(Yes, that is indeed my face in there, even if it’s too small to tell).
I mentioned, in an early post, that I have a slight fascination with Conan the barbarian. Give me a chance to explain why this is not necessarily a bad thing. Like any fascination, you must avoid getting too carried away with it. When it becomes an obsession, that is when you start running into problems. Back when I used to go to Grateful Dead concerts, I always felt a little sorry for the people who had sold their houses, bought Volkswagen Vans, and spent all their time selling tofu and bean sprout sandwiches when they weren’t standing on a street corner holding a sign that said, ‘I need a miracle’, which translates to; ‘I didn’t sell enough sandwiches to purchase a ticket, so could you please give me one’. These people had crossed the line. They were now ‘following’ the Dead. (Maybe that is why ‘following’ other bloggers makes me nervous, now that I think about it).
(Now do you see why I say that Photoshop is so much better than reality? I did all these pics in like 20 minutes).
So, guys, (and gals), get in touch with your inner barbarian. Let him babysit your inner child. Just don’t get carried away. Don’t spend eight hours a day in the gym trying to look like Conan. (Ladies, this goes double for you). Trust me, this doesn’t impress anybody but other body builders. It just makes your head, (and other body parts), look smaller, and if you become too musclebound, you might have to pay someone to wipe your ass.
Let me explain how Conan came into my life, and why he makes a better role model (and babysitter) than you might at first think.
When I was about fourteen, my family was spending the usual one month vacation in San Diego, visiting Gramma. We did this every year. And every year, despite the warnings from mom, my three brothers and I would get sunburned like you wouldn’t believe. (In the 70s, we didn’t have sunscreen. We put baby oil on so we would fry like freekin’ bacon. One year, maybe even the year I am talking about now, I made the mistake of going to Belmont park, which is this amusement park on the beach. They had a roller coaster and some rides. One of the rides was this big, upright cylinder that ten or so people would go inside of, and then get stuck to the walls when it got to spinning very fast. Then the floor would drop out from below you. The walls were covered with bumpy rubber mats. I went on this ride with a bad sunburn and no shirt. Please, learn from my mistake).
So anyway, there I was, bored and burned out of my skull, and I didn’t want to go outside . Or play with my brothers. I pestered my mom until she got desperate and said, “Why don’t you try reading a book?”
At fourteen, I had not yet discovered the joys of reading. But I was about to. Mom suggested I try some Edgar Rice Burroughs. She thought I might like Tarzan. She was right. A kid growing up in the jungle with gorillas, who meets a beautiful girl and then finds out he is a Lord with a mansion and a boatload of cash waiting for him in England. I read everything that guy ever wrote… (Edgar, not Tarzan)… The John Carter, Warlord of Mars series is awesome… wait, aren’t they releasing a movie version very soon? What are the odds?
Since that magic summer, I have been a voracious reader. I have emergency books in both bathrooms, and in my car, and… never mind.
Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, was the next author on my hit parade. (Seriously, try some of his more obscure stuff, like; The Mucker, for example. Cannibal head-hunters who, a few centuries before had mixed with the survivors of a Japanese war-fleet, chasing a New York street thug through the jungle while wearing armor and swinging samurai swords. And he wrote it in like the 30s, I think).
Back to our buddy, Conan. Do not be put off by the crappy movies! Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to like them. Arnold ‘the Governator’ Schwarzenegger did look like I wanted him to look like. Even his accent worked in a funny sort of way. It was the writing that sucked. To fit into the movie time frame, they had Conan spend his entire young life as a slave pushing some huge wheel around in a circle. I guess this explains the big muscles. In the books, Conan wisely spent that time traveling the world, having adventures, rescuing the needy, learning languages and basically improving himself. By all means, read the comics; Conan, Savage Sword of Conan, King Conan, I still have most of those. But read the books. The original ones, not the ones written after Howard’s death. Do it for yourself, not for me.
So why did I relate to this bronze giant who hacked such a bloody path through the Hyborian age?
First of all, he was big. And he was bad…(in a good way)… I was, as yet, neither of those things. He killed more people and evil creatures before 7:00 AM than most of us kill all day. But it was always someone or something that needed killing. He never did it gratuitously. Now that I am six feet four inches tall, have size fifteen feet and weigh 230 pounds, I still to this day never kill an evil sorcerer or one of Set’s demon minions unless they really deserve it.
But why do I claim that Conan is a good role model and babysitter?
Well, if you really get to know our well traveled Cimmerian, you might get to see my point.
The ladies loved Conan. He never took advantage of a woman, because he just didn’t need to.
He always came to the rescue of the weak and the poor, even when there was nothing in it for him. He didn’t save maidens so they would go out with him. He was just that kind of a guy. Some people, when faced with a difficult life decision, ask themselves; “What would Jesus do?” I ask myself; “What would Conan do?” Try it, it works. I used to always step in when a little guy was getting picked on, or a girl was in trouble. The down side is that I used to get beat up by some of the bullies because I still wasn’t big yet, and the people you are rescuing seldom stick around long enough to thank you, let alone help you in the fight. But no regrets.
Conan was a thief, but an honest thief. It was sort of a rob from the rich to give to the poor type of thing, though honestly, a lot of his money went to poor barkeepers.
Conan always fought evil wherever he saw it. No matter how scary it was, he would take it on. Don’t you sort of wish you could say that?
Conan would become fabulously wealthy, or become the leader of some group, and then have it taken away, or he would just give it all up in a good cause, or a bad gambling game, and he never gave a rat’s ass about it. He had a sense of his own worth that went beyond what he had accumulated. He knew that none of that meant anything.
Also, despite all the women he had to save, the books are full of strong female characters who could kick ass and take names. Red Sonja rules!
The best thing about Conan to me was that he wasn’t a super hero. I didn’t mind Batman so much, because he was a regular guy… (with a fortune) who used training and technology to fight crime. I can believe this. Superman only had one weakness, so you knew that somehow, kryptonite was going to show up sooner or later. And he was just so hard to relate to or believe in. (Yes, I realize that I have no problem believing that John Carter went to Mars and lived there battling aliens, so sue me for being complex).
Conan was no mutant, no alien visitor, no cyborg, no nothing. He was just a man from a violent age that happened to be the best swordsman alive. Like Bruce Lee in cave bear-skin shorts. What’s not to believe in?
Conan did have one major flaw. He tended to end up leading men into danger. Sometimes just one or two men, sometimes a ship load, occasionally a huge army. A lot of the time he would end up being the sole survivor. Hey, nobody forced those guys to go with him. They were drawn to his power, his strength. From this I learned a valuable lesson. Never ‘follow’ anyone. (Hey, another reason I get nervous pushing the ‘follow’ button)… But all I really mean is that if you are going to play Conan, then you better be Conan, not one of his ‘red shirt guy on the away-team guys’…
So I took a long path to get here, but all of this is leading up to something.
Time for another look at the early artistic endeavors of our hero… (me)…
Here is a Conan comic that I started when I was still a tiny barbarian;
Yes, the artwork is less than masterful, and the spelling is atrocious. (It still is…bless you, spell checker). But I was slowly improving.
I do sort of like the colors and the layout. Oh, jeeze, I hope no one is offended by this. I did this in the early 70s when Archie Bunker was on TV. I actually wanted some enemies that would seem tough enough to give Conan a run for his money. (Does that guy on the right look a little like Richard Pryor?)
Every time you draw, you get a little better.
I hope the SPCA doesn’t see this next part… Hey, that reptile totally started it…
That is another thing that I like about good old Conan. No matter how crappy your day was, you knew he was having a worse one.
So that is as far as I got with that project. Because that is the way I am. It is still sitting in my drawers of mystery, waiting for me to get around to finishing it.
I leave you with one other thing I found in my drawers… so to speak…
Hey, that isn’t too bad, for ink and colored pencil.
I hope you can read what Conan is saying in the caption. There is a message in there somewhere.
We are still not done with Conan. Many of the better pictures I did of him I cut out and mounted on wooden plaques. Someday I will scan them, and we will talk more about Conan, that sweet, brooding, misunderstood barbarian.
