COMPLETED IN 1966, THE PAINTING SHAPED MODERN FANTASY ART AND REDEFINED A LITERARY HERO
By Christina Rees | September 2, 2025
Frank Frazetta’s cover painting for the 1967 Lancer/Ace Conan reprints is nothing less than a landmark of modern fantasy art – a single image that crystallized a literary hero and reset the expectations of popular illustration art. Completed in 1966 and published the following year, the oil-on-canvas board, commonly known as Man Ape, endures as one of the most recognizable of Frazetta’s Conan paintings and stands among the greatest canvases the artist ever produced. On September 12, Heritage will offer this singular masterpiece in a dedicated one-lot auction.
“Man Ape is a touchstone of fantasy illustration, an image that redefined Conan for modern audiences,” says Todd Hignite, Executive Vice President at Heritage. “To acquire this painting is to own not just a masterwork of draftsmanship and color but the very matrix from which so much of Conan’s modern mythos was born.”
This quintessential image of Robert E. Howard’s famed barbarian is one of the most desirable of Frank Frazetta’s Conan-related covers. The 1966 painting hits the auction block September 12.
Heritage holds the auction records for Frazetta’s original paintings. In May 2019, Egyptian Queen realized $5,400,000 at Heritage, setting a world and house record for original comic book and fantasy art. Four years later, that record was surpassed by Dark Kingdom, which Heritage sold for $6,000,000, currently the highest auction result for any Frazetta work and any comic or fantasy artwork globally. His drawings go for out-of-this-world prices as well. In June of this year, Frazetta’s original cover art for Famous Funnies No. 214, a magnificent 1954 pen-and-ink work that portrays Buck Rogers sailing through space, sold for $1,035,000 at Heritage.
“This painting by Frank Frazetta is one of the most recognizable and iconic images of Conan the Cimmerian,” says Mark Finn, a nationally recognized authority on Robert E. Howard, the fantasy writer who created Conan in the early 1930s. Drawn from Howard’s tale Rogues in the House, the scene stages Conan’s brutal encounter with the man-ape Thak. Frazetta distilled the story into an unforgettable tableau: a barbarian warrior squared against a hulking beast, each figure modeled with authority and electrified by movement.
Movement, in fact, was the artist’s guiding principle. Sharp diagonals, sweeping brushstrokes, and compressed pictorial space pull the eye toward the clash of bodies at the composition’s center. Conan’s twisting torso, clenched fists, and forward-driving musculature animate the painting with a ferocious energy that continues to reverberate long after viewing. Frazetta’s mastery of anatomy – honed through years in commercial illustration – never lapses into static academic display. Every gesture serves the narrative, and color provides both structure and memory. Against a moody chiaroscuro of earth tones, flesh, and stone, Frazetta deploys a visually stunning note: the blood-red cape of Thak. This crimson slash anchors the eye and sears itself into the imagination, transforming the painting into an unforgettable emblem of raw conflict. Frazetta achieves both immediate readability and enduring depth.
To acquire this painting is to own not just a masterwork of draftsmanship and color but the very matrix from which so much of Conan’s modern mythos was born.”
–Todd Hignite, Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President
When Man Ape appeared on the cover of the 1967 Conan paperback reissues, it did more than sell books – it reinvented a character for a new era. “Frazetta’s covers for the Lancer/Ace series introduced a new theatricality into paperback illustration,” Hignite says. “They made Howard’s prose feel palpable to a new generation of readers.”
Those covers ignited a Conan resurgence in the late 1960s, sparking Marvel Comics’ long-running series and later feature films. Frazetta’s imagery, elemental and larger-than-life, redefined how the barbarian would be envisioned across all media. Posters, comic book covers, and endless reproductions spread the image globally, yet the power of the original remains unique.
Beyond its cultural impact, the painting’s custodial history enhances its rarity. Executed in oil on a 16-by-20-inch canvas-wrapped board, the painting, a favorite of Frazetta’s, has remained with the artist and his family since its creation, preserving an unbroken link to Frazetta’s studio. For collectors of illustration art, American art, comic art, or fantasy art, Man Ape represents a pinnacle. Heritage’s offering of Man Ape as a one-lot auction underscores both its rarity and its centrality to the Frazetta legacy. This is not simply the sale of a painting; it is the presentation of a cultural touchstone – the canvas that launched a thousand images and continues to shape the imagination of illustration art half a century later.
