In Savage Sword of Conan – The Original Marvel Years Omnibus v01 (2019), Roy Thomas tells how John Buscema did not like Alfred Alcala’s incredible inking of his pencils. This stunned me. I LOVE Alcala’s work on SSOC. I had heard somewhere else (I don’t recall where but also according to Roy Thomas) that Big John did not care for Ernie Chan’s inking either! I suspect John didn’t like anyone else inking his stuff but since he was in such demand as a penciler, he simply couldn’t change who got to ink him. (John has stated inkers that he preferred were his younger brother Sal Buscema, Frank Giacoia and Tom Palmer. Only Palmer worked on SSOC.)
Looking back at John’s early years, he was inspired by the comic strip artists Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Burne Hogarth and Milton Caniff. All these artists have a strong line-oriented inking style. When I look at John’s own inking for Savage Sword of Conan #61 I see that comic strip style. The Filipino masters like Alcala, Nebres and Redondo brought a more ornate rendering. The strong lines and solid black & white areas are not as important as an over-all “atmospheric” effect.
Here are John’s inkers in order of first appearance in SSOC:
Pablo Marcos (“Curse of the Un-Dead Man”, Savage Sword of Conan #1) I think John might have liked this one. Pablo sticks to solid b&w. His later inks have washes that immediately make his work identifiable.
Alfred Alcala (“Black Colossus”, Savage Sword of Conan #2) Alcala at his best! Gruesome and very detailed. I wonder what this one looked like in pencil?
Tony deZuniga (“A Witch Shall Be Born”, Savage Sword of Conan #5) Tony was another regular who had a distinct style that later used zip tones.
Sonny Trinidad (“The Sleeper Beneath the Sands”, Savage Sword of Conan #6)
Yong Montano (“The Abode of the Damned”, Savage Sword of Conan #11)
Joe Rubenstein (“The Treasure of Tranicos”, Savage Sword of Conan #47) This was a real schizo issue with pencils by GilKane and HJohn alternating as well as inks by Rubenstein and Bryant alternating.
Rick Bryant (“The Treasure of Tranicos”, Savage Sword of Conan #47)
Klaus Janson (“A Wind Blows From Stygia”, Savage Sword of Conan #48) Klaus would be famous later for inking Frank Miller. He also go to ink John again for Marvel’s Tarzan.
Rudy Nebres (“The Sorcerer and the Soul” Savage Sword of Conan #53) Rudy would work with John again on the spectacular Klarn comic,Warriors of the Shadow Realm.
Ricardo Villamonte (“The Stalker Amid the Sands”, Savage Sword of Conan #54) I’m a huge Villamonte fan as artist on Beowulf Dragonslayer. less interesting here as an inker.
Danny Bulanadi (“The Ivory Goddess” Savage Sword of Conan #60)
John Buscema (“The Wizard Fiend of Zingara”, Savage Sword of Conan #61) Here is John’s inking of his own work. It’s clean and not bad but I miss the pizzazz of Alcala.
Ernie Chan (“The Temple of the Tiger”, Savage Sword of Conan #62) Ernie was John’s inker on Conan the Barbarian, the color comic. It took awhile before he got to do one for SSOC. I think of John/Ernie first when I think of Conan comics.
Tom Palmer/Bob McLeod with Ernie Chan (“Moat of Blood”, Savage Sword of Conan #63) Hard to tell who did what but I suspect Ernie inked the figures and Palmer and McLeod did the washes and background.
Kerry Gammill with Alfred Alcala (“Plunder of Death Island”, Savage Sword of Conan #67)
Steve Mitchell (“The Dweller in the Depths, Savage Sword of Conan #70)
Joe Chiodo with Alfred Alcala and Ricardo Villamonte (“Dominion of the Bat”, Savage Sword of Conan #76)
Nestor Redondo (“Devourer of Souls”, Savage Sword of Conan #90) Nestor Redondo was an important figure in Filipino comics but he seems to be restraining the flourishes in this piece.
Bob Camp, Dave Simons and Armando Gil (“The Jeweled Bird”, Savage Sword of Conan #92) Mostly Bob Camp’s inking.
John left Savage Sword and Conan the Barbarian in the early 1980s. He returned along with Roy Thomas and Ernie Chan after a break of a few years. Most of the stories John did were inked by himself. The exception was this one.
E. R. Cruz (“The Children of Zath”, Savage Sword of Conan #210) This one is an intriguing mix of John and Horror comic regular, E. R. Cruz. Cruz would also do Cormac Mac Art comics.
Conclusion
E. R. Cruz was the last of John Buscema’s inkers in Savage Sword but I need to mention one more. In 1996, there was a poor attempt to rekindle the magazine as Conan the Savage. For the tenth issue John penciled a Clark Ashton Smith story converted to a Conan tale that was inked by his granddaughter, Stephanie. I think in this case, John may have been quire happy to have someone else ink his work. Stephanie has gone on to an accomplished career as a graphic artist. She would have been quite young when she got the honor to ink her grandfather’s work.
Stephanie Buscema (“The Necromancers of Na’at”, Conan the Savage #10) Stephanie uses a pencil-sketch style here.
I think all John Buscema fans (even if we can’t agree on who was the best inker) will agree that John Buscema’s penciling always meant action and excitement. What really brought this home to me was a later graphic novel, The Vale of the Shadow (Marvel Comics, 1989). In this one, Tony deZuniga got to do pencils and inks for a King Kull tale written by Alan Zelentz. As good as Tony is, the book lacks the dynamic power of John Buscema. John loved drawing Sword & Sorcery and it showed no matter who inked him.
It blew my mind when I first read that Buscema wasn’t a fan of Chan’s inking, because in my mind that is the definitive Conan artwork. Buscema’s pencils were quite loose, a format which lent itself that dynamic action-packed style, and then his framework was brought into marvelous cohesion by the many fantastic inkers he had the good fortune to be paired with.
Of course, they also had the good fortune to be paired with the best penciler in the business!
Like probably everyone else, I loved Alcala’s inkwork on SAVAGE SWORD, and Tony DeZuniga’s, too. Both look much better in black & white than in the heavily colored MARVEL SUPER SPECIALs. Vastly different styles, but like Tom Palmer, both were draftsmen in their own right. And I treasure the handful of late issues that were all John Buscema– as well as the all-Buscema graphic novel.
Great article. Just like Joel Jenkins I was surprised that Buscema didn’t like his inkers! Buscema’s Conan, especially with inks by Alfredo Alcalá, were a big part of my childhood. Interestingly, I was living in the US, but got my SSC in Spanish, as gifts from my grandfather. I was quite older by the time I could read Howard in the original. I really liked how you showed us samples of Buscema’s work with all the SSC inkers. I really think he got some first-rate inking, but I understand he’s uneasiness at having somebody else ink his “baby”. Again great article.