|
|
By Roy Thomas
Excerpted from Answers to Readers Letters
Curse of the Cat Goddess (SSOC #9) was conceived as a rush 15-pager because I was already well into the 50-page story Abode of the Damned when I was hit by twin personal tragedies which made it impossible for me to finish the longer story by the deadline time. First, there was my painful leagal separation from my wife, Jean; the second and even more sorrowful event was the unexpected heart attack and death of my father back home in Missouri. Between these two occurences, I found myself having difficulty writing for a period of some months, so I was forced to substitute a shorter Conan story for the longer one, and even then I was late getting the pages to Pablo (Marcos).
As we mentioned last issue Tim (Conrad) prefers not to do any more Conan stories as such - though he did do the cover for the record album reviewed in this very issue. Also, in addition to finishing up a Bran Mak Morn story already in the works, Tim is working with Roy Thomas even as we speak on a new several-issue color comic based on Robert E. Howard's only "interplanetary" type novel, Almuric. It'll see print in the next few months, probably under the (tentative) title Esau Cairn, Warrior of the Lost Planet.
After a delay due to heavy schedules on both Roy's and Walt's (Simonson) part The HYborian Age should be back next issue - in an illustrated chapter that'll bring things right up to Conan's time.
...one final note about Boris' (Vallejo) cataclysmic cover for issue #9. As you may recall, it was designed to go with The Abode of the Damned, which was then re-scheduled (after the cover was doen) for #11 instead. Thus, to refresh everyone's collective memory, we've printed our talented cover artist's initial sketch for that cover as our Frontispiece for this issue.
