The Broken Sword by George Barr is a little known adaptation of Poul Anderson’s classic Heroic Fantasy novel. Anderson wrote the book in 1954 to no applause. The novel is set in a mythological version of ancient Scandanavia. Anderson peoples his novel with elves, trolls and changelings. He was influenced by his ancestral myths, not by J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which used many of the same icons. The Fellowship of the Ring appeared in 1954 but Tolkien fever would wait another twelve years for the paperback version to appear. The Broken Sword only became a “classic” when Lin Carter reprinted it in the Ballantine Fantasy Series in 1971, when Tolkien’s avid readers were clamoring for more. Barr’s version appeared in a fanzine, Tom Reamy’s Trumpet in Issue #4 (April 1966) to Issue #7 (May 1968), making Barr’s version earlier than the BFS reprint. Sadly, the comic was never completed.
An ad for the series appeared in Star-Studded Comics, another fan publication that also featured Sword & Sorcery comics and fiction as it progressed. It was here that George R. R. Martin got his start.
George Barr would become one of the top paperback cover artists of the 1970s and beyond, known for his delicate and fantastic style. He would do covers for Thomas Burnett Swann’s mythological fantasies as well as adapt Lin Carter, Clark Ashton Smith, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, Tanith Lee, as well as illustrate top Science Fiction magazines. It should be no surprise that Barr did the cover for that 1971BFS edition of The Broken Sword. Who else could possibly know the story that well? It would later get a Boris Vallejo cover in reprint but George’s iconic cover was the very essence of the unicorn-colophoned Ballantine series.
Tom Reamy would later go on to become one of Fantasy & Science Fiction top short story writers of the 1970s. His best stories were collected in San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories (1979) Reamy died far too young from a heart attack in 1977 at 42. His work is often reprinted in F&SF collections.
Let’s look at the comic. We have to remember that this comic adaptation is early work, before Barr would do all those great covers. Despite this I find his artwork excellent, far beyond the level of most fanzines. (It should be noted that Alex Eisenstein and Tom Reamy’s over-all level of excellence was very high. Some professional magazines should look and read so well. The list of pros who wrote for him included Ray Bradbury, Jerry Pournelle, Ray Nelson, Andrew J. Offutt, Robert A. W. Lowndes, John Boardman and Harlan Ellison. Art besides George Barr was by Jim Cawthorn, Jeff Jones, Stephen Fabian, Hannes Bok, you get the idea. This was a class fanzine.)
I am most familiar with George’s work in color for book covers. It is nice to see what he can do in black & white. He did do illustrations for SF magazines like Isaac Asimov’s, another place to admire his non-color artwork. Unlike single illos, the sequential nature of a comic book is another thing altogether.
Trumpet did a one-page bio on George.
Conclusion
George Barr’s The Broken Sword is an unfinished gem hidden away in an old fanzine. It launched Barr’s career as an artist of Fantasy & Science Fiction but had no real effect on comics in general. Trumpet, despite its excellence, had a small reach like most other fanzines. As with other cover artists like Frank Frazetta, Jeff Jones, Ken Barr and Mike Kaluta, George did comics as well but found the single color venue of covers more lucrative or satisfying, while others like Wendy Pini, Gray Morrow, Neal Adams and Richard Corben, did comics more often.
