Sometimes people critique Black Gate by looking over the site, noting our focus on books and magazines, and proclaiming us “books snobs.”

That’s not true at all, I argue calmly. Look — you know what the most popular article on the Black Gate website was just last month? It was Scott Taylor’s Art of the Genre post, “The Top 10 Dragon Magazine Covers of the 1970s & 80s.”

You see? We’re not merely book snobs. We’re also art snobs.

This is Scott’s second month at the top of the charts — back in September, he claimed the top spot with his article on the Top 10 TSR Cover Paintings of All Time, a nostalgic look at the finest artwork from the Golden Age of roleplaying. Scott certainly knows his stuff when it comes to fantasy art — and our readers love him for it.

The next few articles at the top of the charts don’t do much to help my thesis that we’re not book snobs, however. The #2 article for the month of October was M. Harold Page’s “Four Books on Historical European Martial Arts.” Hard to argue that you’re not just all about books, when your most popular posts are all about books.

The #3 article for the month was my look at The Fantasy Roots of Fan Fiction, an argument that the modern fan fiction phenomenon grew largely out of the tradition of the pastiche novel, and especially the long-running success of the Conan pastiche, and the success of writers like Lin Carter, who wrote pastiches for most of his career.

#4 on the list was “Collecting Lovecraft, Part II,” a look at some of the most collectible Lovecraft paperbacks on the market. And rounding out the Top Five was Erin Evans’s guest post, “Crossing the Threshold: Making Ultra-Long Fiction Work For You.”

After the list of top articles for October, I’ve also broken out the most popular blog categories for the month.

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in October were:

1. Art of the Genre: The Top 10 Dragon Magazine Covers of the 1970s & 80s
2. Four Books on Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA)
3. The Fantasy Roots of Fan Fiction
4. Collecting Lovecraft, Part II
5. Crossing the Threshold: Making Ultra-Long Fiction Work For You
6. Art of the Genre: Photographs from a Long Lost Lake Geneva
7. Why Did I Say That? Or, The Perils of Writing a Series
8. One Shot, One Story: Clark Ashton Smith
9. Fanfiction and Me
10. The Dungeons (and Dragons) of My Life, Part One

     

11. The Top 20 Black Gate Fiction Posts in September
12. New Animated Series About a Teen Aboriginal Superhero from Creator Jay Odjick
13. Medieval Arms and Armor in World War One
14. The End of an Era: The Death of Saturday Morning Cartoons
15. Frayling Tackles his own Yellow Peril
16. Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition Available for Pre-Order
17. Art of the Genre: Roger Dean, Asia, and Finding Myself in ’82
18. Vintage Treasures: Down to a Sunless Sea by Lin Carter
19. Art of the Genre: The Artistic Mystery of The Temple of Elemental Evil and the Turmoil of 1985 TSR
20. Art of the Genre: A Review of the 5E Monster Manual and its Place in D&D Product History

     

21. Vintage Treasures: Silverglass by J.F. Rivkin
22. Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952: A Retro-Review
23. The Siege of Namur 1914: A Wakeup Call to Modern Warfare
24. The Books of Blood, Captain Blood
25. Vintage Treasures: The Gods Hate Kansas by Joseph Millard
26. The Monsters of Golarion: Monster Codex for Pathfinder
27. Art of the Genre: Robotech Anime, RPG, Novels, Comics, Toys, Video Games, and Soundtrack, oh my!
28. On the Road to Khurdisan: Brak the Barbarian by John Jakes
29. Selling Short Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Fiction, Part I
30. Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Doom that Came to Sarnath by H. P. Lovecraft

     

31. Renner & Quist at Their Very Best
32. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The First Great Holmes (Gillette)
33. Goth Chick News New Horror: The Boy Who Drew Monsters
34. The Savage Influence of Doc Savage
35. Re-reading Michael Moorcock’s The History of The Runestaff: What I Missed the First Time Around
36. Vintage Treasures: The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs
37. Self-Published Book Review: Brush with Darkness by Jamie Maltman
38. Win a Copy of The Madness of Cthulhu, edited by S.T. Joshi
39. The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September
40. World War One: An International, Multiracial Conflict

     

41. Fantasy Scroll Magazine 3 Now Available
42. NaNoWriMo: How to “Pants” Through Your Novel like a Rampaging Panzer Division in 1940 France (and Why You Should)
43. September Short Story Roundup
44. Robert Jackson Bennett and Chris Pratt: Separated at Birth?
45. Goth Chick News: Vlad Tepes Does Time
46. New Treasures: The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard
47. Film Review: The Conjuring (Hallowe’en Post # 1)
48. Take to the Skies in Iron Battleships in Catalyst Game Labs’ Leviathans
49. Discover the Best Short Fiction of the Year with Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2014
50. Firefly Friday – Firefly: The Game

The top categories last month were:

1. New Treasures
2. Fiction
3. Blog Entry
4. Books
5. Vintage Treasures
6. Editors Blog
7. Reviews
8. Art of the Genre
9. Game Reviews
10. Interviews
11. Art
12. Comics
13. BG staff
14. Contest
15. Pulp
16. Goth Chick
17. Magazines
18. Movies and TV
19. News
20. Conan

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in September are here and you can see all 111 posts we made in the month of October here.