I love when interesting artists take on Robert E. Howard’s most famous swordsman. This isn’t a slight on John Buscema/Ernie Chan/Tony DeZuniga/Alfred Alcala. I love the old Marvel stand-bys but like watching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit films, after a while you just want something that looks “different”.
Mike Kaluta (1947-) is one of those artists. Famous for his The Shadow comics at DC, as well as the independent Starstruck, he earned his chops doing illustrations for Ted White’s Fantastic, covers for the DC horror titles such as Madame Xanadu, the adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Pirates of Venus even painting the album artwork for Lenny White’s The Adventures of Astral Pirates in 1978. Mike is one of the four artists who were known as The Studio (the others all superstars, Barry Windsor Smith, Jeff Catherine Jones and Berni Wrightson.) Kaluta has done it all.
And he has done Conan. Not the sweaty, brutal Conan, but the subtle, intriguing, dare we say elegant, Conan. Most people would not think that Kaluta was one of the first Savage Sword artist but he did the cover for #3.
In late 1983, Mike signed on to do covers for King Conan, soon retitled Conan the King. I remember buying these lackluster comics just for the covers.
Mike wasn’t done with Conan covers just yet. The 1990s saw three more.
And just so you don’t think Mike has slipped any, in 2005 he drew a special insert into Cary Nord’s “Tower of the Elephant” (Conan #22, November 2005) and cover work for Dynamite that shows he has only gotten better.
