Joe Jusko turned sixty-five the other day. While I have done a post on his Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired artwork, I’ve never done a blog entry on Jusko’s covers for Marvel’s The Savage Sword of Conan, which is where I first became aware of him and his work.

The moment I began to regard Joe Jusko as an artist of note was when I bought The Savage Sword of Conan #74 in 1982. By that point, Roy Thomas had jumped to/been pushed from Marvel to DC. However, Roy—being the prolific beast he was in his prime—had left a big backlog of REH-inspired stories. Thus, that issue of SSoC was half Roy Thomas. Plus, the main story was by Chris Claremont and Val Mayerik. Both of them can deliver some good heroic fantasy…so, I bought it.

While I probably would’ve bought it anyway, Jusko’s cover was a big bonus. The style was ‘photo-realistic’, which had been pioneered by Boris Vallejo in the ‘70s. By the 1980s, art directors for SFF publishers—-with the exception of DAW Books—apparently had come to the decision that the photo-realistic style was the New Way. However, unlike many artists at that time, Jusko brought a sense of real dynamism to his paintings, rather than the usual staged and static look from most of the others. Also, Joe knew how to depict Conan enraged or murderously grim much better than almost all the others.

So, without further ado, feel free to check out the select gallery of Jusko’s SSoC covers below. I’ve tried to present them in chronological order to show Joe’s progress, but don’t hold me strictly to it.

Jusko's painting for SSoC #63 from 1981.

There ya go. As cool as these covers are, they would have been even cooler if Roy Thomas was still around writing stories more accurate to Conan and the Hyborian Age than those who followed him. What could’ve been…