At DMR Brian Murphy offers a useful new article “Things That Are Undone and Ought Not To Be: A Sword-and-Sorcery Studies Wish List”.

A good ‘Not Conan or R.E. Howard’ critical survey of the genre in pre-PC comics would certainly be welcome, ideally including British (Karl the Viking etc) and European titles (e.g. in editor Toutain’s Heavy-Metal-alike magazines). And a lavish coffee-table book of related pinball-table art, perhaps with a DVD slotted in the back with the playable pinball table ROMs on it.

To his list I’d add:

* a survey-study of vintage paperback cover-art (as published) and its artists, though if the permissions could be obtained is perhaps doubtful now and one would have to rely on ‘fair use’ for covers;

* a close study of the curiously tepid cultural receptions and contexts of The Lord of the Rings in its ‘fallow period’ between publication and mass take-up. Say 1952-72, to add two years of run-up and take-off at either end;

* perhaps a study of the uses / re-workings sword-and-sorcery authors made of traditional works which were (by their time) effectively in the public domain (folklore, semi-fictional history, Arthur, Norse tales, Arabian Nights, the Northern fairy-tales, Ovid and ancient myth etc). They too had a ‘public domain’, though it was different than ours.