The Friday Face-Off is a meme initially created by Books by Proxy and is now hosted over at Lynn’s Books. The idea is to compare a book’s different covers with a specific theme each week.

This week’s theme is a Sword and Sorcery book cover: “By this axe I rule!” This week’s book is The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard.

And the winner is… COVER A!

I love the myth and lore around characters like Conan. It’s an iconic character, the ultimate loin cloth-wearing, sword-wielding barbarian. So much has come from him – the epic Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, the glut of comic books, video games and even the fantastic Sir Terry Pratchett character Cohen the Barbarian, an excellent old-aged riff on the character. And this particular cover really epitomises all that I imagine when I think of the character. Bare-chested and muscles bared for all to see, the horned helmet and the vicious axe swinging as it carves the enemy down. And of course, the man himself single-handedly takes down hordes of bloodthirsty enemies.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with my winner, or does one of the others work better for you? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s theme is a cover from a fairy tale retold: “And they all lived happily ever after.”