Vikor!

Spotted this Vikor action figure over at Poe Ghostal's and just had to share it here.

"Gege the Average Joe Barbarian" by Stephane Sabourin!

I got an email a while back from french artist, Stephane Sabourin, who sent along his little tribute to the barbarian genre with his Conan-esque parody, Gege the Average Joe Barbarian, which, quite frankly, I found brilliant (if only I could read French)!

In his own words:

hello
I'm a french admirer of your "Crom" homepage and also a huge REH fan!
Few years ago,I made this 7 pages parody of our beloved Cimmerian,strongly inspired by the introduction part in Buziek and Nord's comics(I'm also a big fan of their works)
Here is the link to my DeviantArt page and the "Gege the Average Joe Barbarian" folder(with english explanation for each page,for texts are all in french,sorry). If you want to have a glance at it...by the way I'm an hobbyist penciler,I won't mind(or cast any curse^^) if you don't like my work!
By Ishtar's Girdle...
Bye

By Ishtar's Girdle, indeed! Enjoy...

Conan the Barbarian Movie Flubs!

CROM! reader and all around savage badass, Rrozum, sent me a couple of links to lists of flubs from the latest Conan movie installment, and I'm just now getting around to posting them (sorry, Rrozum, I swear I wasn't ignoring you!). I copy and pasted them here, or you can see the original list HERE or HERE.

Continuity 

During the chase scene when Tamara flees the temple, Conan's sword repeatedly disappears and reappears in between shots as he pursues Remo.  

 

During the chase scene; just after Tamara disconnects the coach that she was riding in from the horses that she is now riding, you see the coach tip forward, roll and shatter apart. In the next shot the coach is whole again and lands on the front and shatters for a second time. 

 

During the fight on the ship, it starts of being night, but ends being with the sun out.

Crew or equipment visible 

During the fight on the ship, Conan is thrown back onto a raised platform in the cargo hold. When his legs fly up you can see the rubber soles of the athletic shoes built into his leggings at 1h:12m:28s

Plot holes 

With no apparent way of knowing where Conan's ship has laid anchor, and with no way of knowing that Tamara would be on land with Conan and not still aboard the ship, Zim's soldiers nevertheless are able to set up a perfect ambush to try and capture Tamara after she leaves Conan's chamber and wanders through the forest.  

 

When Tamara is ambushed by Zim's men in the forest, she does not notice the first rider until he is only a few yards from her, despite having a very clear line of sight for a few hundred yards in every direction, and despite there being no noise louder than birdsong to mask the thundering hooves of a galloping horse. Similarly, the foot-soldiers were quite clearly not lying in wait - the trees in the forest are too skinny for them to have hidden behind and there is no other cover around - yet they are upon Tamara within a couple of seconds of the horseman attacking.  

Revealing mistakes 

When Conan and Tamara are waiting for Khalar Zym at the Outpost of Shaipur, the actress playing Tamara is replaced by a body double in two blurred shots. Her hair and height is the same, but her facial features are slightly different.

 

During the fight with Zym, Conan falls backwards onto an obviously rubber rock.  

 

In the climax when Khalar Zym and Conan are fighting, Conan hits Zym on his face with the back of his sword and he bleeds. Then at 1:38:13, Zym is shown with no blood on his face, but in the subsequent scene at 1:38:18, the blood is back on his face.

Conan Fan Art by Ostoja Mitric!

One thing I love is seeing all of the killer fan art being done out there by the minions of Crom. Today I got an email from Ostoja Mitric, a forestry worker from Croatia, who is no slouch when it comes to drawing the greatest son of Cimmeria. He sent along some of his pencil sketches and I just had to share them here. Thanks Ostoja! And keep up the amazing work!

The Coming of Conan....

In 1968 John Buscema and his brother Sal drew one of the greatest comic books in the history of comicdom. In that comic book there was an unknown supporting character who is very familiar looking. Many people know that John Buscema was tagged to draw the new title CONAN the barbarian due out in 1970 but Stan Lee chose not to put him on the book and thus another worthy superstar was off to a running start. A few years later John Buscema would take over the book anyway...but many people wondered...Just what would CONAN have looked like?
If you take a gander at these select panels from SILVER SURFER 4 published in 1968 you can see for yourself. CONAN would have looked exactly like we know and love him. Seen in these panels an anonymous gladiator resembles our stalwart cimmerian. See the second image of him drawing his sword and then hurling it. How many times have we seen that scenario?
John Buscema actually had a chance at drawing the COMING OF CONAN in a later issue of SAVAGE SWORD following the same script as CTB # 1 that Barry Smith followed and folks...that is perhaps 97% spot on what the actual factual comic book released in 1970 would have looked like. A picture is worth a thousand words....right? You be the Judge.

Two days ago January 22nd was the Birthday of Robert E. Howard the Father of Conan and the man who created the genre known as Sword and Sorcery. Sure...We can argue point for point if he is indeed the father of the Genre but in my eyes...he simply is. It is to him that I dedicate this post. Happy Birthday Mr. Howard.

" Rob Roy the Destroyer "

See Scottish legend ROB ROY demonstrate the sword fighting technique known as the Priest's robe cut...as you can plainly see although Mr. Cunningham knows his way around with a rapier there is no denying a well placed Claymoore blow to the collar bone can really ruin one's day.
This sword fight is one of my all time favorite sword fights in the history of filmdom. NO it is not an action packed swing for swing , blow for blow account of a fast paced major hack and slash battle. But yet it is a dramatic representation of the way it was back in the dueling days. The larger stronger combatant won this one because he had an advantage while being at a disadvantage. He did not have the skill to out match his opponent but his power came in handy when the moment was right. In cold calculating fashion when he appeared down and out he saw his opening and ended the battle leaving ARCHIE with a sucking , gaping chest wound. I love the way this YOUTUBE poster used the theme from STAR TREK'S EPIC battle between KIRK and SPOCK in the "Amok time" episode to full advantage. It works perfectly. I only kinda wish that they used the Basil Poledouris score from CONAN instead. No this is not CONAN...but Mr. Mac is of the same lineage as our stalwart Cimmerian. Of course CONAN would have ended this duel a bit quicker...instead of grabbing the sword he would have ripped the arm from the socket and skewered his opponent with both sword and arm...but the results would have been the same.

More CONAN fan art

This piece comes from ME..Mikeyboy...or Michael John Destasio for those of you who are familiar with me in OTHER circles. I bought some ink brush pens and wanted to test them out. So I found a random CONAN drawing on the web. I am not sure who it was drawn by but it's from a sketch card...some artists sell them at cons and some companies give them as prizes. I wanted to take up as much space on the paper as possible and use every pen for every little different texture I could possibly think of. ( The large black area was done with a white board marker , they spread out nicely ) Being that it was from a sketch card there were a lot of areas in the drawing that were hazy and pretty much unformed and ambiguous. So I noodled around over every little pencil line. Mind you this ink testing and study was done right on the printed image lifted from the web. Then I went into my pc's paint program and whipped up this paste up MOCK cover ( If you look close I signed the sword )....We will still accept any fan art anyone would like to share. Please E-mail Reis with any art you'd like to share with the followers of CROM!

2012 Conan Calendar - January

(Click to view full size. I'll post a new one every month.)

Groo vs Conan Coming in April!

Our greatly-missed contributor, Cromsblood, brought this up almost a year ago, and now it's finally coming to pass! Groo vs Conan (a comic that would have probably made my brain melt out of my ears had it come out when I was 12) is coming in April, 2012! I can't wait! This is what is best in life! To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to taste the awesomeness of the cheese dip!

10 years have passed...

It was on this date 10 years ago that John Buscema passed away. His work is his legacy and we will never forget.
Family man , dedicated Husband , legendary artist and Teddy bear. He inspired many and continues to do so. We'll never forget you rest in peace Big John.

Original cover to KULL # 1

Marie Severin really came and saved the day on this one...Here you can see the original Ross Andru and Sal Buscema cover before Marie was called in to do a paste up job. Now I'd always thought it was brother John who did the embellishments for the cover to #1 but...alas like so many other things in life I'm wrong about...there you have it. Ross's original layout was damned cool but it was lacking something dynamic and Marie...came in an knocked it out of the park

One cool cover...two versions and 3 fantastic artists

Bruce Timm ( KULL ) recreation

Bruce is the man...I really wish he'd do a CONAN cartoon. If they did a semi serious cartoon...sort of like BATMAN the animated series ( More Bruce Timm ) they'd nail it! I'm loving the work here. He's really a multi talented do it all kind of artist. I'd love to see a complete Conan comic book series by Bruce. It's just that he's got so much going on with working on television contracts and I don't know if they could pay the man his deserved scale.

But HECK if he wanted to he'd just do it. He has that kind of pull and clout. Anyway enjoy this cool piece I found on Comicartfans.com.

CONAN : " En Francais!"

If'n you head over to ebay you still might be able to score yourself a few of these French reprint editions. Who don't love foreign reprints of CONAN comics...It's always exciting to see some of the coolest Conan covers in a different language! Despite the fact that these ebay photo's are poor quality you still get a real good idea what the folks over there were reading practically at the same time we were. ( Back in the 70's and 80's ) I would love to have any one of these in my collection of Conan coolness.

Conan is a world wide household name and everyone from pole to pole knows who he is!