The 70s were a wonderful time to be a Robert E. Howard fan...and also a wonderful time for a geeky, comic book reading pre-teen to read these stories and seek out the REH paperbacks because of them.

This particular magazine, which only had three in its short run, featured Kull, and a James Addison story about when he was Niord in a past life (REH and HP Lovecraft seemed to love this present-day-man-dreaming-of-a-past-heroic-life scenario).

It's somewhat obvious this issue was a bit of a dog's breakfast, quickly thrown together, with a two-part Kull story drawn by different teams for each part, and the afore-mentioned Niord story, gorgeously illustrated by one of my favourite comic artists, Gil Kane.

And the Neal Adams four panel illustration toward the beginning? Yeah, that's worth the price of the magazine all on its own.

As for the stories? The Kull one serves as a good introduction to that character, and serves fairly well to separate him from his better known brother-from-another-mother, Conan. It's not a great story, but it's not a bad one. The Niord one, once it gets into the Worm part of the story, is very good.

Definitely worth the ride. ( )