This one has bothered me for years. In the old Lancer Conanan the Barbarian series (and later the Sphere and Ace series), the third volume in chronological order was Conan the Freebooter, and this is the original cover:
http://www.howardworks.com/conanthefreebooter.html
Conan has obviously just cut something off the ape who has him by the leg. From the trail of red, it looks as if the bloofd-dripping sword has just come up from that red stump, although the physics of swinging the sword make that seem unlikely.
It looks as if he’s cut the head off the ape, because the rest of the body looks like it has a pair of shoulders on either side of the stump. But I can’t help noticing that, if that’s the case, that ape has an awfully long neck. Furthermore, if he’s just cut the head off, where is it? You might say that the ape head in the lower right belongs to the ape body, but I have an even harder time believing the physics of that. Besides, the ape seems to be looking at Conan, and I really can’t believe it would have the concentration to do that after it’s been cut off. I find it easier to believe that this is some other ape, wh wandered in while the chopping was taking place.
it’s entirely possible that the appendage being cut off is something else. I want to believe that it’s an arm, because then the proportions kinda make sense, but it’s hardf to square that with the apparent shoulders.
This must bothered the folks at the book companies, because they later replaced the cover wityh this Boris Vallejo painting with no apes, but a couple of sexy women, a floating demon head, and Conan:
I think there are two different apes. I think the one in foreground looking at Conan is a different ape than the one Conan has just decapitated. I think the blood streak is spurting blood from the neck stump/
I could be totally wrong, but that’s how I interpret the image.
the stump itself isn’t badly drawn 9for an arm stump, that is), but then you have to explain why it is that an arm stump has two shoulders on either side of it, and where, if that’s an arm, the ape’s head is.
It doesn’t make any sense to me, no matter how I parse it. Maybe it’s a weird mutant ape with its head in the lower right of the book cover, three arms (including one where it’s head should be, between itws shoulders), and two remaining arms, one of them gripping Conan by the leg.
I know squat about Conan and less about art <or is that reversed? hrm> but it looks to me, pretty clearly, that the ape’s right arm has been cut off, his left one is holding Conan’s leg, and that other ‘shoulder hump’ behind Conan is actually the ape’s hip.
I think the obvious thing that’s going on is that Conan’s trying to free his boots.
Without reading the thread, I had the same reaction as Diogenes - I saw two apes. The problem is that headless ape doesn’t appear to have been much involved with the battle. It seems he (or she) would have been staring straight ahead.
I actually have an easier time believing that the head is the cut-off ape head. The economy of apes makes more sense. Then the problem is Conan’s swing, but that doesn’t work no matter how you slice it. The best I can try for is that Conan began at the back, sliced forward and then up, with such force that the ape head was tossed upward, flipped once and is captured just as it falls forward past the ape’s left arm. I’d find that easier to swallow if the head was turned somehow instead of apparently still attached to a body.
Does it make more sense to envision the ape on the ground, on his left side, elbow on the ground probably? 'cause I can’t see anything else no matter what I read.
I tried reading it this way, but it still doesn’t look right to me anatomically. It looks to me like that would put his arm in the middle of his torso.
At first, I thought is was an arm stump, of the gorilla with the head. It helps if you picture the ape subdued to the point of falling on his left side, with Conan above, and the ape is reaching across his own chest and looking back/up at Conan.
But…if it’s an arm stump, the gorilla has one hell of a fucked up shoulder. The “arm” starts about 12 inches down from the shoulder. And his shoulder is a hinge joint instead of a ball and socket joint kept together with a rotator cuff full of muscles. That ain’t right.
So yeah, I gotta go with the 2 Apes/ Long Neck theory. The decapitated head is out of the frame, perhaps flung upward with an upward swing of the blade, with appears to be sharp for 2/3 of its length on the top edge. (Not a practically likely swordstrike, but hey, we’re talking giant apes here, so physics is not our friend.)
Ok, well then…all I can see is a badly drawn shoulder-arm, then. I cannot for the life of me see two apes, even if one is headless. >.<
Someone find John Duillo and find out, damnit!
Or hey…let’s ask Cecil!
I also immediately saw two apes. One that Conan just cut off, and then he jumped from that ape towards the other, as the blade is pointed that way. The ape’s hand holding him throws that off, but that could be a perspective thing.
What I think they were going for is that Conan was trapped and cut off the apes head and we are catching it before the arm lets go. The problem is that Conan’s position makes no sense in that interpretation. The blood on the blade is pointed downward, so, to slice upward, he’d have to have just turned his blade around and somehow moved relative to the cut without being able to touch the ground.
