Pulp Review: Red Shadows

Before Conan the Barbarian swaggered onto the stage, another Robert E. Howard character graced the pages of Weird Tales. Debuting in the August 1928 issue, Red Shadows introduced the world to the unflinching morality of Solomon Kane.

Solomon Kane is a wanderer, a Puritan living in a dark 17^th Century world full of evil monsters and worse men. Driven by a burning sense of purpose to punish evil, Kane comes across a young woman dying in the French wilderness. She names her killer, a bandit captain named Le Loup, and with a single sentence, Kane sets out to avenge this nameless woman's death.

“Men shall die for this.”

And die they do. Kane tracks the bandits to their hideout, killing them off-camera one by one like he's Jason Voorhees, until he's able to storm it and confront Le Loup. The bandit tries to bribe him and is shocked to find Kane uncorruptible. A fight ensues and Le Loup escapes.

Years later, Kane lands in Africa. He has tracked Le Loup to the jungle where he is captured by a local tribe of cannibals, but finds an unlikely ally in N'Longa, a powerful ju-ju man and sorcerer.

While the world of Solomon Kane is considerably grimmer, it is incredibly atmospheric. Its an excellent horror setting of heartless villains and mysterious monsters living in the shadows where the most dangerous creature in it is a good man. Action, blood, and magic abound in the story, but what differentiates Kane from Conan is that while Conan is a freebooting adventurer looking to get rich and doing the right thing in the end because he's a decent guy deep down, Solomon Kane deliberately wanders out into the world looking for evil to smite because he's already decided to do the right thing. Also, there is no way in hell that Solomon will have extramarital sex with a scantily clad temple maid. While the Conan stories are tremendously great fun, there is something deeply satisfying about watching Solomon Kane go about his bloody business.

Robert E. Howard didn't write bad stories, and I completely recommend Red Shadows as an introduction to Solomon Kane.