Monarch's Konga!

Konga the novel from Monarch Books (a Charlton brand) was written by "Dean Owen" (Dudley Dean McGaughey) and adds some spice to the already pretty randy yarn about a man and his killer gorilla. 

The cover art is by John Duillo. For more Duillo art check out this link. 

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Conan Of The Paperbacks!

As potent as I find Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, there's little doubt I would not know about them at all if Lancer Books had not decided to take the Gnome hardback series from the 1950's and present them to the world all over again in affordable paperback beginning in 1966. Paperbacks were after all the equivalent in many ways of the pulps from which Howard's brawny barbarian had emerged decades before.  And further one can fairly speculate that without the hiring of the late and great Frank Frazetta to paint covers for many of those paperbacks, their impact on the racks of the day might well have been less potent. 

So many people of my generation were struck by the absolute powerful image of Conan by Frazetta which graces the debut volume titled Conan the Adventurer. Now Frazetta didn't do all the cover paintings. John Duillo was the artist for Conan the Freebooter, Conan the Wanderer, and Conan of the Isles. Boris Vallejo painted the final cover in the series Conan of Aquilonia, but only after the series had lapsed due to the collapse of Lancer and had been transferred to Ace Books. 

Boris Vallejo went on to do more paintings for the Ace series, replacing all of the Duillo covers. I like Vallejo's work in general, but I for my part really like the original Lancers better. 

It should also be noted that Lancer came out with a King Kull volume as well, a proper companion to its Conan series. This cover was done by Roy Krenkel. Robert E. Howard was brought forward in time, and to no small extent immortalized, something the author likely could have hardly imagined. 

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Turok - Son Of Frazetta IV

Actually this first Turok cover is not a swipe of a classic Frank Frazetta image, but rather of a Conan cover from Lancer by John Duillo. Duillo did the Lancer Conan covers that Frazetta did not do, and there is a great similarity between the snake-monster from the Mexican Turok cover above and the Lancer cover below for Conan of the Isles.


Unfortuantely this Duillo cover and others were replaced by work from Boris Vallejo when Ace reprinted these Conan books. I rather like the Duillo stuff better myself.


This mighty tusker though is pure Frazetta and Turok here is facing off against a mighty foe.


The cover for Back to the Stone Age from Ace is one of my favorite Frazetta images, the dynamics are off the charts.

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