Fantastic magazine, edited by Ted White. August 1972. Cover by Jeff Jones

I read Rich Horton’s Retro Review of the August 1972 issue of Fantastic magazine here at Black Gate, and I remember being excited by what I presumed was the first appearance of Conan in Fantastic, and then realizing just how awful the novelette was, which was made even more disappointing by the fact that this cover was the first time the great Jeff Jones, already known for terrific depictions of Howard’s Solomon Kane, tackled Conan.

Even in 1968, when I read Conan the Adventurer at the age of ten, I noticed that all the best Conan stories were by Howard, but it took me into my early teens to realize just how bad the non-Howard ones were. Yes, De Camp was a much better writer than Carter, but his work lacked the passion and pulp poetry necessary for the character, and something like “Beyond the Black River” (which my penpal Fritz Leiber thought was the best Conan story, along with “People of the Black Circle,” which Fritz liked for its sympathetic villain and capable proto-Indian heroine), was completely outside De Camp’s wheelhouse.

Billy Graham’s illustration for “Black Sphinx of Nebthu” (Fantastic, July 1973)

I recall reading that, when De Camp was putting together the Gnome Press collections in the 1950s, he originally approached Leigh Brackett about doing new Conan stories. Those might have actually been good.

But the Fantastic novelettes, which went into a fix-up novel about Conan and Conn, were the worst. Teenaged me had no interest in King Conan as a middle-aged dad being a good father figure to his son, rather than a brawling wenching skull-splitting mercenary/thief badass.

Table of Contents for the August 1972 Fantastic

Billy Graham’s illustration for the sequel to this novelette got him “fired” by White. In the letter column, White apologized for this illo, called it a “gross caricature,” and said that, as all of Graham’s work had been disappointing, he would not be appearing in the magazine again.

Graham, the first prominent Black comics artist of the 70s, would later do important work on Luke Cage and Black Panther, and I’d liked his earlier work for Creepy, but his Fantastic illustrations were not his finest hour. For this one, he’d recycled a fanzine caricature from several years before.

Billy Graham, and his covers for Marvel’s Luke Cage, Hero For Hire (Issue 15,
November 1973) and Jungle Action, Featuring The Black Panther (Issue 21, 1976)

Graham’s Black Panther storyline, with T’Challa fighting the Klan in Georgia, ended with the cliffhanger on the cover of issue 21 (see above). Marvel gave the book to Kirby, who started a completely unrelated story. I was so mad as a teenager.

They did complete the story arc twenty or thirty years later, with the Black writer Christopher Priest (Jim Owlsey, no relation to the British SF writer), but Billy Graham had passed away by then.

White employed several artists later important to Marvel and DC. Dave Cockrum would draw the X-Men revival that was a huge hit, and which added Wolverine to the team, along with Storm, Colossus, and Cockrum’s creation Nightcrawler.

But easily the best was Michael Kaluta, who would soon be doing gorgeous work for DC on The Shadow and Burroughs’ Carson of Venus.

I can only imagine how little Fantastic paid these artists.