They Bleed Me Dry...

As I noted earlier I'd bought the Centenary Edition of Robert E. Howard's Conan short stories. It's a beautiful black hardback volume. True to form I've discovered there are at least two companions volumes I'd like to get my hands on.

Firstly there is Conan's Brethren - a forthcoming volume collecting Howard's other creations including Solomon Kane and other characters I know nothing of. However I have heard of Kull - another barbarian who used to act as a backup feature in Savage Sword of Conan.

Kull I am reasonably familiar with -- I've plopped the kingly sum of £3 (inc. p&p) to buy the 'awesome' Kull the Conqueror movie on DVD. It stars Kevin Sorbo of Hercules fame stretching his acting range as a barbarian in a mythical world. Originally intended to be the third Conan movie (King Conan or some such) it was turned down by Arnold Schwarzenegger and rewritten to be a Kull movie. It's genuinely held as a bad movie and airs on sci-fi but it certainly isn't Uwe Boll.

Apparently Red Sonja was not a creation of Howard's but rather an addition from the comics in the 70s. This is interesting as the character went on to spawn a dreadful movie starring Briget Neilsen and Arnie (not playing Conan in name due to some bizarre movie rights thing). She nows stars in her own comic series and there is a new movie in the works by Robert Rodriguez with his missus in the titular role.

Second up is this amazingly neat volume collecting some of Lovecraft's best stories. I probably already probably have all these in some scruffy paperbacks back in Scotland but a volume like this is beautiful and apparently comes with a map of Arkham.

It does worry me though that most of my current reading interests are more at home in magazines than books, but hey ho!