Roberto's going for an oldskool Silver Age look for Jungle, and it's paying off hugely. The best thing about his art, for me, is the beautiful, textured backgrounds. You really feel like you're in the jungle, in every panel.

As usual, Dynamite serves up an awesome panoply of front covers, by Alex Ross, Paul Renaud, and Ryan Sook (featured!). Yes, all the knick-knacks Tarzan is wearing are 100% accurate and in accordance with the original novel. That's the big idea behind Dynamite's adaptation of the story – we're trying to do it the "right way", as close to the spirit of the original as possible. Newsarama did an interview with me about the whole thing.

The reviews so far are very positive – thanks, Stephen and Jimmy!

Wayne Hall at scifipulse.net has interviewed me twice about all my writing for Dynamite. The latest is online. Whole lotta Tarzan.

The best thing about Lord of the Jungle #1 is the price – $1. Check out a preview right here, and buy three copies of each cover variant. Rest assured, Dynamite is losing money on each and every purchase!

Game over.

I never finished Rygar as a lad – it was just too discouraging to have to start over from scratch after playing for four hours straight.

Despite all this, Rygar was and is one of my favorite games. It was one of the first titles I played that wasn't a hopelessly insoluble "graphic adventure" or a futile, existentialist sprint against death. Rygar is a story, in the truest sense of the word. Now, what with ROMs and emulation software and all, you can actually finish the game and know the ending.

Playing Rygar all over again reminds me why I loved the game when it first came out. It's so weird and imaginative. Your hero (Rygar!) is a Robert E. Howard-esque slayer, with a "Discarmor", a spinning shield of fire that lashes out like a yo-yo. Rygar searches the land of Argool for the five "Indoras", mystical sages who will bestow him with the power to kill the evil god Ligar and restore peace.

Despite the simplicity of the graphics, there are moments of true beauty and awe in the game – the rising sun in the background of the opening level, the mysterious castle in the sky, and the far-off mountains and trees in the backgrounds. Argool is a wild, vast and magical place.

At times Rygar feels like Norse mythology; at others, it feels Hindu. Or Greek. It's a delirious and wooly blend of prehistoric Indo-European mythologies, completely unrestrained in its creativity and imagination. The wonderful names of the monsters and places – Eruga's Forest, Garloz, the Tower of Garba – added immensely to the flavor.

Rygar was also special when it came out in that you could actually revisit places you had been – in fact, you had to. Argool was truly open-ended, every bit as much as Grand Theft Auto.

But Rygar's soundtrack is the best thing about the game. There are a few missteps – the repetitive drone of Dorago's Palace drives me a little crazy – but nothing can take away from the overall beauty and power of the score. Garloz and Eruga's Forest are my favorite tracks.

Tecmo remade Rygar for the PS2 in 2002. It was a great game, but they abandoned Argool for a Greco-Roman setting. It actually came out before God of War, so it wasn't a copycat, but I was still disappointed – I've always wanted to know more about Argool's myths and monsters.

I was surprised to learn there was a coin-op Rygar game, released about a year before the NES version, but it's one instance where the console version of the game is head-and-shoulders above the arcade. They're not even the same game, really. Although the graphics for the arcade version are better, the game is grindingly repetitive.

So there's no question: the version of Rygar for the Nintendo Entertainment System is the best of the bunch. It's crude, and it's brutal, but despite that it truly feels like a window into another universe. To play it, check out the Nestopia emulator. Rom-world.com is a great place to go for ROMs. I don't condone downloading ROMs of games you never owned, of course, but if you bought the original game, it's still yours!

My framed copy of Will's original art for Kull!

Last October, I got some fantastic news: Will Conrad, the artist who drew my run on Kull for Dark Horse, is the new interior artist for Marvel's X-Men.

It's a pretty big deal – every artist's (and writer's) dream is to work on a high profile ongoing series, and it doesn't get much more high-profile than X-Men. It's the equivalent of moving up to the major leagues in baseball. I've been paired with a lot of great artists, but working with Will was a stand-out experience.

He gave me an original page from Kull, which now hangs on my wall next to my computer – you can check out a cleaner version here. I look at it every day. Kull has always been my favorite Robert. E Howard character, more even than Conan. Bringing him to life with such a talented artist will always be one of the highlights of my career as a comic book writer.

I was sad Will and I couldn't continue on Kull together, but Dark Horse has a great team in place with David Lapham and Gabriel Guzman. In some ways it's better, because I get to just sit back and read!

You can see some of Will's X-Men art on his site. Congratulations, Will. It warms the cockles of my admittedly black and desiccated heart to know you're getting the recognition you deserve.

Imagine my surprise – they were even better than I remembered. The story begins off a lot like a fantasy novel, but soon it becomes clear something is very, very wrong.

I'm happy I read the versions of the books with front covers by the great Tim Hildebrant. No other illustrations of this series even come close to his. Tim was very smart not to show any of the characters close up – or at all, really. I never like seeing overly representational takes on characters from books, I always think "That's not what they look like!"

Here are Tim's three covers:

And now for some SPOILERS, only for those who've read the books already.

One of my favorite things about the Tripods books is how you can deduce certain things based on clues John Christopher drops. For instance, it becomes clear Will lives in England, and that his friend, "Beanpole", is in fact "Jean-Paul". The "White Mountains" Will and his friends are trying to reach are really the Alps. Later on, you can deduce the "Masters" breathe chlorine gas.

But none of these things are ever stated explicitly! Little touches like that make the Tripods Trilogy one of my favorite things.

I mean – you could get it for "free" from Bittorrent, but then you'd be stealing from me. And you wouldn't want to do that! At the very least, wait until I move into a mansion with a bowling alley, an oxygen chamber, a ferris wheel, and laser turrets…

Mmm… laser turrets…

Click on through to buy, Dear Reader…