Sailor Costigan Battles the Yellow Cobra Essay
The upcoming 15th issue of TGR will include the first appearance of the Steve Costigan version of “The Yellow Cobra.” The story is illustrated by Clayton Hinkle, whose work appeared in issues #11 and #12. Clayton is primarily a pulp/comic book artist who is staff artist for Pro Se Productions.
He captures the slightly off-kilter, madcap mayhem of Howard’s fight yarns like no one else.This fight story was originally titled “The Fangs of the Yellow Cobra” in an early Costigan draft, then the carbon of the version Howard submitted to his literary agent, Otis Adelbert Kline, as “Sailor Costigan and the Yellow Cobra.” Someone at the agency then converted it to a Dorgan adventure, probably at Howard’s request when he was trying to salvage some of his unsold Costigan work.
The story was sold to The Magic Carpet Magazine and was announced in the final issue. The magazine folded before the Dorgan version appeared and it sat around until its publication in the FAX hardcover, The Incredible Adventures of Dennis Dorgan (1974) and later reprinted in several paperback editions.The only Dorgan story published during Howard’s lifetime was “Alleys of Singapore,” which was published as “Alleys of Darkness” in the January 1934 final issue of Magic Carpet. Since Howard had another story in the same issue (“The Shadow of the Vulture”), the story appeared under Howard’s “Patrick Ervin” byline. Wright had bought a handful of other Dorgan stories, but they remained unpublished when the magazine succumbed to poor sales — they eventually appeared in the Dorgan collection.The print run for this upcoming issue will only be numbered 200 copies. A complete list of contents, as well as pre-ordering information will be available soon.
More details on issue #15 can be found on the Coming Soon page.
