Awesome post on the lasting appeal of Robert Howard’s Solomon Kane (and I don’t mean the movie).
When modern readers think about pulp fiction, they no doubt tend to imagine sword and sorcery like Conan the Barbarian, lost worlds fiction like The Land That Time Forgot, pulp detectives like Dick Tracy or The Shadow, or horror like the Cthulhu Mythos. They probably don’t envision a dour, glum-faced musket-wielding Puritan roaming Europe and Africa in the late 1500s/early 1600s. And yet, Solomon Kane was quite popular for creator Robert E. Howard, with nearly as many stories as Conan or his sailor hero Steve Costigan.
Like Conan, Solomon Kane is frequently overmatched by the enemies he faces, often pulling off seemingly impossible triumphs through luck and alliances with more powerful forces. He’s not the typical muscle-bound sword swinger or athletic boxer, as he’s often described as being tall and lanky, though strong, and he’s never looked upon by others as an attractive man.
One of the biggest reasons Kane succeeds…
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Dark Perceptions 