Rusty Burke founded The Dark Man and edited the first four issues. He is the author of REH: A Short Biography of Robert E. Howard, published in 1999 by Cross Plains Comics, and is the series editor for Wandering Star‰s Robert E. Howard Library of Classics. He edited, for Necronomicon Press, Day of the Stranger: Further Memories of Robert E. Howard by Novalyne Price Ellis, and Report on a Writing Man and Other Reminiscences of Robert E. Howard by Tevis Clyde Smith. He provided most of the annotations for the two volumes of Howard‰s Selected Letters and has provided editorial services for Robert E. Howard‰s Fight Magazine and Ghor, Kin-Slayer.

He was the featured speaker for Cross Plains‰ Robert E. Howard Day in 1998, has presented papers and participated on panels at various conventions, and contributed articles to James Van Hise‰s Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard and Fantastic Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft, and to the Cross Plains Comics/Wandering Star edition of Worms of the Earth.

He has been a contributing member of the Robert E. Howard United Press Association (REHupa) since 1981, a frequent visitor to Cross Plains and avid supporter of Project Pride, and is active in the online REH community. He organized the first of many REHupa visits to Cross Plains, in 1986 (visits that ultimately inspired Project Pride to purchase the Howard Home, and that served as precursors to the community's annual Robert E. Howard Day celebration), and the REH Banquet at the 1988 World Science Fiction Convention, with Novalyne Price Ellis as guest speaker.

He is currently working on a full-length Howard biography, in addition to other ongoing research projects.