Solomon Kane Movie Fight Scenes!

Barbarian Backpiece!

CROM! reader, Johan V. sent me this pic of his full backpiece featuring one pissed off barbarian, a dragon-beast losing its head, a horned giant and tons and tons of booty. Thanks for sharing, Johan!

Full Color Marvel Super Special Conan Issue Over at Diversions of the Groovy Kind!

Mad props to Diversions of the Groovy Kind for posting this killer Marvel Super Special featuring Conan and Red Sonja!

Click HERE to read the whole issue!

Custom Red Sonja Action Figure!

Found this sweet custom on eBay! As of this writing, it's still up for grabs, for those interested. ;) I just thought the pics kicked ass, so I'm posting 'em!

MORE Solomon Kane Previews!

Since We're Talking About the Solomon Kane Movie...

...dig this seriously kick ass concept art posted on CanMag.com!

Frazetta's Son Attempts to Steal $20 Million in Paintings!

Thanks to CROM! reader, Ian for passing this along!

From the Associated Press:

Pa. police: Artist's son swipes $20M in paintings

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM (AP) – 1 hour ago

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A Pennsylvania man used a backhoe to break into a museum owned by his father — the pioneering fantasy artist Frank Frazetta — in an attempt to steal 90 paintings valued at $20 million, police said Thursday.
State police charged Alfonso Frank Frazetta, 52, of Marshalls Creek, with theft, burglary and trespass after they say he was caught loading the artwork into his trailer and SUV.
The elder Frazetta, 81, is renowned for his work on characters including Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan and Vampirella. He was in Florida at the time of the theft.
His son's motive may stem from a family feud over the master illustrator's assets, according to a law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is still early in the investigation.
Frazetta was arraigned and sent to the Monroe County jail. Bail was set at $500,000. Officials didn't know whether he had a lawyer yet.
Police said that Frazetta and another man used the backhoe to enter the Frazetta Art Museum in the Pocono Mountains region on Wednesday afternoon, tripping a burglar alarm.
A trooper who responded said Frazetta claimed he had been instructed by his father "to enter the museum by any means necessary to move all the paintings to a storage facility," according a police affidavit.
The elder Frazetta told police that his son did not have permission to enter the museum or to remove any artwork. Frank Frazetta's attorney, Gerard Geiger, said the stolen paintings were insured for $20 million, according to court documents.
Geiger did not immediately return a phone message Thursday.
Police say charges are pending against a second suspect.

You can see the original article HERE.

Conan... He Likes a Good Joke...

Conan Cover Re-done on Covered Blog!

I love the blog Covered, and their massive collection of re-interpreted classic comic book covers, but I love it even more when the day's feature is a Conan cover! Artist, Dieter Van der Ougstraete, did a brilliantly odd and fascinating version of an international release of Conan de Barbaar with a stunning amount of vision. I tip my spikey, iron hat to him!

Here's the original cover...

MORE Conan Movie News!

To add on to the news posted by Cromsblood the other day (great scoop, my brother!) and to finally pass on some info sent to me by intrepid CROM! reader, Rob Rozum, several articles have been cropping up alluding to all kinds of Conan casting, make-up and creature design and other stuff, from ComicBookMovie.com.

Stated one article:

It looks like Lionsgate's new Conan starts shooting February 2010 in Bulgaria. Marcus Nispel ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Pathfinder") will be directing. Empire has the casting breakdowns, which help understand the characters, and some indication of the plot.

Conan: 20s-30s, Caucasian, the last of the Cimmerians, out for vengeance on Khalar Singh, a formidable warlord and warrior in his 40s or 50s, for whom the producers are "open to all ethnicities".

Singh is looking for Queen Ilira, whose blood will help him raise a demon army. Ilira's handmaiden is Tamara, who allies with Conan in what sounds like a Red Sonja hot amazon role. And there's Ukafa, Singh's untrustworthy henchman for whom a massive African or African American is required.

There are also supporting roles for Conan's dad Corin, who teaches his son the Riddle of Steel; Fariq, Khalar Singh's son and heir, strangely described as a "proto goth-rocker"

Remo the evil wizard; Fassir, a monk protecting Ilira.

Lucius, a mercenary scarred by Conan dumping him into a fiery pit

An unnamed one-eyed thief Conan rescues from Lucius.

Artus, Conan's pirate buddy; and Cheren, Khalar Singh's mystical blind archer.

Now interstingly is the worry for Khalar Singh and the reason he wants to raise a demon army in the first place, could it be arch-wizard Thoth-Amon, he only appears in one original Robert E. Howard Conan story, but is mentioned in a couple of others.

Thoth-Amon was played by Pat Roach in Conan the Destroyer (Love that movie ).

I think this has potential but unsure of the director. I hope Conan finally gets the on screen treatment he deserves.

Another article when on to discuss the art direction and creature design and a shooting date:

Mania broke the exciting news that Scott Wheeler and Shaun Smith of Zack Snyder's comic book movie '300' are on board to do their stuff.

Scott Wheeler will be heading up the makeup department bit and Shaun Smith will be acting as the creature designer on the new 'Conan' adaption. Both of the guys right now are working up the creature schemes for the picture with the director Marcus Nispel (Of the Friday the 13th reboot fame).

Smith confirmed all the news exclusively to Mania saying, "as you might expect I really can't say much except it looks really cool and we are excited to be a part of it."

Filming is soon to commence on the epic big screen return of the barbarian hero 'Conan'. Production plans are to start shooting in Bulgaria next February.

And for those of you with stronger stomachs than mine, there's even talk of Dolf Lundgren being in the film. Mitra preserve us.

To read the full scoop, along with all kinds of other sweet Conan movie speculation and rumor, click your mighty mouse pointer HERE!

Thanks again, Rob, for send me the links!

Hordes of Chaos! Epic Barbarian Metal!

CROM! reader known only as Ryan sent me the link to this wicked video of the thundering metal band, Kreator, ripping it up on their song Hordes of Chaos, while footage of Conan-esque barbarians beat the living tar out of each other and drag hot chicks around by their wrists. This is the kind of music I grew up on in high school, so I found it especially rocking. >:)

Anyway, thanks to Ryan and everyone enjoy!

Frank the German Barbarian!

Hail Fellow Conan Fans!

I received a great e-mail from a nice guy from Germany who is all about dressing up like Conan and hitting the comic/sci fi/fantasy conventions. Anyone who's got the stones to walk around a European convention center wearing little more than a fur loincloth is okay in my book. So swing by Frank's Myspace page and say hello!

And as Frank says, Strength and Honor!

And While We're at it...

Let's all show some respect to one of my all time favorite artists, Earl Norem. Just look at how awesome this piece is!

Conan Art by Jack Kirby!

Growing up on comic books taught me a lot of things, but lesson #1 was pretty much that the legendary Jack Kirby is the friggin man, and don't you forget it! Hell, I learned to draw from ripping off his comic panels and his influence can be seen in my personal artwork to this day. So, naturally, when I came across this Kirby piece of our favorite barbarian, I just had to post it (Kirby did the cover for Giant Size Conan #5).

This piece was actually penciled by Kirby and inked by contemporary artist Alec Fritz. Damn fine job, too!

Epic Conan Costume!

Oh man, Greg is going to kill me for this, but I just have to post a couple of pics of him dressed in his wickedly awesome Conan costume that I stole from his Facebook! You all may remember Greg as my good buddy who gave me my Conan Mego action figure for my birthday this past year.

Seriously, this costume is EPIC!

What I love about this costume is that he clearly put some thought towards the original Howard stories, with him square-cut black mane and his sandaled feet. Most people would have gone for the movie version, but Greg kept it old school and classic.

I raise my cup to you! May Crom watch over your battles!

Kull Sticker Trading Card from 1975!

I keep coming across these Marvel stickers from the '70s which usually have some character saying the stupidest things! Apparently, Kull, king of Valusia and precursor to Conan, wants to discuss the tightness of his pants.

Oh, jeeze!

Conan Custom Minimates!

 For you toy collectors out there, you should be no stranger to those little blocky figures known as Minimates. They're sort of a hybrid between LEGO minifigs and Playmobil figures, and they come in the form of all sorts of famous comic book characters such as Spider-man, Batman, etc.

Well, I came across this Minimate somewhere (cannot remember where, for the life of me... sorry!) and I got seven kinds of excited thinking it was a Conan Minimate! But it's not. I think it's supposed to be Turok, or Tarzan or some such barbaric Conan wannabe. Oh well. Pretty close...

Anyway, it got me thinking and off I went, searching the interwebs for any sign of custom Conan Minimates, and lo and behold, I found myself perusing a web forum called Minimate Multiverse which led me to this interesting digital template for a Conan Minimate figure...

I also found this one, which is pretty good, but looks more like Kevin Sorbo in the Hercules: Legendary Journeys TV show...

... but a damn good effort all the same!

Conan the Tiny!

I stumbled across this shot of Arnold being easily lifted by Wilt Chamberlain and Andre the Giant during the shoot of Conan the Destroyer. They make Conan look like a dwarf!

Thought you all would get a kick out of it and I'm just revving up to get back to some serious Conan blogging!

By the way, Cromsblood, you've been doing one hell of a job running the blog while I was away! I lift my cup to you!

Solomon Kane Trailer in Russian!

Fellow CROM! blogger, Cromsblood, sent me this link and since neither of us speak (or read) Russian, it took us a while to figure how to embed the video. After watching this trailer (three times!) I have to say that I'm hella crazy excited about this movie!

It's got a gretty, dark magical feel to it. I can only hope that whenever they get around to making the next Conan movie, it will look at least this good.

Enjoy...

I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the English version of this trailer hits the interwebs and whn it does, I'll be sure to post it!

Brilliant Conan Art!

CROM! homeboy, Dan Van Cool, hipped me to this mind-blowing piece of art featuring the world's greatest barbarian from an artist known as Cheeks 74. I see a lot of Conan art throughout the course of my obsession with the son of Cimmeria, but rarely am I this stunned. This piece is truly original and visionary! An singularly unique piece of work!

Props to Dan Van Cool for sending this my way!

More Conan Miniatures!

Darius, our good friend and fellow blogger posted a great little collection of Conan miniatures on his flagship blog, Adventures in Nerdliness! Swing on by to see the rest, they're Crom-tastic!

Barry Windsor Smith Comic Splash Pages Spotlighted at Diversion of a Groovy Kind!

One of my all-time favorite comic blogs, Diversions of a Groovy Kind, had a blog post last week spotlighting the great, epic splash panels from Seminal Conan artist, Barry Windsor Smith, and I just thought that any Conan fan should take a look at such a glorious collection!

Having run my eyes over these classic Conan comics for so many years, I feel like these pages are like old friends and I'd know them like I'd know the back of my hand, but there was something about seeing them all in one place that made me take a moment and remember a little of what those old-school Conan comics used to mean to me.

You can see them all right HERE! Thanks to the Groovy Agent for such a great post!

Arnold Schwarzenegger Still Keeps His Conan Sword in His Office!

I stumbled on to this article from igeektrooper, thanks to a tip from Topless Robot, all about how Arnold Schwarzenegger's office (he's the Govenor of California, you know) is jam-packed with momentos of his long and prolific film career, including the actual prop sword he used in the movie Conan the Barbarian!

I imagine that this cuts down on people disagreeing with him. Look in the picture below at all of the people sitting there, trying to smile, but holding back a pants-peeing fear that at any moment the Governator is going to behead them.

"What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to get a bill passed through that provides more money for local education! Crom!"

I'll Be Taking a Small Break from CROM!

Hail Fellow Conan Fans!

As some of you may have noticed, I've run into some serious image hosting issues, mostly stemming from Photobucket being a bunch of douchebags. So, instead of seeing all of my images that I have posted over the past year, you're getting an "Exceeded Bandwidth" graphic.

To combat this, I finally bought a pro Flickr account, so I will never run into storage or bandwidth limits again. Unfortunately, this means that I'll have to replace every single image that I have posted, with a newly hosted copy. This may take a while. Especially as I have to take care of my other blog Geek Orthodox as well.

Sorry about all of this. So bear with me and all will be back to normal soon.

In the meantime, fellow CROM! blogger, Cromsblood, is doing a killer job and I have faith that you are in good hands until I return!

See you all again soon!

-Reis

Photobucket is Screwing Over Their Users...

Well, it seems like the bastards at Photobucket have done it again. I have occasionally run into exceeding bandwidth problems due to either uploading too many pics to a free account or other people hotlinking to my images, but now this is all on Photobucket. You see, they originally allowed free users a cap of 25 gigs of bandwidth each month, so I became quite adept at knowing about how many pics I could host per account before going over that limit. Well, they suddenly just dropped the cap from 25 to 10.

So, basically this means that no matter what, all the pics that I have posted on this blog are going to magically turn into "Exceeded Bandwidth" graphics every month. There's no way to stop it.

And for that, I've made Photobucket this sandwich...

With that said, you've probably guessed that I will no longer be using Photobucket. I have finally decided to man up, quit being a cheap ass, and plunk down the cash for a pro Flickr account, which will give me unlimted hosting and we won't have this problem again. Huh, look at that, Flickr is cheaper too, and they don't censor your images if you show the hint of a buttcrack or something, like another image hosting site that I may have mentioned before.

I apologize to you all for having to look at pictures that aren't there. I guess I'm going to have to go through every single post and replace the pics with newly hosted copies on my Flickr account. This may take a while. Sorry about this everyone.

*EDIT* Okay, I have calmed down a bit, the problem is solved an we can all move on. I've still got a lot of work ahead of me, fixing all of these posts. Ugh. I took out the majority of the f-bombs in my rant, but the fuck you sandwich stays for Photobucket to choke on! ;)

Even MORE Custom Conan Action Figures!

As many of you may already know, I occasionally go through the custom action figure archives of Figure Realm and get all geeky over the custom Conan action figures. then I cherry pick a few and show them off here. Well, it's that time again! Check out these one-of-a-kind sons of Cimmeria!

I love stuff like this! I keep saying that one day I'm just going to buckle down and make a custom Conan myself. I made a couple years ago, but they have long since been lost. Oh well. Thank Crom for these awesome action figure customizer, through which I can live vicariously!

You can see more custom Conan action figures right HERE!

The Official Handbook of the Conan Universe Download!

If you've been looking for the classic Official Handbook of the Conan Universe from Marvel Comics, you can now download it right HERE!

You'll need a comic book reader program to view it, and I strongly suggest this one. You're gonna want this anyway, when you realize that this site has TONS of Conan comics to download! Including the entire run of Conan the Barbarian and Conan the King!

Now, go get you some free comics!

More Conan Fan Art!

Here's a couple of sweet Conan pieces sent in by CROM! reader, Mike DeStasio, showing what Conan thinks of chains and monkeys! Thanks for sharing, Mike!

Killer Conan Art by Kekai!

CROM! reader and all around cool dude, Dan Van Cool, sent me a link to the blog of artist Kekai, who whipped up this "quick Conan" sketch that makes the art I spend days and weeks on look like a dog crapped on a thrown up pizza. AWESOME! Thanks to Dan!

Red Sonja & the Hyborian Players!

Hey! Let's keep this Red Sonja thing going, shall we? Onward!

Fellow blogger, cartoonist and genius Halloween prop-maker, Dave Lowe, who's been a Conan fan for a very long time, sent me a link to a page documenting the history of the Hyborian Players. I remember reading about this group in the back of an old issue of Savage Sword of Conan about this zany gaggle of people doing something theater-like while in strange costumes.

The group is basically made up of a guy in a wizard costume and several hot chicks dressed as Red Sonja. Not a bad way to spend your weekend, if you ask me.

Of course, it's got to be mentioned that one of the many actresses to play the part of Sonja was none other than Wendy Pini, co-creator of the Elfquest comics!

Here's a shot of Wendy back in the 70s all dolled up as the She-Devil with a Sword...

And you can still find photographic evidence all over the web of Mrs. Pini in her Red Sonja garb.

Dig these crazy actors, man!

To read the full history, just make the mouse go click right HERE. Thanks to Dave Lowe for sending us the link!

Custom Red Sonja Mego Figure!

My fellow blogger homie, Calvin, from Calvin's Canadian Cave of Coolness posted a slew of custom Mego action figures and the one that totally caught my eye was this brilliant (and quite busty) Red Sonja figure, clearly designed after the classic Marvel Comics representation of the character.

Hmmm... this is starting to turn into Red Sonja week here on the blog! I'm sure you readers don't mind. ;)

If you're unfamiliar with Mego action figures, here's a shot of my very own original Conan Mego that was a birthday gift from my good homie and CROM! commenter, Acorndog!

*UPDATE*

CROM! reader, Kal, was cool enough to send me a link to more pics of this awesome Red Sonja custom by Jason Roberts! Thanks Kal, and mad props to Jason!

Shaky, Bootleg Footage of the Solomon Kane Trailer!

Looks like somebody swiped this from the SDCC, so it's pretty shaky and the sound is bad and there's some nerd's head in the way, but it's Solomon Kane! Special thanks to The Evil DM for the heads up!

Conan Soundtrack CD Autographed by Basil Poledouris!

Here's another eBay find, an actual autographed copy of the Conan movie soundtrack, signed by the composer himself, Basil Poledouris! I know, this isn't exactly like have a copy of Electric Ladyland signed by Hendrix, but it's still pretty cool. I can't remember the going price for this but I think it was kind of low. Of course, most people would go "Basil who?" and then offer you $3 for it. But we know the truth! Basil is the man! Well, was the man. He died a couple of years ago. Which should make this autograph worth millions! No? Oh well...

Age of Conan Costume at SDCC!

I have no idea what the explanation behind this display is, because it was a random pic found in an SDCC Flickr group with no description. It looks like the Age of Conan people were making a half-assed attempt to remind convention goers to revive their game accounts when they get home.

Still, it's kind of cool, I guess. But why a mannequin wearing armor worn by a video game character, and even then, mostly on the box art? And why is the mannequin standing like a male chorus line dancer? And where the hell is his face?!

So... well... there you go.