EXTRACTS: The Complete Conan of Cimmeria Volume 3 © The Book Palace (416 PAGES in Full edition)

i Foreword I never knew Conan. Oh, I saw the movies and studied the paintings and thought I knew all about Conan’s character. Then I read the stories presented here. I knew next to nothing until then. And neither does anyone else who hasn’t read Howard. Because locked within these flights of fury, these vaults of untamed male fantasy, is the actual persona of the character so many have captured on canvas. And now it was my turn and I leapt at the chance. I believed that the real character would come to life in my mind’s eye in a different way than what I had been exposed to. Intuitively, I knew I was not understanding the full picture. I began reading with the daunting task before me of trying to capture a view of Conan that was entirely my own approach. As I read I was struck by Howard’s wordsmithing. The words with which he chose to describe certain passages were themselves descriptive and visual. It sent me running for the dictionary. The farther I read, the more I realized that these stories were becoming classic in a broader sense than the pulp genre. I viewed them in a way that N. C. Wyeth may have absorbed Treasure Island or Mead Schaeffer visualized Lorna Doone . A grand adventure scale with all the seriousness that the Golden Age illustrators imbued their pictures. A classic illustrated adventure book. I wanted to own Conan the way those guys owned their presentations of beloved characters. There was so much to choose from. The images were cascading and overlapping in waves of postures, lighting, and movement. As I sketched away into many nights, out came the Conan bouldering through a creek bed, on his way to or from so many of the actions in this collection. It became the slipcase, presenting Conan’s essential portrait. Alert, confident, and solitary. I wanted a range of his emotions. The next painting to appear stemmed from my desire to portray the stealthy, panther-like side of the Cimmerian. And so he strides atop the wall at night in The Man-Eaters of Zamboula, on a mission to educate someone about the way the world works. I added another night scene because I wanted to see those streets in Zamboula and find Conan rescuing Nafertari, sneaking about, ever watchful for dangerous cannibals. Then the pirate story. As adventurous and mythical as Sabatini’s Captain Blood , Conan steps into the story of The Black Stranger in full-on pirate gear. I had to show him as no one is likely to have seen him portrayed. Finest pirate regalia, as if Howard had just discovered an old trunk of his grandfather’s in the dusty attic. The portrait of Black Sarono is in the Golden Age mode of limited colors: red, black, and white, and executed with the same spirit. Each black-and-white chapter painting

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