By Sam Christopher
On Tour with the Masters:
The adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s adventure story “Hawks of Outremer” concludes in BOOM! Studios’ Hawks of Outremer #4. Michael Alan Nelson has written a masterful outline here along with excellent dialogue, while artist Damian Couceiro does most of the heavy lifting in this story of sword and axe (no sorcery to be found anywhere at all). This is the tale of Cormac Fitzgeoffrey, a man of great honor and strength whose brother-at-arms Gerard was slain by an evil man of ambition named Nureddin. It’s Christian vs. Moslem in this medieval tale, although the end is not quite what you might expect. Cormac finds there are men of honor in even the least likely (to his mind) places. I have to say that this story has really whetted my appetite for more Howard. I’ve read all his Conan tales, of course, and some other stuff as well, mainly Kull. But that leaves many, many characters and tales for me to explore. I enjoy almost all the comics work REH inspired but there’s nothing quite like reading the prose from which it came.
And then we have the next chapter in The Starlost, from Harlan Ellison’s Phoenix without Ashes #2. In our last installment, we left Devon staring down at a hole in the ground, an aperture, actually, a man-made opening in the turf that led down into the darkness. He wonders as we open this time if this is a sign from the Creator, a means of escape from the torches and pitchforks of the frightened villagers (okay, okay, I’m exaggerating a little—I didn’t see any pitchforks). He falls into the pit and finds that he can float. He comes to a room, a room which looks very much like… like something you need to see for yourself. Ellison has done it again here. I haven’t read the original Starlost script but if this has Ellison’s name on it it would be very odd indeed if this adaptation wasn’t spot-on. Another bit of coolness beyond coolness comes from the back cover, where we are graced with a picture of the Grandmaster himself taken by… get this… Roddy McDowell! Granted, I can’t verify it’s from THE Roddy McDowell who made the Planet of the Apes series worth watching all on his own, but I’m going to just assume it is until told otherwise. And I may not even change my mind then.
