Karl Edward Wagner (1945 – 1994) is one writer I make a concerted effort to collect. I think I have almost his entire output, which is — unfortunately—not extensive. The man was a genius and I wish it was more. I met him briefly at a conference and corresponded with him some. He was only 48 when he died and that’s way too young.

The first work I found by Wagner (KEW) were his Sword & Sorcery stories of Kane, sometimes called “The Mystic Swordsman.” In my opinion, Kane is the most outstanding character creation in heroic fantasy, for he is Cain of the Bible, of Cain and Abel fame, although in later years Wagner seemed to be reinventing the character.

[Click for larger images.]

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin (Penguin English Library, 1985). Cover by Henry Fuseli

When I first read the Kane stories, I assumed the character was influenced by Howard’s Conan and said so in public.

I actually received a letter from KEW where he indicated that he’d started writing about Kane in high school, before he’d ever heard of Howard, and that the character was much more influenced by Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin, published in 1820, which was part of the development of “Gothic” literature. KEW was certainly strongly influenced by the gothic and even referred to the Kane stores as “Acid gothic.”

The Kane paperbacks I’ve shown above are as follows.

Novels

Bloodstone (Warner Paperback Library, March 1975). Cover by Frank Frazetta
Dark Crusade (Baen Books, May 1991). Cover by Frank Frazetta
Darkness Weaves with Many Shades… (Powell, 1978). Cover by Bill Hughes

Story collections

Death Angel’s Shadow (Warner Paperback Library, June 1973). Cover by Frank Frazetta
Night Winds (Warner Books, August 1978). Cover by Frank Frazetta

All these have Frazetta covers and all but Dark Crusade were published by Warner Books. My copy of Dark Crusade is from Baen. My image of Kane will always be from the cover of Night Winds.

The one non-Frazetta cover volume from the picture is a pretty rare collectible. This is the first publication of Death Weaves With Many Shades, from Powell Books, 1970.

Whoever edited the book at Powell made internal changes apparently to try and match the cover and Karl did not like it. He much preferred the later publication from Warner. The Powell cover, by Bill Hughes, isn’t horrible but it certainly does not represent the Kane that KEW described.

The Powell version did have a map on the back, above, and has a couple of interior pencil illustrations, seen below. The first illustration is definitely more how I’d envision Kane and is signed “Mayer.” I didn’t see a signature on the second one.

Red Harvest is a specialty item I picked up from the Sidecar Preservation Society of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Karl lived much of his life and where he died. It’s a side stapled pamphlet containing 14 poems about his most famous character, Kane. Some of these are fragments. The collection is illustrated by Stephen Jones, who also wrote an introduction. Scott F. Wyatt is listed as editor.

Interior art from Darkness Weaves by Bill Hughes

Red Harvest is a revised and expanded version of a KEW poetry collection published in 1981 called Songs of the Damned, which had been edited by Vern Clark and Bob Barger, two fellows I’m acquainted with.

There’s a lot of power in Karl’s poetry but he was not generally the most lyrical of poets. I’ve written a long essay in the past comparing Karl’s poetry to Robert E. Howard’s, and REH’s is quite a bit better to my mind, although Howard also just wrote a lot more poetry.

One KEW piece with a pretty good rhyming scheme is “Death Angel’s Shadow.” The first stanza is,

I wander through a desolate land,
On a cold and barren day;
I wander beneath a shadow,
Under light so chill, so grey;
My thoughts beneath a shadow,
That will not pass away.
Death Angel’s Shadow.

I like this, but the repetition of “shadow” three times in seven lines seems weak to me. Indeed, “shadow” appears ten times in this twenty-eight line poem.

There is one piece from Wagner that I really like, and it’s included in Red Harvest. It’s probably his best known piece of poetry. The rhyme scheme is simple, yet effective, and nary a word is repeated except for “In their.” Best of all, it trips like sweet water off the tongue.

In their castle beyond the night,
In their dungeon’s evil light,
Gather Gods while even fades,
And Darkness weaves with many shades

Much more on KEW to come in Part Two of this article.

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was a review of The Eternal City, edited by David Drake, Martin Greenberg, and Charles Waugh. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.