Hello, now that the smoke is starting to clear following the pronouciation posting I made, I wanted to ask you others if you bear any "pet-peeves" about visual representations of Conan. We have all seen hundreds if not thousands of images of him, but I personally can't think of any one presentation that fully does it for me.
What we know about Conan is that he is tall, and muscular, that he has a shock of square cut black hair and smouldering blue eyes, that his skin is burned bronze/brown, that he is scarred, and that he often dresses differently from story to story (as the local style suits him), but often uses a shagreen scabbard. (I would love to see a painting of Conan in the Kozak costume he is described as wearing in the Devil in Iron for an example of one of Conan's different costumes) I am interested in specifically what people like and dislike about extant visual representaions of Conan. For instance, Margaret Brundage used to render Conan with quite short hair as did Roy Krenkel. Perhaps this haircut was their idea of long hair, or perhaps I am incorrect in thinking that Howard described Conan as having long hair. Just from my memory now, I can recall that Howard used the word "mane" alot, which may not mean shoulder length long.. I personally don't like the short hair pictures of Conan myself. One other small issue that I don't like are the presentations of Conan with hoop earrings. Several artists do this, from Frazetta to Windsor Smith. I personally don't recall Howard ever describing Conan with pierced ears, although he didn't emphatically say otherwise. My thought was that Conan is essentially utilitarian; his hair is cut squarely, he doesn't covet any particular personal articles, and uses what is at hand to serve him best. He also wrestles with men and apes quite alot(!), and I just can't see these points adding up to describe a man that likes to adorn himself with large hoop earrings.(LOL) Anyways, what do you think? -Jesse ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
