Um, two great tastes that taste great together? I think not. Huge fan of the Fritz Lieber material, but this? This is disturbing. Well, at least it confirms exactly _how_ popular they were in their time... enough to cross mediums...
Wow, that cover is vaugely familiar but it's definitely a few years earlier than I would have considered picking up a Wonder Woman comic.
Swords of Sorcery, featuring Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, on the other hand, I do recall. Very shortlived and I think it was a reaction to Marvel's barbarian title. Um, memory fades at this point. Need another pill.
Conan? King Kull? Savage Tales? Savage Sword of Conan? King Conan? 8)
(Probably Conan, since that was 1970 and onward, and started getting really popular in about 1972. Those are being reprinted right now, complete with the lovely dialog I posted last night.)
There's also a Marvel/Epic adaptation of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mousers stories, adapted by Howard Chaykin, with art by Mike Mignola...
aw, man. you had me until "Howard Chaykin". and I've never even read the Lankhmar stuff. I just know who they are because Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser turned up in an [i]AD&D[/i] sourcebook one time. (I wonder if that was [i]Castle Greyhawk[/i]. I mean, shit, Doctor Who and the Fantastic Four were in [i]Castle Greyhawk[/i]... )
They had the newhon mythos in the dieties and demigods. There was also a small module for Lankmar, then they had the super module for lankmar and then they had the sourcebook (? not sure on the sourcebook). Lots of D&D stuff for them.
I didn't actually pay attention/know much about them til the comic. Then I got a couple/few volumes of the reprinted books which were quite spiffy.
(oops! DCForum pseudo-HTML habits strike again. shame there's no way to edit comments on LJ, other than the old "delete and replace" trick, which doesn't work so well once people have replied.)
I'm generally not all that keen on So-and-So the Barbarian type stuff... too much potential for seriously dorky dialogue (as you noted yourself not long ago :). Maybe I'll give it a try, though - I mean, if nothing else, the original stuff won't feature the involvement of Howard Chaykin. :)
Oh ho! You may be in for somewhat of a treat, then. Fritz Lieber is VERY clever. He also, while writing in-genre, tries to avoid most of the cheesy genre traps. His characters are well-spoken, and VERY sarcastic. Much of the fun of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books is their byplay (and the Mouser making fun of Fafhrd for being a barbarian).
That's in the most recent re-released Conan collection, too.
It's not THAT bad. Anyway, not like Moorcock didn't have Elric meet all kinds of weird random people from his own books. Is dimension-hopping to the Conan universe really much weirder? At least he's in the same genre.
(Tad Williams' Elric/Hendrix crossover is quite good. I'm sure you've read it... I need to find a collection with "The Stone Thing" in it, too.)
No, it's not bad: it's just weird, in that Elric is pretty much the Conan anti-particle, and that I'd expected the two of them to destroy one another on sight.
That Tad Williams story, "Go Ask Elric", is far and away the most brilliant thing in the otherwise-fairly-dodgy Pawn of Chaos White Wolf tribute/compilation book. It's considerably better even than the story that Moorcock contributed. :-)
If you can find the Eternal Champion re-issues, "The Stone Thing" is in both the in-print UK edition and the OOP US edition of Earl Aubec. It's also in the older mass-market paperback of Elric at the End of Time, if you happen upon that first.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-03 08:47 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 08:59 am (UTC)Yeah, they continue to be my favorite swashbuckling sword and sorcery stories... "Lean Times in Lankhmar" still makes me laugh my ass off...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-03 10:00 am (UTC)Re:
Swords of Sorcery, featuring Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, on the other hand, I do recall. Very shortlived and I think it was a reaction to Marvel's barbarian title. Um, memory fades at this point. Need another pill.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 10:33 am (UTC)Conan? King Kull? Savage Tales? Savage Sword of Conan? King Conan? 8)
(Probably Conan, since that was 1970 and onward, and started getting really popular in about 1972. Those are being reprinted right now, complete with the lovely dialog I posted last night.)
There's also a Marvel/Epic adaptation of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mousers stories, adapted by Howard Chaykin, with art by Mike Mignola...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-03 11:34 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 12:32 pm (UTC)I didn't actually pay attention/know much about them til the comic. Then I got a couple/few volumes of the reprinted books which were quite spiffy.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 01:13 pm (UTC)You might want to read the real stories, if you haven't-- Fritz Leiber.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-03 01:21 pm (UTC)I'm generally not all that keen on So-and-So the Barbarian type stuff... too much potential for seriously dorky dialogue (as you noted yourself not long ago :). Maybe I'll give it a try, though - I mean, if nothing else, the original stuff won't feature the involvement of Howard Chaykin. :)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 01:30 pm (UTC)Oh ho! You may be in for somewhat of a treat, then. Fritz Lieber is VERY clever. He also, while writing in-genre, tries to avoid most of the cheesy genre traps. His characters are well-spoken, and VERY sarcastic. Much of the fun of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books is their byplay (and the Mouser making fun of Fafhrd for being a barbarian).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-03 12:24 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 01:14 pm (UTC)That's in the most recent re-released Conan collection, too.
It's not THAT bad. Anyway, not like Moorcock didn't have Elric meet all kinds of weird random people from his own books. Is dimension-hopping to the Conan universe really much weirder? At least he's in the same genre.
(Tad Williams' Elric/Hendrix crossover is quite good. I'm sure you've read it... I need to find a collection with "The Stone Thing" in it, too.)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 05:49 pm (UTC)That Tad Williams story, "Go Ask Elric", is far and away the most brilliant thing in the otherwise-fairly-dodgy Pawn of Chaos White Wolf tribute/compilation book. It's considerably better even than the story that Moorcock contributed. :-)
If you can find the Eternal Champion re-issues, "The Stone Thing" is in both the in-print UK edition and the OOP US edition of Earl Aubec. It's also in the older mass-market paperback of Elric at the End of Time, if you happen upon that first.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 05:53 pm (UTC)Ooh, okay. It's been about time for an amazon.co.uk order again anyway.