The Mercury from Pottstown, Pennsylvania • Page 60

lllustrater creates world of swords and savages By ANDY LINDSTROM Copley News Service SPRINGFIELD, 111. Tim Conrad digs ugly characters. The young Springfield artist likes to draw people with warts on their noses and rings around their collars. He is a comic book artist. To be more specific, he is a science fiction illustrator.

In less than four years, since TIM CONRAD he was discovered at a comic book convention and offered his first assignment, Conrad has earned a national reputation. Stan Lee, editor of Marvel Comics, calls Conrad one of the best science fiction artists in the United States. At a recent science fiction and fantasy convention in Toronto, Canada, he won first prize in the category. Comic books with his artwork sell out at local stores within hours of delivery and his posters move even better. not Conrad said, leaning back from the drawing board in his studio-home.

Conrad, who has made it artistically, if not yet financially, lives in a plain, white bungalow nestled into a neighborhood of plain, white bungalows. are few prodigies in this business. What I have is a neurotic compensation, a compulsion. If I could focus this much energy into making money be Howard Whatever his special genius compulsion, neurosis or talent Conrad is a bear for work. On a typical assignment for Marvel Comics, he draws for 30 nonstop hours in a creative frenzy that lasts until the job is inked, dried and ready for delivery.

Surrounded in his poster-lined studio by shelves of books, statuettes of comic strip heroes, record albums heavy on David Bowie and Hank Williams, ashtrays stuffed with cigarette stubs, empty cartons of fried chicken, a seemingly endless supply of soft drinks and two cats that make him sneeze, pnnraH ctorinc about weird heroes like Conan the Barbarian and his mythical world of swords and savages. Or, he dreams up psychedelic posters of scenes from some other world, reeking with escapism and hedonistic pleasures. usually get up about 3 p.m.,” he said. eat lunch at 6 and dinner at Dressed in a purplish-blue sweater of his own design of the stores had what I Conrad discussed his career. He is 25, a somewhat reluctant graduate of the Springfield school system and Western Illinois University.

A self-taught artist and well read in the classics, he boasts that most of his education came outside the classroom. first major effort was to illustrate a pirated version of a Tarzan novel. He was 15. never did anything with he said. fact, I never read comic books most of the time.

I was burned out on all those super heroes. was kind of strange the way I got started with Marvel Comics because I have any experience at all when I got the job. was working at the time as a supervisor of auxiliary personnel at the office of human resources. They needed somebody who knew how to Conrad was hired to do free lance work by Marvel Comics in 1973. He is still amazed that he got the job.

is derived from a comic book heritage that reaches beyond the turn of the last century when illustrations first began to appear in newspapers. It started with simple line figures like the Yellow Kid and Mutt and Jeff Adventure comics, however, the prototype for brand of art, went into action when Hal Foster introduced first Tarzan and later Prince Valiant. were the first Conrad said. really dig work. Still do.

then, later on, there were so many super heroes that I just quit reading comic The super heroes Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel and a stable full of imitators grew up in the depression and flourished during World War II. Comic book art was further developed by Will Eisner who brought film techniques to the comic page. Eisner used three-dimensional visual effects, contrasted long shots to close-ups, played different angles against each other and borrowed other tricks from films like and the classics of German director Fritz Lang. so-called New Wave artists came along in the Conrad said. Smith was one.

They paid great attention to detail and filling in the background. guess you could say kind of second or third If all this sounds a little intellectual for comic book art, it should. The whole field has been submerged into debates over mythical images, subconscious motifs and the archetypes of Carl Jung. As distinguished an institution as Harvard University publishes a of Pictorial in which film and comic book art are dissected like so many frogs in a laboratory. Conrad loves it.

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