Dr Hermes Reviews – ROBERT E HOWARD
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WILD BILL CLANTON

"She-Devil" (Sep 11, 2005) Man, I would love to see this as a half-hour episode of a new TV series, TALES OF WILD BILL. The phone lines would be glowing red at the surge of protesting calls, the darn thing is so Incorrect (in a fun way). At one point, the hero's plan is to be "headin' for the Solomons for a load of niggers for Queensland!" I think he's the first pulp hero I've noticed indulging in actual slave-trading. "She Devil" first appeared in the April 1936 issue of SPICY ADVENTURE STORIES, the first of the five Will Bill Clanton epics by Robert E Howard. (They were published under the byline "Sam Walser.") Clanton is visually identical to most of Howard's heroes, "a broad-shouldered, clean-waisted, heavy-armed man with wetly plastered black hair, blue eyes that blazed with the joy of mayhem and lips that grinned savagely."Of course, he's also deeply tanned and I imagine at some point, we'll find out his face is scarred. I'm certain he's an American of Irish descent, and probably from Texas, too. Like Steve Costigan and Dennis Dorgan (who were originally the same character, after all), Clanton is a sailor who operates in the Pacific. He's notorious enough ("She had heard of him; who in the South Seas had not? A wild adventurer roaring on a turbulent career that included everything from pearl-diving to piracy, he was a man at least...."). But unlike, Costigan and Dorgan, who were good-hearted simple-minded brutes relating their misadventures in the first person, Clanton is much more a straightforward thug. Even though his saga appears in one of the "Spicy" pulps, he doesn't get to fondle any naked breasts or engage in actual sex between paragraphs (although he does tell the heroine that he understands she comes along with the ship he's taken over, so "I want to see you in the cap'n's cabin, right away!"). Clanton is kind of a generic Howard protagonist. "She Devil" is just as much the story of the luscious Irish-Spanish vixen Raquel O'Shane, who is quite a handful however you look at her. Originally a "dancer" at a Water Street honky-tonk on the Barbary Coast, she was on the run from the police after "knifin' a Wop" and begged to be taken aboard the ship SAUCY WENCH for refuge. Her relationship with the beefy red-haired simian Captain Harrigan seems made up mostly of furious screaming matches and temper tantrums, and all the implied beatings haven't begun to tame her. She can take it and dish it out right back at him. As the story starts, she throws the captain's treasure map out of the porthole during one of their deafening conversations, going just that one step too far this time. Before she can meet her demise, everything is interrupted by the uninvited arrival of Wild Bill Clanton. He had been thrown off another ship, set adrift in a leaking lifeboat and had come aboard just in time to avoid drowning. He pauses in the water because a shark attacks and "he kicked its brains out or bit it in the neck, or done something atrocious to it." Immediately, he pounces on the first mate (they have a long-standing grudge) and they proceed to pound each other like Popeye and Bluto. They don't quite produce the swirling "fight cloud" from which heads and fists emerge at times, but they come close. Howard really seems more interested in the fights than the sex. His "Spicy" tales include nudity and caresses and hot burning toe-curling kisses, but Howard's main impulse is to spend his creative energy on the men whaling each other into intensive care. Some of his boxing stories dwell so much and so happily on the extreme damage the hero endures that it seems a bit perverse. (Sometimes, I wonder if Bob Howard would have liked being around in the post World War II years, when the biker gangs started appearing. The actual experience of surviving a few drunken beatings from big tough guys might have been a lot less rewarding than he imagined.) After thrashing the first mate, Clanton saves himself from being tossed back in the Pacific by calmly announcing he knows where the island lies which was on the now-lost map. Supposedly, a barrel of ambergris is hidden there, and the captain can't afford to pass a chance on collecting the fortune that whale-intestine product (*ack*) represents. Of course, Clanton has never actually heard of such an island... Before too many paragraphs have rushed by, Clanton has guzzled down the captain's booze, won over the affection (or lust, at least) of Raquel and managed to run the ship aground on an island. As he and the She Devil are racing for their lives from the enraged crew, still more difficulties arise; the island is inhabited by the cannibal Kanakas. Despite all his superior fighting skill and courage, Clanton is overwhelmed. He and Raquel are tortured horribly, killed and eaten by the Kanakas. Heh, just seeing if you're paying attention. That would be an unexpected plot twist, though. As in other Howard stories, the hero has two different ferocious groups chasing him, and it'll take some cunning and quick footwork to get out of this pickle. Nearly everything Robert E Howard wrote has been reprinted somewhere or other, in different degrees of accessibility. All the Wild Bill Clanton stories were collected in a 1983 Ace paperback titled SHE-DEVIL. I'm not much for pristine quality, or mint condition in my books, since they usually end in a back pocket or under the seat of my car anyway.... finding a used copy at a reasonable price shouldn't be that difficult today.

"The Purple Heart of Erlik" (Nov 18, 2006) Feh. Not Robert E Howard at his best. The basic premise is workable. A young american woman in Shanghai is blackmailed into trying to steal a valuable gem from a shady Chinese dealer; things go wrong, hatchet men are in pursuit and she has to confront the blackmailer with only a rough sailor to back her up. Howard could do a lot with that springboard, either as a straight action yarn or one of his slapstick Dennis Dorgan spoofs. Here it falls flat. I honestly think the problem is the Spicy element. "The Purple Heart of Erlik" appeared in the November 1936 issue of SPICY ADVENTURE (credited to "Sam Walser"), where the formula required a good deal of leering descriptions, copping of cheap feels (the Dan Turner lifestyle) and maybe some actual copulation discreetly between paragraphs. Howard never seemed at ease with this element. He's got the vocabulary down but it jars his style somehow. If he had to rewrite this story to sell to another publisher, I'd bet he would add a ferocious knife fight with the assassins or some sort of ancient curse on the jewel and the story would benefit from it. (Nothing against porn, softcore or not – I just don't see where this writer was comfortable with it.) We learn Arline Ellis has more problems than usual. Back in Canton, she was seen fleeing from the apartment where a Japanese official was murdered. Important documents had also been taken from the scene, and the theft and murder have "the wrathful Nipponese" infuriated. Sleazy adventurer Duke Tremayne witnessed her flight and now he holds it over her head. If she doesn't toe the line, he'll hand her over to the Japanese government and a firing squad after brutal interrogation is guaranteed. Duke doesn't demand she give up her fair little bod right away, although "she felt it would come to that eventually." First, Duke sends her to fetch the Heart of Erlik, a famous purple ruby. It belongs to Woon Yuen, who is well known for his craving of beautiful white women. He has a more sinister reputation, as well, and previous would-be thieves have been fished out of the river with amateur tracheotomies. Duke's scheme is for Aline to impersonate the notorious millionaire art collector, Lady Elizabeth Willoughby, and to slip some knockout drops in the tea Woon Yuen can be expected to share with her. Aline is not enthusiastic about the whole project but has no choice. On her way, she runs into Wild Bill Clanton. Now, this sailor is by far the most unsavory of Howard's heroes. Aside from being a pearl poacher and gun runner, he's a notorious "blackbirder". That is, he kidnaps islanders from Samoa and thereabouts and sells them to work sugar cane in Queensland. Since slavery has been outlawed, these unfortunate souls are called indentured servants. But changing the name of the crime doesn't make the misery any sweeter. Clanton has been admittedly stalking Aline from city to city, and now he demands she yield. ("Damn your saucy little soul!.. Now are you going to be nice, or do I have to get rough?") With her literally kicking and biting, he drags her into an empty room. Clanton has yanked most of her clothes out of the way and is about to commit some penetration when she smashes a heavy pitcher over his thick skull and escapes. Straightening herself up, Aline goes to meet Woon Yuen. Surprisingly, he is shown as neither a shrivelled old coot nor an obese smiling phony. The guy is a big, powerful brute in his own right. Aline's attempt to con the shrewd merchant go badly wrong. Woon has had so many people try to loot his shop that he sends a servant in to impersonate him while he watches. And now, irritated by this woman's attempt to drug and rob him, Woon hauls her into a chamber with mirror-lined walls and rapes her. An hour later, Aline is flung out into the alley behind the shop, her clothing in shreds. "Dazedly she rose, shook down the remains of her skirt, drew her dress together, and tottered down the alley, sobbing hysterically." Even now, the worst is still not behind her, for she has to go back and face Duke. The blackmailer will turn her over to the Japanese authorities for "questioning" and execution and, of course, he might sample her body too before she goes. This is not at all like the carefree romantic escapades of a lady of mystery that she might have been expecting when she went to China. And it still gets worse! Woon has sent two of his hatchetmen to trail her, figuring that some guy put her up to the attempted theft. He also has the interesting belief that the Purple Heart of Erlik appreciates it when he pours human blood over it. This is when Wild Bill pops up again. Being smacked over the head seems to have made no impression on him any way you look at it. Suddenly, Aline feels differently about the big lug. "There was possessiveness in the clasp of her arms about her supple body, but she found a comforting solidity in the breast muscles against which her flaxen head rested. There was a promise of security in his masculine strength. Suddenly she no longer resisted his persistent pursuit of her. She needed his strength – needed a man who would fight for her." Whew. I can't help but think this story would read much better with the rape and attempted rape edited down to mere ominous threats of what might happen to Aline. That would leave room for some of the action scenes that Howard wrote better than any other pulpster I know, and her gratitude toward Clanton would leave her naturally disposed to reward him in a carnal way – thereby supplying the necessary Spicy element. As it stands, Aline (and we) would have been so much better off if she had encountered Steve Costigan or Dennis Dorgan instead of this creep.