The Nemedian Chroniclers #6

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By Lee A. Breakiron

REVIEWING THE REVIEW

Belying its name, the first issue of the fanzine The Howard Review (THR) contained no reviews, but only because its editor and publisher, Dennis McHaney, had wanted to hold it to 24 pages while including Howard’s story “The Fearsome Touch of Death” and Glenn Lord’s “The Fiction of Robert E. Howard: A Checklist.” McHaney had sent a list of the published works to Lord, who added the unpublished works. “Fearsome” had not been reprinted since its appearance in Weird Tales in February, 1930, and it was de rigueur at the time for any REH fanzine to feature some unpublished or unreprinted material by Howard. Lord had provided the material and permission required, as he was to do for so many fanzines, magazines, and books published during the Howard Boom of the 1970s.

In the issue’s editorial, McHaney states that his zine “will be strictly devoted to Robert E. Howard, and will only review new material by others if that material is directly related to R.E.H., or one of his creations,” including pastiches. It would also “contain fiction and poetry by Howard, including obscure, out-of-print items as well as unpublished pieces.” [1, p. 3]

And so began one of the better known fanzines of the period, produced by the longest active contributor to Howard fandom, given that he is still active. Marked by continual experimentation and improvement in format and style, THR reflected its creator’s interest and skill in graphic design and his drive to constantly hone those skills and utilize the best technology available. He had been creating and publishing fanzines since 1963. He acquired a used manual Gestetner mimeograph machine in 1971, which he utilized for a couple of years. His first fantasy zine, Mesmeridian #1 of 1973, consisted of 200 mimeographed copies with no Howard-related content.

Published in the summer of 1973, his Mesmeridian #2 was a 30-page, 8½×11-inch mimeograph inside covers offset-printed by his friend Tom Foster, in a run between 100 and 150 copies priced at 50 cents each or “your fanzine in trade.” The contents were an article by McHaney on REH’s unreprinted boxing, western, adventure, and spicy yarns; his index/survey of the pulp Golden Fleece; Grover Deluca’s “The Manner of Roses: The Works of Thomas Burnett Swann” (the 1960s fantasist) ending with a bibliography; letters from Edgar Rice Burroughs collectors Vernell Coriell and Darrell C. Richardson; and art by Foster (including a four-page, full-color, offset-printed cartoon). A copy of the zine now sells for $20 to $40.

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In discussing the surprising success of the modest Mesmeridian #1, McHaney said:

I’d always wanted to do a successful fanzine. I’d been doing them for years, but never sold many because of my rather eccentric choice of subject matter. So why did this one do so well? The Howard Collector had just stopped publishing, and as far as I knew, there were no other Robert E. Howard fanzines available. I’m sure that had nothing to do with my pitiful effort’s success, but I saw a void, and had the silly notion I could fill it. [2, p. 10]

Thus, McHaney and Foster decided to launch THR, which sold well and garnered favorable reviews despite its frequent changes in format. McHaney would sometimes take subscriptions and sometimes not, depending on what was feasible at the time. For similar reasons, his plans for content, print runs, and availability often changed before a project was done. True to form, he was dissatisfied with his first attempt at THR #1, a 6½×8½-inch staple-and-tape-bound typed mimeograph of 32 pages in black and white with some touches of color done in December (though dated November), 1974 in a print run of 206 copies, so he redid it a year later in a second edition of 600 copies priced at $2.50 each. That edition sold out upon publication. Having mastered offset plates and half-tones, he did a revamped second printing of the second edition in January, 1976, in a run of about 500 copies for $2.00 each. Without asking, the printer, instead of the cover stock McHaney had requested, substituted paper that did not dry very fast, so a lot of these have ink smears, especially on the back cover. The second edition was typed, offset-printed in black and white, and saddle-stapled, as all THRs and his other publications would be through THR #11, except where noted otherwise herein.

In May, 1975, McHaney published an updated, corrected version of Lord’s Checklist as a 24-page, 4¼×5½-inch booklet, with covers and interior illustrations by Foster, entitled The Fiction of Robert E. Howard: A Pocket Checklist by McHaney and Lord in two printings. The first printing of 500 copies was priced at $1.25 (including postage) and sold out in 3 weeks. A facsimile reprint of about a hundred copies was done in October, 1986, priced at $1.50 each, but half of these remain uncirculated. McHaney published further updated versions as The Fiction of Robert E. Howard in his REHupa zine* The Blufftown Barbarian #5 of 60 copies in August, 1994, as part of Mailing #128; The Fiction of Robert E. Howard: An Illustrated Bibliography (Part One of which appeared in THR #13); and the 106-page The Fiction of Robert E. Howard: A Quick Reference Guide, which was available as a 106-page perfect-bound

*REHupa = Robert E. Howard United Press Association

REHEAPA Summer Solstice 2010 softback from the print-on-demand Web site Lulu.com in 2008 for $12. He has also contributed a fair amount to the REH bibliographic Web site HowardWorks.com and has been an activist in getting correct and pure texts into print.

Since he had already reprinted the Checklist, McHaney replaced it in the second edition of THR #1 with REH’s poems “Moon Mockery” and “Dead Man’s Hate,” reprinted from the Lord-edited Always Comes Evening (1957), and “The Thunder of Trumpets,” a story on which REH had collaborated with Frank Thurston Torbett. The latter was REH’s only collaboration to appear in Weird Tales. Torbett was a Howard correspondent who, at this time, was still living in Texas. Torbett’s father had a sanitorium that REH had taken his own mother to. Torbett probably wrote most of the story.

All versions of THR #1 were priced $2.00 each and were illustrated by Foster, who was joined in the second edition by artist Steve Fabian (who did the cover and other pieces) and Roy G. Krenkel, a McHaney favorite. Both editions now sell for about $35 each, except for a 26-copy variant bound in greenish cardboard, which has fetched up to $878.

McHaney tried a newspaper format for his next issue, a choice he soon regretted because of its fragility and unwieldiness. The THR #2 was published as a 24-page, 11½×15-inch, unbound tabloid in a run of 1790 copies in 1975, with a price of $2.00 each. Again profusely illustrated by (and co-published with) Foster, the all-REH zine featured two humorous stories, “Vikings of the Gloves,” starring sailor/boxer Steve Costigan, and the western “The Riot at Bucksnort,” starring Pike Bearfield (a small section of which was published out of order); three unpublished fragments lumped together as “The 3 Perils of Sailor Costigan”; poems “Song before Clontarf” and “Riding Song”; and ads. It sells now for $10 to $30. The Costigan story and fragments were published in 1987 in McHaney’s zine The Perils of Sailor Costigan, which also included a list of all the Costigan stories and where they were originally published, in a run of 25 copies, though only 11 were bound.

THRs #1 and #2 were later bound together in a spiral softback entitled The World’s Largest Robert E. Howard Fanzine in a run of 11 copies, which has sold for up to $87.

The third issue of THR, dated June, 1975, was in still another format, a 40-page, 4¼×5½-inch booklet, with a cover reproducing a photo of REH holding his hat at his side, reprinted for the first time since its first appearance in Fantasy Magazine (typoed in the credits as The Fantasy Fan). The issue contained the REH stories “The Reformation a Dream” (title typoed therein; reprinted from the Howard Payne College student newspaper, The Yellow Jacket) and “The Beast from the Abyss” (reprinted from Lord’s The Howard Collector); the REH verse “The Soul-Eater”; six reviews by McHaney and Jeddrick P. Manteel; and the first installments of “The Heroes of Robert E. Howard (on the humorous western character Breckinridge Elkins, listing all the stories and books featuring him) and of “The Illustrators of Robert E. Howard” (on the Weird Tales artists Harold S. Delay and Virgil Finlay, with summaries and examples of their work). THR #3 was printed in a run of 500 copies each, with a cover price of $1.25. The smaller size of THR #3 was dictated by budget constraints. He put out a second edition about 1997 or 1998. These editions of THR #3 now sell for $10 to $30, though a rare third edition full of type scan errors and with a Fabian cover sold for $547.50 in 2007.

Born in 1950 in the bootheel of Missouri, McHaney lived in Memphis, Tennessee, for 48 years and worked in a jewelry mail-order firm for 7 years and then in a comic-book store during his late twenties. He worked on a journalism degree until he got married in 1972. In July, 1975, while in retail management, he paid $115 to have the nephew of one of his employees print 870 copies of the booklet Rhymes of Death in a shed in the man’s backyard. Over the next 8 months, he did nearly two dozen fanzines of various types. By this time, he was in full swing as a small-time publisher of mostly Howard- related items, a pursuit he would follow on and off for the next 35 years. He also produced many other

REHEAPA Summer Solstice 2010 publications, including seven underground comics and dozens of other fanzines and comics, including the magazine ERK! Many of these related to his other passion in fantasy, the fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the art illustrating it. He regularly produced more fanzines and books than he could afford to publish, and has more hobbies than he can properly devote himself to, including cinema and music. He has an extensive movie collection and frequently attends pulp, fantasy, and film fan conventions.

His 5½×8½-inch chapbooks of 1975, the aforementioned Rhymes of Death and Two against Tyre, reprinted scarce REH material, each in deluxe and regular editions priced at $4.00 and $2.00 respectively. Rhymes of Death was a 32-page (plus covers), dust- jacketed edition collection of 12 poems (four appearing for the first time) in a numbered edition of 600 copies and an unnumbered edition of 268 copies, all on parchment stock and profusely illustrated and signed by Foster. About 50 misprinted copies of the latter remain uncirculated. The title of the poem “The Ballad of Buckshot Roberts” is typoed. Two against Tyre was a 30-page booklet (plus covers), illustrated inside and out by Fabian, and limited to 600 numbered copies on deluxe paper with a textured cover and 900 unnumbered copies on white stock with a slick cover. Fabian was a few months late with his artwork, so these sold out before it was published. Accordingly, for dealers, McHaney had another 500 unnumbered copies printed, though the printer, without telling him, used a slightly different color of blue ink. One Illinois dealer added numbers to his copies and sold them as numbered editions. Both booklets sell now for about $20 each.

After THR #3, McHaney started publishing The Howard Review Newsletter, free sheets or pamphlets that kept subscribers apprised of the availability of current and back issues of THR, advertised his and other fanzinists’ publications, and corrected errata. Issues #1-4 were double-sided one-pagers published in July and October, 1975, and January and February, 1976, respectively. The first two were typed and the last two professionally typeset; #s 1 and 2 had art by Foster, and #s 3 and 4 had art by Foster and Fabian. McHaney did the typesetting with a compugraphic compuwriter, which generated the film a printing contractor would use to finish the job. Issues #5-7 were retitled the Robert E. Howard Newsletter. These were 6, 2, and 8 pages and dated April, May, and July, 1976, respectively. #5 and #6 were 8½×11 inches and #7 was 5½×8½. #5 and #6 had no price on them, but #7 had 25 cents. #5 had art by Krenkel, Foster, and Fabian; #6 had no art; and #7 had art by Frazetta, Krenkel, and Lawler. The print run of #s 1-7 was 500 unstapled copies each, though 100 of #7 were lost or discarded. All of these sell for about $20 each now.

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THR #4, also of 1975, was a definite step-up in size (5½×8½ inches, as it would remain through THR #7), length (40 pages), cover stock (textured tan), and content, in a run of 500 copies. Sporting a cover by Frank Frazetta; interior art by Fabian, Foster, Frazetta, and Arnie Fenner; and photos, it presented the Costigan story “The TNT Punch,” the REH poem “Singing in the Wind,” two articles by REH authority Fred Blosser, and a review by McHaney of the fanzine Cross Plains #7. Blosser’s first article was a review of the book The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta (1975), about whose subject Blosser comments, “There’s no doubt about it, Frazetta, in his medium, is as much a genius as Robert E. Howard was in his.” Thankfully, that perceptive appraisal is even more widely shared now than it is then, in both cases. In fact, Blosser was one of the first critics to unabashedly call Howard a genius. Blosser’s second article, “Conan and the Man with No Name,” reviewed the spaghetti western movie, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” comparing it to various Conan stories.

As a supplement to this issue, McHaney produced a separate, 16-page booklet of the same size, but with a gray cover and textured paper throughout, entitled “The Illustrators of R.E.H.: Roy G. Krenkel,” containing a folio of that artist’s work. It was originally to have been much larger, but several Krenkel originals were lost in the mail (though these, as it turned out, were probably forgeries). It ended up being comprised of a preface, 13 sketches, three cover paintings, and a list of books illustrated by Krenkel; it was priced at $2.75 each.

THR #4 and its supplement were sold together in a gummed envelope illustrated by Krenkel. Either piece now sells for $20 to $30.

In 1976, McHaney tried to publish a third issue of Mesmeridian, which would have been 80 pages long, with a two-color cover and art to rival the prozine REH: Lone Star Fictioneer. Its REH content would have been the first publication of the story “The Devil in His Brain,” the tales “Secret of Lost Valley” (including about eight illustrations by Marcus Boas) and “Dermod’s Bane,” and perhaps another story and poem. Finally, there would have been some reviews by Blosser, Byron Roark, and McHaney. But this magazine and paste-ups of one issue each of the zines The Howard Reader (in two booklets), The

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Monthly Mesmer, and The Motley Murmer, including dozens of pieces of original art by Frazetta, Krenkel, Fabian, Boas, and others were lost when the entire contents of one of two printing shops McHaney was using were confiscated in a bankruptcy [3]. The Howard Reader was to have been an annual publication whose first issue would have featured an introduction by Lord and the stories “The Blood of Belshazzar” and “Sailor Costigan and the Swami,” each densely illustrated by a different artist [4]. It is out of deference to this lost work that REHupan Joe Marek entitled his later zine The “New” Howard Reader, which presented scarce REH material in eight packed but poorly laid-out issues between 1998 and 2003 (though “New” was omitted from the title of the last issue).

All of these bear no relation to the Robert E. Howard Reader, Volume One (2007) that McHaney (as “Albert Schweitzer”) published as a gibe at Darrell Schweitzer’s projected Wildside Press volume of the same name that still hasn’t appeared. The former contained a wide variety of (12) REH stories and is available for $32 (hardback) and $15 (softback) from Lulu.com. There have been no further volumes.

The fifth issue of THR came out that November, running 34 pages, with glossy front and back covers by Boas and interior art by Frazetta, Krenkel, and Fenner, in a run of 1000 copies. It reprinted REH’s “The Noseless Horror” (its second appearance) and a poem “The Passionate Typist,” the contents of Lord’s Ultima Thule #2 apazine from The Hyperborean League Mailing #3 (including eight letters from magazine editors to REH rejecting his stories), and the article “Heroes of REH: Solomon Kane” by Roark. The issue cost $1.50 each and now sells for $20 to $25.

McHaney printed 25 proof copies of issue #6, but never distributed them. The issue was a corrected copy of his Rhymes of Death booklet called The End of the Glory Trail, made up of 20 REH poems and many illustrations by Foster.

In April, 1977, he printed the zine “The Hyperborian Heathen” for The Hyperborian (note spelling change) League Mailing #7. It contained art by Frazetta, Krenkel, and Fabian, and a description of his

REHEAPA Summer Solstice 2010 recent personal problems, which included an emergency appendectomy and being injured in an automobile accident caused by a policeman.

The same month, he published THR #7, which ran 32 pages, with cover art by Jerry Lawler (front) and Krenkel (back) and interior art by Foster, Boas, and Frazetta, and containing REH’s previously unpublished “Sailor Costigan and the Swami” (illustrated by Foster and salvaged from The Howard Reader) and the articles “Howard’s Crusades Hero” (about Cormac Fitzgeoffrey) by Lord (McHaney’s retitling of the introduction Lord had written for The Howard Reader) and “Solomon and Sorcery” by REHupan Michael Kellar on the character Solomon Kane’s religious beliefs and encounters with sorcery. Of the run of 500 copies, 50 were later bound so as to have a second, blue cover on them and another 50 so as to have a second, tan cover. The regular copies now sell for $20 to $40 each, and the variants for about four times more.

After delays caused when more of McHaney’s originals were held for “ransom” by a second printer (who tried to charge more that his estimate and whose operation was hampered due to seizures by the IRS), McHaney lost his right to reprint the REH poetry book Always Comes Evening that had been granted by Lord. The book would be published again in 1977 by Underwood/Miller. In THR #7’s editorial, McHaney explained that he was discontinuing publication of THR and, referring to the losses he suffered as a result of the first printer’s bankruptcy, said “I can never at this time compensate all those fine artists and contributors for the loss of their materials.”

These losses, McHaney’s perception of waning general interest in Howard, and his profligate lifestyle caused him to sell off his huge book and record collection in the late 1970s and to gafiate from Howard fandom for a decade.

McHaney has been divorced twice, the first time in 1977 and has a son from that marriage. Returning to school, he graduated from a local college in 1984 and continued towards a second degree, one in graphic arts, at Memphis State University, not quite completing it. He worked as a graphic artist in a wide range of media, and was art director for National Hardwood Magazine. He was employed by the

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House of Typography in Memphis in 1985, producing trade publications; by the advertising department of an appliance store chain in 1987; and as a freelance designer for Memphis State in 1987 and early 1988. From then until December, 1990, as a part-time employee at Memphis State, he produced hundreds of publications with Tom Foster, who had become head of the graphics department there. All the while, he was doing fanzines about films and music and some comic books [5]. Throughout his career, he has done many thousands of pages of magazine and newspaper designs and ad layouts. Later he was to work for a sign company.

In 1985, he acquired a copy of the incredibly rare Jenkins edition of A Gent from Bear Creek (1937) that a girlfriend had found in England. He sold it in 2006 for $6000. In 2009, he was to reprint the original text of this work (retypeset, with a change of only one word), as a hardback through Lulu.com.

McHaney’s school work prevented him from formally joining REHupa, but he contributed THR #8 to Mailing #94 in November, 1988. It consisted of 34 pages side-stapled inside glossy covers featuring art by Fabian and Krenkel in a run of 50 copies. It sells today for between $50 and $100. He has always been one to set forth his standards and express his judgments in no uncertain terms, not hesitating to direct the same brutal honesty toward himself, as is evident throughout this zine. In explaining why #8 was the first issue of THR to appear in over a decade, he confessed it was “the first issue ever to be produced without the influence of some sort of substance abuse,” even though this abuse actually continued for a couple more years.

The issue’s cover and Lord’s introduction to “The Blood of Belshazzar” were salvaged from The Howard Reader. Following them were an article by McHaney on the REH characters Dennis Dorgan, Steve Costigan, Breckinridge Elkins, Francis X. “El Borak” Gordon, Kid Allison, Steve Harrison, and Wild Bill Clanton; a reprinted newspaper article on the REH heirs, the Kuykendalls; and art by Boas, Fabian, Dennis Kesler, Mike Kaluta, Krenkel, and Foster.

In December, 1990, McHaney was laid up for a year by abdominal surgery. He said, “The urge to publish was driving me crazy” [5, p. 3], so he soon produced over 200 pages of material, about a quarter of which ended up in THR #9 of January, 1991, which was comprised of 48 pages inside covers illustrated by Finlay and Krenkel in a run of about 60 copies, priced at $3.50 each. Its theme was a look back at the fan press explosion of the 1970s, “when amateur publishing enthusiasts scram- bled and fought a heated competition for the last scraps of material remaining unpublished by Robert E. Howard.

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Actually, enthusiasm and/or interest ran out before the material did. The quality of the material was dwindling with the quantity” (p. 2). He reproduces several letters from Lord and fellow fanzinists Roark and Fenner (of REH: Lone Star Fictioneer) and Blosser, giving “a first hand account … of why so many fanzine publishers suffer from burnout in such a short amount of time …” (p. 3). The zine sells nowadays for $30 to $60.

In December, 1990, for $2.00 a copy, McHaney published 100 copies of THR #3.5, a 32-page (including covers), 4¼×5½-inch supplement to THR #3 to preserve some art (by Fabian, Foster, Kesler, and Lawler) and reviews that had been left out of THR #3 and were to have been included in a larger-size reprint of #3 that never reached fruition. It sells now for about $30. An edition of THRs #3 and #3.5 bound together, signed, and limited to 25 copies as a 2nd edition of THR #3 was distributed as proof copies at Pulpcon 1998 and sold most recently for $102.50. An even rarer third edition full of type scan errors and with a Fabian cover sold for $547.50 in 2007.

McHaney had intended to continue his article on the fan press in THR #10, but he decided to print what would have been its biggest article in his The Blufftown Barbarian #1 zine for REHupa, namely “A History of Amra—Part One: The First Two Years.” Also, L. Sprague de Camp implied he would sue if McHaney published some of his letters without permission, so McHaney shelved the rest of the zine for what would turn out to be 16 years. Thus, this “Lost Issue,” dated December, 1991, finally appeared in December, 2007, as part of REHupa Mailing #208. Running 20 pages between covers with pulp art by Finlay, it featured his article “The Golden Age of Howard Fan Publishing, Part Two – Conclusion,” presenting his correspondence with Fabian, Fenner, Lord, Dirk Mosig, and Warfield, and REH’s poem “Eternity.” Its run was 60 copies. It sells now for about $100.

He finally joined REHupa in July, 1991, mainly to get feedback on his work. In his zine The Blufftown Barbarian #1 for Mailing #110, he reveals that his friend Darrell Richardson had given him access to his sizeable collection of pulp art and other originals, e.g. Finlay, Hannes Bok, and J. Allen St. John. “Since most pulp reproduction was pretty bad, I hope readers will appreciate seeing that art on decent stock without half the detail being lost by shoddy or primitive reproduction,” he said [5, p. 3]. McHaney himself has always been an admirer and collector of graphic art, especially that of Krenkel, St. John, Al Williamson, and Bernie Wrightson.

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The Blufftown Barbarian #2 of September, 1991 (Mailing #111) presented “A History of Amra, Part Two: The 3rd and 4th Year”; “Letters to The Howard Review” on his correspondence with Roark, Fenner, de Camp, and Fabian; and art by Lawler, Finlay, and Joseph Clement Coll.

The Blufftown Barbarian #3 of March, 1992 (Mailing #114) mentions McHaney’s work on Richardson’s J. Allen St. John: An Illustrated Biblio- graphy (ERBzine #682).

Leaving REHupa and joining again, McHaney contributed The Blufftown Barbarian #4 of February, 1993 (Mailing #119), which contains “Roy G. Krenkel and Robert E. Howard: An Appreciation,” followed by a bibliography and with illustrations by Krenkel. McHaney discussed his activities as a Burroughs fan and collector, his friendship with Burroughs collector Richardson, and his own work on a Krenkel/Burroughs bibliography, saying “More than any other artist, Krenkel did more to stimulate my imag- ination about the fantastic worlds and creatures that populated them in so much of my favorite fantastic literature. … His contributions to The Sowers of the Thunder and The Road of Azrael stand above all other Howard books in their splendid marriage of art and the printed word” [6, p. 4].

After a third departure and return to REHupa, McHaney submitted the booklet “The Fiction of Robert E. Howard” mentioned previously. In the mid-1990s, he produced two issues of the zine Barbarian Cinema, which he sold at conventions.

THR #11, dated February-May, 1995, features two REH pieces, the boxing-related yarn “Thoroughbreds” (published before only in French) and the unpublished parody “Lives and Crimes of Notable Artists” (from his correspondence with friend Tevis Clyde Smith). Written a few years previously were contributions by two REHupans, Rusty Burke surveying the state of “Howard Fandom Today” (concerning the publications and events of the 1980s) and Rick McCollum discussing his comic book work and plans (particularly the REH stories he was to adapt and illustrate for Conquest Press in the early 1990s). The 24-page issue had front and back covers by Krenkel and McCollum respectively; interior art from Weird Tales, McCollum, Foster, and Kesler; and some publishing news. Printed in a run of 300 copies with a cover price of $5.00, it sells now for $20 to $40.

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The mid-1990s saw great advances in computer technology and the rise of the Internet. McHaney adapted to these early on, moving from offset printing to desktop publishing, mostly using the program Pagemaker. On the World Wide Web, he launched the Yahoo.com news and discussion group REH- innercircle in February, 2000, partly in reaction to the group REHfans at Xenite.org, whose moderator, Michael Martinez, he deemed ill-informed about REH and such aspects of computer technology as message archiving. REHinnercircle soon drove REHfans out of business and has accumulated 429 members and 58,977 posts by July 1, 2010, making it the most active REH forum on the Web until the advent of Conan.com, a complex, closely moderated series of message boards with a wider scope and less personal focus. REHinnercircle remains the go- to site for the latest news about REH fandom, research, and publications. Always loosely moderated, the site fulfills McHaney’s objective of serving as a place where “HowardHeads could talk about anything they wanted.”

The last three issues of THR saw still another signficant advance in format, length, and contents. In fact, though, this advance began with his next REHupa contribution and would mark their ascension to prozine status. In a fourth return to REHupa, McHaney submitted the Robert E. Howard Newsletter, Vol. 2, #1 to Mailing #149 in February, 1998. This 28-page color book was priced at $3.50, dated spring, 1998, and published in a run of 250 copies, which sold out in 2 months, and was also posted online. Leading off was an interview from the REHfans board of artist Rafael Kayanan, who drew Conan the Adventurer comics for Marvel and was planning on illustrating much REH for the new Cross Plains Comics. Unfortunately, few of these comics saw print before editor Richard Ashford pulled the plug. REHupan Morgan Holmes weighs in with a first installment of “Bad Sword & Sorcery: Paperback Hacks, One Hit Wonders, and Lin Carter.” Then McHaney slams the Marvel Comics’ latest stab at Conan and then, in “Conan: The Good, the Bad (and the NOT Conan),” sorts the various Conan books by textual purity and degree of pastiching. Finally, REHupan Joe Marek reviews REHupan James Van Hise’s The Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard (1997), a book which did the service of disseminating excellent essays and interviews, all by REHupans, to the wider world; we need more like it. McHaney himself has pushed for more Best of REHupa collections.

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As his REHupa zine for Mailing #153 (October, 1998), McHaney submitted the 22-page booklet (including covers) Robert E. Howard in “The Eyrie”: A Weird Tales Farewell, summarizing all mentions of REH by the editor of and letter writers to that pulp during the 8 months following his death in June, 1936. It contained art from Weird Tales and had a print run of 60 copies.

During his fifth stint in REHupa, in Mailing #168 (April, 2001), McHaney had (no “The”) Blufftown Barbarian #s 6 and 7 as separate booklets of 14 and 16 pages plus covers, respectively. In #6, he published “The Trouble with FAX.” Darrell Richardson, co-founder of FAX Collectors Editions, was editor of its REH titles. McHaney was pleased to discover how little tampering Richardson had done with the Weird Tales texts, but disappointed at the unnecessary changes he had made in the unpublished stories, breaking up longer sentences and detracting from the stories’ dynamism. Richardson had planned to publish several volumes of REH stories starring Francis X. “El Borak” Gordon, Steve Harrison, Wild Bill Clanton, and Steve Costigan, and various humorous westerns, but he was outmaneuvered by competitor Donald M. Grant, who published the Harrison stories in Lord of the Dead (1981), but never did publish the others. Blufftown Barbarian #7 presented the 16-page booklet (including covers) Robert E. Howard in the Public Domain, listing only the public domain stories from his illustrated bibliography, in a run of 45 copies.

McHaney, in The Blufftown Barbarian #8 (Mailing #170, August 2001), treats the Weird Tales-clone, Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, covering its seven-issue run, indexing its contents, and reprinting its letter-column mentions of REH, who had published “The Cairn on the Headland” and “The People of the Dark” therein. In 2005, McHaney published Robert E. Howard’s Strange Tales in hardback and paperback through Lulu.com, presenting those two stories, the first book publication of “The Touch of Death” from Weird Tales and “The Voice of El-Lil” from Oriental Tales, and others that appeared in The Fantasy Fan, Marvel Tales, and Weird Tales, together with their original illustrations. The first edition was a 12-copy paperback with a white spine. The hardback run was 100 copies. A paperback version is still available on Lulu.com for $15.

Mailings #172, 174, 176, and 178 of December, 2001, and April, August, and December, 2002, saw the inclusions of McHaney’s booklets Robert E. Howard & Weird Tales #s 1-4. They were 5½×8½-inch booklets of 16, 20, 16, and 30 pages respectively, including the color covers, in runs of 45 copies each. They contained color reproductions of pulp covers and a fairly comprehensive history of REH’s contributions to Weird Tales and other pulps, as well as the reactions of readers to REH.

To REHupa Mailing #178 he also submitted the signed, 4¼×5½-inch booklet “Golden Hope” Christmas, with color covers by St. John; its run was 100 copies.

The last three issues of THR were published as perfect-bound 8½×11-inch softbacks, with slick color covers and color contents, on-demand from Lulu.com. THR #12, dated September, and published in October, 2004, was 60 pages long, with covers painted by St. John. Its REH contents were the stories “Black Talons” and “The Tomb’s Secret” and the verse “The Song of the Bats,” “The Riders of Babylon,” “The Harp of Alfred,” and “The Gates of Nineveh.” Blosser is represented by the article “Black Queen, Red Heart,” in which he examines REH’s controversial use of race in the Solomon Kane stories and the bowdlerization of their texts by publisher Donald M. Grant. By removing all clues of Nakari’s blackness, Blosser argues, Grant gutted the story “The Moon of Skulls” of “Howard’s first fully realized exploration of the themes of racial domination, social decadence, and tabooed sexual attraction” [7, p. 7]. “In the Tradition of” by REHupan Charles Gramlich looks at the covers and introductions of non-REH Sword & Sorcery novels for references to Howard and Conan. His list of book titles and quotations reveals the extent to which Howard’s name was used to market various titles, regardless of their merit. McHaney cites several instances of REH’s mother, Hester Jane Ervin Howard, writing letters to pulp magazines praising her son’s stories, in his article “Letters from Mom.” McHaney further contrib-

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butes “Robert E. Howard, Oriental Stories, The Magic Carpet Magazine, & The Souk,” citing the REH stories in those pulps and contemporary comments on them, which he had first published as a 24-page, 5½×8½-inch booklet of 60 copies, with color covers and five color pages inside, in REHupa Mailing #151 in June, 1998, but added more art. In 2004, he published this as a 36-page, 8½×11-inch booklet (dated 2005), with color covers and contents, through Lulu.com. THR #12 is bejew- eled throughout with pulp covers and interior art. THR #12 is available from Lulu.com for $20 (color contents) and $13 (black-and-white contents).

Rob Roehm reviewed THR #12 in Mailing #190. “For quantity and quality of art and color, THR beats all comers,” he said [8].

McHaney combined his booklets Robert E. Howard & Weird Tales #s 1-4 with Robert E. Howard in “The Eyrie”: A Weird Tales Farewell and Robert E. Howard, Oriental Stories, The Magic Carpet Magazine, & The Souk into a 104-page perfect-bound 8½×11-inch softback entitled Robert E. Howard–World’s Greatest Pulpster (October, 2005), lavishly illustrated in color, for which he won the 2006 Cimmerian Award for best book by a single author. It has deservedly been called the most beautiful book every published about REH. It is available from Lulu.com for $35. He took the title from an aborted series of fanzines he had planned in 2001; five proof copies were printed of the first issue and have sold for up to $104 each.

THR #13, the “30th anniversary issue,” was dated December, 2004, and came in at 140 pages, again lavishly illustrated, though black and white inside, as was most of the original art. In his editorial, McHaney states:

If I’d been ambitious or devoted to the magazine, I’d have a hundred issues out after this much time, but after all, this started as an obsessive hobby that becomes boring after a while, so I move on to other things. A year would pass, then another, and five more, and then I’d get the urge to do another issue. Sometimes I’d spend time putting an issue together and not like what I’d done, then I’d forget about it for another year or two. Sometimes, I’d finish an issue, and just not publish it. Every now and then one would actually escape. Over those thirty years I joined and then quit the Robert E. Howard United Press Association more times than anyone else—five times so far. During those times, I started a lot of Howard projects that never quite got completed. Now, I’ve decided to get that material out of my files and off of my conscience! [9, p. 4]

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The issue led off with the REH stories “The Dark Man,” “The Fire of Ashurbanipal” (facsimiles from Weird Tales), and “The Voice of El-Lil” (its text from Oriental Stories, rather than from its heavily edited book appearances) and the REH poem “Voices of the Night.” These were followed by an expansion of his REHupa article on the FAX books. Then came the first part of the latest incarnation of his “The Fiction of Robert E. Howard: An Illustrated Bibliography.” The rest never appeared in THR, but the entirety did so in the the Lulu.com book mentioned previously. Next, Blosser contributed “Beyond ‘The Valley of the Worm’: A Retro View,” reviewing Bloodstar: King of the Northern Abyss by Rich Corben, REH, and John Jakes (1976), an article originally written for Marvel Comic’s The Savage Sword of Conan magazine in 1979. The issue concluded with reviews by McHaney of The Illustrated World of Robert E. Howard (2004) and The Bloody Crown of Conan (2004). It was reviewed by Rob Roehm [10] and is available from Lulu.com for $15.

In his reviews of THR #s 12 and 13, Bill Cavalier called McHaney a “highly talented graphic artist and a master of layout” [11]. Van Hise, in his review of #13, said that, “with the advent of computers and print on demand, “Dennis is able to get a better grasp on what he’s been reaching for” in terms of format and layout [12].

McHaney compiled a bibliography of the art of J. Allen St. John and the book Those Macabre Pulps, which Richardson published by, respectively, FAX books in 1991 and Adventure House in 2004. In 2004, Richardson and McHaney formed Old Tiger Press. McHaney helped to edit and publish Richardson’s The Life and Works of J. Allen St. John (2005), High Adventure—Westerns, Northerns, and Other Lands (2006), a St. John bibliography, and a volume on Burroughs’s Tarzan, all in full color through Lulu.com.

When a wildfire ravaged REH’s hometown of Cross Plains, Texas, in December, 2005, stopping just short of the Howard Home and Museum, McHaney conceived of and executed the compilation of a 32- page zine (plus a cover by Foster) Odes at the Black Dog (January, 2006), the sales of whose 100 copies were donated to the Fire Relief Fund for the rebuilding of the town. Coming with a pictorial bookmark containing REH’s poem “Musings,” it was edited by Paul Herman and comprised of the 19 poems read at the first annual REH “Birthday Bash” celebration in Dallas, Texas, which Herman organized. Bill Cavalier and McHaney produced posters for the event.

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This was so successful, McHaney dared to think he could put together an entire book with the same purpose, so he called for volunteers to contribute articles to a book that became the 310- page The Man from Cross Plains, Texas: A Centennial Celebration of Two-Gun Bob Howard (May, 2006). The book contained the first U.S. publication of REH’s story, “The Ghost with the Silk Hat.” This is accompanied by an editorial by McHaney and essays about REH, his stories, and Cross Plains by scholars Rusty Burke, Brian Leno, Bill Cavalier, Rob Roehm, Gary Romeo, Scotty Henderson, Don Herron, Larry Richter, Steven Trout, Damon Sasser, Patrice Louinet, Glenn Lord, Fred Blosser, Chris Gruber, Danny Street, and Mark Finn, most of whom were members of REHupa. The selfless dedication of all those who contributed to this volume made it a major achievement in REH fandom. For this, McHaney would receive the 2007 Cimmerian Award for best anthology. The book was available from Lulu.com as a hardback in a run of 23 copies and as a paperback. The 2009 edition dropped the subtitle and has a slightly different cover, introduction, and contributor section.

After moving to Austin, Texas, in 2006, McHaney worked for the IRS and then the state of Texas. He arranged other Birthday Bashes in 2008 and 2009 in Cross Plains, in coordination with that town’s Project Pride, and in 2010 in Austin. He has also been active in organizing the Texas Fans of Robert E. Howard. For the 2009 party of this group, he published 36 copies of the 40-page (including covers), 6¾×8½-inch booklet Halloween at the Dog and Duck, drawing together all 36 REH poems that had appeared in Weird Tales.

During his sixth stint in REHupa, McHaney submitted The Blufftown Barbarian #9 to Mailing #201 (October, 2006), describing his narrow escape from an apartment invasion (which would confirm his resolve to leave Memphis) and his experiences at the Howard Days literary festival in Cross Plains, which he has attended several times. His latest zines have been J.A.A.I.T., Gone to Texas #1-4, and Gone to Houston for Mailings #s 203, 205, 210, 213, 216, 218, and 220 (February and June, 2007, April and October, 2008, and April, August, and December 2009), respectively, containing descriptions of his publishing ventures and travels, and reminiscences. As previously mentioned, he placed THR #10 in Mailing #208 (December, 2007).

The so-proclaimed Final Issue of THR, #14, saw print in 2008, running 96 black-and-white pages. In his editorial, McHaney says:

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This magazine has been part of my life, off and on again, for 34 years. Sometimes I treated it like a hobby, sometimes I treated it like an obsession. … I have enjoyed my time in Howard fandom immensely. At times, it has been a very life enriching thing, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes truly joyful. I have made some lifelong, very dear friends, people I respect and love like my own family, and I hope to continue treasuring those friendships. Robert E. Howard and Howard fandom have played a major part in my entire adult life, and I hope I have given back to it at least the smallest fraction of what it has given to me. [13, p. 5]

The primary theme of the issue is REH’s humorous western character Breckinridge Elkins, containing as it does REHupan Rob Roehm’s article, “Humorous Westerns Are Serious Business,” REHupan Mark Finn’s “Breckinridge Elkins, Robert E. Howard, and Filial Piety,” and McHaney’s “Breckinridge Elkins: A Bibliography.” The lead article is McHaney’s history of The Howard Collector. In “The Robert E. Howard Poetry Collections: An Overview,” REHupan Frank Coffman comments on REH as a poet and on the quality and significance of each of 13 books. Rusty Burke describes his experiences editing “The Best of Robert E. Howard: An Overview of the Two Volume Set.” McHaney presents the Viola Garvin poem that Burke identified as the source of the excerpt by REH in his suicide note (if that’s what it was), correcting a misidentification by de Camp. Paul Herman discusses his discovery of REH’s original writing desk. Next come facsimiles of the appearances of two REH poems, the lyrics to an “outdoor song” by REH, and fragments of two synopses (the first previously unpublished) of REH westerns. The issue ends with the Otis Adelbert Kline Agency’s index of REH poems, including several that have been lost. THR #14 is available from Lulu.com for $15.

McHaney helped prepare the book The Last of the Trunk (2007), collecting the last of Lord’s REH typescripts, for publication by the Robert E. Howard Foundation, of which McHaney is a member.

McHaney has gone on to publish occasional books on specific themes relating to REH. The first, The Return to Bear Creek (2007), was a 116-page softback with art from the pulps and Jim and Ruth Keegan (color on the covers and black and white inside), in a run of 50 copies plus some corrected copies, in order to make available eight of the Breckinridge Elkins stories as facsimiles of their pulp appearances. They are preceded by reprints of McHaney’s Elkins Bibliography and Roehm’s and Finn’s articles from THR #14.

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He has also published Interiors (2006) and The Face in the Pool: A Faerie Tale (2009), both by St. John, through Lulu.com.

Currently he is putting together books entitled The Book of “The Howard Review” and Illustrating Robert E. Howard, the latter based on his own writings and on those elicited from other experts in the field.

The 34-year run of The Howard Review constitute not only an impressive legacy of Howard fanzines, but comprises just the best known of many such contributions by Dennis McHaney, whose record of REH fandom activity is virtually without peer. Just as Howard has risen in stature from pulp magazine entertainer to respected literary genius, so have the best REH fanzines matured from mere pop effusions to respectable works of criticism and scholarship. THR has not only mirrored, but participated in this development. Though some fanzines have surpassed it in scholarly content, none has matched it in the quality of design and layout. Its producer seems positively driven both to be creative and to raise the bar of such quality ever higher. May he long continue to do so.

REFERENCES

[1] McHaney, Dennis, “Introduction to The Howard Review,” in The Howard Review #1 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), p. 2 (1975)

[2] McHaney, Dennis, “The Short, Sweet Life and Slow, Agonizing Death of a FAN’s Magazine,” in The Howard Review #8 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 10-15 (Nov., 1988)

[3] McHaney, Dennis, “Editorial,” in The Howard Review #7 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 2 & 3 (Apr., 1977)

[4] McHaney, Dennis, REHinnercircle post, 28 September, 2000

[5] McHaney, Dennis, The Blufftown Barbarian #1, in REHupa Mailing #110 (July, 1991)

[6] McHaney, Dennis, The Blufftown Barbarian #4, in REHupa Mailing #119 (Feb., 1993)

[7] Blosser, Fred, “Black Queen, Red Heart,” in The Howard Review #12 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 6-10 (Sept., 2004)

[8] Roehm, Rob, Onion Tops #1, in REHupa Mailing #190 (Dec., 2004)

[9] McHaney, Dennis, “Thirtieth Anniversary Intro,” in The Howard Review #13 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 4-7 & 134-139 (Dec., 2004)

[10] Roehm, Rob, Onion Tops #17, in REHupa Mailing #206 (Aug., 2007)

[11] Cavalier, Bill, Cold Steel #113, in REHupa Mailing #191 (Feb., 2005)

[12] Van Hise, James, The Road to Velitrium #55, in REHupa Mailing #191 (Feb., 2005)

[13] McHaney, Dennis, “Hello Goodbye,” in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 4 & 5 (2008)

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THE ROBERT E. HOWARD BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SECONDARY SOURCES, PART VI

The list of articles below is complete insofar as it contains all items relating to Howard, excepting those by Howard himself (being primary references and cataloged elsewhere) and those inspired by Howard, such as poems by others (being primary references by those authors). It is in alphabetical order by author and then by title. The abstract, if any, is in brackets.

The Howard Review (fanzine series edited and published by Dennis McHaney)

AUTHOR REFERENCE

Anonymous Reviews of Fantasy Crossroads #3, The Swords of Shahrazar (by REH; FAX, (Roark, Byron or 1976), & Flashing Swords #3 (ed. Lin Carter; Dell, 1976) in The Howard Warfield, Wayne?) Review #3.5 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 14, 15, & 20-28 (Dec., 1990)

Blosser, Fred “Beyond the Valley of the Worm: A Retro Review” [of Bloodstar: King of the Northern Abyss (by Richard Corben, REH, & John Jakes; Morning Star, 1976)] in The Howard Review #13 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 126-128 (Dec., 2004)

Blosser, Fred “Black Queen, Red Heart” [race in & bowdlerization of Solomon Kane story texts] in The Howard Review #12 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 6-10 (Sep., 2004)

Blosser, Fred Review of The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta in The Howard Review #4 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn., 1975), pp. 7-9

Burke, Rusty “The Best of Robert E. Howard: An Overview of the Two Volume Set” [his experiences editing them] in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2008), pp. 45-53

Burke, Rusty “Howard Fandom Today” [important publications, REHupa, & Project Pride] in The Howard Review #11 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 10-15 (spring, 1995)

Coffman, D. Frank, Jr. “The Robert E. Howard Poetry Collections: An Overview” [commentary on REH as a poet & on the quality & significance of the 13 books] in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2008), pp. 32-44

Finn, Mark “Breckinridge Elkins, Robert E. Howard, and Filial Piety” [examination of the Elkins character & how it reflected on REH & his life] in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2008), pp. 62-69

Herman, Paul “The Writing Table of Robert E. Howard’ [his discovery thereof] in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2008), pp. 79-81 with 5 photos

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Kellar, Michael “Solomon and Sorcery” [Solomon Kane’s religious beliefs & encounters with sorcery] in The Howard Review #7 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 24-28 (Apr., 1977); reprinted in The Dark Man #2 (Necronomicon Press, West Warwick, R.I.), pp. 11-13 (Aug., 1990)

Lord, Glenn “The Fiction of Robert E. Howard” [list of titles & years, published & unpublished] in The Howard Review #1 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn., 1975), pp. 15-26

Lord, Glenn “Howard’s Crusades Hero” [REH’s historical stories] in The Howard Review #7 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 4 & 5 (Apr., 1977)

Lord, Glenn “Introduction to the Howard Reader” [on Cormac Fitzgeoffrey] in The Howard Review #8 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), p. 30 (summer, 1988)

Lord, Glenn Ultima Thule #2 in The Hyperborean League Mailing #3 (Apr., 1976) [rejection letters to REH from editors & publishers]; reprinted as “Ultima Thule: Installment 2” in The Howard Review #5 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 3-11 (Nov., 1976)]

Manteel, J(eddrick) P. “Conan: The Good, the Bad, the Un-” [lists books Conan stories have appeared in, incl. collaborations & pastiches, with comments on origins & text purity] in The Robert E. Howard Newsletter, Vol. 2, #1 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, spring, 1998), pp. 14-23

Marek, Joe Review of The Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard (ed. James Van Hise, 1997) in The Robert E. Howard Newsletter, Vol. 2, #1 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 24 & 25 (spring, 1998)

McCollum, Rick “Pen and Ink, Blood and Thunder” [his REH comics] in The Howard Review #11 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn., 1995), pp. 20-23 (spring, 1995)

McHaney, Dennis “Breckinridge Elkins: A Bibliography” in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2008), pp. 70-77

McHaney, Dennis “The Fantasy Magazine Howard Memorial” [eulogies of REH by Kline, Price, & Byrne] in The Howard Review #13 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 70- 71 (Dec., 2004)

McHaney, Dennis “The Fiction of Robert E. Howard: An Illustrated Bibliography, Part One: Alphabetical Fiction Listing” [story title index with sources of all appearances] in The Howard Review #13 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 72-125 (Dec., 2004)

McHaney, Dennis “The Golden Age of Howard Fan Publishing, Part Two – Conclusion” [his correspondence with Steve Fabian, Arnie Fenner, Glenn Lord, Dirk Mosig, & Wayne Warfield] in The Howard Review #10 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn., 2007), pp. 1-17 (dated Dec., 1991) in REHupa Mailing #208 (Dec., 2007)

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McHaney, Dennis “The Heroes of Robert E. Howard: Breckinridge Elkins” [list of his stories & books] in The Howard Review #3 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn., 1975), pp. 33-35 (June, 1975)

McHaney, Dennis “The Howard Collector” [history & contents of Glenn Lord’s REH fanzine & other contemporaneous REH publications] in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2008), pp. 6-31 with 4 photos of REH & 1 of Lord

McHaney, Dennis “The Illustrators of Robert E. Howard” [Harold S. Delay & Virgil Finlay] in The Howard Review #3 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 36-39 (June, 1975)

McHaney, Dennis “The Illustrators of Robert E. Howard” [Steve Fabian & Dennis Kesler] in The Howard Review #3.5 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 7-13 (Dec., 1990)

McHaney, Dennis The Illustrators of Robert E. Howard: Roy G. Krenkel (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn., 1975), 16 pp.

McHaney, Dennis “An Informal Look at REH Fanzines, 1975-1976, Part One” [his correspondence with Fred Blosser, Arnie Fenner, Glenn Lord, & Byron Roark] in The Howard Review #9 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 4-41 & 45 (winter, 1990-91)

McHaney, Dennis “The Kline List” [index of REH’s poems held by the Otis Adelbert Kline Agency] in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2008), pp. 89-96

McHaney, Dennis “Letters from Mom” [Hester Howard’s published comments on REH’s stories] in The Howard Review #12 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), p. 26 (Sep., 2004); reprinted in The Book of the Howard Review (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 158 & 159 (Dec., 2010)

McHaney, Dennis “More Unborn Howard Books” [never pub.] in The Howard Review #11 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), p. 3 (spring, 1995); reprinted in The Book of the Howard Review (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), p. 157 (Dec., 2010)

McHaney, Dennis “News” [review of fanzine Fantasy Crossroads #9] in The Howard Review #5 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), p. 33 (Nov., 1976)

McHaney, Dennis “Oriental Stories, The Magic Carpet Magazine, & The Souk” [stories in those pulps & contemporary comments on REH’s stories therein] in The Howard Review #12 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 38-57 (Sep., 2004)

McHaney, Dennis “Origin of Howard’s ‘Suicide Note’” [Rusty Burke’s identification of Viola Garvin’s poem quoted therein] in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2008), p. 78

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McHaney, Dennis “Plugs” [short reviews of recent REH publications] in The Howard Review #4 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn., 1975), pp. 36 & 37

McHaney, Dennis “Project Pride, Cross Plains, Texas” in The Howard Review #9 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 42 & 43 (winter, 1990-91)

McHaney, Dennis Review of Cross Plains: Final Issue [#7 of that fanzine] in The Howard Review #4 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn., 1975), p. 38

McHaney, Dennis Review of The Bloody Crown of Conan (by REH; Wandering Star, 2004) in The Howard Review #13 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 130 & 131 (Dec., 2004)

McHaney, Dennis Review of The Illustrated World of Robert E. Howard (by Jim & Ruth Keegan; Wandering Star, 2004) in The Howard Review #13 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 129-130 (Dec., 2004)

McHaney, Dennis Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2005), 104 pp.; reprinted except for p. 104 in The Book of the Howard Review (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 169-229 (Dec., 2010)

McHaney, Dennis “The Series Characters of Robert E. Howard” [Dorgan, B. Elkins, Kid Allison, Harrison, Clanton, & Costigan] in The Howard Review #8 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp.16-22 (summer, 1988)

McHaney, Dennis “The Short Sweet Life and Slow, Agonizing Death of a Fan’s Magazine” [history of THR] in The Howard Review #8 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp.10-15 (summer, 1988)

McHaney, Dennis “Thirtieth Anniversary Intro” [history of THR] in The Howard Review #13 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 4-7 & 134-139 (Dec., 2004)

McHaney, Dennis “The Trouble with FAX” & “Roy G. Krenkel and FAX” [Darrell Richardson (as J. R. R. Tolkien) & history of the FAX books] in The Howard Review #13 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp.42-51 (Dec., 2004); reprinted in The Book of the Howard Review (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com), pp. 149-156 (Dec., 2010)

McHaney, Dennis Reviews of Fantasy Crossroads #3 (fanzine), Verses in Ebony (Hamilton, & Manteel, J. P. 1974, The Lost Valley of Iskander (FAX, 1974), Golden Fleece (Odyssey, 1973), The Sowers of the Thunder (Zebra, 1975), & Fantastic Stories (June, 1975) in The Howard Review #3 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 25-32 (June, 1975)

Remick, Pat “Conan Creator Leaves Legacy” [REH heirs Alla Ray Kuykendall & Alla Kuykendall Morris] in The Ventura County Star Free Press Cal. newspaper (summer, 1988); reprinted in The Howard Review #8 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn., 1988), pp. 6-8

Roark, Byron L. “The Heroes of REH: Solomon Kane” [summary of his character & stories] in The Howard Review #5 (Dennis McHaney, Memphis, Tenn.), pp. 12-15 (Nov. 1976)

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Roehm, Rob “Humorous Westerns Are Serious Business” [history of the writing & publishing of REH’s humorous westerns in the pulps] in The Howard Review #14 (Dennis McHaney, Lulu.com, 2008), pp. 54-61