Edited by Leo Grin | Illustrated by Jae Woo Kim
40 pages

This issue was printed in two editions. The deluxe edition, numbered 1–75, uses a black linen cover with foil-stamped emeraude text. The limited edition, numbered 76–225, uses an emeraude cover with solid black text.

DELUXE COPIES DESTROYED: 0

LIMITED COPIES DESTROYED: 42

Features Part Two of our comprehensive coverage of the new five-volume set of Howard titles from the Bison Books imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, an article about the current collecting prices for Howard boxing pulps, a Clark Ashton Smith-inspired poem from Donald Sidney-Fryer, another jam-packed Lion’s Den, and more.

EXCERPTS:

Such fights began to mold and define my view of the game. Colorful personalities. Unfettered brutality. Blood. Guts. Suicide. I gained great respect for truly tough boxers, even those that earned little or no success. Kim’s death instilled in me a healthy respect — a sense of awe — at what was actually transpiring inside those ropes. And some perverse sense of mystery lurked in me, desiring to experience it for myself. Little did I know that, decades earlier, a young man in Cross Plains, Texas had undergone the same transformation, falling prey to the same obsessions.

— from “Born to Edit Boxing Stories” by Chris Gruber

Then I discovered another wrinkle in the mix: it turned out that there were two different typescripts for “The Road of the Eagles,” and the one Glenn had sent me was not the one that had been used for the earlier publication as “The Way of the Swords.” The copy I received had extensive editorial markings, very similar to those made by Farnsworth Wright on other typescripts I’ve seen, suggesting that it was the version sent to, and accepted by, The Magic Carpet Magazine during Howard’s lifetime — the magazine ended up folding before the story could appear. Therefore, the version published as “The Way of the Swords” in The Road of Azrael was likely an earlier draft Howard never intended to have published. At any rate, the Bison Books appearance will be a version of the story that readers have not seen before, hopefully one that is eventually proven to be definitive.

— from “Frontiers of Imagination” by Rusty Burke

The fans are just as interested and eager for the previously marginalized stories of Sailor Steve Costigan and his more serious brother, Iron Mike Costigan, as they are with Conan’s original pulp appearances. Consider as well that despite there being two (!) different collections of these boxing stories currently available, folks are still clamoring for the original pulps.

— from “Fight Stories Feeding Frenzy” by [redacted]

Entombed within, she too had changed to dust,
With all her lovers, but where then had flown
The passion, where the rage, and where the lust?
Within, all now lay mute — no lover’s moan,

— from “Demeure Exotique” by Donald Sidney-Fryer

I keep seeing a possible Hyborian Fiddler on the Roof arising from some Sholom Aleichem-type stories, perhaps set in the Aquilonian province of Gunderland. Hit song: “If I were a swordsman!” or “Soothsayer, soothsayer, make me a necrophiliac! Find me a corpse! Make me. . .” Well anyway, you get the idea.

— Steve Harbin, writing in The Lion’s Den