Bruce Jones has had an extensive career crafting some of the most diverse and interesting horror fiction in outlets as varied as Creepy and Web of Horror to writing for the horror anthology television series, The Hitchhiker. Jones is also a Robert E. Howard aficionado, having written Conan and Red Sonja at Marvel previously—so of course, he would jump at the opportunity to write for a new Solomon Kane miniseries for Dark Horse.
Jones talked to MTV Geek recently about the pleasures of writing the gun-toting Puritan and tells us a bit about what he has in store for Howard’s character.
MTV Geek: How did you get involved with this project?
Bruce Jones: Editor Philip Simon at Dark Horse called and asked if I’d be interested in adapting some of Howard’s Solomon Kane material to the comic format. I gave a very enthusiastic “Yes!”
Geek: Could you tell us a little about your version of Kane? What’s the appeal for you as a writer?
BJ: The biggest appeal is that I’m a huge Robert E. Howard fan who’s been reading his stuff since high school. It was harder to find back then. Later, when the Lancer paperbacks with the Frazetta covers came out I began collecting them avidly. Eventually, I went on to find the old Arkham house editions like Skull Face and The Dark Man. Howard was a big part of my formative years. I grabbed anything I could find on him.
Geek: A larger point: you’ve worked on the pillars of Howard’s oeuvre (Red Sonja, Conan, and now Kane). What brings you back to his works?
BJ: The chance to do Solomon Kane, one of the few Howard characters I hadn’t adapted to comics yet. It was a blast re-reading the stories again—they hold up so well—and getting inside the mind of Kane who is much darker and more introspective than some of Howard’s bigger-than-life creations like Conan, etc. It was great for me because I found Kane’s brooding personality very humanistic, very conflicted yet at the same time there was still plenty of action to play with in both tales. Read More...
Ron Chan
