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Post by MRPs_Missives on Aug 8, 2024 17:45:10 GMT -5
I like the details she puts in the margin of her maps. I tagged her, Fred Malmberg, Jeff Shanks and Jim Zub on twitter and asked what they used for sources to compose the map and if it was based on the marvel map. Only Fred has replied so far, but he said it was made mostly based on consulting with Jeff Shanks and his annotations of the Howard stories themselves. I'll wait and see if Jeff himself responds (or anyone else I tagged) and will keep you posted. Shanks, if you are unfamiliar, is an archaeologist and Howard scholar who has been responsible for all the backmatter in the Heroic Signatures/Titan books so far, has published and edited several works on Weird Tales era pulps. and was the lead archeologist on the work at Howard's house in Cross Plains that was part of the process of it being declared a historical site and made into a museum. -M |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 9, 2024 6:05:48 GMT -5
I like the details she puts in the margin of her maps. I tagged her, Fred Malmberg, Jeff Shanks and Jim Zub on twitter and asked what they used for sources to compose the map and if it was based on the marvel map. Only Fred has replied so far, but he said it was made mostly based on consulting with Jeff Shanks and his annotations of the Howard stories themselves. I'll wait and see if Jeff himself responds (or anyone else I tagged) and will keep you posted. Shanks, if you are unfamiliar, is an archaeologist and Howard scholar who has been responsible for all the backmatter in the Heroic Signatures/Titan books so far, has published and edited several works on Weird Tales era pulps. and was the lead archeologist on the work at Howard's house in Cross Plains that was part of the process of it being declared a historical site and made into a museum. Yeah, Titan got a good advisor, there. It shows great dedication to the project and I am really happy to see a Howard scholar on board, just as I was to see Patrice Louinet associated with the Wandering Star/Del Rey Howard-only collections of the early '00s. I'm not sure about changes Shanks made to the unofficial but functional canon of the past decades, though (just as I really disliked the "Dark Storm chronology" that was supposed to replace the Miller-deCamp one). The concept of "Howard first" is fine, but to me it shouldn't mean "let's get rid of anything deCamp has written and make up our own stuff instead"... at least not when deCamp's additions do not contradict Howard and have been used for a long time. Most notably, Titan dropped the name "Arenjun" for the City of Thieves and decided to call it Zamora. Losing Arenjun is fair enough since Howard just called the place "City of Thieves", but why replace a non-canonical name by another? Just to erase any trace of deCamp's contributions? Furthermore, since Zamora is already the name of the country, having a city with the same name is something of a confusing move. True enough, Zamora in real life is the name of a city and not of a country, but the same holds true for Argos. Perhaps it was decided that when Howard referred to "the thief-city of Zamora" (in his letter to P. Schuyler Miller), he meant "the thief-city that is named Zamora" and not "the thief-city that is found in Zamora"). Another change made to the map is that said City of Thieves is now the capital of Zamora, replacing Shadizar. That can actually be defended on account of what is related in The Tower of the Elephant, where two passages can be interpreted to mean that the Zamoran court was indeed located in the City of Thieves. That's an astute observation, probably made by Shanks or some other Howard exegete. Howard mentions Shadizar in only two stories, and only in relation to its wanton women. He doesn't even specify that it's in Zamora, in fact, let alone make it the capital. Only this excerpt from The Pool of the Black One suggests it's in the country at all: "He had roamed the cities of Zamora, and known the women of Shadizar the Wicked." Mind you, it could have been a good idea to make Shadizar itself the city of thieves; "Shadizar the Wicked" is a good name for a den of sin and iniquity! Heh! I suspect that if Howard were alive today, he'd say "you people really have a lot of time to waste... they're just stories, man!"  I think it's a tribute to the man's talent that people still obsess over such minutiae almost a century after the stories were written! |
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Aug 9, 2024 11:45:04 GMT -5
I tagged her, Fred Malmberg, Jeff Shanks and Jim Zub on twitter and asked what they used for sources to compose the map and if it was based on the marvel map. Only Fred has replied so far, but he said it was made mostly based on consulting with Jeff Shanks and his annotations of the Howard stories themselves. I'll wait and see if Jeff himself responds (or anyone else I tagged) and will keep you posted. Shanks, if you are unfamiliar, is an archaeologist and Howard scholar who has been responsible for all the backmatter in the Heroic Signatures/Titan books so far, has published and edited several works on Weird Tales era pulps. and was the lead archeologist on the work at Howard's house in Cross Plains that was part of the process of it being declared a historical site and made into a museum. Yeah, Titan got a good advisor, there. It shows great dedication to the project and I am really happy to see a Howard scholar on board, just as I was to see Patrice Louinet associated with the Wandering Star/Del Rey Howard-only collections of the early '00s. I'm not sure about changes Shanks made to the unofficial but functional canon of the past decades, though (just as I really disliked the "Dark Storm chronology" that was supposed to replace the Miller-deCamp one). The concept of "Howard first" is fine, but to me it shouldn't mean "let's get rid of anything deCamp has written and make up our own stuff instead"... at least not when deCamp's additions do not contradict Howard and have been used for a long time. Most notably, Titan dropped the name "Arenjun" for the City of Thieves and decided to call it Zamora. Losing Arenjun is fair enough since Howard just called the place "City of Thieves", but why replace a non-canonical name by another? Just to erase any trace of deCamp's contributions? Furthermore, since Zamora is already the name of the country, having a city with the same name is something of a confusing move. True enough, Zamora in real life is the name of a city and not of a country, but the same holds true for Argos. Perhaps it was decided that when Howard referred to "the thief-city of Zamora" (in his letter to P. Schuyler Miller), he meant "the thief-city that is named Zamora" and not "the thief-city that is found in Zamora"). Another change made to the map is that said City of Thieves is now the capital of Zamora, replacing Shadizar. That can actually be defended on account of what is related in The Tower of the Elephant, where two passages can be interpreted to mean that the Zamoran court was indeed located in the City of Thieves. That's an astute observation, probably made by Shanks or some other Howard exegete. Howard mentions Shadizar in only two stories, and only in relation to its wanton women. He doesn't even specify that it's in Zamora, in fact, let alone make it the capital. Only this excerpt from The Pool of the Black One suggests it's in the country at all: "He had roamed the cities of Zamora, and known the women of Shadizar the Wicked." Mind you, it could have been a good idea to make Shadizar itself the city of thieves; "Shadizar the Wicked" is a good name for a den of sin and iniquity! Heh! I suspect that if Howard were alive today, he'd say "you people really have a lot of time to waste... they're just stories, man!" I think it's a tribute to the man's talent that people still obsess over such minutiae almost a century after the stories were written! Jim Zub has said on several occasions that the only canon is the Howard stories. Everything else, the deCamp/Carter pastiches, the Marvel Comics, the later Tor pastiches, the video games, the movies, the TV show, the cartoons, etc. are all there to be mined if they choose, but they will pick and choose from that stuff like a buffet, using what they think fits and/or is appropriate for the stories they are telling and ignoring the stuff that does not. It's all still valid in a tales told about Conan around the campfire way, but none of it is "official canon" unless and until they use it in a new story. I think that if they are going to be telling stories of other Howard characters like El Borak, that Roy adapted into Conan tales, and those stories will be part of the Howardverse as non-Conan tales, then those stories become a bit problematic as Conan stories for being too similar to the other stories (though Howard did set the precedent himself by turning the Kull story By This Ax I Rule into the first Conan story. But overall I am good with that approach. Overall I like the deCamp/Carter era of pastiche, but there were some bad stories there too and some bad decisions along the way too. Jim Zub has also said they want to avoid doing any direct adaptations of Howard's Conan stories. They've all been done before on multiple times and they don't want to be a "cover band" just playing the hits over and over again but do new stories to give the audience the thrill of discovery again. The will homage those stories, and play in and around the edges of those stories with the new stories (such as setting the second arc just after the death of Belit and having Conan still grieving over her loss, or having the current story arc begin just before the events of Frost Giant's Daughter, or having Yog-Kosha appear alive and vibrant during the Thurian Age before he ever encountered Yara), but not do direct adaptations for now (never say never kind of thing but it's not in their plans right now). Jeff Shanks is the point man for Jim Zub for a lot of this stuff, both in what is used and how he wants to use it. For example, they went back and forth for a while on if/how to use the Atlantean Sword from the movie, which they did eventually use as the sword Thulsa Doom was wielding in the Thurian Age. A nice homage/Easter egg, but not affecting the core lore or canon of the mythos. (and perhaps we need to move this thread of discussion out of the Meanwhile thread and into the Conan from Titan thread in the Modern Comics sections). -M PS and yes, Howard's approach seems to have been just tell good yarns, there all just stories around the campfire, which is how I generally approach all of it rather than trying to piece every tidbit into a coherent fake history that is monolithic innature. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 9, 2024 12:14:10 GMT -5
A good day starts with Devo, playing NPR's Tiny Desk Concert....especially when they close with "Come Back Jonee!"
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Aug 9, 2024 13:08:31 GMT -5
Twenty-one years ago today, I exchanged vows with the lovely Mrs.MRP, becoming partners for life.
-M
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 9, 2024 20:20:31 GMT -5
Twenty-one years ago today, I exchanged vows with the lovely Mrs.MRP, becoming partners for life. -M Your marriage is now of legal age! Have drink to celebrate! Congratulations! |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 10, 2024 7:41:09 GMT -5
We received the tail end of Debby yesterday, with crazy amounts of rain and high winds. And see how things work...
Two years ago, there was a big maple close to our house that started making cracking sounds in winter, suggesting that it might pose a risk to our home. I thought about cutting it, but since it otherwise looked healthy I left it in peace.
Last night, the wind uprooted one of my neighbours' maples and it fell straight toward our house. (The maple, not the neighbour). It would have crashed into our roof and very likely have collapsed the living room were it not that my cracking maple, the one we left in place, stopped its colleague's fall short.
We'll have to deal with what is still a worrying situation today, but at least the house still stands... thanks to one tree who bravely defended us. Treebeard would be proud!
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 10, 2024 11:25:21 GMT -5
We received the tail end of Debby yesterday, with crazy amounts of rain and high winds. And see how things work... Two uears ago, there was a big maple close to our house that started making cracking sounds in winter, suggesting that it might pose a risk to the house. I thought about cutting it, but since it otherwise looked healthy I left it in peace. Last night, the wind uprooted one of my neighbours' maples and it fell straight toward our house. (The maple, not the neighbour). It would have cashed into our roof and very likely have collapsed the living room were it not that my cracking maple, the one we left in place, stopped its colleague's fall short. We'll have to deal with what is still a worrying situation today, but at least the house still stands... thanks to one tree who bravely defended us. Treebeard would be proud! I was stationed in Charleston, SC, when Hurricane Hugo tore through there. I was living in an apartment, in the West Ashley area (Charleston is a peninsula, split by the Ashley and Cooper Rivers) and we were told to evacuate that area (rather shrilly, by a local official, on tv). I went further inland, to my parent's apartment, in North Charleston (my mother took a job there and my dad had retired from teaching) and my sister came up from Hilton Head (where she was living and working). We came through it fine and went outside to survey the damage. Their place was untouched, but a car in the neighborhood had a tree fall on it, down the long axis of the car, folding it like a taco!. There were pine trees snapped off everywhere, though palm trees generally survived. When it was safe, I went back to check on my apartment. I lived on the second floor and had taped the windows and moved my stuff inside a closet, in my bedroom. I came in and the living room and kitchen were fine and I started back to the bedrooms (2 bedroom apt). The spare bedroom had a broken window, which was dangling from the tape. I then went into the main bedroom. There was a tree, sticking through the ceiling, above my waterbed. It rained for about 3 days straight, after the hurricane made landfall, so the carpet was soaked. Luckily, it didn't do any damage to the waterbed, other than discolor the wood, in a few spots. However, the tree was an issue. It was a pine tree, from a house that bordered on the apartment complex property. It had snapped off about 20 ft or more up the trunk and fell over, punching through the roof of my building, into my bedroom. I ended up getting a different apartment, in another building and was moving my stuff in, when I heard a crash and broken glass hit the floor. Some kids were kicking a soccer ball and had broken the window to the spare bedroom. After I marched the culprit over to the office, to confess his sins, I was informed they had material to cover it, as glass and plywood were in short supply, in the area. It was a sliding window, with a screen, so I just slid the interior window over the broken area, to make it look like there was still a pane of glass in it and left the screened portion open. It worked long enough to get the glass replaced. Charleston looked like it had been bombed. Pine trees were snapped off all over. There were a lot of areas where there were groves of trees, between developments and they were ripped up. There were forests of trees along the interstate and state highways that were just filled with broken trees. It took most of two years to clean it all up and be back to normal, more or less. After that, you saw a lot more daylight coming through the trees, along the highways. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Aug 14, 2024 20:10:16 GMT -5
Selling your home is exhausting! I've been retired since June 1 but I don't feel like I've had a single day of retirement yet. The end appears to be in sight at last, though, and we'll be moving to a well-deserved upgrade next month. |
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Post by impulse on Aug 14, 2024 23:51:41 GMT -5
Yes, it is, both physically and emotionally. Good luck!
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Aug 16, 2024 23:28:35 GMT -5
Would your take be that this is Eric Stanton art?  |
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 17, 2024 1:18:27 GMT -5
Would your take be that this is Eric Stanton art? Doesn't look like Stanton, to me. The tattoo on the one woman's arm (the "pony girl") is a John Willie image, from his Bizarre magazine, inspired by a Rene Gruau image for a lipstick advertisement. As for the two figures, it looks a bit more modern to me, like someone doing an homage. More European, too. Stanton's stuff always maintained a bit of that Ditko influence, from their time sharing a studio. Not all of his stuff, like some of the material he did for Irving Klaw. Stylistically, I'd lean more towards Gene Bilbrew., aka Eneg. Don't think it is his work, either. Just looks a little too sleek and modern. More in the vein of Olivia. |
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Post by supercat on Aug 23, 2024 12:14:54 GMT -5
I'm deep into working on some new art and music projects right now, pretty much taking up all my days at this point. So just wanted to give a heads up, if you don't see me around for a bit, all is good, just crazy busy!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 23, 2024 18:22:39 GMT -5
I'm deep into working on some new art and music projects right now, pretty much taking up all my days at this point. So just wanted to give a heads up, if you don't see me around for a bit, all is good, just crazy busy! Thanks for the heads up, supercat ! Now go and create new stuff! Gotta strike the iron while it's hot! |
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Post by berkley on Aug 24, 2024 4:10:36 GMT -5
Selling your home is exhausting! I've been retired since June 1 but I don't feel like I've had a single day of retirement yet. The end appears to be in sight at last, though, and we'll be moving to a well-deserved upgrade next month.
If you had only accepted my generous offer of 100 Canadian dollars you could have saved yourself all this worry and anxiety.
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I think it's a tribute to the man's talent that people still obsess over such minutiae almost a century after the stories were written!
