Tracers
Howard committed suicide in the midst of the depression and never saw the huge fame his characters would come to. He died penniless after begging Weird Tales, the magazine that had published most of his work, to pay him the money they owed him.
I have a few of Howard’s books, but I am sad to say they are fairly recent acquisitions, and still on my reading pile. I have a renewed interest in getting to them, thoush, so they will likely move up from the bottom of the pile. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a love of Howard’s characters. Long before Hollywood got their mitts on them, Conan and Red Sonja were licensed by Marvel comics, and wildly popular. Conan helped put Marvel on the map.
But for some reason or another, both of these characters have had their rights sold to other publishers in the last few years. Conan has come into the possession of Dark Horse Comics, famous for, among other things, Frank Miller’s work 300 (which I haven’t seen yet, so shush), and Sin City. Writing of Conan was taken over by one of my favorite writers, Kurt Busiek, and the book was painted by Cary Nord in a kind of watercolor-style that got me reading Conan again after something close to 20 years.
Red Sonja fell to Dynamite Entertainment, who gave writing over to Michael Avon Oeming, whose art I loved from Powers. Art was taken over by Mel Rubi, who fucking ROCKS, even if he doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry.
Reading these books now has awakened my love of sword and sorcery comics, and I’ve started buying the trade paperback collections of the old Marvel runs of Conan and Sonja that the new publishers have put out (with fancy new computer coloring on Conan!).
It’s been an eye opener, particularly with the Conan books, of which there are 11 trades out (all of which I now have, thanks to a very lucrative birthday and some generous friends) collecting something like the first 100 isues. The book started in 1970, three years before I was born, and probably 15 years before I would start buying it around issue 160 or so.
Author Roy Thomas, who wrote the first 200 issues of the book, give or take, writes long afterwords to each trade, reflecting on each issue and its origins. Most of the original stories were adapted from Robert E. Howards’s stories, combining his half-dozen or so heroes into the Conan we know. When that well ran dry, he licensed plots from other sword and sorcery writers, as well. I don’t blame him. The guy was editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics for a good chunk of that time, and writing other comics to boot. He was busy, and still had to compress and adapt the stories into the comic format and write all the boxes and balloons.
In it, he talks about how he originally wanted the top-rated Marvel artist at the time, John Buscema, to draw the book, but after having to pay $150 an issue to Howard’s estate, Buscema was too pricy. Instead, he went cheap, and got stuck with a so-so artist, Barry Smith.
I was a little annoyed at first, because when I read Conan, Buscema was doing the art, and it is that style I most associate with the barbarian. I was fascinated by the history lesson, though, because I knew that Barry Smith would one day become Barry Windsor-Smith, who is a famous and amazingly talented comic artist.
Smith’s early work was a hackish imitation of Jack Kirby, who was the comic art icon of the time. I give props to Kirby for pioneering much of the art style that drives comics to this day, but personally, I don’t really dig his stuff.
Sacrilege, I know.
Anyway, over a few short issues, Smith’s own style develops, and it is an amazing thing to see. By the time he stopped drawing Conan, the apprentice had become the master. I was actually sorry when Buscema took over.
But I quickly got over it. Buscema, while not as detailed and inventive as Smith, is the artist whose style really represents Conan in my mind, and it made me feel like a kid again.
What’s interesting about John Buscema’s work, though, is that his penciling was very loose, leaving a lot of work for his inker. I get the impression that he left out a lot of backgrounds, and probably left several lines defining the characters that the inker needed to solidify while adding in all the depth and shading that bring out the art.
Inkers never get proper cred. I’ve always said it. That job is fucking hard, and thankless. The penciler almost always gets full art credit; the inker might as well be the letterer (another hard and thankless job).
One time, The Pickytarian and I went to the Museum of Cartoon art, where John Byrne and Terry Austin were answering questions. Terry was John’s inker on his X-Men run, which was what he was most famous for at the time. No one had any questions for Terry, and it made me feel bad. So I raised my hand and asked him, “Does it bother you that John gets billing as the ‘artist’ on the book, while you are just credited as ‘inker’?” This was something John Byrne always did that pissed me off.
Well, apparently I had picked at a raw wound, because Terry went on a rant about giving credit where credit is due. Byrne turned bright red, and had no choice but to publicly agree with everything Terry said. Good times.
But even knowing all this, as I did from my experience reading, penciling, and inking comics as a kid, I was still stunned at the difference an inker can make while reading these old Conan books.
Inkers were a rotating bunch in those days, and while several were names I recognized from decades of Marvel service, like John’s less-famous brother Sal Buscema, Tom Palmer, and Frank Springer, others were just listed as “C. Bunkers” which stood for “Crusty Bunkers”, the nickname Buscema gave to the team of young hungry art apprentices he had in his studio to ink his work. There were even a few issues John Bucscema inked himself, because he felt the inkers were not staying loyal to his style.
Thus, from issue to issue, there are MASSIVE differences in the art. Backgrounds vary from huge detail to a few spartan lines. Tom Palmer used a thick brush for most of his work (which I hate), whereas Frank Springer used a pen that seemed like it had run dry three panels ago, producing a thin, sketchy line (also crappy IMHO). Sometimes faces and muscles have tons of rendering lines. Other times they just have the black “holding lines” around the perimeter. Sometimes the panels look flat and two dimensional, and others they sprawl out into the horizon so that you feel you can reach right out into them. If you didn’t know it was all the same penciler throughout, you would never guess it.
Mad props to all the great inkers out there. We owe you a debt. It ain’t just tracing.