The Problem of the Invincible Warrior: Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer by James Silke
James Silke (1931 – ) is something of a renaissance man in the arts. He’s a visual artist and prose writer, a set and costume designer, photographer, and comic book guy. Most people who I meet recognize him as a comic artist/writer, although I’ve never read any of his graphic stuff.
I’ve seen a few of the movies he’s worked on, including King Solomon’s Mines and The Barbarians. My only experience with Silke’s writing is the four Sword & Sorcery books in the Frank Frazetta Death Dealer series.
These are:
1 Prisoner of the Horned Helmet (February 1988)
2 Lords of Destruction (January 1989)
3 Tooth and Claw (November 1989)
4 Plague of Knives (June 1990)
There’s also a book called Rise of the Death Dealer, with a Frazetta Cover (shown below), but I’ve never seen a physical copy, and from what I understand it’s not a 5th book in the series. According to Fantastic Fiction, it’s an omnibus volume that collects the first two books. Fantastic Fiction has been pretty accurate in my experience.
As far as I understand, Frazetta provided the Death Dealer character and the covers and Silke wrote stories about the warrior, including an origin story in Prisoner of the Horned Helmet. I don’t know whether Frazetta offered any story ideas but the prose is Silke.
The series features a character named Gath of Baal, a young but powerful warrior at the beginning of the series, who acquires a horned helmet imbued with great sorcery. He doesn’t realize that once he puts it on he’ll become its prisoner and will become the Death Dealer.
I enjoyed the series quite a lot. There are some strong visuals and some bloody, gory fights. The prose is serviceable but not outstanding. There are some very modern phrasings that occasionally threw me out of the story. I was hoping for more Robert E. Howard style poetic prose but didn’t get it.
The pacing is not as fast as it could have been either, mainly because the books are too long. Cutting fifty pages out of each of these volumes would have really helped. At some point I’ll also talk about the “problem” of the invincible warrior and how it diminishes tension in a tale.
Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods? and the Pseudoscience Bestsellers of the 1970s. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.
I remember them fondly, mostly for the setting in the lush Mediterranean basin, vivid descriptions, and interesting array of sorcery. Plus, huge Frazetta fan. Duh.
I greatly prefer this Death Dealer to Darkwolf in the Fire & Ice movie, even though, as far as I know, Frazetta was much more involved in that movie than in this series..
It seemed to me that Death Dealer was kind of a further development of Darkwolf. I like both, though Death Dealer is a fantastic concept. I liked the books although I felt they were a little longer than necessary.