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Glossary and Character Taxonomy  Breakdown by Country of Origin   Bibliography   Table of Contents    The Best of the Encyclopedia

Kane, Solomon. Solomon Kane was created by Robert E. Howard (Pike Bearfield, El Borak, Conan, Steve Costigan, De Montour, Breckenridge Elkins, Steve Harrison, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Turlogh O’Brien, Kirby O'Donnell) and appeared in eight stories in Weird Tales from 1928 to 1932, beginning with “Red Shadows” (Weird Tales, Aug. 1928).

Near the end of the 16^th century Solomon Kane is a hard-bitten Puritan adventurer who fights evil around the world: “All his life he had roamed around the world aiding the weak and fighting oppression; he neither knew why nor questioned why...if he thought of it at all, he considered himself a fulfiller of God’s judgment, a vessel of wrath to be emptied upon the souls of the unrighteous.” From England to Africa he destroys ghosts, African magicians, voodoo priests, winged monsters, and vampires. Kane is tall, gaunt, and dour. He dresses only in black and carries a rapier (with which he is supremely skilled) and several flintlock pistols. Kane is occasionally assisted by N’Longa, an African medicine man.

* I'm including the Soloon Kane stories in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because they're fun. Robert E. Howard is of course better known for his Conan stories, but of equal interest to his readers are his non-Conan stories, of which his comic stories (like those about Steve Costigan and Breckenridge Elkins) and the Solomon Kane stories are the best. The Kane stories are atmospheric, wide-ranging, gloomy, and full of the pulp energy which Howard brought to his best stories. Too, N'Longa is Howard's best attempt at making a non-stereotypical, non-racist African character--a rarity in the pulps. 

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