Can age diminish faith? Can God speak with different words? Solomon Kane is old, and he hasn’t found an answer yet.
The new work of the Robert E. Howard trilogy by the well-known screenwriter El Torres brings back one of the most beloved creations of the North American writer: Solomon Kane. a puritan of unshakable faith that travels the world eliminating evil in the name of God. A character who is always remembered but who never had the popularity of Conan or Kull. Torres is accompanied by Jaime Infante and Manoli Martínez to tell the story of this strong man, already in his old age.
On the east coast of what will become the United States, British settlers build their lives with their own hands. A nation in full birth where faith and laws guide its growth. But we are also in a time of fanaticism and fear. Religion, which should comfort men, is also a harsh parent that punishes offenders. And those suspected of witchcraft will receive the greatest sentences.
Solomon Kane He lives apart from the world, old, accompanied by a young squaw, being part of the community, but not interacting with it. His nights are filled with conversations with the past, about the past, with spirits and ghosts that haunt him. Every day more convinced that he is doomed, his age does not match his strength, and his mission seems endless, the work of Satan surrounds us despite long years of work.
In the town, gossip calls him a hermit and strange, the young women believe he is a witch and they talk about it in secret, between whispers and laughter. But evil pursues the Puritan, and this time a young woman will be the tool to weaken him, expose him, and perhaps condemn him in the eyes of God and men.
With a style that drinks directly from everything written by Howard, the towers he goes further than the creator of the character, and shows us his life after the adventure, how his happiness faded, and the mission continues to pick up the pace to hunt him relentlessly. The writer is quick to remind us of Kane’s great dilemmas, his faith, his belief in things beyond what is related in the Bible, and his experiences that would have damned another man, but they have strengthened him so that in the winter of his life, he is as powerful as he was in his youth.
But within the comic we find many other influences, the wicker man by Hardy, the most recent Midsommar or The Witch, Carmilla, the Crucible, Salem Witch Trials, Captain Kronosand the Hammer in a very concrete way. The dark and suspicious environment, where a neighbor could be the informer to condemn you, paranoia as a tool for control. Torres intelligently analyzes faith, beliefs, fanaticism, and the wildness of man with a mission. He leaves no stitch undone, and the taboos of that isolationist society wake up and harass the protagonists. Only one man remains standing, a man who doubts what faith is, but he does not when he must act for the good.
If the script is rich in detail, in analogies and questions, Jaime Infante’s drawing is not far behind. With pen and ink he gives life to a town in the colonies full of life, but also of blacks and shadows. His demons hide behind corners. Making it look easy, he has a pulse on everything El Torres throws at him, always showing details and sensations beyond mere description. Manoli Martínez’s color adds something to Infante’s inks and plots, a smooth path of sensations and emotions that we absorb and add depth to a drawing that “stains” the reader.
El Torres’ Howard trilogy has left two incredible comics to date about the pulp writer’s characters. Complex, full of action, and with a solid and loving performance with the legacy they have in the collective imagination. And although they have points in common, heroes who are in the twilight of their careers and doubt their place in the world, each of the works makes it clear that Howard did not create them to be just incarnations at different times of the same stereotype, but living characters with the ability to grow and tell far beyond the “sword and sorcery”.