Liam Sharp - Conan Commission - Tower of the Elephant

Conan the Cimmerian scaling the Tower of the Elephant, by Liam Sharp. 

Inks on 11" x 17" paper.

Lake Como Comic Art Festival Commision, acquired in April 2026

“The shimmering shaft of the tower rose frostily in the stars. In the sunlight it shone so dazzlingly that few could bear its glare, and men said it was built of silver. It was round, a slim perfect cylinder, a hundred and fifty feet in height, and its rim glittered in the starlight with the great jewels which crusted it. The tower stood among the waving exotic trees of a garden raised high above the general level of the city. A high wall enclosed this garden, and outside the wall was a lower level, likewise enclosed by a wall. No lights shone forth; there seemed to be no windows in the tower—at least not above the level of the inner wall. Only the gems high above sparkled frostily in the starlight.”
— Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)

Commissioned in the lead-up to the Lake Como Comic Art Festival, I was thrilled to pick this up in Italy and to finally see Liam’s other Conan artworks in person.

I’ve been a huge fan of Liam’s rendition of the Cimmerian, and expect it will likely become this generation’s defining visual interpretation of Conan. Of his Conan works so far has been his haunting portrayal of Yag-Kosha (the imprisoned elephant at the summit of the eponymous tower) so it felt only natural to commission the scene before it: Conan scaling the tower itself.