Spliced between Iron Shadows and Queen of the Black Coast we are given one of Dark Horse's non-Howardian tales and I was pleasantly surprised. Typically these spots have been the holes in the Dark Horse Conan line = Free Companions for example-but I enjoyed Road of Kings. Likely because of Roy Thomas who if anything only writes a more engaging Conan yarn now than he did back in the day, I cringed with a few of his original story arcs back in the Marvel day-but everything in RoK's feels close enough to the Hyboria of REH.
I know if you're interested, you're interested so I don't need to give away too much. The other thing with graphics-the art. Hawthorne is pretty good, perhaps I don't enjoy him as much as Giorello but he is an absolute master compared to the coming of Becky Cloonan stuff that I shudder to look at in QotBC. I loved the Doug Wheatley covers-awesome visceral action.
Three Uses of the Knife, by David Mamet
A very brief book on drama, I found this absolutely fascinating. Mamet's insights into how people work and why we tell stories were revelatory, I've already reread it. Granted I might not agree with everything he says but it no way halted my enjoyment. For example I do lean (but not 100% Anti-Stratfordian) but it doesn't make me bitter at enjoying Shakespeare, I love Shakespeare, I can read him without shouting the world is flat-so that was a strange tangent for me, I'm just not totally convinced that it really was a playwright and not one of the nobility, in any case.
Tiger Scroll of the Koga Ninja, by Jay Sensei
This is one I have owned for ages, I read it years ago. But I reread quite often on any given topic if the mood takes me and for whatever reason I thought on ninja's. I'm inclined to think Jay Sensei is an utterly fake name, who knows how much of anything he has to say is true from a firsthand account, but regardless the book is interesting on a semi-historical level as well as technique level. Full of tales on how this ninja accomplished this or that, I looked at it as a good primer for the sake of fiction utilizing the ninja.
4 comments:
Did you ever read Karl Wagner's novel "Conan: The Road of Kings?" Not my favorite Conan pastiche but it was pretty good.
I did Charles, I liked it alright. I guess I should have mentioned from the get-go that I knew this wasn't a graphic of that pastiche.
I really need to read 'Jeet Kune Do' one of these days.
Cool Paul-you've already heard some of it in the "I Am Bruce Lee" biopic.
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