One of my favorite John Buscema pencil jobs is Conan#100 (Ernie Chan inked) - an adaptation of one of Robert E. Howard's best Conan stories - The Queen of the Black Coast' - the first part was adapted in Conan #58 with Steve Gan inking (whom I like a lot). It's all there - superb draftsmaship, drama, mood, action, movement, settings, characterization, emotion, pacing, rhythm, structure, composition ... a great artist working with a great story - I like to read it while drinking Banana-Pineapple smoothies - here's what Buscema had to say about Bob Howard:
'When I was working from the Howard books, Conan was the greatest joy in my life. He wrote everything. I could see the dungeon, I could see the castle, I could see the people, the atmosphere. Unfortunately, again, the biggest mistake I ever did was that I didn't do the finished drawings on those stories or ink them. They gave them to inkers who did whatever they wanted with those pages, and they destroyed the entire concept.
I wish I could do every one of those stories again, working from the Howard books. It was like I didn't have to draw them. I just sat there and swiped what Howard gave me in that book. It was like looking at a movie. He's great; I love his works. The people who've taken over Conan, like Carter and de Camp, and all the other people, they're absolutely lost.They don't don't understand Conan. The only one who ever did was Howard. He could describe a scene in sentences where it would take pages for other people to do it.'
Comics Feature #31
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