Timothy Truman needs no introduction to long time comics readers. Truman has long been a fan favorite writer/artist, since his early days at First Comics working on Features like Starslayer and his signature character, Grimjack, to his later series Scout and the Prowler at Eclipse, to his more recent work on characters as diverse as Jonah Hex and the Justice League of America. And now Truman has taken over as the regular writer on DarkHorse Comics' Conan title. He’ll be doing some art on the series as well. Tim took time from his (very) busy schedule to talk a bit about how he came to take over Conan and what plans he has for everyone’s favorite Cimmerian. To get a good look at Truman’s dynamic portrayal of Conan, be sure and follow the link to his website provided at the end of the interview.

--Charles Rutledge

I guess the place to start is, how did you end up writing the Conan book? I knew you were scheduled to draw some fill in issues with regular scripter Kurt Busiek, and then suddenly Darkhorse was announcing you would be taking over.

Timothy Truman: I'm not quite sure myself. It happened literally as you described it. My whole experience on the book has been like that. When I was wrapping up the Grimjack: Killer Instinct miniseries last year, I emailed Scott Allie to tell him what a Conan fan I am and offered to do a fill-in issue if he'd ever need one. Well, before I knew it my offer turned into a 5 issue miniseries that Joe. R. Lansdale is writing for me, Conan and the Songs of the Dead. No sooner had I started on that, Scott called me to ask if I would like to cover for Cary Nord and do 2 fill-in issues of the regular series. I'd finished one issue of the miniseries and had about finished the art for the first of the fill-ins, issue 36, when I heard a rumor that Kurt might be leaving the book. I sent Scott a very casual email, wondering what was up, hoping there hadn't been any problems or anything. Well, Scott wrote back, assuring me that Kurt was leaving under good graces, everything was cool, and, by the way, Kurt had put my name on the "A" list of possible replacements. Would I be interested? Well, it was the last thing I would ever have expected when I'd written my email. I had absolutely no clue that anything had been going down, much less the fact that I was being considered as Kurt's replacement. It's very flattering, because I know there are a lot of guys out there who would have liked to have had a shot at the book.

Were you a fan of Robert E. Howard's work before being approached to write Conan? Had you read much in the Sword & Sorcery genre?

Swords and sorcery is my favorite genre, bar none. Always has been. And I have always been a huge Conan and Robert E. Howard fan. Conan has always been my favorite fictional character, ever since 1969 or 1970 when I bought the Lancer edition of Conan the Conqueror. I was into Conan even before the Marvel Comics version came out. Doing the book is a very, very cool thing. There are very few characters for which I'm a total fanboy. Conan is at the top of the list. When I say that, I'm not speaking of the movie Conan, or even the Marvel Conan. Conan as written about by Robert E. Howard.

Since you're an artist and a writer, do you find you approach writing for another artist any differently than if you were drawing the story yourself?

Only because I have to describe the pictures I'm seeing in my head-- the camera angels, character descriptions, expressions, etc. When I submit to an editor a story that I'm going to be drawing myself, I usually only give the editor a page-by-page breakdown or plot, and then do dialogue while I'm doing my pencils. Most of the time when I write for someone else I'll write full-script, only because I like to get it all out of the way and not have to worry about doing dialogue a few months down the line when I'm in the middle of doing something else. Sometimes I do the "plot" method with an artist, but usually it's full script. Since I want the artist to have fun, though, I usually try to write something that will cater to their obvious strengths and interests.

Will you be drawing any more Conan material in the near future?

Well, I'm right in the middle of doing 4 covers and 4 issues worth of interiors for the Songs of the Dead miniseries so for now that's keeping me pretty busy. I had to take a break from the miniseries so I could do the two fill-ins. Now that I'm back into it I'm going full-steam. I should finish the last issue in September, though issue 1 will be on the stands before then, I'd think. I'd love to do more Conan artwork beyond that, though, or maybe work on another Howard character. And I'm pretty sure that Scott and Dark Horse are up for it. We'll see what happens. For now, doing the art for Songs of the Dead and writing the ongoing series is keeping me real busy.

What interests you as a writer about Conan?

The character himself, as well as researching the Howard stories themselves. Getting into Howard's writing technique has been a treat, too. The guy was a real poet. He had a fantastic way with stringing words together and coming up with moods and imagery. As a character, Conan is so intriguing. At first glance he seems to be so self-serving and brutal, but there are so many layers to him. He's surprisingly complex. I always knew that but never before did I have to set down and analyze the reasons for his complexity. Well, it's become part of the job now, and it might be the most appealing aspect of doing the writing.

Will you be following the path established by Kurt Busiek or going more in your own direction?

I respect tremendously what Kurt has done with the book. He's a terrific writer. There are certain things that have to stay in place, and we'll be following the same continuity. Kurt and Cary brought this wonderful element of humanity to the character. My stories will retain that human element, but will almost certainly have more of an arcane, pulpy element to them as well.

Could you tell us a bit about your artistic influences? Who are some of your favorite artists?

Paul Gulacy, Joe Kubert, Steranko, Wally Wood, Jim Starlin, John Bolton, Jack Kirby, Howard Chaykin, Kaluta, Jeff Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Barry Smith-- the usual suspects. On top of that, I was heavily influenced by underground comics artists like Greg Irons, Spain Rodriguez, Rich Corben, and Rick Griffin, as well as newspaper comic strip artists Milt Caniff, Warren Tufts and Hal Foster. My biggest influences since 1979, though, were European artists-- Victor De La Fuente, Hugo Pratt, Mobius, Druillett, Hermann, and most of all a guy named Alfonso Font.

I was glad to see that Grimjack is back in action in 'Killer Instinct'. Any plans for further Grimjack mini-series?

Ideally, sometime after I finish the art for Conan and the Songs of the Dead.

Fan-boy question. Any Chance we could see a Conan/Grimjack team up?

That's one for the oracle, my boy.

Are there any other sword & sorcery characters you'd like to get a shot at? Elric, Kull, Solomon Kane, etc?

All the above. I was a huge Elric fan. Also Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I love the Basil Broketail stories-- those would be fantastic as comics. If I ever had a chance to adapt China Meiville's stories, though, I'd probably welcome that almost as much as I have the opportunity to do Howard. Almost. Over the last few years-- whenever I get a few days off-- I've been working on a weird adaptation of the Norse myths, too, called "Odin the Wanderer." People can see samples from that at my website: http://www.timothytruman.com/. There are about 5 or 6 galleries of art at my site, including a lot of Conan art. Plus fantasy fans can see my depictions of characters like Solomon Kane and Elric in my commissions gallery.

Thanks, man! Best to all.
-TT

FS: Thanks for talking to us!