Judith Hunt!

American artist Judith Hunt is the “First lady of Conan comics”, so to speak…the first female artist to do sequential artwork for a professional Conan comic (penciling Marvel's Conan the King #35 to 39), way back in the mid 80’s…I see that she’s been credited with three of those covers as well, according to The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators.

Over on one of Judith’s blogs, Art Farm, I came across what must be her original pencils for the cover of Conan the King #36…wow! As far as Conan goes, this is about as good as it gets, and IMO, so much better than the finished cover!!!

On the Darkhorse boards last year, Judith was kind enough to discuss her Conan/Marvel days:

“I obtained the Conan the King penciling contract directly from Marvel and penciled it for 3 issues. I subcontracted out some of the pages or partial pages to members of my studio that I ran at the time...Mike Manley and Ricardo Villagran as I was busy with other projects such as Macmillan's Raggedy Ann and Andy design work, an ABC special, and a Jim Henson muppets book.

I did the majority of the fight scenes and almost the entire issue that Al Williamson inked. I found Conan to be interesting to draw as I love history, armor, and horses but the writing was poor... predictable and fairly mindless. I convinced Al Williamson who was friends with Ed King to ink one issue and that issue and all the other art except one page was stolen from the Marvel offices.”

Furthermore (unless someone knows something that I don’t), Judith was the ONLY woman that ever did sequential artwork on a professional Conan comic before 2009.

That changed this year, when Dark Horse released Myspace Dark Horse Presents Volume 2, which included the short Conan adventure “Trophy”, featuring the artwork of Canadian Marian Churchland.