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Gary Gianni interview

The second book in Wandering Star's Conan series, Conan of Cimmeria (Volume Two), will be out soon. It contains three stories, "The People of the Black Circle," "A Witch Shall Be Born," and Robert E. Howard's only Conan novel, "The Hour of the Dragon." As with the other editions in Wandering Star's REH library, this new book will be first-rate, with texts carefully checked by Howard scholar Rusty Burke, a selection of rare supplemental material including Howard's original synopses of the three stories, and numerous color and black-and-white illustrations.

The artist for this volume is Gary Gianni. Although this is his first published Conan work, REH fans have probably seen his extraordinary art in two previous Wandering Star editions, The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn: The Last King. Both established Gianni as a major REH illustrator, and Conan of Cimmeria will establish him as a major Conan artist. Following in the shadows of Frank Frazetta, artist of the Lancer Conan paperbacks, and Mark Schultz, illustrator of Conan of Cimmeria (Volume One), is an unenviable task, yet Gianni has produced art that may not only be the finest of his career, but has a worthy place alongside the best of the Conan illustrators.

The following interview was conducted by phone on April 16, 2004 by Craig Miller, publisher of Spectrum Magazine. It was transcribed by Craig and edited by Craig and Gary. The full text will appear in the upcoming Spectrum Magazine Conan Super Special (coming in June from Win-Mill Productions), but here is an excerpt.

Miller: I think this Conan work is your best ever. How long did you spend on the illustrations?

Gianni: Two-and-a-half years! Actually, it's almost closer to three years. But in all honesty, at times I had to put it down to do other things. And as much as that dragged it out — much to the consternation of the publisher and myself — it gave me an awfully long time to think about it, which was good, I guess, although there's an old saying about thinking too much can make someone stupid. But in this case thinking was good...

I think I once said I'd never illustrate Conan. I thought [Frank] Frazetta really was the last word. I shouldn't say Frazetta; a number of illustrators were the last words on Conan. Especially after finishing Bran, I didn't think I had enough gas left to do another big book. [Wandering Star publisher] Marcelo [Anciano] asked me to read the stories that were going to be in the second volume, and it slowly dawned on me that there was some stuff I thought I could do that maybe would add to the canon. So I finally agreed to it. CM: So you've been working on Robert E. Howard books for— GG: Now I can call it a trilogy — Kane, Bran, and Conan. I've been working on it for a little over six years total. I tried to bring a different sensibility to each book, and I tried not to lean too heavily on the conventions of the past.... I think that Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon, is an illustrator's fantasy come true. There's a scene change on practically every page. As far as the sheer love of drawing, you can't go wrong with that. There's this continual waterfall of imagery, page after page. It was too hard to pass up. It's enjoyable, as episodic as it is. If people haven't read a Conan story, that's a pretty good one to read. And there were some passages where I could really sink my teeth into, because I could see between the lines, or in the wings of the stage, I could mine other areas that maybe Howard had left unsaid. I tried not to just be redundant and illustrate the text. It's funny for me to say this, but I still think that all of these Howard books don't need to be illustrated.

Something hit me about your art in the new Conan book. There seems to be a solidity, a mass, to the characters that wasn't as prominent in your earlier volumes. Is it my imagination? If not, is the change the result of a change in your art style, or the subject matter, or something else?

It's funny when people say things like this, or will point out stuff like this to me, because I'm not particularly conscious of that, and it always looks good to say, "Oh yes, that's what I intended." But to be honest with you, if you're picking that up, I'm delighted, but I can't say that I was particularly conscious of it. I will say that Conan needed a directness and power that I'm not used to. I didn't know whether I could do it or not. I tend to think of myself as someone a little more cautious, a little more refined in his style, and not as spontaneous and primal as I'd like to be. Maybe that's a good way of putting it. But Conan demands that, and so if it comes out that way, I'll take that as a compliment and say, "That's exactly what I intended.".

In flipping through the book I noticed a few "quiet scenes" with Conan just standing there with a woman beside him, something like that, or a couple of close-up shots — for instance, in "The People of the Black Circle," there's a woman with a vase and Conan with some coins — that drawing is more interesting than some of the more action-oriented ones.

I agree with you totally. You see, I think that any time there's a relationship possibility or an interaction between two characters, where I can do something interesting with the body language, I jumped at those. The action stuff, as important as it is, I just don't think it's as interesting. It's the turn of a neck, or a woman's arm resting across a chair or something, that is a lot harder to do, and I find that more challenging. I didn't particularly even want to put a battle scene on the cover, but everybody [else] wanted it, so what could I do?

In the Bran interview, you said, "There are going to be some things in Conan that I want to try that I don't think have been done before, and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do them!" What things were you referring to, and do you think you were successful?

Yeah, some of the stuff like just being able to paint a picture of Conan sitting in a chair, looking like he could rip somebody's head off, without putting an axe in his hand. More of a contained violence or an inferred violence, or a penchant for quick action, but still in an arrested development. That's really hard to pull off, and I think I did that, especially in that picture where he's sitting in the tent. I spent a lot of time on that picture, and I was thinking how unconventional it was for a Conan painting. I was a little worried about it. ...

Another painting that I had a hard time with was the one with Conan and Zenobia--I wanted to paint a picture of a pretty woman without her being a complete sex object. And she's supposed to be something different from a lot of the women that Conan had run into anyway, so I think she had to go beyond being a sex kitten. That sort of stuff's really hard to pull off. I don't know whether I achieved it or not, but when I said I'd have these kinds of challenges, that's what I meant. It's the stuff that's a little more restrained, I guess.

In the introduction, you mentioned that your first exposure to Conan was Conan the Adventurer. What was your first reaction to the character?

[Pause] Um, I don't remember. I must have liked it. In high school I did drawings of Conan. I even tried to do a Conan strip once. But he always intimidated me. That's the kind of guy that always made me uneasy. I'd be much more able to have a drink with Solomon Kane than Conan. I've tried to search my mind and find people I've known in my life who I could use as a springboard for Conan, and when I have, they were people that I never really fully trusted, because they've got very sensitive triggers, and I think if you have a few drinks with people like that and say the wrong thing, even if you're a friend, you could be in trouble.

Here's a question I've asked just about everyone: what would you describe as the core, the essence, of the Conan character?

I don't know about anybody else, but I'd have to say he's very dangerous, and I think we're all interested — especially at a nice, safe distance, like in an armchair where we're reading about the guy — and he's intriguing for that reason. I generally like vulnerable characters. That's what attracted me to Bran. I think he's a very vulnerable character because he's got the weight of this tribe on his shoulders. And Solomon Kane is cut out of another bolt of cloth too, in a way, because he's got this moral fervor, which I like in a man! But Conan doesn't necessarily have any of that. He's much more a primal engine. It's why we like to look at shark exhibits and dinosaurs and stuff like that. Conan's just a primitive thinking machine. I don't mean primitive thinking. He's definitely intelligent, which makes him all the more dangerous. But for me I think it's that aspect of unbridled, coiled violence. Someone who spits in the eye socket of death. And that's very powerful. It generally doesn't make for good drama, but for some reason it works in these stories.

When we talked about your work on the Bran Mak Morn book, you spoke of the challenge of temporarily "forgetting" the Frazetta depiction on the original paperback cover. But his image of Conan has an even stronger hold among fans. How did this affect your art on the book?

I was one of those people [who loved the Frazetta covers], and that's why I talked about it in my Conan introduction. And that's another reason why, when you asked me about the challenges, I've got to stand in the shadow of Frazetta's iconic graphic imagery. If there's anything, I would like to think that what I've done works in tandem with Frazetta's stuff without borrowing from him too much. I don't know whether I achieved that, but that's something I tried to take into consideration. But for me, if I had to illustrate Frankenstein — I know [Berni] Wrightson did a really great job — but if I had to illustrate Frankenstein, I'm sorry, I cannot get away from Boris Karloff and Jack Pierce's make-up job. Even when I read Mary Shelley, I see that in my mind. So some things, I'm afraid, are just too heavily imprinted, and rather than re-invent the wheel with Conan— You know, I even gave him the straight-cut hair across the forehead. A friend said, "I'm surprised you did that." I never thought of Conan any other way. I don't know whether Frazetta came up with that on his own, or that's the way he was thought out before. When you read Howard, he always talked about that straight cut across his brow, so I just assumed that's the way he looks! [Laughter] It's difficult. You can't get away from all the imagery that's come before, and it's not necessarily a bad thing to embrace it and build on it. So I hope I did that.

So what have you been working on since finishing the Conan art?

By the time I finished, John Cullen Murphy had decided to retire from Prince Valiant, and literally the day I finished Conan, Prince Valiant was thrown in my lap. I had ghosted a few of them, but I had always had Jack there to finish them up. I never really felt any pressure. But the day I started doing Prince Valiant, he didn't even want to see them any more. He just realized he had done enough, and it was time for somebody else to do it, and he felt I was capable. It was sort of like a guy who's on a bike with training wheels, and you get about ten yards, and they decide to take the training wheels off the bike. There's a whole different sensibility to Prince Valiant than there is to Conan. It's a different kind of drawing, as a matter of fact, which is very interesting. It's a challenge. It has to be more representational. By that I mean, things have to be drawn out more accurately. You can't be more out-of-focus or moody with things. Because in Prince Valiant, a lot of drawing has to substitute for text, where in a book illustration you don't have to worry about that. So it's a different kind of drawing, a different kind of mind-set.

It debuted with my name on it on March 21.... If your local paper doesn't get it, go online at kingfeatures.com. They post them weekly.