The original Conan by Robert E. Howard appeared largely in Weird Tales. Because of this, the artists of Weird Tales are intrinsically linked to the Cimmerian’s history. The first artist to create an image of Conan was Jayem Wilcox (1895 – 1958). James Milton (thus JM or Jayem) Wilcox did art for Weird Tales and Magic Carpet for Farnsworth Wright for the year of 1933. After leaving Chicago he illustrated other Pulps until moving into comic books. Wilcox preferred human figures over monsters, thus he avoided such wonderful opportunities as illustrating the slithering shadow.
Margaret Brundage (1900-1976) was the first artist to render Conan stories in color, though usually focusing on the females in the story (especially if they own whips). All the Conan covers were done by her since Howard died in 1936 and she stayed on until 1938, when Weird Tales‘ offices moved to New York.
More fond of the weird and monstrous, Conan’s best illustrator was probably Hugh Rankin (1878-1956). Howard liked Hugh’s work though he felt he drew Conan “too latinate”, in other words not Celtic enough. Rankin drew his illustrations with grease pencil rather than ink. This can create some wonderful effects but also can be muddy and dull (see his illo for “Devil in Iron”).
Sprinkled among the Rankins is this illustration for “Jewels of Gwalhur” by Joseph Doolin (1896-1967). Doolin illustrated the Seabury Quinn novel, The Devil’s Bride (1932) before leaving Weird Tales. He did work for all the big Pulps before moving into comic books.
Vincent Napoli (1907-1981) brought a different look to weird illustration. His line work is reminiscent of etchings. He drew illos for Weird Tales from 1946 until the magazines declining days. He drew for many other New York pulps as well but ended up in comics like so many other artists.
Harold DeLay (1876-1950) was the last of the original Conan artists, illustrating “Red Nails” shortly after Howard’s death in 1936. He started his career in book illustration before coming to the pulps but eventually went on to draw comics too.
I have to mention one artist who never got to illustrate Conan because he came on board after 1936. That man was Virgil Finlay (1914-1971). He started at Weird Tales about the time Howard died. He did do work on other Sword & Sorcery stories such as those by Clifford Ball and Henry Kuttner. He also got to do the second illo for “Worms of the Earth” when it was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries in 1953. We can only imagine what Vigil would have done, or for that matter, Lee Brown Coye, Hannes Bok or Boris Dolgov…
The next generation of Conan artists would work for Gnome Press or Avon Fantasy Reader in the 1950s. These were sufficient to help keep Howard’s flame burning but it would be Frank Frazetta in the 1960s would blaze Conan’s name far and wide….
