My Top Ten Savage Sword of Conan covers.

Not that I'm a violent man but there are times in this life when all I want to do is pick up my broadsword and hack a monster to death.

The only problem is I can't because I've already killed them all.

Happily, I can at least seek solace in the adventures of Conan, a man who's clearly determined to follow in my footsteps.

And that leads me to fling together another of those Top Tens that always push up the site's visitor numbers. This time, I'm looking at the covers of Marvel/Curtis's Savage Sword of Conan. How impressed by their covers I remember being when I was a mere lad.

As so often with these things, I've not given them any sort of ranking, as doing such a thing tends to hurt my brain, and so they're posted here in a purely random order.

What does strike me is how many of them are from the title's early days. There are some covers I like from later on in the mag's run but I don't like them enough to put them in the Top Ten. Plus, a fair number of them are badly marred by what, to me, seems to be a highly unsympathetic typography that destroys their chances of feeling suitably Howardian no matter how hard the artist tries.

It's issue #1 and I've only just discovered that this cover's by Boris Vallejo. It doesn't look as photographic to me as his usual efforts. It also feels a lot livelier and more comic-booky than I'm used to from him.

Neal Adams shows what he can do when let loose on our favourite swordsman.

And what he can do is give us a bold image with an elegant background.

Mike Kaluta gives us a dynamic scene where the strongly-lit characters contrast starkly with their black background.

That might not sound like a big deal but an awful lot of the covers that I rejected failed to make it because their total lack of colour variation between background and foreground made them fail to grab the attention.

This was the first issue of the mag I ever had and probably my first ever exposure to the work of Boris Vallejo. It had a huge impact on me.

Nowadays, I do feel that, accomplished as he was, his practise of painting from photos means his work does lack the energy and character of Frank Frazetta who he was clearly influenced by. Still, it's all lovely stuff to look at and he was clearly the king of the Savage Sword of Conan cover artists.

It's Vallejo again. I know I said I wasn't going to put the covers into any sort of order but I must confess this is easily my favourite. It has Conan being crucified. It has a giant skull. It has a vulture. How could I not love it?

Alex Nino and Frank Magsino give us a subterranean battle to the death.

Boris Vallejo again.

I'd say this is the least impressive of the Vallejo covers, with it all looking too much like models posing but it would definitely have made me want to buy it when I was a kid, so it makes the list.

Vallejo again.

My main memory of this issue is me throwing up halfway through reading it.

Fortunately, it was because I had a bug, not because I didn't approve of its cover.

Bob Larkin. I don't like the painting style on this cover as much as on the others I've chosen - because it all looks far too clean and modern for my liking - but what matters is the sheer strikingness of its imagery, with our hero about to be swallowed by a well-known movie star.