Solomon Kane Story Rankings · 3:07am Dec 12th, 2021
Out of all the literary genres to be reinvigorated in the Internet age, the most fascinating one to me is pulp fiction. A genre that loomed large over the American publishing landscape from the late 1910s to the late 1940s, pulp has influenced virtually every facet of pop culture in some form of another. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman, and so many other popular characters owe their creation to the wide-spanning genre umbrella that pulp provided. Heck, even Friendship is Magic showed some pulp influence, particularly in the one-off character of the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well (and if you said “Darkwing Duck wasn’t a pulp character!”, you may want to look at the guy who influenced him).
Admittedly, this episode would've been stronger with Mare-Do-Well dual-wielding .45 automatics.
And when you talk pulp, there’s one name that will invariably come up: Robert E. Howard. Best known for his creation of Conan the Barbarian, a pulp legend in his own right, Howard created a vast amount of different pulp characters in his lifetime. Characters ranging from boxing sailor Steve Costigan to gunslinger El Borak filled the pulp magazines Howard submitted to in the 1920s and 1930s. And it is one of these characters who we are examining today: Solomon Kane.
Kane is an interesting character in both his publishing history and his actual characterization. Historically, Kane was Howard’s first big hit in regards to his fantasy characters, with Kane first appearing in a 1928 issue of Weird Tales. Kane popped up in Weird Tales for the next four years before a certain barbarian appeared in 1932 and Howard devoted the remaining four years of his life to Conan once he realized how popular the Cimmerian had become. The birth of Conan came at the expense of Kane’s own life, as Kane's last published story “Wings in the Night” likewise occurred in 1932. Despite having two stories finished with the Puritan avenger and four fragments ready to be fleshed out, Howard never returned to the character before his suicide, and left the remaining Kane stories locked away unpublished. It is perhaps the greatest indicator of Kane’s playing second fiddle to Conan that the Marvel comic Sword of Conan frequently published B-stories with Solomon Kane as the focal character.
In regards to the actual character, Kane is in many ways an opposite of Conan. Conan’s famous lustfulness for adventure and women is very much absent from Kane, who wanders the world searching to right wrongs against others and doesn’t particularly like his wayfaring nature; he would rather settle down somewhere, but feels it is his duty to wander the earth and save the defenseless rather than let himself plant any roots. He also largely avoids sensuality due to being a Puritan Christian, a quirk many of the characters find odd considering how good with a rapier and flintlock he is. This contradiction of devout Christian and propensity towards violent retribution makes Kane engaging as a character, as he frequently justifies his fights with humans and monsters alike as a holy crusade against evil that God has sent him on.
Another interesting difference between Conan and Kane is the time period. While Conan wandered a prehistoric Earth before any of the known ancient civilizations appeared, Kane wanders the known world of the late 1500s and early 1600s. Multiple historical figures like Sir Francis Drake appear as characters in the Solomon Kane poems, as well as many historical references in the stories proper. Thus, while Conan’s adventures hold little historical significance since they exist before history, Kane’s adventures are more historical fantasy, mixing in elements of 1500/1600s British and world history to the stories’ backgrounds. Indeed, some have suggested that Kane’s wandering nature is due to him being a Puritan, as this era was a time of noticeable oppression of Puritans by the British government. This may have pushed Kane to leave his homeland of Devonshire to escape the persecution and prevent the same oppression from happening upon others.
Whatever the reason for his wandering, Kane remains a very fascinating figure in both Howard’s bibliography and pulp history in general. This video by Razörfist that goes into a little more detail about Kane and his adventures of note, so I’d recommend checking that out if the character seems interesting to you. It was this video that got me into Kane and led me to purchase the complete collection of his stories (available here on Amazon; highly recommended as it features great artwork by Gary Gianni throughout). I will be doing reviews below of all the Solomon Kane stories, poems, and unfinished fragments, as well as a quick review of the Solomon Kane movie from 2009. I won’t be doing the comics Marvel and Dark Horse did for Kane because, A) there’s more of them than there are completed Howard stories, B) Many of them are just adaptations of the following stories, and C) I haven’t read most of them.
It goes without saying that there will be SPOILERS for all the works discussed here, so if you don’t want me to ruin them for you, I’d recommend checking out the stories and movie first. They’re pretty good and will probably fascinate those into sword-and-sorcery or historical fantasy in general.
So, without further ado, here are my rankings for the Solomon Kane stories, from worst to best and separated by their respective categories (Finished stories, poems, unfinished fragments, and movie):
Completed Stories
#9: The Right Hand of Doom
Taking place at an inn, Kane watches as a drunken braggart named John Redly boasts that he turned in necromancer Roger Simeon to the English authorities for gold. Problem is, Simeon had thought Redly his friend and is enraged by his betrayal. So enraged that he might just find a way to get his revenge before the hangman comes…
This story sits at the bottom of my ranking list because it commits a very grievous sin: It doesn’t really do much with Solomon Kane. Most of the story is Kane either listening to others talk or observing the black magic taking place. The only thing of note he does is impale the titular right hand of doom with his rapier, but even that comes only after Redly gets his deserved punishment. Note also that Kane had plenty of time to warn Redly (a long passage describes Kane looking at the titular hand as it sits on Redly’s windowsill), yet doesn’t shout alarm until just before the hand grasps Redly’s throat. It makes Kane come off as ineffectual and insignificant to the story. I suspect a large part of this comes from the story’s short length, which only covers seven pages in the Solomon Kane collection book. There just wasn’t much time to use Kane in the space Howard gave. This was one of two completed Solomon Kane stories Howard never got to publish, and I can see why he sat on this one. Aside from decent atmosphere and the impressively gross description of the titular hand, there is not a whole lot going for this story.
#8: Rattle of Bones
Solomon Kane and a fellow traveler named Gaston l’Armon travel through the Black Forest of Germany and arrive at the Cleft Skull Tavern at night. Suspicious of the creepy tavern-keeper, the duo explore the inn and find there is something much worse lurking in the darkness…
On the one hand, “Rattle of Bones” has the same problem “The Right Hand of Doom” has. Kane isn’t on his best game here, walking into a tavern run by an obviously shady individual and blindly trusting Gaston who he only just met. Both of these things come back to bite him and he basically lucks out of the situation by having the sorcerer’s skeleton rescue him at the last minute. But even that came because Gaston cut the skeleton’s chain, meaning Gaston and the inn-keeper basically killed each other while Kane looked on.
However, “Rattle of Bones” does a much better job at atmosphere. The inn feels very hostile and creepy, and the sorcerer’s still-living skeleton is an interesting left-curve to throw into the story. Quite a few Solomon Kane stories have no supernatural element whatsoever in them, so it’s always neat to see whether Howard will work one into the story or not. I also think “Rattle of Bones” takes the story structure of “Right Hand of Doom” and improves upon it ever so gradually. The inn is dangerous from the start, not safe and cozy like “Right Hand”, and the supernatural element comes out of left field but makes sense in context, while “Right Hand” telegraphed the supernatural shenanigans a little too obviously by mentioning Simeon was a necromancer. It also improves on the idea of a betrayed party coming back for revenge more interestingly, with the tavern-keeper’s cruelty towards his victims being the catalyst for the sorcerer’s release and vengeance even long after the sorcerer’s death. It doesn’t make the story great per se, but it does make it feel a little more substantial. Worth checking out if you want to see Howard’s greatness of writing creepy locations.
#7: Hills of the Dead
Reuniting with his African blood brother and voodoo priest N’Longa, Kane gains the power to summon N’Longa to his location via the Staff of Solomon, an ancient artifact of immense power. Kane will need it, as his venture into Darkest Africa makes him come across vampires who terrorize the local villages…
One of the weird things about Solomon Kane stories is that the strongest ones are usually when Kane is in Africa. Perhaps it is because it is the most alien place to an English Christian like Kane and the tension is naturally ramped up in an unfamiliar world. But this is also why I suspect Kane probably isn’t talked about as much as Conan, since Howard’s, shall we say, questionable attitudes towards non-Caucasians is a lot easier to see in tales featuring existing races of people. While Conan’s setting allows for more flexible interpretations of race dynamics considering they are set in a prehistorical setting before modern-day races as we think of them were fully established, stories set firmly within our history (like Kane’s) really can’t hide the attitudes the characters and Howard has toward them. This story is a pretty good example, as an African girl Solomon saves and her lover become mere vessels for N’Longa to assist Kane. The fact the girl goes as far as to ask if Kane is a god and refer to him as “master” throughout feels off by today’s standards.
Indeed, the whole story feels off for other reasons, such as N’Longa being rather overpowered and largely subsuming Kane’s role as the hero. While Kane does fight off the vampires in a cave and distracts them during the final battle, N’Longa manages to possess people and summon an entire flock of crows to devour the vampires alive. It removes a lot of the suspense the story could develop in Kane fighting a swarm of vampires and makes you wonder why N’Longa didn’t flex this power level when he first met Kane in “Red Shadows”. TV Tropes has a trope called Poorly Disguised Pilot, which is described as “an episode in which the show's primary characters take a back seat to brand new characters in order to test the waters for a separate show”, and that’s what it feels like here with N’Longa. Though this apparently didn’t work because he didn’t appear in either his own or anymore Kane stories after this. Maybe Howard also came to the realization that this character didn’t really work with such a vast power level.
That being said, the story does have a decent start and middle. Kane fighting off a lion with his musket and battling the cave vampires comes off as both exciting and creepy. The story likewise introduced the Staff of Solomon, which would become an important element of Kane’s weaponry later down the line and tie into the greater universe of Howard’s Hyborean Age. Other than that, however, the story just doesn’t reach a satisfying conclusion and leans way too hard on N’Longa to solve the problem. A better story than the previous two structurally, but with a big enough narrative issue to keep it from being halfway decent.
#6: Skulls in the Stars
On his way to the English village of Torkertown, Solomon Kane is told by a young boy to take a twisting swamp road instead of the easier road going over an open moor. Intrigued by the villager’s fears of the evil that lurks on the moor, Kane decides to investigate the cursed road himself. He soon learns that the villagers’ fears were well-founded…
This is the first Kane story in this list that I find unambiguously decent. While only two chapters long, it manages to tell a fascinating ghost story and demonstrate Solomon’s strength against supernatural enemies as well as human ones. In fact, this story plays around with this human/supernatural enemy separation that most Kane stories have and includes both, in the form of the vengeful spirit and his human murderer. The story also does an interesting thing in that Solomon’s faith and fortitude save him from the ghost, giving him the ability to harm the ghost with his fists where his sword and flintlock fail. It demonstrates exactly why Solomon’s Christian faith is a super power in its own sense and how his fanatical devotion saves him just as much as it thrusts him into danger.
The one issue I find with the story is partially due to its short length: the quick resolution. While the reveal of the murderer’s identity was set up, the quick nature of the story doesn’t really allow us to see the villain much. He’s introduced just in time to be punished by Solomon, and just feels pitiful as he’s left to his doom by Kane and the village folk. It makes sense within the terms of the story, but the ending is so straight-forward and clinical that the punishment doesn’t feel as impactful as it should. There probably could’ve been a more interesting way to show the murderer involved in the events before suddenly introducing him. But other than that, this is a good Kane story that reveals an interesting aspect of Solomon’s power and the capabilities his faith provides him in battle.
#5: The Moon of Skulls
Solomon Kane journeys into the deep jungles of Africa, desperately searching the kidnapped daughter of an acquaintance. But he will soon learn of the dark plans within a cursed land by a queen of unspeakable evil…
We’re back to Africa this time, and it’s a good one. Howard really liked writing about his characters finding lost lands on their travels, and his writing in this story shows how enthusiastic he was about this idea. The land of Negari is the typical depiction of a lost savage nation, with the natives worshipping a dark god and wanting to sacrifice the girl Solomon is trying to save. Interestingly, the story remains vague on why Solomon journeys to Negari for the first half of the story, which gives a certain amount of mystery as to why he’d want to come there. The main villain of the piece, Nakari the Vampire Queen, is a solid villain. While the rest of the Negari people come off as the stereotypical African savages Howard often depicted, Nakari has a little more going for her. She has the typical cruelty of a Howard villain, and there’s an interesting element to her wanting Solomon to be her consort when she sees his ability to cause bloodshed (which she finds VERY attractive). She similarly came to power by overthrowing the previous Atlantean-descended rulers of Negari, showing she has a cunning about her that the best Kane villains had. The ending is also great, showing Solomon using his mind to defeat Nakari’s cult by destroying an important artifact of their worship, rather than trying to fight the throng head-on. It's a refreshing change from his typical "Leeroy Jenkins" approach many other stories depict him using.
The one main drawback of the story comes in the fourth chapter. Kane manages to escape his prison cell and comes across an old man who aided the dynasty that came before Nakari’s. As he dies, he gives a long speech about the history of his race and the background of the entire Negari civilization. It’s interesting in parts and would fascinate those who like tracking Howard’s mythology, but overall, it fills up a lot more time than necessary and just kind of grinds the story to a halt. Particularly grating in that Kane is trying to save the girl from being sacrificed to Negari’s god, which he knows is coming up soon, yet he sits here and listens to the whole history of this place like he’s just sitting in a classroom. Had this part been edited down a bit, I think the story would be a little higher on my list. Everything else about it is superb and makes the story definitely one of the first Solomon Kane stories you should read if you haven’t already.
#4: The Footfalls Within
Coming across the dead body of an African woman, Solomon Kane vows to track her murderers down and bring them to justice. He soon learns that the killers are Arabian slave traders who hold the rest of the tribe in their possession. But both Kane and the slavers will soon learn that they are not the only dangerous ones in the jungle…
I like how this story points out Solomon’s most obvious flaw (recklessly throwing himself into situations where his vengefulness overcomes him) and shows how that can blow up in his face. Kane spends most of the story in the captivity of the Arabian slave-traders because he decides to attack them head on despite being hopelessly outnumbered. Previous stories showed him overcoming impossible odds through his willpower alone, so it makes sense that he might get a little full of himself and overestimate his abilities by now (this was the second-to-last story published in Howard’s lifetime). I also like how the story does the same supernatural/human enemy shift that “Skulls in the Stars” did, only reversing the dynamic by starting with the human enemy (the slavers) before moving onto a supernatural enemy (the red Horror). The fact the Horror’s release occurs only because of the slavers’ greed and disrespect for other civilizations makes the punishment feel a little more satisfying than “Skulls in the Stars”, since we get to see several pages of the slavers’ cruelty and their downfall being more directly tied to their actions. And while there is still some of that Howardian insensitivity towards Africans (they offer to make Solomon a king upon seeing his bravery), this one portrays them unambiguously as the victims of the Arabian slavers and deserving of rescue from such a cursed fate.
Speaking of slavery, this story reveals an interesting aspect of Solomon’s history in that he’s revealed to have been enslaved by Muslims at an earlier point in his life and why he takes the enslavement of the Africans so harshly. It’s an interesting tidbit of history that not only brings attention to the less talked about White Slave Trade done by the Barbary Coast in the 15th to 19th centuries, but also shows a probable reason for Kane’s desire to fight evil. In fact, this focus on the slave trade makes the story the most well-aged in my opinion, as human trafficking is still very much a problem in the world. Aside from the Horror, the story is fairly grounded in its examination of the dehumanizing effects of slavery. Speaking of the Horror, this is another example of the friendly interplay Howard and HP Lovecraft had with one another, as the Horror is clearly influenced by Lovecraft’s infamous monsters. Indescribable apart from being a blood-red mist, the text makes it clear it is only Kane’s fanatical devotion to God that immunizes him from the fear-ridden madness the slavers fall to. Insanity overcoming insanity in a sense, which is a neat way of overcoming Lovecraft’s otherwise unbeatable creatures. It also allows Solomon to use the Staff of Solomon, which is given a deeper history by one of the slavers in a much more natural way than in “Moon of Skulls” and is the key to Solomon overcoming the Horror due to its mystical properties from ancient times.
This is the part of the list where the stories stop having many obvious problems and become straight-up bangers. Pretty much every critique from here on out will be minor nitpicks, and “Footfalls” is no exception. The only real issue I have with the story is the fact it feels like Solomon falls into the clutches of the slavers a little too easily. While I can buy his rage overcoming his good sense, I’m not sure he’d be so reckless as to rush out into the open the way he does. It doesn’t ruin the story by any means, but it’s something that I feel could’ve been done a little better. Otherwise, a fine story and one you should check out.
#3: Red Shadows
Solomon comes across a dying girl in France who tells of a vicious criminal named Le Loup who violated and stabbed her. Vowing vengeance, Kane tracks down Le Loup’s gang and slays them one by one. Even when their leader flees for Africa, Kane sets out to perform his oath…
It’s easy to see why the readers of Weird Tales got so into Solomon Kane, because this is one of the best stories Howard did with the character. Not only is it a great introduction to Kane and his philosophy of retribution for the wronged, but it also features a great villain in Le Loup. He’s as crafty as Solomon is and has the same ability in swordsmanship to give him a good fight. The fact he’s so baffled by Solomon’s drive to right a wrong for somebody he didn’t even know makes him a great foil and shows how much of a heartless bastard he truly is. Having the second half of the story take place in Africa is another neat choice, as it forces Solomon and Le Loup to play politics for the tribe that finds them. N’Longa first appears here and his magic is much more restrained, which gives him enough power to help Solomon without becoming too overpowered like in “Hills of the Dead”. The scene where he brings a corpse to life to kill his rival is both creepy and exciting. The story is a pretty straight-forward revenge tale, ending right when the evil are dead and Solomon stalks off to his next adventure, but this simplicity makes the story flow really well and not grow tiresome at any point.
The only nitpick I’d have for the story is the final few pages where a gorilla kills Gulka. It’s a fitting punishment for the man dubbed “the Gorilla Slayer” and there’s an interesting subtext that the gorilla might be the mate of the female gorilla Gulka slays earlier in the story, but it does seem like their battle goes on for a little too long. The fact it comes right after Kane has killed Le Loup, the main instigator of this whole conflict, sort of makes it feel like the story is spinning its wheels and trying to get in that one last bit of excitement before the curtain falls. But this is a minor gripe. The rest of the story is a fantastic introduction and shows exactly why Kane became a hit for the Weird Tales magazine.
#2: The Blue Flame of Vengeance (or Blades of the Brotherhood)
Jack Hollinster lies in a feud with local na’er-do-well Sir Rupert in their small English village by the seaside. But when he finds a black-garbed traveler by the name of Solomon Kane investigating their shoreline, he learns that vengeance has come to his hamlet…
As the synopsis above hints, this story largely takes place from the point of view of a new character, Jack Hollinster, rather than Solomon Kane. This makes the story feel unique from the others and presents Kane in a mysterious manner via the story’s perspective rather than just his actions. It’s also interesting how Howard mixes in two different stories (Hollinster’s feud with Rupert and Kane’s search for the pirate called the Fishhawk) in a way that doesn’t feel bloated or overdone. It manages to depict a situation where the victims of evil are as much as characters as Kane and the villains are, showing exactly why Kane’s battles are so needed. This makes the ending somewhat depressing when Kane’s fellow Englishmen want him to stay with them, but he insists he must keep to his wandering ways and disappears once more. This was the second story Howard didn’t release when he was alive, which is a pity because it manages to be a great swashbuckling tale. While there is an “official” final story we’ll get to in the poem section, this one would have been a fine conclusion in its own sense.
Again, any flaws in this story are relatively minor. The fight between Kane and the Fishhawk feels like it goes on for a little too long, and the fact Kane defeats Sir Rupert instead of Jack himself robs Jack of the vindication he seemed to be seeking throughout the story. But the story is still one of the greats and worth checking out.
#1: Wings in the Night
Fleeing a group of cannibals he has offended, Solomon stumbles across a valley populated by fiendish flying creatures who terrorize the natives. The natives decide to keep Solomon around to fight the beasts off, but Solomon soon learns that these winged beasts are not idle in their own plots for revenge…
One of the main reasons this story works so well is the story pacing. Every single chapter leads into the next with a natural development, with twists building upon twists until the bloody ending. Kane’s initial arrival builds up his conflict to be with the cannibals chasing him, but they are killed by the winged menace in the first chapter. Kane starts the story wanting revenge for the locals for sacrificing a man to the winged beasts, only to become their ally once he learns of the necessity of sacrifice to keep their tribe alive. There’s a constant sense of changing priorities for each new chapter, which made it hard to know what direction the story would go. I also really like stories like this that have the hero stumbling into the situation rather than them openly searching for it (like how most of the Kane stories feature). These kinds of stories give the hero more interesting perspectives on the situation than they do for situations they start out having a vested interest in. The winged beasts are a great enemy too, being less supernatural beings and more forgotten beasts of the Hyborean Age who managed to survive into then-modern times. Their evil actions, however, make sure you don’t feel too bad for them once they get what’s coming to them.
But perhaps the best aspect of this story is the character development it gives Solomon Kane. The story initially sets up Kane perhaps having to change his perspective on his wandering and stay in the village to have his own life. Yet this is subverted when the winged beasts simply arrive and slaughter everybody but Kane, who essentially goes mad and commits a months-long guerrilla campaign against the winged beasts. He doesn’t invoke the name of God in his revenge quest like the other times; he’s just so genuinely angry and crazy that he wants to kill every winged creature. It’s only when he finally gets his revenge upon the winged beasts that he falls back into his faith and ponders on the idea of godless acts being tied into God’s will nevertheless. It's an interesting note to leave the story on, leaving one to wonder if Solomon’s devotion to God is necessary to keep him in check and make sure his tendencies toward violent retribution doesn’t push itself onto undeserving targets.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this story. Everything is put exactly where it should be. If you only read one Solomon Kane story, it should be this one.
Poems
I’m going to be pretty short and sweet in my reviews of these poems, because there’s not much to say about them. Only one was released in Howard’s lifetime (“Homecoming”), with the other two sitting in storage until his estate released them in the 1960s. They thus are considered kind of side-stories more than fully developed tales. Like the stories, they are listed from weakest to strongest.
- The Return of Sir Richard Grenville: Solomon Kane fights alongside the ghost of Sir Richard Grenville when he is ambushed. Unlike a lot of the other Kane stories that only hinted at historical events and individuals, this poem explicitly features the historical figure of Sir Richard Grenville, a British explorer and fighter who died during the Anglo-Spanish War of the late 1500s. This poem denotes him as a former commanding officer of Kane in the English Navy. While the plot is interesting, it’s shortchanged by its shortness. Grenville only wakes Kane up, then peaces out when the threat is finished, allowing for little character interaction. There’s just not much to this one outside of the interesting historical connection, and even that’s probably not terribly interesting to most people.
- Solomon Kane’s Homecoming: Solomon Kane returns to his hometown, inquiring about the fate of his past love and reminiscing on his previous adventures. Generally considered to be the final Solomon Kane story, this is a poem that pretty much serves as the coda to Kane’s adventures while still leaving the door open for future adventures. You can tell it was Howard’s way of closing the book on the character, since Conan was taking up all his time and he probably realized he wasn’t going to be returning to the character. This gives the piece a nice solemn tone that grows dour once Kane learns the fate of his past love and thinks back on his previous struggles. However, there is a slight drawback in that the poem comes off kind of like a clip show of previous adventures than a focused story. Probably not the best ending Kane could have had but satisfying regardless.
- The One Black Stain: Solomon Kane witnesses Sir Francis Drake’s execution of Thomas Doughty on the shores of Patagonia. This poem is the strongest of the trio due to the fact it involves an actual character moment for Kane. Enraged at Doughty’s unfair trial, he briefly considers revenge against Drake before departing. Drake himself comes off as an interesting antagonist, insisting Doughty must be killed but later doubting himself as he sees the degree of Kane’s wrath. He almost seems saddened when Kane decides to spare him and force him to live with the murder he has committed. The poem manages to be an interesting story and characters in of itself, which is what makes it the strongest of the poems in my opinion.
Fragments
As I mentioned earlier, Howard committed suicide in 1936 and left a lot of unfinished work behind. This included a quartet of Solomon Kane fragments that he’d likely written in 1932, but abandoned once Conan came on the scene. I’ve decided to rank them here in regard to best written and best story potential, since I figure it’s only fair to judge them on their likely quality had they been completed by judging the overall quality of the completed text. If you want to see other artists’ interpretations for how these stories would have gone, I recommend checking out the Dark Horse comic stories. For now, let’s look at them purely through their completed elements, again from weakest to strongest.
- Death’s Black Riders: A dark rider on a black steed passes Solomon Kane on a lonely road. This one is the lowest because it’s the shortest and really doesn’t show any decent set-up. There are only a few paragraphs, and all they show is Kane being surprised by this mysterious rider. Perhaps a halfway decent ghost story could be spun out of it, but there’s not enough here to guarantee anything interesting.
- The Children of Asshur: Kane discovers an ancient race of people from Assyria who have created a new kingdom in Africa and fights them to get his weapons back. This was the most completed fragment of the bunch, stretching three chapters long and giving an in-depth explanation of the Asshur civilization. But much like “The Moon of Skulls”, a lot of the story focuses on explaining this civilization, with much of the story having Kane captured and unable to do much. It thus comes off more like an explain-a-thon for another one of Howard’s lost civilizations instead of an engaging story. There might’ve been a good tale here and the ending of Kane finding favor with an Asshur nobleman holds an interesting twist in the story, but otherwise the story that exists spins its wheels and doesn’t leave much of an interesting building block for the future chapters.
- Hawk of Basti: Solomon comes across Jeremy Hawk, an old acquaintance who became king of an isolated African tribe and enlists Kane in helping get his kingship back after he’s overthrown. This story has the interesting hook of a figure from Solomon’s past popping back up and putting him on course for adventure. There’s also an interesting dynamic in how Hawk and Solomon use their firearms as a way of impressing the natives who have never seen gunpowder before. About as problematic as any other Howard tale towards the African natives, but this one had a promising set-up and likely could’ve turned into an interesting story.
- The Castle of the Devil: Solomon Kane and mercenary John Silent come across a boy hanged dead outside the castle of a corrupt baron. Howard seemed to really like pairing Kane with contrasting characters, seeing how many Kane stories feature a companion whom Kane interacts with. John Silent proves to be an interesting one despite his limited appearance, basically starting off uncaring toward the boy before deciding to join in on Solomon’s adventure for the sheer fun of it. There was an interesting repertoire between him and Solomon, as well as an interesting set-up for the baron as an antagonist. This is most certainly the fragment with the best possible set-up.
The Movie
Finally, I shall give my thoughts on the 2009 Solomon Kane film, starring James Purefoy as the titular Puritan. The film is meant to be more of an origin story than an adaptation of any of the Kane stories, so there’s a deeper focus on Solomon’s background and what drove him to his wandering ways. This has positives and negatives on a story level. The pluses are that there was more freedom on the part of the filmmakers to insert a bunch of different fantasy elements and monsters, from witches to goblins to fire demons and so on. The story also gives an intriguing background to Kane that explains how his attraction to Puritanism came about and why he wanders the earth. James Purefoy does a great job showing both the hardened warrior and the regretful sinner Kane is meant to be, which in turn makes the movie feel even more powerful in both the action scenes and quieter character moments.
The negatives of the film come mostly from the fact that it’s an origin story and suffers the same narrative limitations all origin stories have. We’ve got to see all the emotional baggage Kane held, from his relationship with his family to the Puritans who took him in, and a lot of it plays out as the film trying to explain every aspect of Kane’s behaviors from the stories. It robs Kane of a lot of his mystique and makes too many of his future adventures seem like extensions of his past traumas instead of the results of his own independent quirks. The movie also gives Kane a much darker past in that he was a pirate instead of an English naval officer, which feels like an unnecessary heightening of Kane’s evil. He verbally admits feeling bad for his past actions in the Navy in the stories, so it feels more like the filmmakers were heightening his evil just to hammer home the need for his redemption. I don’t think anybody would doubt people do bad things during a war, pirate or not, so this addition feels a little cheap in its inclusion.
Aside from the limitations of being an origin story, everything else about the movie is great. The costume and set design really make it feel like the early 17th century, with a consistently darksome look that aids the tone of the dour storyline. The actors are likewise all fantastic, where even actors with limited screentime like Max von Sydow and Jason Flemyng give their all. The music by Klaus Badelt did a great job at setting the mood for each scene, and the creature designs by Patrick Tatopoulos manage to be very creepy through largely practical effects. The bits of CGI in the film are noticeable, but they sort of add to the charm of the flick and heighten the alienness of these demonic beings. If you want to check out Kane but would rather watch something rather than read something, this would be a pretty good entry-point to the character for you. An all-around solid movie that is comparable with the other famous Howard adaptation, the 1982 Conan the Barbarian film. In fact, this movie and Conan would make for a pretty good double feature if you wanted to have a Howard movie night (sorry, Kull the Conquerer!).
So that is my final say on the stories of Solomon Kane. He’s a very fascinating character and one that I think deserves a little more attention. Hopefully he’ll get more traction as the years go by; I’ve heard of many RPGs focusing on him coming out in recent years, and there’s been rumors of a Solomon Kane show being developed jointly with a Conan series. In the meantime, I’ll likely continue finding different Kane media I haven’t experienced, as well as writing a fanfic or two about him on this site. I hope my summaries here have interested those who have never experienced the character, and I hope my rankings haven’t enraged anybody who does know about the character. Thank you, and sin not!
When I first saw this blog title, I said to myself "well, the one with the harpies where Kane goes nuts is the best one." And we agree!
Those DelRey collections of Howard stories are really stellar-- I picked up the Kane one some time ago, and I'm rather glad I did. Never got around to seeing the live action movie, however. Though it's kinda funny to think about what might've happened if this movie was, uh, good, and the John Carter movie also got some momentum going for it, and we got a flood of pulp adaptations or something.
On another random sidenote, apparently one of the characters in Blind Guardian's rock opera/fantasy novel Legacy of the Dark Lands is supposed to be Kane's daughter? Though she's also apparently a satanist who's lovers with a Persian sorceress or something? I, er, haven't read it, but a friend of mine says it's fairly 'edgy teenager' ish.
Still, I find Kane kind of interesting when compared to some of Howard's other protagonists. As mentioned before, he's not as lusty as, say, Conan. In fact, I kind of see a chronological/maturing development in personality from Kull to Conan to Howard. Kull is almost adolescent in his "ew girls" attitudes, where Conan chases skirts and parties hard, and finally Kane is more of a father figure and vengeful protector. I'm not particularly sure what to make of such a reading of the stories, but hey. It's fun to nerd out over, at least.
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Yeah, "Wings in the Night" is one of the best Howard stories period. And regarding the Solomon Kane and John Carter movies, I noticed that Hollywood has a weird tendency to adapt pulp characters around the same time a successful comic book film came out. For instance, after Batman 1989, they did The Phantom, The Shadow, and The Rocketeer in the 1990s. Then in the late 2000s, when the MCU was starting out, they did Solomon Kane and John Carter. The thing that really killed both movies was the advertising and distribution. Disney sunk so much money into John Carter's production that they pretty much slept on advertising it, which wasn't good since it was an old property and wasn't even called by its more recognizable title, John Carter of Mars. Solomon Kane was screwed because they got snapped up by the Weinstein Company, who, aside from having a certain infamous founder, also had a history of giving their releases really crummy schedules. In Kane's case, they only gave it a limited release 3 years after it had been released in Europe. I only learned it existed when I actually looked up Solomon Kane and saw the blurb about the movie.
Yeah, that sounds pretty "edgy teenager". I think Kane's faith is the most fascinating aspect of him, so making his progeny a Satanist feels like a slap in the face. I might read/listen to it out of curiosity, but I'm not given high hopes by your description.
Also, you just reminded me of a (likely unintentional) reference to Kane: the main villain in the John Carpenter film In the Mouth of Madness, who is called Sutter Cane. While the name is meant to be a play on Stephen King and his work is clearly inspired by HP Lovecraft, the well-known interplay between Lovecraft and Howard makes me wonder if Carpenter subconsciously weaved Kane into the story. The fact Cane largely resides in a church is also an interesting touch.
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As I understand it, the "Kane's daughter" thing is just in the novel-- the album itself is mostly bombastic power-metal style orchestra stuff. Which is pretty fun, if you dig Blind Guardian.
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Interesting. I'll check out the music at least.