If you grew up in the ’80s, once you hit puberty and got over the superhero comics that are flooding the big screen, the only magazine left on the rack was Marvel’s gory, black and white, comic-code free “Savage Sword of Conan.” Those busty wenches and barbarians were everywhere in the 1980’s – from album covers to conversion vans. It seems like a different world now. The “SSOC’ quartet that ruled “SSOC” in the 80’s was the dynamic mix of Gary Kwapisz, Chuck Dixon, and Ernie Chan – with Joe Jusko providing the glorious covers. Recently, Dark Horse released all 22 (!) volumes of “SSOC”.

When I heard Gary Kwapisz was back with his release of REBEL DEAD REVENGE – a brilliant EC-horror inspired tale with fascinating historical accuracy, I was fortunate to track him down from his fortified mountain compound for an interview. He’ll be at the Comic-con in Pikeville, Kentucky with some other living legends, Aug. 2-3 in Pikeville, Kentucky, signing copies of REBEL DEAD REVENGE. Get down there to see him!

BOOKGASM: Tell me a little about “Rebel Dead Revenge”! I jumped on the zombies in the Civil War cover – only to be sucked in by the interesting factual details that you incorporated. It’s much more than a horror comic.

KWAPISZ: Chuck Dixon and I started our own publishing company dealing with Civil War adventure/history. Chuck’s written more comic book pages than any other writer in history. We wanted to get the homeschool market. But I was at Gettysburg at a Civil War reenactment and I was telling them how I went to Marvel and pitched this idea. [But] they weren’t interested. And I said “What if I put zombies in it?” [Then] they said it might be interesting, write something up. But I don’t want to write about zombies, the real stories are much more interesting. And I told this to the reenactors. Civil War Walking-Dead? We’d be totally into that. So I called up Chuck up and said maybe if we did a Civil War Zombie book it would help sell these books. And he said he’d rather work at a dry-cleaner than do a Civil War Zombie book. So I took that as a challenge for what I could come up with.

BOOKGASM: You did everything! It’s lettered, beautifully illustrated and uses little known historical mysteries to tale an awesome story – like Stonewall Jackson missing arm, and free slave Jim Lewis …

KWAPISZ: Yeah. That’s why he was so good for the book. And it’s cool because he was a real person.

BOOKGASM: And Zombies.

KWAPISZ: I wanted to release “Rebel Dead Revenge” as a comic. There’s a lot of cool stuff in there. I wanted to start the zombies on fire. I wanted to shoot them with grape-shot. Squash them with a locomotive. Plus a great story. If you don’t like the story, you’ve still got the good art.

BOOKGASM: Great art! Lush coloring. Which brings me to “Savage Sword of Conan”. I grew up on military bases. Once I discovered girls, it was straight to “SSOC”, if it wasn’t sold out. You, Chuck Dixon, and Ernie Chan wrote some classics!

KWAPISZ: [laughs] My editor always told me the people reading your stories are bikers, guys in jail, or in the military.

BOOKGASM: That must have been a wonderful time! You went from the Comics Journal – still one of the best sources for comics critique – to one of Marvel’s main non-superhero lines. Most of your colleagues are not with us anymore. How old were you at the time?

KWAPISZ: 22. It was cool. I loved it. It was a black and white magazine. It was 50 pages. I could do double page spreads. You know I hated super heroes. At Marvel if you didn’t draw super heroes you didn’t count. The fact that you couldn’t put “SSOC” into a plastic bag with other comic books meant that nobody cared about it. [At] the office [Larry] Hama did all the non-super hero stuff and we’re like the forgotten ones.

BOOKGASM: Larry Hama must have been interesting to work with. He blew up with GI Joe!

KWAPISZ: Larry wasn’t a big super hero guy. But he got popular on GI Joe. Yeah he did a ton of work. He was the editor and did concept work. He did everything. Once I went into the office and he was doing Strawberry Shortcake. Larry was a very interesting guy. I drew really fast. I could do a 50-page book in 2 months. Pencils and ink. I would get the script draw it, come into the office, and go into the office and say you want to look at it. He would say, nah, let’s go lunch. And that would be the end of it.

BOOKGASM: What was the process?

KWAPISZ: Generally what happened was when I got a story from Chuck Dixon, a lot of times I would plot the stories and those were stories I wanted to pencil and ink. And if I got stories I didn’t like as much, well I’d go this is one for Ernie. And I’d just break it down, got it out of there, and it was an easy month for me and let Chan ink it.

BOOKGASM: What about comics now with Marvel on the big screen?

KWAPISZ: The biggest change between when I was in comics and now is when I was in comics it was artistic-centric. The artist was the king. The writer was just an add-on. Now the writer is king. That really makes for better comics, because the story should be central. When I first saw Spider-Man [on the screen] swinging between buildings in the movies I thought, it’s all over. We always thought they’ll never be able to film us. And then I thought, shit, they’re doing it. That’s just the way things go. But now you can build your own audience and sell directly to them.

BOOKGASM: Even directly through your own website. Here’s some real pressing answers inquiring BOOKGASM fans want to know. Who pulls down more wenches, Conan or Prince Valiant? I always had some questions about Valiant, even as a kid, but don’t ask, don’t tell. [RIP Hal Foster!]

KWAPISZ: [laughs] Hal Foster did one of the hardest things in the world: he made a hero who was married. You can see why people don’t do it – it cuts off all future romances.

BOOKGASM: Okay, on to the Picts, Conan’s ruthless mortal enemies. If they were alive today, would they qualify for free health-care and school tuition?

KWAPISZ: They would just take it!

BOOKGASM: And lastly, for the record, if there’s a cage match between Conan the Barbarian and Thundarr the Barbarian, with his Sunsword, who would win?

KWAPISZ: Conan kicks his ass.

BOOKGASM: Thank you, Mr. Kwapisz!

—Matt Adder and Emi Ann

Get it at Amazon.