What drives your art? What forces you, rides you, hustles you, controls you until its latest needs have been met? What really drives you to create speculative fiction art, be it words or images?

First and foremost, I am a fan. And to help bring back the very genre of yester-year the way I remember it, the days of Warren Magazines, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allan Poe, That’s what drives me, that’s what keeps me inspired and anything that fits into that description in today’s Fantasy or Sci-Fi & Horror or Mystery.

If there was the possibility of becoming any speculative fiction character ever created (except your own), would you? Who? Why?

For me it would have to be Robert E. Howard’s Conan. The ultimate story of a man who gained all by his means and his way. Stories that bring you from a simple boy’s life who survived tragic events and turned him into what he is. Hardening him to be able to survive all that came his way. Beasts, sorcery, war & women, and ultimately becoming king. Yeah, I would have to pick the Barbarian.

If you could only take one author’s works compressed on an e-book reader on a “one-bag-only” one-way trip to another galaxy, whose works would it be and why?

Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Burroughs. Probably Robert E. Howard, but I like Edgar Rice Burroughs books a lot. So there’s my answer.

In the privacy of your favorite artistic nook, do you act out your protagonist’s actions? Do you know how to use his/her weapons? Do you wear her clothes? Do you talk like him?

Yeah, somewhat. Normally the characters I am painting are wielding a sword or an axe. I have had some practice with sword and bamboo. I normally don’t have much to say. I do not dress like the characters I create or help bring to life, but I defiantly have a bad habit of probably reacting the way they would.

Robert E. Howard, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Fritz Leiber, Karl Edward Wagner, Louis L’Amour, Frederick Faust, Ian Fleming, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rafael Sabatini . . . the list could go on. Some lived long lives, some flared and burned out young. All lived life hard. All wrote pulse-pounding action-adventure, often dipping into the many different genres they share, yet each eventually establishing their name within a specific one. What do you believe you have in common with these authors, and what makes you so sure speculative fiction – heroic fantasy fiction to be precise – is your genre? Or is it?

Well being in the art department of the genre, I would hope to fit in the genre along with these names and also the names who helped bring the worlds they created to life. Artists like Frank Frazetta, Sanjulian, and Bernie Wrightson.

Thank you for your answers and the terrific cover, Johnney.

Johnney Perkins is the artist behind the jaw-dropping RotS cover art, “The Return of the Sword”. He also is the Art Acquisitions Editor here at RBE, and in this role will be contributing to many of our titles. You can find more of Johnney’s work at his websites: FantasyArtists, MySpace, and Facebook pages.

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