An appreciation of Conan artists

Like a lot of people, it was art that initially drew me to Conan the Barbarian. There are so many incredible artists who have worked on Conan for the last 90 years that he's been done in dozens of styles and mediums. There have been specific scenes from his best-known stories reproduced on canvas and originals that evoke the spirit of our favorite Cimmerian. I wanted to spend some time appreciating those artists who have brought him to life in such meaningful ways.

I love Conan art, but I'm not an art critic or much of an artist by any stretch of the imagination, so I enlisted my twin brother Jake to help me out here. Jake's actually an artist and a professional designer, so I wanted to see what he thought about various Conan artists and was hoping he'd let me know if I was talking out of my ass.

Much of this will be about cover artists of Savage Sword of Conan, and while there is frequently incredible interior art in Conan comics (Barry Windsor-Smith, Ernie Chan, Sal and John Buscema, and Val Mayerik, just to name a few), I want to focus on the paintings and covers that draw us to those stories.

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Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta is going to be brought up in any conversation about Conan art- it's like rock and roll conversations always making their way back to Chuck Berry. He completely earns his title as the "godfather of fantasy art." He didn't just do Conan- he's also known for his dynamite work on characters like John Carter of Mars, Vampirella, and Doc Savage, but he did a bunch of Conan stuff.

Frazetta is probably more influential than anyone else other than maybe Neal Adams on this list. The Misfits and Glenn Danzig were really important to my development as a music fan and for the longest time, I thought the cover of the Danzig EP "Thrall-Demonsweatlive" was a Frazetta, but I think it's just that Simon Bisley was very influenced by Frank.

Frazetta always elevates Conan to mythical status. He frequently places Conan in the midst of or on top of hordes of enemies, either dead by Conan's hand or about to be. His backgrounds are frequently sublime skies that are churning storms or burnt-blood reds, which always make Conan seem even more powerful. There's always something dark, threatening, and salacious about Frazetta's work.

Jake notes that Frazetta frequently uses charged backgrounds like piles of skulls and often employs a low point of view that makes Conan look even more monumental, like you're the prey and Conan is the predator. He notes that Frezetta's kind of "perfect" because he essentially invented this style. His work is so weighted and fleshy but so unreal at the same time that his powerful compositions suck you in.

Earl Norem

Earl Norem is the close second for me as far as Savage Sword cover artists go. His work is phenomenal and represents what might be the platonic ideal of Conan. His color work always makes the art pop, using a lot less muted colors and fewer reds and earthtones than Frazetta did.

His Conan is heroic and pulpy, as Conan should be. His Conan is definitely less threatening than Frazetta's, at least to us, and the motion of his paintings always center on Conan (I mean, Conan is usually in the dead center of the frame, too). Something about the way he draws Conan's faces and poses always just oozes the Bronze Age of Comics to me. Conan is pure superhero. Jake feels that it hews a lot closer to post-War men's magazines and that it's a little more realist than the surrealism of Frazetta.

Norem's backgrounds are a little more practical than artists like Frazetta or Boris Vallejo, choosing to usually put Conan in a cave or against a more worldly landscape than lots of other Conan artists. Jake notes that usually there's just a gradient and maybe one piece of scenery in the back. In his "Hawks Over Shem" cover, though, Conan looms large in the background with his jaw as square as can be. It's a great one. Tons of the Dark Horse Savage Sword collections I have use Norem's work as the cover.

Jake notes that Norem uses a little bit more dynamic positioning of the viewer than Frazetta so that he really puts you into the action. He pointed out a strong understanding of anatomy in his musculature that works well for the barbarian look.

Boris Vallejo

A guy at my local comic shop recently said to me, "If Frazetta is Coke, Boris Vallejo is Pepsi," and I think he's right. The two have a lot in common.

Vallejo's Conan feels classical, like Biblical paintings of Genesis or Revelation. He's impossibly shredded, and universally holding a blade in his hand. Vallejo usually chooses to surround Conan with deep blacks and misty backgrounds, usually devoid of most scenery, which helps make them feel even more primordial to me. Jake feels like it's a little more gothic than other Conan artists.

Boris did the covers for many of the Lancer books like Conan the Wanderer, which uses his "Devil in Iron" painting. That one's probably my favorites of his.

Jake notes that that Vallejo's work feels a lot more theatrical and frozen in time rather than the intensity of Frazetta's stuff, but that it's a really classic fantasy look.

Margaret Brundage

Margaret Brundage was the very first Conan cover artist, providing covers for Weird Tales from 1932 to 1938. While her Conan is definitely different than we think of today- less muscled, short hair, classically handsome- I find something creepily alluring about a lot of her work. It's kind of flat in a way that makes it feel older than it is, and her vibrant colors are really beautiful. I think there's something strangely occult about her work that makes me think of Aleister Crowley, but that's probably just me.

Clearly, most of her Conan work wasn't centered on Conan himself, but on the damsels in distress in his stories. A lot of women in Conan artworks are scantily clad, but Brundage's are frequently straight-up nude, which I find even more shocking since it was the 30s.

I didn't tell Jake that Brundage was working about 30-40 years earlier than most of the artists here, but he noted that they look much older while also being way more sexual than the others with strange, lurid designs. He pointed out that her female figures are all so dramatic and theatrical, but the perspective almost never changes. There's lots of censorship from the original illustrations: nipples get covered, body parts removed. Every woman has the same slender, twisting build.

Women had a hard enough time breaking into the art world in the 1930s and it's interesting that she actively hid that Margaret was a women. When they actually revealed the M in "M. Brundage" stood for Margaret, the reaction was poor.

Neal Adams

Neal Adams didn't do a ton of Conan stuff, but he did at least do the cover for "Black Colossus" when it appeared in Savage Sword, and that's one of my favorite Savage Sword covers of all time.

I met Neal Adams at Denver Comic Con in 2017 and he was a real delight to talk to. I think he was bored, so he chatted up my buddy Zach and I for way longer than I expected. He was very complimentary with the fact that we were teachers and he talked mad shit about Trump, which was pretty entertaining. I see a lot of Neal Adams influence on my first-ever favorite comic artist, John Romita Jr.

​Jake just said, and I agree with him on this, "It's Neal Adams so it's dope as fuck."

Bob Larkin

Bob Larkin produced some Conan work that's pretty unique in the canon. While there are lots of action shots of him, most are full-body, whereas Bob Larkin actually drew some serious close-ups of Conan.

He always seemed to be going for more of a photorealistic vibe than other Conan artists, and his paintings are sometimes lit from interesting, unnaturally-low angles that give them a cool vibe.

Larkin reminds Jake a lot of Hector Garrido, the guy who painted all the GI Joe action figure box art, especially the way he draws explosions. Jake's a big fan of his X-Men and Universal Monsters art.

Nestor Redondo

Nestor Redondo is up there with Earl Norem when it comes to great Savage Sword cover work. He's got some great color work and some really cool touches like the lighting on his cover for "The Gem in the Tower."

Jake let me know that when art by US artists was becoming more expensive in the Bronze Age, publishers hired foreign and immigrant artists to work for cheaper, and Redondo was one of those artists.

His work definitely feels more posed and a little less dynamic than many Conan artists, which makes his stuff not quite as compelling as Norem or Vallejo for me. I know these are literally book covers, but many of his poses feel like book covers, like they're posed just a little too perfectly.

Jake says that Redondo has super expressive ink work and loves his lines. It's very traditional pen and ink that almost feels like something you'd see for children's Bible stories. He tends to use more architecture rather than fantasy settings in his backgrounds.

Joe Jusko

Most of Joe Jusko's covers come a little later in the life of Savage Sword. His work looks a lot flatter in dimension than other Conan artists in a way that reminds me of the cardboard backing to the box that an action figure comes in. That sounds like a complaint, but I don't mean it to be negative. There's something Saturday-morning-cartoony about Jusko's Conan in how he's chiseled out of bronze and either grins wolfishly or open-mouth screams at us.

Jusko also did the A cover for the new Titan-published Savage Sword issue 1, so that's fun to see how he's progressed as an artist after about 40 years.

Jake notes that Jusko's Conan is a little bit more passionate or crazed than others. He praised that Jusko's faces are a little bit more expressive in the face when a lot of artists keep him a little more muted in expression. His figures don't vary much- Conan's upper body is pretty identical each time) but that there's a shine to everyone, be it their skin or clothing.

David Mattingly

David Mattingly did some later Savage Sword covers, and they are so incredibly 80s. Looking at the difference between Earl Norem or Boris Vallejo's work and Mattingly's feels like Kiss going from Destroyer to Creatures of the Night.

I really like his use of color and shadow, in this cover of Savage Sword 62, though. There's something about his work that reminds me of paperback cover, specifically "choose your own adventure" stories.

Jake likened Mattingly to a less-stylized Dan McPharlin with sort of that "space girl" thing going on. Like Bob Larkin, he feels its evocative of GI Joe.

Joe Chiodo

Joe Chiodo draws a lonelier Conan. So many of his covers place Conan alone against a kind of empty backdrop like the sky on a cliff or a barren landscape that his work feels very prehistoric and ethereal. His lighting is usually unique and low, like it's coming from dawn or sunset.

I really like his choice of colors and how he draws Conan's clothing. Too many Conan artists put him in just a boring loincloth, so to see someone do some adornments like leg wraps or a necklace of pendants is welcome.

Jake likes Chiodo's painted stuff a little bit more, like his Savage Sword 79 cover, and he feels like Chiodo's women are reminiscent of Margaret Brundage's. He noted how many monumental creatures or people are in his work with Conan. Unlike Frazetta's storming, brooding masses, Jake feels like Chiodo's depicting the final moment of the final fight more often.

Bill Sienkiewicz

I only know of a few Bill Sienkiewicz Conan pieces, but holy shit are those few good. His armored Conan that was used for Savage Sword 102 is impossibly cool, and his painting for the Conan the Barbarian film evokes both Arnold and literary Conan.

He has such a unique style that's so much more Copper Age of Comics than all the Bronze Age artists I've included here.

Jake loves his expressive brushwork and says that his blockier, more abstract work is really compelling to him. Sienkiewicz is a lot closer to impressionism than anyone else here.

Also, WHAT IF CONAN HAD A GUN? (Conan, you are a killing machine. You don't need the gun.)

Vladimir Nenov

Vladimir Nenov the the covers for several Conan novels, including the copy of Conan the Swordsman that I have. His Conan has longer hair than many other artists’, and he is a little bit more evocative of Arnold Schwarzenegger than a lot of other renditions, at least to me. 

I really like how he does Jamal’s Turanian garb in his “The People of the Summit” cover.

It’s interesting that a lot of Nenov’s Conans are facing away from the camera. Jake noticed that too, that even outside of his Conan work, Nenov's subject is almost never engaging with the viewer. He says that a lot of Nenov's work has what he called a "Lisa Frank-ass color scheme" to it.

Ken Kelly

I saved (one of) the best for last. Remember how I mentioned Kiss earlier? Ken Kelly actually did their album covers for Destroyer and Love Gun. His work is incredible.

Honestly, Ken Kelly clearly seems to be aping Frazetta, but I don’t mind because the result is so dynamite. I mean, I’ve obviously used one of his paintings as the banner to this chronology the whole time. 

His Conan changes quite a bit from painting to painting. Sometimes, he’s more of a Joe Jusko action figure-type body, and sometimes he looks like a smaller, but more mythical Conan. It's incredible to me that his "People of the Black Circle" painting looks like it's 100 years old and some of his others look like they're from the 90s. Though we all know Conan has blazing blue eyes, I find it interesting that so much of Kelly's work hides Conan's eyes in shadow, making him seem even more savage and vicious. There's just a little glint of the whites of his eyes in that darkness.

His backgrounds and scenery are really what draw me in, though. His misty, gorgeous, primordial backgrounds look incredible. Jake notes the really structured layouts with much of the frame unfilled compared to other artists, pulling your eye to one side of the frame. Look below at the scene in the temple on mount Yimsha with all that space behind Conan.

While we were talking about Kelly's work, Jake made a little graphic to highlight how much of Kelly's paintings are essentially negative space. He drained the color out of everything except the foreground in the collage below. He says that he feels Conan is usually in-your-face, but Kelly is so much more restrained, putting him off-center in the frame and including a little more narrative in his work since he's giving you more to look at.

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When Savage Sword switches title fonts at issue 207, I think it's a huge travesty. So many of the works of the artists above look amazing right beneath the vicious SAVAGE SWORD text and the big, blocky CONAN. I'm not a huge fan of the logo they've been using on the 2024 Titan run, but it's better than the last 30 issues of volume 1's cover.

If you've made it this far, thanks for checking out these great artists with us! Go follow my brother on social media if you want to check out his work- he does great albums, concert posters, photography, and just little fun designs that he comes up with.