Red Shadows

Robert E. Howard's “Red Shadows” story featured Puritan hero Solomon Kane. Howard had initially pitched the story to Argosy but was met with a rejection. Weird Tales paid the author $80 for the story and published it in the August, 1928 issue of Weird Tales (Vol. 12 No. 2, interior art by Hugh Rankin). At this link HERE you can read letters that Howard wrote about the submission and rejection from Argosy and how he originally wrote the subject matter for the Weird Tales audience. It is an interesting read.

Howard's story begins in the mountains of France and ends in an African jungle. Unlike some of the earlier Kane stories I've read, “Red Shadows” is a bit longer and has an extensive feel. It isn't confined to a lone road through a foggy moor or crammed into a stuffy beer-swilling inn. As previously mentioned, the narrative begins with Kane in a French forest discovering a village in ruin. A dying girl explains to Kane that a man named Le Loup (meaning The Wolf) led marauders into the village and they “robbed, slew, and burned” everyone. In her dying breath she describes Le Loup as the Wolf that stabbed her. As she lay dying in Kane's arms he swears he will kill them all. 

Later, the scene shifts to Le Loup discussing the dwindling numbers in his ranks due to Kane systematically killing each member. The men describe Kane as looking like Satan. When Le Loup's remaining party enter a cave to steal treasure, Kane is there waiting in the darkness. He kills nearly everyone, but is foiled by Le Loup when the villainous leader escapes into a nearby tunnel. Kane can hear Le Loup laughing as he makes his escape. His freedom will be short-lived. 

The story changes scenery from France to African jungles when Kane, who has tracked Le Loup, leaves a ship on the shore and embarks into the dense foliage. He meets an African shaman named N'Longa in a violent way and is later captured by a stealthy Le Loup. He ties both Kane and N'Longa to a stake and prepares to have them burned. Yet, N'Longa has a magical ability to leave his body and take over the bodies of both the dead and the living. This ability plays a huge part in the story's epic finale involving a savage avenging ape, a fight to the death with Le Loup, and a reanimated corpse. 

Needless to say there is a lot to unpack here. The story borders on horror with the jungle terrors and the astral projection (?) of N'Longa's spirit. It also had a "Wolves Beyond the Border” vibe, an unfinished story that Howard penned featuring Conan and bizarre rituals along the Pictish border. The ape frenzy conjures Kipling and Burroughs, but that's not to say “Red Shadows” lacks identity. This is a fantastic story with a touch of vigilante justice and a solid reinforcement that Solomon Kane is a noble fighting-man (if anyone ever doubted). I like the injection of human compassion, which is consistently a trait Kane possesses in Howard's pages. 

What's really interesting about Howard's story is that the heroism remains intact with the star, but the performance is shifted to N'Longa to save the day. This is the first appearance of N'Longa and he will return again in “Hills of the Dead”, a 1930 story that was published in Weird Tales. N'Longa provides Kane a magical juju staff in that story, something that becomes iconic in visual imagery of Kane holding the wooden Staff of Solomon.

“Red Shadows” was reprinted in the collection Red Shadows by Donald M. Grant in 1928 (red binding) and 1971 (gray binding). It was also featured in numerous collections including the Solomon Kane paperback (Baen 1995) and the Savage Tales of Solomon Kane (Del Rey 2004). The comic adaptation appears in Marvel Premier #33-34 (1976/1977), a six-issue Marvel series called The Sword of Solomon Kane (1985), and a four-issue series from Dark Horse (2011) simply called Solomon Kane Red Shadows.