How Billy Graham’s Conan Art Got Him Fired from Fantastic Magazine
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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.