Why is Conan's skin tone SO RED? Doesn't that seem odd for a guy from the northern regions? (Or is it a permanent sunburn from spending so many years in deserts?

I didn't mind a lot of the earlier Dark Horse coloring (been reading some of them in the last week or so), but in too many cases they went too far, overpowering the art and making it pointless for somelike like Ernie Chan to have used so much rendering (the sort of thing that was designed to use with simple, "flat" color in the first place).

It almost looks to me as if Dark Horse is going too far the other way, and I can't help but wondfer if it isn't mostly a COST-CUTTING reason they're doing this for.