown of Cross Plains, the resources of the Texas oil boom town’s library were it and they were obviously insufficient for his needs. So, he did the next best thing and created a completely fictional world from whole cloth. One that was a reflection of the ancient world but was not constrained by it. In so doing, Robert Howard invented an entire genre called Sword and Sorcery by Fritz Lieber.
Think about that for a second, this pulp writer in a small Texas boon town created an entirely new category of fiction and he’s been despised by all right-thinking people for it ever since.
Who in this modern world could hope to do justice to the works of a man born at the turn of the last century that venerated the purity and strength of the barbarous?
The Legend Chuck Dixon, that’s who.
The Legend has already completed the second book, THE CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED, and is now working on a third. Both of these books will be illustrated by Ademir Leal, the cover artist for THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL.