MM: You said your father was artistic. Did he draw much while you were growing up? Did he tell you, “This is the brush that you use,” and that kind of thing? FRANK: Not really. My dad had taken many art classes in his youth and was a standout art student, but he never became a professional artist. MM: It was more of a hobby for him? FRANK: Well, even as a hobby, he didn’t really draw much. My first memory of my father doing something artistic was right before we left for the United States. I guess he got suckered into building a model boat for one of his friends or co-workers. It was this historic Korean warship that was shaped like a turtle with a dragon’s head at the bow. I remember him carving this boat from a block of wood. It was about two feet long. It was pretty impressive. I’m pretty sure that, looking at it with adult eyes, it wasn’t as intricate as my childhood memory remembers it being, but as a child, I remember just being blown away by it. I remember my dad shaping the pencils into miniature cannons and carving the powerful and fearsome dragon’s head— all the little details that he put in. My dad was a great artist.... When we came to the United States, we were pretty poor. We didn’t know anyone. No money or free time. We didn’t really do any traveling. My dad had two jobs. He was a janitor at night for Greyhound, and he was a carpenter during the day, and my mom worked at a shoe factory. So the only times that I saw my dad using his artistic ability was when I had a science fair or science project to do and he would help me. I would screw up, and my dad would help me build or fix something. I remember a couple of times he actually drew the poster that I was supposed to hand in, and I was just amazed at the posters that he drew. It was pretty impressive. MM: You said you used comics to help you learn English. What were the comics you were reading as a kid when you first started reading them? FRANK: I remember my dad bringing comics home from his work when he worked as the janitor at the Greyhound station. He would bring home these old comics that people just left at the station. But it wasn’t until fifth grade that I became really interested in comics, because all my friends started collecting comics at the time. So it was about ’83 that I really started collecting comics, when I really became aware of comics. My friends and I only collected Marvel titles: Fantastic Four, Uncanny X-Men, Spider-Man. I think Walt Simonson’s Thor started up around 7
Previous Page and Above: Sketches from high school. Left: Preliminary sketch for a Conan illustration. Conan ™ and ©2007 Conan Properties International, LLC.