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classic hanging skeleton + tree eating woman cover by Gil Kane; COMIC BOOK IMPACT rating of 5 (CBI)
Cover pencils by Gil Kane, inks by Ernie Chan. The Garden of Life and Death, script by Roy Thomas, pencils by John Buscema, inks by Ernie Chan [as Ernie Chua]; setting: Oasis of Shar-Al-Tjinn; Conan saves & kills Zhadorr; Conan fights a man-eating tree & kills Phandar; Yar Ali & Haak-Shi die. The letters page contains Marvel Value Stamp series A # 91 (Hela the Goddess of Death by Buscema).


Artists Information

'The Michelangelo of comics.' Buscema was one of the mainstays of Marvel Comics during its 1960s and 1970s heyday, best known for his run on the The Avengers and The Silver Surfer, and for over 200 stories featuring the sword-and-sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. In addition, he penciled at least one issue of nearly every major Marvel title, including long runs on two of the company's top books, Fantastic Four and Thor.

Gil Kane was a Latvian-born American comics artist whose career spanned the 1940s to the 1990s and virtually every major comics company and character. Kane co-created the modern-day versions of the superheroes Green Lantern and the Atom for DC Comics, and co-created Iron Fist with Roy Thomas for Marvel Comics. He was involved in such major storylines as that of The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98, which, at the behest of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, bucked the then-prevalent Comics Code Authority to depict drug abuse, and ultimately spurred an update of the Code. Kane additionally pioneered an early graphic novel prototype, His Name Is... Savage, in 1968, and a seminal graphic novel, Blackmark, in 1971. In 1997, he was inducted into both the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame and the Harvey Award Jack Kirby Hall of Fame.

Ernesto "Ernie" Chan born and sometimes credited as Ernie Chua, was a Chinese-American comics artist, known for work published by Marvel Comics and DC Comics, including many Marvel issues of series featuring Conan the Barbarian. Chan also had a long tenure on Batman and Detective Comics. Other than his work on Batman, Chan primarily focused on non-superhero characters, staying mostly in the genres of horror, war, and sword and sorcery.