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Fantasy Crossroads 10/11: March 1977
Editor/publisher: Jonathan Bacon

I know I remember seeing this stylish zine way back in the 70s…but I did not actually have a copy in my possession (well, I should say, I didn’t keep a copy if I had one). Though it is very text heavy, there are a few nice illustrations in this issue. Fantasy Crossroads was a Robert E. Howard centric zine, and true to it’s name, it was indeed a crossroads for all sorts of content around that and related subjects. You would see fiction, reviews, poetry, art, interviews, and more. Editor Bacon had a good eye for design as well. The pages have room to breathe. I do wish he had done a few more illustrative column heads, but that is just the artist in me I suppose. It sat in good stead with similar zines of that time such as Copper Toadstool, Amra, Erb-dom, and the many Howard zines that were around at that time.

As you can see above, Bacon starts off with a very beautiful early Jim Fitzpatrick Conan image, residing more in the Celtic myth type visuals he soon became associated with, than with the more coarse Frazetta style Conan. I have loved Jim’s work for a looooong time, starting not with zines or books, but with music. Jim was the artist on many of Thin Lizzy’s albums, exhibiting a love for comics (Neal Adams and Barry Smith mainly) early on. You can find Jim on Facebook, he is an incredibly nice guy (in fact, he was one of a few that contributed pro bono work to the group of Tori Amos/RAINN calendars I did years ago).

After the table of contents, and Bacon’s Ramblings editorial (and an inside cover illustration by Stephen Riley), the first fiction piece begins, Ginseric’s Fifth Born Son. This is a character from Robert E. Howard called James Allison, and is written in round table style by Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, and Joseph Payne Brennan. It is illustrated by Riley (above left), Allen Koszowski, Clyde Caldwell, and Jeff Easley. Bacon promises that later installments will be presented by such greats as Michael Moorcock, Frank Belknap Long, Brian Lumley and more (featuring art by Fitzpatrick, Gene Day, Cliff Bird, and more). Hopefully I will get subsequent issues to see if it happened!

When I asked Clyde Caldwell about the piece below on Facebook, he told me, “that one has a lot of Jeff Jones influence.  I always admired his ink work. (I’ve got one of his original Idyl pages.)  I started out in my teens inking with a dip pen and India ink that I would buy at the office supply store in my hometown.  Back then I was into the MAD Magazine work of Wallace Wood, Jack Davis and Will Elder.  I hadn’t discovered inking with a brush at that point.  I did a lot of ink work over the years and was influenced by many fine ink artists, not the least of which were Virgil Finlay, Frazetta, the aforementioned Jeff Jones, just to name a few.  I kept experimenting with new inking techniques and styles, but never considered myself to be a very good ink artist.  So, when I got into things professionally, I tended to go more for tonal, airbrush & ink wash illustrations when I needed to do a b&w.”

Following a poem by Gregory Nicoll (Galileo Saw the Truth), a Roundtable Discussion with Bacon and fellow REH zine publishers begins, and I think will be very interesting to fanzine aficionados. Next is more fiction in the form of The Wrath of Tupan, by Richard L. Tierney, illustrated by Richard Huber. I will shamefacedly confess, I did not have time to read all these bits of fiction. Next up is an interview with Donald M. Grant, a highly regarded publisher of fantasy. You can check out his site here. One comment I found particularly incongruous was Grant on Frank Frazetta, saying “I think he’s very good. Probably not a great favorite because he doesn’t have that mythic quality — for me — that I can find in Coll, or Finlay, or Krenkel, or in Barr or Austin or Jones.” However, that is a tiny bit of contention for me in an illuminating interview. Some of Grant’s favorite artists adorn the interview, such as Finlay, David Ireland (seen above left) and Roy Krenkel. There is also a bibliography of Grant’s books at the end of the interview.

More poetry and fiction follows (Fantasy Crossroads by Brian Lumley and A Vision of Rembathene by Darrell Schweitzer, respectively, and in addition, a poem, The Ugly Avoided Places, by Joseph Payne Brennan). A book review column is next, Of Swords and Sorcery No. 3, covering books by John Jakes, Norvell W. Page, Larry Niven, and others.

Next up are several articles on Robert E. Howard by Harold Preece, Tevis Clyde Smith, Brian Earl Brown, and L. Sprague de Camp. Pretty big names for a fanzine! A longer book review section follows, as well as News Notes (covering many zines of the day, as well as other publications). A short article on early Wargaming is next on the list, followed by a few more poems, as well as the letter column (Epistle Express, filled with more of the bigger names in fiction). The penultimate feature is a bit of fiction and illustration by the late Gene Day called Darkshire’s Monster. You can see two of the illustrations below.

The Temple of Nephrenka is the last bit of fiction in the zine, and is accompanied by a beautiful early Charles Vess illustration (below). When I asked him if he had anything to say (via Facebook) about this piece, in typically modest fashion, he replied, “Not much to say. I was trying much too hard to impress with my pen & ink technique and still not good enough drawing underneath to support it.”

There is an ominous afterward by editor Bacon, lamenting losing his administrative job at Graceland College and the publication’s demise. However, something must have gone right, because there are several later issues! Stay tuned! [NOTE: I did just get a copy of issue 15, with a Stephen R. Donaldson (Thomas Covenant books) interview, so look forward to that!]

(NOTE: On a Facebook post, the venerable James Van Hise said on this subject, “What I read is that he was working on a book with chapters by different authors who were all supposed to be paid, but then he lost his job and he no longer had the money to pay the authors but they didn’t quite understand why he couldn’t find some way to live up to his obligations. The book was apparently published by someone else a few years later and Jonathan Bacon quit fandom and stopped communicating with people.”

Thanks go out this time to Charles Vess and Clyde Caldwell.

Don’t forget the pdf, where you can actually read the stories, as well as see more art by those seen so far, (as well as Doug Herring, David Heath Jr, Virgil Finlay, Ric Cruz, Richard Huber Jr., Broc Sears, and Allen Koszowski). The back cover features a Frazetta sketch, below, and then….we are out! See you next month!

Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com