Skull-Face

Last updated

"Skull-Head"
Short story by Robert E. Howard
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s)Adventure
Publication
Published in Weird Tales
Publication type Pulp magazine
Publication dateOct–Dec 1929
Skull-Face was reprinted as the cover story of the December 1952 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries. Famous fantastic mysteries 195212.jpg
Skull-Face was reprinted as the cover story of the December 1952 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries .

Skull-Face is a fantasy novella by American writer Robert E. Howard, which appeared as a serial in Weird Tales magazine, beginning in October 1929, and ending in December, 1929. [1] The story stars a character called Stephen Costigan [2] but this is not Howard's recurring character Sailor Steve Costigan. The story is clearly influenced by Sax Rohmer's opus Fu Manchu but substitutes the main Asian villain with a resuscitated Atlantean necromancer (similar to Kull's bit character Thulsa Doom) sitting at the center of a web of massive addictive drug crime and intrigue meant to end White/Western world domination with the help of Asian/Brown/African peoples and to re-instate surviving Atlanteans (said to lie dormant in submerged sarcophagi) as the new ruling elite.

References

  1. The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, pages 194–320. Cosmos Books, July 2007
  2. Howard, Robert E. (1976). Skull-Face Omnibus Volume 1: Skull-Face and Others. St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, UK: Panther. p. 36. ISBN   9780586042205.