Lovers of sword n’ sorcery often Hail America’s young, cherubic journalist Robert E. Howard as one of the genre’s formative masters. For me, this has long been the main reason for dislike. The creator of muscled, reactionary dunderheads such as Conan and Krull was never likely ever to endear himself to my more humanist tastes. That is until a clutch of ten near-forgotten short stories, from the late 1920s’ and early 1930s’, featuring a fundamentalist Christian superhero and his African shaman guide were dusted down. These I had to read.

Solomon Kane is a sixteenth century Puritan, cloaked in black and grey, topped with a broad-brimmed hat, forever hiding his cold grey eyes in unyielding shadow. He is on a lone quest, the starting point having been the home county of his beloved Devon. While his destination is one we never find, a brooding pointer in each of these ten weird tales intimates one rather more metaphysical than geographic. Titles like ‘Skulls in the Stars,’ ‘The Moon of Skulls’ and ‘The Footfalls Within’ all hint at journeys totemic and internal; the Macrocosm’s indelible link to the Micro.

A repressed soul, restless for release that can only manifest in anger, Kane seems to be seeking some spiritual solace the Bible alone cannot provide: one more akin to a Buddhist monk. It is this that especially surprises - reading between the lines – Kane’s constant questioning of the very thing he fiercely believes in. He can quote the Bible at the most inopportune moments and avenge a whole village, killing through single arm combat, citing God as his sword’s indomitable source of success. Yet, through it all, each encounter inspires the kind of self-doubt he knows the Good Book alone cannot answer.

In most adventures of the period, it is always just a matter of time before the Blacks are somehow shown the error of their ways by their white colonial masters. In white Solomon Kane, we see a superhero whose self-belief isn’t up to his physical prowess. Then, his Jewish name is destined to confuse.

N’Longa, the voodoo spirit guide he meets on his first published adventure, ‘Solomon Kane,’ provides him with a spell-endowed stave that, in combat, succeeds against supernatural foes before whom even his God-blessed sword proved impotent. N’Longa also confides with there-are-more-things-in-heaven-and-earth-type responses that Kane gradually accepts through experience, adding to already existing ruminations on the source of Man’s – and his own - fallibilities.

Constantly, Kane experiences doubt of his own worth and a kind of intellectual angst; not merely with regards being a ‘good Christian,’ but in simply being a good man. It is as though Robert Howard himself is questioning his own internal conflict between the State’s view of Christianity and what it means to him, personally.

Being a restless spirit, there are suggestions Kane’s wanderlust is as much to do with running away as heading to. Precisely what he has left or to what he is heading, we never know. This makes him far more interesting than the usual macho brooders most diehard fantasy hippies and anorak males still adore. Kane is at least aware of his dark side, even if he can’t comprehend its meaning. Just five years later, DC Comics The Batman would ditch the religious iconography but keep the dark conflict, giving it motive - the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents - and voice; to his faithful butler, Alfred; a guide offering routes to solutions like a Colonialist N’Longa.

These stories are rich in horror and sumptuous in description and, if you can overlook the inevitably clichéd stereotyping, a colourful sweep through mythic history. A key title in a new genre of cheap editions in Wordsworth’s ‘Mystery & Supernatural’ series.