“The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1: Crimson Shadows”, by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Jim & Ruth Keegan

 

503 pages, Del Rey, ISBN-13: 978-0345490186

In the early oughts, Del Rey began producing the complete works of Robert E. Howard; The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1: Crimson Shadows, illustrated by Jim & Ruth Keegan, was the seventh volume to be published. Inside, readers will discover (or rediscover) such stories as Beyond the Black River, The Black Stone, The Curse of the Golden Skull, The Dark Man, The Fightin’est Pair, For the Love of Barbara Allen, The Grey God Passes, Hawk of the Hills, Kings of the Night, Lord of the Dead, The People of the Black Circle, Red Shadows, The Shadow Kingdom, Sharp’s Gun Serenade, The Valley of the Worm and Worms of the Earth, along with the poems A Word From the Outer Dark, An Echo From the Iron Harp The Dust Dance (version 1), The Ghost Kings, Lines Written in the Realization That I Must Die, The Marching Song of Connacht, The One Black Stain, Recompense, The Song of a Mad Minstrel, The Song of the Last Briton and The Tide, along with one other piece, “You have built a world of paper and wood…”

Since I discovered that there was so much more to Robert E. Howard than Conan, my only regret is that I didn’t discover all of his other tales and characters sooner. Unlike the other volumes in the Del Rey collection of All Things Howard, Crimson Shadows doesn’t focus on just one character, but a slew: Conan, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Kull and other besides can all be found within, with Howard’s descriptive style and combination of (sometimes) historical facts with speculative fiction on display and making each tale different and unique. Compiling this collection couldn’t have been easy, but Rusty Burke assembled these sixteen tales and twelve poems in order to try and illustrate just how diverse and wide-ranging was Howard’s capacity for storytelling – but he had help, as Howard fans forwarded their selections as to what tales should be included in this particular volume, with nineteen of the top vote-getters included here. While the selection feels a bit slapdash at times, the quality of the stories never shirks.

While the aforementioned characters from above each make their expected appearances, there were some unexpected – not to say unknown – characters who are also well-represented in Crimson Shadows. The first is Sailor Steve Costigan and his best pal Mike in The Fightin’est Pair as the team find themselves in a literal dogfight – Mike is a bulldog, you see. One of Howard's many boxing yarns, The Fightin’est Pair displays a rather unexpected side of Howard’s writing, as he manages to covey, without getting overly weepy or sentimental, how a man who speaks to most other men through his fists can show love to an animal (this is a sentiment I suspect many men can relate to). Even more unexpected than this tale of canine solidarity was For the Love of Barbara Allen, a love story that unfolds across time told in the style of a Southern folktale. While I would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite story from Howard’s immense repertoire, this particular piece would at least find pride of place in my Top Ten – oh, hell, Top Five.

But the most unexpected highlight of Crimson Shadows is a selection of Howard’s Lovecraftian horror – you read that correctly: Howard had a take on his friend and mentor’s sprawling mythos (to my certain knowledge the two never met; their mutual admiration society was carried out exclusively through the mail). Howard’s confidence – to say nothing of chutzpa – is astonishing, as he boldly made his own additions to the Lovecraftian Canon, such as the “Unaussprechlichen Kulten”, the “Nameless Cults” or the “Black Book”, that first appear here in The Black Stone and which would later be mentioned in several stories by Lovecraft himself – which should say something about what he thought of their quality and creativity. Seeing the respect each author had for the other’s work, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by Lovecraft’s embrace of his friend’s contribution to his dark universe; after all, it was just the kind of thing ole’ H.P. supported (one can only wonder what a Lovecraftian take on Conan or Kane would have looked like).

Howard was, then, a brilliant storyteller, displaying a wide-ranging capacity to create, adapt and draw his reader into worlds unthought-of, which this series more than illustrates.