Is it just me? I used to love Conan back in the day,
especially the more adult SAVAGE SWORD tales. I had actually avoided the early
issues of the Marvel comic but was introduced to it via those packs at the
corner grocery where you got 3 coverless or partially coverless comics for a
quarter. When I saw Barry Smith’s rapidly evolving art, I began seeking out
back issues on purpose. In time, with Roy Thomas’s help, I discovered the
mythos of both the character and the property.
Today, though, I ran into this image on the Net. It’s the
cover of a relatively recent CONAN title but it looks little different from
literally hundreds of earlier ones, nearly all inspired by Frank Frazetta’s
paperback covers from the sixties. Only this time—the first time I’ve really
looked at a cover featuring the character in probably more than a decade—it
bothered me.
Let me preface this by saying that I love Frank Cho’s
artwork and have long been a fan of his LIBERTY MEADOWS.
But let’s see. You have the dark-skinned Conan, not a hair
out of place, posing with a bloody axe, having presumably lopped off the head
of the unfortunate gentleman at left. His axe blade is bloody but not dripping
and the blood’s clearly running down-cover from that site so where’s the body?
That said, why does our “hero” look so calm and poised? Yes, his arm veins are
bulging but not a drop of sweat or obvious signs of exertion. And what about
those legs? They look more like dual tree trunks. Even assuming he might
legitimately have legs like that, where in the world would he have found boots
that fit?
The real issue though is the girl. Now it had to have a
girl. I get that. You don’t hire Frank Cho and have him NOT draw a girl. But
why is she there? In spite of all the obvious recent carnage, she looks almost
drugged, even as the blood congeals under her thighs. And why is she dressed in
a Slave Princess Leia costume anyway? Where did she come from? With skin that
pale, she isn’t likely to be a local girl and that is most likely not her
normal attire. More importantly, what is she doing crawling between Conan’s
tree trunk legs in the first place? It looks as though if you were to stand her
up she would be a tiny sort, too, except, of course, for that outsized
derriere. Is she supposed to simply be just a random sex object, another in a
seemingly endless line of submissive females in Conan’s testosterone-bloated
universe?
As I said, maybe it’s just me. There was a time I would not
only have loved this cover but would have spent long hours trying to draw ones
just like it. Now I look at it and see nothing but a violent and potentially
dangerous male fantasy catering to base instincts that I like to tell myself
most of us have long since outgrown.
Yeah. I’m thinking it’s probably just me.
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