Today marks the seventy-fifth birthday of the wildly talented artist, John Bolton. While he is, perhaps, more famous for his Kull covers for Marvel Comics, I want to focus on his Dark Horse Cormac Mac Art and Bran Mak Morn covers tonight.

Bolton exploded onto the American comics scene with Bizarre Adventures #26. That issue is considered by many to be the single best Kull adventure in the history of comics. Soon after, Kull the Conqueror--a color comic, not a magazine--was fired up. Bolton was brought in for issue #2. Once again, top-notch. In fact, I consider it slightly superior in some aspects.

Soon after that, Bolton teamed up with Chris Claremont to craft the classic ‘Marada the She-Wolf’ series for Marvel's Epic Illustrated and then the excellent Black Dragon, once again with Claremont. By this time, the non-Conan sword-and-sorcery comics market was truly dying, at least at Marvel and DC.

John would go on to do stories with Chris Claremont for X-Men Classic and various covers for other Marvel superhero comics. By 1989, he was done with capes and tights for awhile. He decided to jump over to the independent upstart, Dark Horse Comics.

As near as I can tell, Bolton's first assignment at DHC was painting covers for Roy Thomas' 'Cormac Mac Art' miniseries. It was a natural fit. Bolton had proven he could do world-class S&S illustrations, so why not Cormac Mac Art? This project teamed Bolton with the grandaddy of REH comics, Roy Thomas.

For those out there, like me, who are hardcore CMA fans, a little bit of background on this series is warranted. I no longer own these comics--thanks to the Flood of 2012--so I can't access Roy's article from issue #1.

What I can say is that Roy compresses all the Cormac Mac Art material from REH--two fragments, two complete stories--into one story arc. The stories freely adapted are, in order, 'The Temple of Abomination', 'Tigers of the Sea', 'Night of the Wolf' and 'Swords of the Northern Sea'.

Let's look at the covers:

I have to say I'm bummed that Bolton never limned Wulfhere Skull-Splitter as well...but we don't live in a perfect world.

Pretty much on the heels of the CMA miniseries, Dark Horse unleashed Roy's adaptation of 'Kings of the Night'. That is a tale I rate as both the second-best Bran Mak Morn yarn and the second-best Kull story that Robert E. Howard ever wrote. Overall, it's in my top twenty—if not top ten—Howard stories of all time.

Once again, Bolton banged out iconic covers. As I've noted elsewhere, Bolton's version of BMM is closer than most to what Howard actually described.

Let's take a look...

Well, there ya go. While it's a tragedy that Bolton didn't do the actual comics--just the covers--that has to be enough. Those Dark Horse covers put him in the top echelon as an illustrator for all three of those REH protagonists.

Raise a mead-horn in honor of John Bolton's nativity, sword-brothers. He's truly earned it.