Interview With Marcelo Anciano The Ultimate Triumph Interviewer: Anya Martin July 1999

MA: All of this started 10 months ago when Gary and I were talking as he was starting work on the next Robert E. Howard book for us, Bran Mak Morn. We were throwing ideas around about artists whom we would like to see do a book like The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane. Gary suggested Frank Frazetta. I said, well, I would love to see a Frank Frazetta book done like that, but, of course, he had a stroke and there's no way you could do it. Then Gary pointed out that The Sowers of the Thunder [Donald Grant, 1973] was actually a collection of sketches that Roy Krenkel had done over the previous 10 to 15 years. They had been all collated together and quite often didn't correlate with the text.

I said, oh, that's a good idea, that's a really good idea. We could use all of Frazetta's sketches which you see in all these disparate sort of fan magazines and art magazines. There are such a lot of disparate sketches which no one has actually collected together, either in an art book or in a fiction book. Gary said, why don't you talk to Frazetta and see if you can get all of these sketches and then you could have a collection of stories. I thought that was an amazing idea. I was really surprised that no one else had done it.

So I started to look around and realized that there were hundreds of these little sketches which no one had ever collated. There were at least 70-80 sketches that we knew of that no one had ever seen before. These had gone through collectors. Someone had taken a photocopy or made photographs of it, and all of these sketches were just lost in the ether really.

MA: Over the last 10 to 15 years, Dave Winiewicz, whom I've known for years, has been collecting as many unpublished sketches as he could, just to have a record of them. I contacted Dave once we did a deal with Frank and Ellie. They loved the Kane book. The reason why they said yes, let's go ahead with it, is because Frank had seen the Solomon Kane book and was very impressed with it. I think he quite liked the idea of seeing his work produced in a book of the quality of the Kane book.

MA: In the limited book, we are also going to have watercolor roughs of paintings, which I thought was always an underdeveloped part of Frazetta's public perception. People just aren't aware of the skill that goes into his color roughs prior to him doing a painting. And there's an enormous amount of vigor in those watercolors. So the whole book has a flavor of very loose sketches up to very tight pencils and also very loose paintings. It is definitely creating its own form by using sketches and watercolor roughs.

So again from Gary's idea and Dave Winiewicz's detective work, we have managed to create a unique little book for Frazetta lovers. That's the story of it.

MA: Dave Winiewicz has known the Frazettas for about 20 years and probably knows more about Frazetta's artwork than anyone else. He's done introductions for loads of Frazetta books. He's also putting together essays. We couldn't have done the job without him.

MA: It has much more of the flavor of the coming together of the Gods. Not only was it the right time and the right place, and Frazetta getting turned on by The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, but also it was the reuniting of Howard and Frazetta. It was as much Frazetta as Howard who created the popularity of Conan, and for 20-odd years the two have not been reunited. This is one of the reasons we're calling it The Ultimate Triumph. The "Ultimate Triumph" comes from a quote from the end of "Beyond The Black River," a Conan story, where one of the traders talks about how barbarism must ultimately triumph. The Ultimate Triumph is both the fact that Frazetta and Howard are together and the fact that the theme of the book is a quote from Howard.

MA: In much the same way as The Sowers of the Thunder, the Roy Krenkel book, collating the sketches and putting them it. Some of them are explicit scenes. A lot of them are just mood pieces that just reflect the sort of mood that enhances the story. They're not in the sense of illustration the way Gary's work is on the Kane book, which is what I would say is classic illustration. This serves more as an evocation of the mood of Howard's writings as created by Frazetta's previously done drawings.

The text was compiled by Rusty Burke who is a Robert E. Howard scholar. It is a collection of stories to do with Howard's take on barbarism, including stories featuring all of Howard's premiere barbarians. With that, we are also going to have a couple of Robert E. Howard scholars writing essays about Howard's approach and feeling towards civilization versus barbarism.

MA: The trade hardback book will feature over 120 line illustrations and pencil sketches, of which, as I said, a lot of them will be previously unpublished. The limited edition book will be slipcased and include five color watercolor roughs, previously unpublished. slipcased. It will be out in the stores before Christmas with 2,500 trade edition and 1,500 numbered limited.

MA: The earliest sketch may be from as early as 1953. The book will cover his whole career virtually.

MA: We would just like to see these sort of books out there. As publishers of illustrated books, we're trying to produce the finest illustrated books since the golden age of illustration so we want to use the best illustrators. Currently the best American illustrator in this genre is Frank Frazetta. So with Gary's suggestion, it just seemed like the perfect marriage really between words and art that people haven't seen before. Are Wandering Star's intentions changing? It just seemed like an opportunity to create a book with Frazetta illustrations.

MA: The following Christmas.