Customer Reviews

Solomon Kane: Castle of the Devil v. 1

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I think of hard-to-like heroes that I still root for, the first one that comes to my mind is Robert E. Howard's adventuring Puritan, Solomon Kane. The man dresses in black and can be an absolute downer with his puritanical ways, but when it comes to fighting men and the supernatural, few stand taller, swing a sword with more authority, or shoot straighter than Solomon Kane.

Because he died at such a young age, Howard didn't get to leave as sizeable a legacy of Solomon Kane stories as fans might have wanted. In the last nearly 80 years since his debut, other authors have penned more Solomon Kane tales than Howard. Nearly all of them have been in comic form.

That venue continues in the latest graphic novel release from Dark Horse Comics: Solomon Kane: The Castle of the Devil. Hellboy-creator Mike Mignola drew the awesome cover which immediately drew my eye, and interior artist Mario Guevara kept up the tone throughout the story written by Scott Allie.

The graphic novel collects the first five issues of the new Dark Horse comics series, and I'm glad I read them in the collected edition. I couldn't imagine having to get and read this story piecemeal month by month. In fact, the book would be better read late at night when the house is quiet, or on a camping trip after everyone else has gone to bed. The atmosphere then would be a perfect reading experience.

The book opens with an excellent action sequence that shows off Solomon Kane's deadly skills to their fullest, as well as the supernatural that flavors most of the stories. Guevara's art is fantastic, and Allie shows good sense in staying off the page and letting his artist carry the weight at this point. Then Allie comes back with brilliant dialogue that transports readers back hundreds of years. You just can't lose with a narrative hook that involves two wanderers on the trail to danger and adventure.

At the castle, the mystery really deepens, and this is when the author's storytelling skill really shines. As I turned the pages, I could see the movie take shape in my head, guided by the gentle nudge of the panels showing the action and the characters. By that time, I knew I was hooked, and that if I'd been having to wait those months in between I would have been greatly frustrated.

This graphic novel reads like a novel as the characters and events progress. Truths and dangers emerge, constantly twisting and changing. It's really good and I don't think many will sit down without reading it all in one go. But the story and characters are dense enough that you need to allow some time for the experience. As I stated, this reads like a novel, not a flipbook to adventure.

The action and adventure really hits its stride in the final pages of the book. By midway I knew I wasn't going to put it down, but then when all the pieces fell into place and I knew who and what Solomon Kane was battling, I was hooked.

Solomon Kane: The Castle of the Devil is a wonderful reading experience for those fantasy lovers who want a trip on the dark side, and for those comics readers that want more meat and potatoes with their stories. Solomon Kane is a great hero that you'll probably always hold at arms length, but he's wonderful to watch in action.

This is a collection of 5 issues (hopefully with more on the way) of the Solomon Kane series from Dark Horse.

The adaptation is from a small fragment by ol' Two Gun Bob, but the author's take on the remainder is pretty awesome, including the sorcery to become a werewolf by donning a wolf's skin. The art and coloring is lushly colored and has a semi-gothic feel. Solomon looks like many artists' renderings of the character (IE, Pilgrim-ish), and he maintains that puritan frown and dour look, right down to his pointy chin. The art, in color, is beautiful and fairly gore-ful, as our righteous avenger impales and causes grievous bodily injury (at one point even swiping a face off with his blade).

The story has some pretty sweet vampire-demons, and the only thing I can really frown upon is the way they use those translation brackets <like this>* [*translated from German], and sometimes translating and sometimes having the german speech there, but I assume this is because of whispered secrets between the Count and his wife, and to add a slight authentic feel. Still, without the translations, it's a fun romp in the world of Kane, and I think it's pretty cool to see a hero who gets offered the lady, and him slap her away as a harlot (I mean, he is a God fearing man and all). Kane gets offended at swearing by God and in the devil's names quite a few times in this story, which kind of made me grin since characters aren't that shockingly Christian these days.

I didn't have any problem with the pacing of the story, but it could have perhaps been condensed into 4 issues instead of 5 with some minor eliminations, but I enjoyed it more than other stories I was reading at the time.

I didn't expect much reading some of the other reviews here but was very pleasantly surprised. The art is terrific and the writing solid, some of the best art you will see in comics is in this book. I read it 6 times straight over a few days.
This hopefully will be a long running series.

Dark Horse presents the first series of Solomon Kane stories in a beautiful volume with a retro 60's cover resembling the pulpy paperbacks of the era, loaded with sketches as well as a short story form the DHP website.

Solomon Kane is one of Robert E Howard's more interesting characters and he is worthy of more fan attention and wider recognition, and I hope with Dark Horse's new series, he gets just that.

The art by Mario Guevara is excellent. Though sketchy and rough in appearance, he has a very sure hand and a good eye for dynamic figures and locations as well as setting a scene. He draws the creatures with enough ambiguity to keep them mysterious throughout the story, which serves to keep an element of scariness about them. Out of Dark Horse's three Robert E Howard relaunches (the others being Conan and Kull), this series is currently the best drawn of the lot, especially with the slump in quality on the current volumes of Conan.

The story by Scott Allie on the other hand is overlong and lacks a sense of fun. The middle part of the story sags badly as Allie spends too much of the story developing character (which is fine) only to do nothing with them later (not so fine). John Silent was a bit of a snore, and the Mahasti the Baroness, a Persian trophy wife, is portrayed stereotypically as someone fleeing the mistreatment of the Muslim world towards women, even though Muslim women during that period enjoyed far more rights and freedoms than they do today, and certainly more so than the women of Europe during the period in which this tale is set (FYI Mr. Allie; Persia is not a part of Arabia, or a part of the Holy land, which is historical Palestine).

Kane himself is quite out of character too. His drive to confront the Baron in the first chapter, from Howard's fragment, does not last when Allie takes the reigns as writer. Our hero spends too much time pondering whether the Baron (the devil of the title) is a righteous or evil man before getting off his butt and into action mode. He also takes no initiative in solving the mystery he came to the Castle to investigate, but instead enjoys the Baron's company even though something is so obviously wrong.

Howard's fragment only covers part of the first chapter of this story (about 4 pages), so Allie had an open playing field to make an exiting swashbuckling tale of horror in the tradition of REH, instead the pace of the story and blandness of the supporting characters lets us down a bit. I will keep reading though, and I hope we will see some better, surer writing next time.

I have yet to read any original SK stories (I will eventually though) but I have read some original Conan stories and from what I've read this graphic novel nails the mood and style of Howard's stories. The story was interesting and well written, it had the pace of a Howard story. I enjoyed the art quite a bit as well. My only complaint about the art is that fact that it's colors over pencils with no inks. I personally don't care for that process since it makes some blacks look grey and I enjoy seeing the solid black make all the other colors pop. Outside of that one minor complaint I enjoyed it enough to want to pick up the next volume.

Unlike Conan, another Robert E. Howard character, Solomon Kane is lean and mean. He wields a sword against the Lord's enemies -- vengeance is he!

The Castle of the Devil is a great trade paperback graphic novel. Looking at the cover, designed like the old Gold Key comics of the sixties, the story starts out with a boy hanging from a gallows.

Kane cuts the kid down and finds out through another wanderer that the land belongs to the Baron of the castle. The Baron and his sexy Persian wife are more than they seem. You read this and see that Kane is beginning to trust the Baron and finds to his dismay that he should not have done that!

Other reviewers discuss the story just fine. I want to mention the art. The art of Mario Guevara is pretty good. The guts spill out and the intestines from horses are grim. Yet the gore is not overly done. His style reminds me a lot of the old Joe Kubert comics.

The book also comes with several pages of sketch art and how the comic book developed. Final story is a lot shorter, "The Nightcomers." It's a supernatural story that has an "OK" ending, not nearly as exciting as the first, thus the loss of one star.

Check out the original books!

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane
Solomon Kane: The Complete Tales (Trilogus Classics)

Comics have come a long way since I was a kid. I feel like Robert Howard himself would be proud of this book. The writing and the art are both very good, as is the overall atmosphere and rhythm of the story. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Robert E. Howard, comics, or both.

"Based on the character created by Robert E. Howard." Also adapted from one of his stories. I wish I could know for a certainty where Howard ends and Allie begins. I know enough about Howard to suspect that he is responsible for the excellent narration and the complex and exciting plot.

Solomon Kane is a Puritan warrior whose believes his wanderings through sixteenth century Europe are guided by God. Since I am describing a Puritan with a sword, you might be very interested in knowing what he is being guided to do. Well, I will let him explain it: "It has fallen upon me, now and again in my sojourns through the world, to ease various evil men of their lives." I suspect him of a bloody heresy, works-righteousness, very un-Protestant. In this tale, his road leads to an untrustworthy friend, a baron who displays much piety but hangs children, and his Muslim wife who would do anything to escape him.

The most striking thing about the artwork is the coloring. It is not the vivid hues I've come to expect from the other Dark Horse series that I've seen. The colorist Dave Stewart has muted them, as if this was taking place in an autumnal world. He makes all of the characters' faces extremely pale. Kane often looks like an a revenant. John Silent, if looked at from the right angle, seems to have a skull for a head. I'll admit that this is memorable in itself, if not at all to my taste, but I couldn't help noticing that it tended to show up the weakness in some of the drawing, especially in John Silent's face, who too often has a lifeless doll-like appearance, something you would expect from an untalented art student. I was irritated enough to take away one star.

I was very excited to see a new Solomon Kane comic series being produced by Dark Horse, but found the actual comics to be something of a disappointment. As other reviewers here have said, Scott Allie tries hard but is simply unable to stretch this story out over five issues. The result is a storyline that feels somehow both too short (in that very little happens) and too long (in that it takes five issues for very little to happen).

I hope this series sold acceptably well, because I'd hate to see it kill the possibility of more (and better) Kane adaptations in the future. But, in all honesty, I cannot recommend this except to the die-hard Kane fans out there.

Never heard of Solomon Kane before, but this book has made me a fan of Robert E Howard's other "bad-ass"....if you are a fan of Conan's adventures, you'll enjoy the Puritan in this story....no remorse, no regrets is the way of Kane.