I had a friend named Chris who was a few years older than me when I was in my preteen years. He introduced me to two very important things before I ever hit high school: punk rock and Conan the Barbarian. He took me to what was at the time called a “hall show” in downtown Flint. It was an all day event that took place on Labor Day weekend, 1988. Over 20 bands played. None of them famous, they were all local, but at that time most of them blew me away because I’d never heard anything like it. When we weren’t listening to bands, we were skateboarding around downtown Flint (which hadn’t completely fallen into decay yet, but it was close). I wound up staying the night at one of Chris’s friend’s house with a bunch of other kids and I had a blast. We didn’t do drugs or drink or anything like that. It was totally innocent and very mind-expanding.

What’s this have to do with Conan? A week or so later, Chris gave me two entire boxes filled with Mad Magazine and Conan comic magazines. At the time I ate up every comic book I could find, but Conan was amazing. The art was way better than anything else I had been collecting at the time. Plus the covers always had some woman with Conan whose cleavage was going to fall out of what was passing for a top. So here I am, drawing Conan about as well as I can.