#Art of Fantasy 132: Pablo Marcos Ortega

I’m visiting a golden oldy this week, mostly because it’s been a horror of a week and I find myself lamenting heroes from my youth. I am not so naïve to think I’d be able to recapture that old magic. No, not at all. Though my eyes are older and my mind harder I still have memories of events from my youth and captured with those memories is the ambiance of time and place. So when I see an artist I admired back in the day, or read a story from one of my first literary heroes, I don’t recapture the magic. I remember it in all its glory. Intact. We’re not supposed to recapture the past. Only to remember it fondly.

Let’s get to it then.

Comic book artist, Pablo Marcos is best known for his work on Batman and Conan the Barbarian during the 1970’s and through his signature character the Zombie. He drew all but one story in the horror magazine, Tales of the Zombie. Like all the great comic book artists from that time, Pablo did a stint for Warren Publishing and later moved to Skywald Publications where he met fellow Peruvian artist Boris Vallejo, who became his mentor.

Readers loved the covers Pablo did for Marvel UK and he became a regular artist for the horror-comics magazines, Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed, Tales of the Zombie, Vampire Tales, and a host of other magazines.

Pablo went on to work for DC and by the early 80s found himself inking for penciller John Buscema on the Conan the Barbarian comic books, The Savage Sword of Conan, and a regular newspaper comic strip of the same character. Some of the other titles and tie-ins Pablo would later work on included Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gulliver’s Travels, The Invisible Man, Jane Eyre, The Jungle Book, King Solomon’s Mines, A Little Princess, Dracula, and Frankenstein.

During the 90s he tackled Red Sonja for Dynamite Entertainment and continues to do so even today. In 2014 Pablo illustrated a cover and 10 interior pages for the 100th issue of Red Sonja. He also signed a 5-year contract with Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. to do one page of Tarzan of the Apes and The Land That TIme Forgot, both of which can be viewed here.

Below I have collected a few of the covers and panels he created. Enjoy!