Conan the Hippie

Sometimes the “look” of something defines it in our imaginations far more than any verbal description. This was certainly true of early science fiction, where Frank Paul, Hugo Gernsback’s favorite artist, defined the look of science fiction for decades.

Frank Paul was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1884 and studied in Vienna to be an architect. He immigrated to New York for further study, where he met Gernsback. Frank Paul painted all of the covers for Gernsback’s “Amazing Stories”, and drew all of the interior artwork, from the magazine’s birth in April, 1926, until Gernsback lost control of the magazine in 1929. He then continued painting for Gernsback once Gernsback launched “Wonder Stories” later in 1929. Altogether, he painted 150 covers for Gernsback, plus 28 covers for other SF mags. Thus, he dominated the visual imaginations of early SF fans.

Frank Paul’s own imagination was mired in the Victorian past and, especially with his clothing, he never escaped that past. For example, no matter how outre the situation he portrayed for his stiff and simply drawn characters, they always faced their situations dressed in knickers and jodhpurs. This gave early SF, a literature of the future, an oddly retro feel. He also splashed his paintings with deep reds and yellows, garish even for the pulp era, and the bright colors of the pulp-era SF mags can be traced to his enduring influence.

Likewise, the look we most closely associate with the 1930s-era “Weird Tales”, the world’s first all-fantasy magazine, founded in 1923, is the look of the much-praised (and beloved-by-readers) artist Margaret Brundage. She painted 66 monthly covers for the magazine in the 1930s and, at one point, painted 39 consecutive “Weird Tales” covers. And she continued painting “Weird Tales” covers into World War II. It was Margaret Brundage who gave us our first glimpse of C. L. Moore's warrior princess, Jirel of Joiry.  And it was also Margaret Brundage who gave us our first visual depiction of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, painting nine “Weird Tales” covers depicting the barbarian warrior, as well as interior artwork featuring Conan.

To our eyes, Brundage’s Conan is a strangely demur character, hardly savage, hardly barbarian. He is slight of build and, most incongruously of all, has short, neatly-trimmed hair. Brundage’s Conan seems to have visited the barber every Saturday.

In the 1950s small press publisher Gnome Press published several Conan titles, all graced with cheery chaps in generic Roman armor on the covers, much like Brundage’s Conans. They did little to help sell the volumes, as the press runs of 3,000-5,000 per title took years, into the early 1960s, to sell out.

In 1966, paperback publisher Lancer Books, and artist Frank Frazetta, changed everything. That year Lancer published the first in a reborn series of Conan titles. This was “Conan the Adventurer”, with a cover painting entitled “The Barbarian” by Frank Frazetta.

This Conan was not slight of build, cheery, or clad in generic Roman armor. He was dark, moody, grim, his heavily muscled and scarred body almost nude, standing atop a pile of bloody corpses with a barely-clad lush young woman clutching his leg. This Conan was, at long last, the right visual depiction of the dark and brooding Conan featured in Howard’s fiction. He was truly savage. He was truly barbaric. And part of the wild exoticism of this bestial barbarian was his long, flowing, unkempt hair. Frazetta’s Conan erupted into existence in the midst of the Sixties, in the midst of the hippie era, when men sported long hair in defiance of custom and propriety, and the most ferocious long-hair of the age became Conan.

“Conan the Adventurer” was an earthshaking game-changer. This was before Conan comix, before Conan movies, before any heroic fantasy paperback series. No one had ever before seen anything like Frazetta’s Conan. Frazetta went on to paint the covers of eight of the eleven Lancer Conans published between 1966-1971. These covers were a big reason the Lancer versions of the Conan stories sold over ten million copies. Frazetta’s vision of what a barbarian warrior should look like became indelibly stamped in the public mind. Thereafter, the “look” Frank Frazetta gave Conan in 1966 became the “look” of heroic fantasy.