giggling-goblin In reply to SugarPlumPumpkin [2010-10-11 00:58:21 +0000 UTC]

thanks much!

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SugarPlumPumpkin In reply to giggling-goblin [2010-10-11 01:02:00 +0000 UTC]

most welcome

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giggling-goblin In reply to gsilverfish [2010-09-12 23:26:53 +0000 UTC]

thanks! i like the wide variety in yours as well. Im a big Leiber fafhrd and grey mouser fan from way back by the way and like your take with "Flashing Swords". I read the Swords books when i was a teen and still read them today. He created a great lived in world and two great rogues there. if you dont have it yet you might want to try Mignolas take on it with his comic touch. Dark Horse collected them up in a trade paperback recently. extremely faithful to Leibers stories. "Ill met in Lankhmar" is to me probably the best "low" fantasy or S&S as leiber would call it ever written. JH

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gsilverfish In reply to giggling-goblin [2010-09-13 01:28:00 +0000 UTC]

Yeah! I picked up the Dark Horse collection a little while back, and it's great, though I do still prefer the books.

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giggling-goblin In reply to gsilverfish [2010-09-13 02:33:39 +0000 UTC]

agreed. the books are always better. i also have mignolas illustrated White Wolf books that collected the stories a longer while back. some very good pen and ink. Fafhrd and GM really need to be animated some day. not dam 3D, just animated. there was an author who actually wrote one continuation book of the series after Leiber died. Robin something maybe. It was called Swords Against the Shadowland and was very good. but nothing after that. oh well. my favorite story in the series is actually Bazaar of the Bizarre for shear creativity.
i grew up in the heyday of Sword and Sorcery in the 70's and 80's. lots of fanzines etc. back then. the Frazetta years i call that. Died down alot since then. I did try and pretty much enjoy the new anthology that just came out. I think it was Swords and Dark Magic. an obvious homage to Leiber. had some good stories. A new Elric one particularly.
later, JH

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gsilverfish In reply to giggling-goblin [2010-09-13 03:25:40 +0000 UTC]

I loved those covers! I do wish those were still in print, the new editions that have been re-released are kind of "eh" on the cover department (Swords against Shadowlands has been reprinted as well, I haven't read that one). If you read my little blurb under that picture, you already know I'm pretty new to S&S--I actually grabbed that Swords & Dark Magic just the other day, but I'm still working through a some older anthologies to get caught up a bit more first.

I think my favorite F&GM is Lean Times, though it's really hard to pick one for sure.

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giggling-goblin In reply to gsilverfish [2010-09-13 21:57:50 +0000 UTC]

the cover to the first collection was the best i thought. great "montage" of the characters and lankhmar things in the background. Many of mignolas covers, particularly Hellboy are of that type. but i especially liked the black and white stuff he did inside the volumes. chapter headers and such.
if you are new to S and S try this site i found on the web one day. its a nice review of S&S that was really pretty nostalgic for me and will give you a good background. its called The Readers Guide to Sword and Sorcery. you can find it at: www.gwthomas.org/readersguide.htm
two other recommendations are Blackgate Magazine which also has a good blog site and Heroic Fantasy magazine which is an online zine. its good and is up to its fifth issue now. the days of printed S&S magazines are done im afraid. There is a good bit of stuff on Robert E. Howard and Conan etc. on the web.
I did like Lean Times also and is actually one of his funnier and more unique stories. Fafhrd is really good in that one.
I found the series went downhill quite a bit around the time of Rime Isle or so. When he took them north. Just not as interesting. although some of the individual short stories arent bad. I go back far enuff to remember when Rime Isle was published in Cosmos magazine. lol. that one didnt last long.
There was a series of anthologies called Flashing Swords in the early 80's or so you could try to locate. I have the first three i think. they had frazetta covers for the first two and a Don Maitz for the third which was in paperback. great cover of a knight asstride a dead dragon. anyway each book had about four s and s stories by the most famous writers at that time: leiber, norton, vance etc. i picked them up cheap on Ebay. to me the most unusual s and s writer was probably Jack Vance. interesting world building. two other authors you can try that i really liked alot were Tanith Lee and Roger Zelazny. Zelazny died way to young and he wrote some great s and s stuff. i think his character was called Delvish the Damned. Lee wrote a series called Flat earth i think which is maybe more high fantasy mixed with myths. but she was a beautiful writer in her style.
later, JH

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gsilverfish In reply to giggling-goblin [2010-09-14 02:04:37 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for the recommendations! I love Conan, it turns out--I picked up all three of the recent Howard-only books (no pastiches or stories by other authors, and in the order they were written). I really had no idea how great those stories were going to be, the mass-media image of Conan (even not exactly the movie one) had really convinced me that I wouldn't find it interesting, I couldn't have been more wrong! I've been seeking out the Flashing Swords for more exposure as well, the Jack Vance story in #4 (the only one I have so far), with Cugel the Clever, I especially liked, I went out and grabbed Eyes of the Overworld right away as a result (though that is another one in the to-be-read pile for now).

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giggling-goblin In reply to gsilverfish [2010-09-14 02:38:06 +0000 UTC]

i am a fairly big conan fan. i actually prefer Howard's Solomon Kane. Much more unique a character. The SK volume put out by delrey (originally by Wandering Star) with Gary Gianni illustrations is great! Love his work. very old school pen and ink. i never liked Conan too much i suppose because he is so muscle bound a hero. but i do like Tower of the Elephant alot and think that is his best Conan work.
I never got too much into Vance. Just alittle on the edges. i do recall Cugel the Clever stories. Vance was a bit like Tanith Lee to me...world building type stuff in a way. interesting guy i think...he just got a hugo for his autobiography i believe.
one good unusual s and s book you can add to your list is The Pastel City by M. John Harrison. Very different then traditional stuff. and its short read. One of my favorites actually. came out years ago and i reread it recently.
flashing swords was a very strong series. that was Lin Carter who was not a very good writer but sure did alot for the field.
oh i forgot: add Jack of Shadows by Zelazny to that list.
later, JH

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giggling-goblin In reply to FrancescaDaSacco [2010-09-04 15:22:53 +0000 UTC]

No prob at all. I love your style. Good blend of old school "storybook" art and a modern sense of humor. And very colorful which i always like. I just wish i could figure out how to make a personal avatar pic like that. I cant figure out how to resize to that small! Lil help? Francesca is a cool name by the way. Goes with your art style. later, JH

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FrancescaDaSacco In reply to giggling-goblin [2010-09-05 15:04:08 +0000 UTC]

Thank you ^^
I've never told my name was cool
And for my little avatar, that's easy, it's a simple animation made with Photoshop CS3.
If you're patient I can try to explain you step by step (next week I can write a short tutorial). If I've done it, everyone can do the same

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giggling-goblin In reply to DrZime [2010-08-07 04:09:26 +0000 UTC]

No problem. its a fun page.

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