Crom the Barbarian

Over the last several years I have found that Instagram has a really active independent comics community filled with people regularly creating and self-publishing their original comics. This is how I met illustrator Kurt Brugel. Kurt runs a few podcasts centered around documenting the process of making comic books: the main one Turbo Pit-Fighter is a weekly virtual meetup between him and co-creator Jake Jacobs to work on their original comic for which the podcast is named. I'd highly recommend getting a copy of their Turbo Pit-Fighter teaser.

Kurt also runs the Gardner F. Fox library which seeks to preserve and distribute the works of author Gardner Francis Fox. One of the properties under that umbrella is public domain Sword and Sorcery comic Crom the Barbarian. Kurt has already published a few collections Crom comics including original stories he wrote and drew with ballpoint pen, but he has recruited some help from a number of artists from the Instagram comix network (myself included) for a new edition coming out this summer!

I received my copy of Crom and got to reading and sketching, and ultimately landed on a composition and a theme more by following a little bit of synchronicity than anything else. I decided to base my pinup drawing on Guido Cagnacci's David Holding Goliath's Head, 1650. There are a couple reasons I did this and I will list them chronologically: the first is that I had seen this painting recently here at the Columbia Museum of Art for an after hours event called Arts and Draughts. It's one of those paintings that stuck with me during the tortuous time spent in art history classes trying to remember dates and artists and titles of paintings that all seemed so similar, and it kind of blew my mind to see it in person just by happenstance. The second reason I based my drawing on this painting was a conversation I had with Kurt on his Crom Updates podcast (my episodes haven't been published yet). After showing him a few initial ideas from reading the comics, he expressed how he'd be interested in a "high art" approach to the whole thing. That instantly brought me back to the museum and the half hour or so I spent in front of that painting sketching it. Thirdly, when I got to thinking about the story of David from the Bible I realized that like Crom, David's story takes sword and sorcery even further back in history. It just seemed like a good idea to marry the two milestones for sword and sorcery together to create something new with a hint of the old.

I currently have two videos on my YouTube where I get into the tedious process of filling in the drawing with texture and value using an 01 Micron pen. It's tedious stuff you can find here and here. If you're into a shorter format video, I made a couple of reels on my Instagram briefly explaining the process of drawing and inking the Crom the Barbarian pinup.

Make sure you check back this Summer as the new edition of Crom the Barbarian comics! I will have copies available for purchase with my pinup artwork as a variant cover! It's a really fun read of pure adventurous escapism. Kurt is really doing something special in whipping this loose community into a more collaborative space as well as getting classic comics into the hands of the general public. Put down the phone, and read a comic for 30 minutes!