*The Sword Woman* (1977). Mr. Fabian has said he was basically forced to paint this ‘Red Sonja’-style cover by Zebra’s art director. Stephen said he wanted to keep things more accurate to Agnes’ early 1500s setting, which the illustrations below bear out.

Stephen Fabian, one of the great artists of the last fifty years, celebrated his ninety-second birthday today. Since almost the very beginning of his career, Fabian’s art has been linked to the prose and poetry of Robert E. Howard, a topic I explored here.

Today, in honor of his birthday, I thought I’d post the art that Stephen created for the Zebra edition of The Sword Woman. The scans themselves are drawn from More Fantasy by Fabian: The Art of Stephen E. Fabian (1979). That book includes one illustration of Dark Agnes that Zebra didn’t use. Also, I’m leaving out an illo from that collection which illustrates the Turlogh Dubh fragment, “The Shadow of the Hun”. This post is strictly about Dark Agnes.

I would like to thank Bill Thom and the great people at the Stephen Fabian Fan Group for these scans.

Mr. Fabian’s official website can be found here.

Happy birthday, Stephen!