I only gave it a 5 second lookover, but my first thought was that Conan was about to attack an unsuspecting giant ape when he suddenly got his foot caught in a pile of dung.
I’ve been wondering about this ferschlugginer cover since 1972!
The illustration is for “Shadows in the Moonlight,” in which only one ape appears, and its arm is hacked off. (You can find the passage easily enough over at Gutenberg.) The “second ape” interpretation makes sense, except that that neck is way too elongated for an ape. This is, however, a fantastic creature, so that could explain any discrepancies. (I also can’t figure out why they omitted the opportunity to show the pretty girl who watches the battle in the story.)
Paperback book cover painters have never felt much obligation to remain faithful to the details of the stories they depict. I’m surprised that Frank Frazetta, whose name was so closely associated with the Conan series, didn’t object to this cover out of concern that someone might think it was his work!
Wow I can’t seem to find the supposed extra ape anywhere. I see one ape with part of his right arm chopped off. The sword is not in a position of having just made the cut. Some time has passed and Conan has since maneuvered to go after the head. I think some people are mistaking the mound of dirt and roots the tree sits on for part of an ape.
I’m just hazarding a guess here, but I bet sales went * way * up when that cover came out.
I’ll apologize in advance for the detour, but the first link in the OP jarred loose a memory I hadn’t thought of in, I dunno, at least 20 years. And that’s what we do on SDMB, right? Share old memories.
Anyway, I was a huge Conan fan back in the 70s, to the point of having multiple copies of most of the books, and all but a few of the comic books (a note to the kids: before the internet this actually meant something).
In 1979 there was a sci-fi convention in my home town that featured, among other events, a reading from Conan by L. Sprague de Camp, and my friends and I were absolutely PSYCHED. It’s true, most of the de Camp books I had were awfully, um, campy, but his association with Conan meant we would be one step closer somehow to Robert E. Howard.
The room for the reading was packed, and he stood in the center (rather than on a podium) as we gathered around him. Then he cleared his throat and began reading.
I had been under the impression for many years that de Camp was American, and checking his wiki page now I see that he clearly is. He’s definitely American! And yet when he began reading, it was in one of those rich, British actor-y voices that sounded more like 1940s BBC Shakespearean radio (as I imagined it). It was completely incongruous, and as de Camp went on it frankly sounded pretty silly as a delivery of Howard’s robust story-telling. Eventually one of my friends (who was standing near de Camp) caught my eye and we were having the same reaction, and he covered his mouth, and then I had to suppress a giggle.
You know where this is leading, right? Once you try to stop that from happening it just gets worse. Pretty soon I was trying not to listen or look at my friend, but it was to no avail, because at some point de Camp dramatically paused and uttered the words “hot breath panted on Conan’s naked back” and my friend let out an inadvertent yelp of laughter and I snickered loudly.
So…De Camp stopped reading and stared at my friend. Time stood still for what seemed like minutes, and then my friend broke for the exit and I went out with him, our heads lowered in shame, but still giggling despite ourselves.
And that’s what I think of every time I see the name L. Sprague de Camp.
I admit that I was introduced to de Camp through the Conan stories, too, but you have to realize that it’s sort of a detour for him, the way writing the Star Trek novelizations was for James Blish. It’s not typical of his work. You really ought to read his other stuff, if you can find it (sadly, that’s daily getting harder to do). And, despite theincongruousness of his voice, he really did have the knowledge and bent to continue the Conan series. I got to meet him at a convention about 30 years ago, and he was an impressive guy.
Hell, guys. That’s not a Conan cover. This is a Conan cover.
This is what I got as well - I’m having a hard time figuring out what part of the picture people are thinking the extra shoulder is, actually (the grass-covered tree-roots behind/beneath Conan?).
Although, slight difference here, to me it looks as though the ape is super huge, and grabbed Conan by one leg and picked him up (probably while Conan was flailing wildly around cutting off the arm in the background). Meanwhile, Conan’s other foot is propped up on the ape’s shoulder (hidden behind his head) to help him balance while he gets ready to chop off the ape’s head.
The big “green furry stuff” behind Conan is a section of tree roots covered in grass, from what I can tell.
I’m not confusing anything with the tree. The head is just was too far away from that arm stump to make anatomocal sense to me.
Of course ape anatomy is much like humans. Our arms essentially drape from our shoulder, they don’t protrude from the middle of our sternum. Any way it’s interpreted it’s a bad rendition, but if that was supposed to be an arm, then John Duillo stole money if he got paid for that job. More believable is the extended neck. Not believable, just more believable.
Conan just cut the ape’s head off. The ape’s arm still grips his ankle and the head is on its way to the ground. Conan used an upstroke to cut his head off.
From the OP’s link here you see a bit more of the ape and it does appear his head is still attached. Problem solved. It’s just a horribly drawn arm.
That does appear to clear it up. Thanks. The stump is just drawn at a bad angle. It doesn’t look connected to the shoulder, but I guess that’s just a bad drawing job.
No argument there from anyone in this thread, I bet.
You can expect a call from SyFy any day now with an advance on your screenplay for this.
I am utterly flabbergasted by people who say they see nothing unusual about the picture, or think they see an ape hip, or something. That the picture is badly executed there is no doubt. That there is more than one way to interpret it is also true. But I’ve been looking at that cover since 1970 9two years longer than sam!), and it still makes no reasonable sense to me. It looks for all the world like onan has cut off an arm growing from a neck between two shoulders – a neck that’s too long to be an ape neck, so it must be an arm, except then the shoulders make no sense. It would make more sense for it to be a head, and there’s a head obligingly close by, but nothing about the head (with its apparently living and exspressive face), including its position, make any sense if it was removed from that bloody stump. I might also add that the position of that left hand holding onto Conan’s leg – even granting that it’s the proper hand to be on that side of the ape – isn’t right. It’s not the natural position for an ape holding a barbarian’s leg. It looks painfully pressed in, as if it’s holding Conan in a ceremonial way, rather than in the natural, positive method of an enraged ape that might ust have been decapitated. I still can’t make any sense out of that picture.
It’s just a crappy drawing man. That’s all. I’m utterly flabbergasted because I can’t find the horror or perplexity in this that you do. Unless you’re wooshing us, then I say “good one.”
Look at this link (from your own link) for a better perspective.
It’s not earthn-shaking, but it;'s annoying, and it bothers me tht it not only makes no sense, but that it passed all the inspections and approvals at the publisher to make it to the shelves and then passed through several revisions, when it might have gotten fixed or replaced.
Why does itbother you so much that it bothers me?
Why does it bother you so much that it bothers him so much that…
No, I’m not going there.
Maybe the story is subtitled “Conan in The Land of The Mutant Apes where Body Parts are Not Proportioned Correctly and Don’t Act as Normal Body Parts.” Then the drawing makes sense and that’s why it passed the editors and you’ve been fretting over nothing for 41 years.
It’s fantasy. It’s not supposed to be real. Right? Maybe it IS a malformed ape. Certainly they don’t grow that big and badass in this world.
ETA: As to why someone can look at it and see what it was meant to be, I dunno. Maybe we have special eyes!