The world of fantasy illustrators has lost one of its most prolific and long-running practitioners, Ken Kelly (May 19, 1946 – June 3, 2022). From the classic Berkley Medallion line of collected Robert E. Howard to the modern Baen reissues, Tor Conan pastiches, and Wildside/Dorchester Weird Works of REH — and the thousands of fantasy and science fiction books from every major publisher in between — Kelly’s art was a ubiquitous presence on the paperback rack for half a century. Tutored by “Uncle Frank” Frazetta, the undisputed master of brooding sword-and-sorcery illustration, Kelly incorporated Frazetta’s high-contrast interplay of light and dark and sinuous, dynamic character modeling into his own brand of frenetic, physical, and fantastically explosive art.
While many remember Kelly for his work on album covers for bands like Kiss and Manowar, or his equally dynamic covers for horror and film magazines, comics, and even toy advertisements, for those of us at Tales From the Magician’s Skull he will forever be honored as one of the major voices in sword-and-sorcery illustration, a direct connection between our contemporary age and the era in which rediscovered pulps boomed across the collective consciousness and sparked a revolution in fantasy story-telling — both in print and in art.
