![]() Let's go back to 1995 for a moment. The OJ trial is on TV. Kurt has already killed himself. Bill Clinton has begun to at least wink at Monica Lewinsky when he thinks no one is looking, but the scandal has not yet come to light. Not everything is sunshine and roses, despite how my generation tends to romanticize the 90s. In the Conan world, things aren't looking much better. It doesn't look like Arnie's coming back; the original movie is 13 years old, the sequel is 11 years old with the consensus being that it was just okay, and the Red Sonja movie which pretty much everyone disliked is already turning 10. Marvel's Conan the Barbarian comic ended two years ago. Savage Sword is cancelled this year. On the printed page, Tor Books has been churning out Conan books at a factory pace- two or three a year about- for the last decade and then some. With that kind of production level, some of them are good, some of them are schlock, and almost none of them have good titles. Can anyone give me a good reason why Conan the Magnificent is called that, specifically? All I'm trying to say is that we were at a bit of a low point for the Cimmerian. Then here comes John C. Hocking out of seeming nowhere- a dude who hadn't ever published anything that I can find, and crafts a pretty excellent Conan adventure. According to interviews with Hocking, he wasn't happy with the Conan stuff being released around that time (I suppose I can relate), so he wrote Conan and the Emerald Lotus over three years from 1993 to 1995. Happy with what he had written, he sent it off to L. Sprague de Camp, who also dug it and decided to publish it. This is not the first time I've read a story about how someone just cold-called L. Sprague de Camp into publishing their Conan work, but it tickles me every time. ![]() Conan and the Emerald Lotus is a really fun pastiche. Hocking says that one of the things he felt was missing from late 80s / early 90s Conan was that "Weird Tales supernatural horror flavor," which he does a good job of recreating. His emerald lotus powder is clearly, horrifyingly addictive, yet also increases the power of sorcerers to an extent that you kind of hope that the story's magic users will continue to indulge. With it being written in the early 90s, I spent most of the novel thinking that this was Hocking's take on the crack epidemic in America, a Conan Says No to Drugs. But Hocking says it's really on the nature of power, which makes a lot more sense. We get to watch as a pair of sorcerers occasionally gulp down handfuls of emerald lotus powder between brutal periods of withdrawal. I feel a sort of kinship with Hocking, because he has said that one of the impetuses for Emerald Lotus was asking himself the question, "If I were to write a Conan novel, when would I set it?" and it seems as though he has a similarly obsessive (is obsessive too strong a word?) fan relationship with the big guy. Because Hocking knows his chronology well, he knew there was a solid place to set the book, and that's in Conan's second mercenary period following his pirate days with Belit in "Queen of the Black Coast." If we follow the chronologies the include L. Sprague de Camp's material, Conan spends some time in the southern kingdoms while working his way back north. And it's clear that Hocking was setting this story in a chronology that includes stuff beyond just Robert E. Howard's work. Hocking embeds some fun chronological stuff for demented completionists like myself to enjoy, like when Conan is first taken hostage by the lackey Gulbanda. The villain of the hour says that Conan was recognized as one who was once a great thief in the city of Shadizar (firmly placing this story after his earliest days). He says that Conan stole the Eye of Erlik (from Andrew Offutt's The Sword of Skelos), a Hesharkna Tiara, and even the Heart of the Elephant from Yara's tower in the city of thieves. Conan flatly replies, "That's a lie," which I love since it's true. He didn't steal it, technically, but he did help destroy it. Conan is also addressed as Amra, placing this story after his first pirate period. Right after "Queen of the Black Coast" in most chronologies, Conan operates as a mercenary for various entities like in stories "The Snout in the Dark" and "Black Colossus." At the start of "Hawks Over Shem," one of the Howard stories that L. Sprague de Camp wedged Conan into, Conan is mercing in Akkharia in southern Shem, which is where this story begins. It probably places this story right before "Hawks." ![]() There's one last, unique aspect of this novel that I really enjoy and think sets it apart from most other Conan stories I've read. Very rare is the supporting cast the star of the story. There are a few where they're fun ("Shadows in the Dark"), and a few where they're truly excellent ("Beyond the Black River"), and quite a few where they're just kind of there (take your pick), but the supporting characters here like Neesa, Lady Zelandra, Heng Shih, and the evil Ethram-Fal are all way more compelling and memorable than many of their counterparts. I think this might be a drawback for some readers: Conan is along for the ride for the whole thing and is certainly at the center of action scenes, but doesn't necessarily drive most of the actual plot action in the story after he's linked up with Zelandra. Conan and the Emerald Lotus is really fun pastiche that makes me hope we'll get more from Hocking, who seems like a cool guy from the interviews I've seen. I picked up the City of the Dead omnibus that also includes Conan and the Living Plague, so I'll probably read that soon. Additionally, he has a direct sequel called "Black Starlight" which only appears to be available in ebook format along with a few other short pastiches. I'm having trouble keeping up these days! ★★★★☆
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![]() In 1954, social psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today's Youth. It was a flashpoint for the comic book industry. Wertham had actually been speaking out for years on what he perceived to be the dangers of comics, rather unsuccessfully. He was far from the only opponent of comics in the early 50s, but his book allowed him to become the poster boy for the supposed illicit influence on kids. Comic books, he argued, would turn your kids into dope-smoking, Satan-worshipping, crime-committing homosexuals. Now, comic books are cool, but they're unfortunately not that cool. Dr. Wertham's work claims are seen by most these days as greatly exaggerated, if not outright quackery, but his voice was a part of a chorus that led the Comics Magazine Association of America adopting the Comics Code Authority in 1954. The Comics Code was a draconian list of rules that severely limited what kinds of content could appear in comics in the name of protecting the most impressionable readers from "injuring" their sensibilities and producing "wholesome" entertainment. Only comic books approved by the code would bear the seal "Approved by the Comics Code Authority" in the corner, and wholesale distributors would not carry comic books without the seal. So while submitting your comics for Code approval was technically voluntary, it was functionally mandatory if you wanted them to sell. The seal was powerful, and as Dr. Amy Kiste Nyberg at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund puts it, "Nothing inherent in the form of comics prevents comic books from telling stories for different audiences, but the perception of comic books as juvenile literature was reinforced by the Comics Code." The Comics Code was in place for decades; I even remember seeing it on some of the books available when I started reading comics in 2001. Looking back 70 years later, the Code is a great example of how censorship, even if it can be well-meaning, is not only restrictive, but actually anti-art. The 1954 Code was extremely confining, prohibiting lurid illustrations, scenes of violence and gore, and most depictions of sexuality. There are a few standards that I'm not necessarily against; for example, it didn't allow comics to ridicule or attack racial groups. But most of the Code was backward and puritanical. It banned using the words "horror" or "terror" in titles, stated that "respected institutions" and parents should never be questioned, and it criminalized slang and poor grammar. It famously barred comics writer Marv Wolfman from being credited, seeing as his name looked too similar to "wolf-man." ![]() The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has compiled quite a few examples of the Code modifying art which frequently changed the flow of the comic and kneecapped its impact. I love to use these as examples of the dangers of censorship when I celebrated Banned Books Week annually with my students. In this first example, you can see that the Code objected to this female lounge singer character's neckline, and the Code-approved re-draw brought her dress up several inches. The Code sometimes demanded art like this be redone, but sometimes also just did slipshod jobs like erasing a line denoting a woman's cleavage, leaving a somewhat awkward space in a panel. ![]() Here, you can see that quite a bit of the violence was taken out of this alien invasion story as part of the exclusion of scenes depicting "excessive" violence (I wonder if "excessive" violence would be identified by you the same way it would by me...). I think it's worth pointing out that not only does the speech bubble at the top not really make sense with the re-drawn art---are the twelve-foot-tall aliens firing on the crowd?---but the flow of the panel is entirely changed. Instead of your eye naturally finding the speech bubble, then moving to the alien and flowing downward with the ray gun blast, ultimately landing on the crowd that's running away, there's just this big emptiness where there's no movement or used space at all. Instead, there's lots of ground shown between this alien and some now-awkwardly-placed characters in the foreground. The fluid movement from the top of the panel to the bottom is eliminated entirely. And, at least for me, the re-drawn panel feels much more still and lifeless than the original. This next one might be my favorite because the resulting re-draw is so phenomenally awkward. I suppose that doctors would count as respected institutions, which means they can't be disrespected by choking them out. It's permissible, however, to show someone stealing from them, apparently. The thing that really puts it over the top is the edits to the middle panels. Instead of seeing your first-person hands on the optometrist's neck, you get these impossibly-placed hands with the optometrist somehow stroking his chin as he thinks. However, his elbows look like they must be about four feet away from him as his right hand touches his chin and his left hand floats strangely high. Then in the next panel, the shot is awkwardly framed down to his chin, and he's noticeably still blue despite his airway being Code-approved unimpeded. The text of the story is now fundamentally different from the one the writer and artist submitted. The final example I'd like to share is baffling. When I'm talking the Comics Code with my high school students, I like to show my students the pre-Code Nick Fury submission on the left and have them guess what was too salacious for the Code to allow. They usually zero in on the smoke, the disembodied lips, or the proximity of the characters when they're shown together. But, believe it or not, it's the phone being off the hook that the Comics Code would not allow. A sensual embrace is okay, as are guns, lit cigarettes in ashtrays, and swinging 60s clothing, but a phone off its hook was far too sexy for them. Your guess why is as good as mine. When Conan the Barbarian burst onto the comic scene at the end of 1970, the Code was still in strong effect. It was revised and slightly loosened the next year, allowing for some horror, magic, and sword-and-sorcery elements to re-enter the comic landscape. Conan historian Jeffrey Shanks opines that Code administrators seeing Conan comics might have signaled to them that the comic landscape was changing, and may have helped hasten the loosening of the Code. Without those changes, it's tough to imagine that a Conan comic could really be possible. ![]() Whereas the 1954 Code banned most of the darker aspects of fantasy stories: the walking dead, vampires, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism, the 1971 revision of the Code allowed them when "in the classic tradition" of works like Dracula and Frankenstein. This opened the door for common Conan tropes like undead sentries protecting a treasure. Those classic Conan the Barbarian comics by Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith, and John Buscema are excellent, but they're definitely more buttoned-up than their source material. I wouldn't hesitate to hand one of those Conan the Barbarian issues to a 9 or 10 year-old since their fantasy violence isn't too intense, at least not any more than a He-Man or Thundercats cartoon. They're largely bloodless. But Robert E. Howard's original, literary barbarian didn't shy away from intense depictions of violence, lurid descriptions of magic and the occult, and gratuitous sex appeal (no actual sex scenes, though). So unless you had only known Conan through the 1970s comics, something felt like it was missing. Roy Thomas has spoken openly in recent decades about how much of a pain to deal with the Comics Code was as a writer, and how he and his artists sometimes pressed their luck in getting Code approval. He recalls how Code approval sometimes vexed him: "Actually, the thing that gave me the most pause was the way John [Buscema] garbed Helgi, the damsel-in-distress-of-the-month: in a short vest, open between her ample breasts. I had visions of the Comics Code insisting, after the story was all ready to go, that she be redrawn in a cardigan sweater. Fortunately, that didn't happen. Not only were comics loosening up a bit by the early '70s, but Code head Leonard Darvin once told me he allowed things to slip by in Conan that he wouldn't have in the super hero mags, because he suspected the former had a somewhat older average audience." ![]() In Conan #9, when a character is dropped into a patch of man-eating flowers, they devour the guy without any of the violence technically being shown. As the flowers eat him, their color changes from white and pink to blood red. The Code normally would have objected to violence like this seeing as they had access to the color notes on the pages: had Roy written "As the flowers eat him, they turn red with his blood," it wouldn't have flown. Lucky for the creative team, the colorist on the book was Maddy Cohen, who happened to be dating the artist, Barry Windsor-Smith. Instead of writing directions for her on the page, he was able to give her color notes verbally and the Code censors were left in the dark as to their true intentions. In Conan #37, Roy remembers wringing his hands as he wondered if the Code would object to one of Neal Adams' drawings of a gigantic slug monster looking a little bit like a vulva. The Code apparently didn't think it was objectionable enough to ask for changes, and I'm glad they didn't. When I read that issue, it didn't even cross my mind when I saw the slug, and it's a little depressing to me that these creative teams had to strategize around the code. The Conan creative team wasn't always successful at working around Code censors. Included below is a panel from Conan #58 which the Code rejected, and it's approved re-drawn beneath. They didn't take issue with a scantily-clad clad woman or with a "blind flood of desire," but instead found Conan's open legs objectionable. In the final drawing, Conan's legs are to one side and he looks like he's about to fall over. Conan wasn't an instant success. The premiere sold pretty well, but then the next six issues lagged behind more popular books, and trended downward. But starting with issue 8, the series began a steady sales increase that meant it was safe from cancellation for a very long time. ![]() Around the time that Conan the Barbarian #1 was premiering in 1970, Roy Thomas got a phone call from Stan Lee with an idea for a new book. It was a for a series he wanted to call Savage Tales, and Stan outlined to Roy an idea that he had for a new character called Man-Thing, an intensely tragic character turned into a swamp monster. While fleshing out the story idea from Stan and sending it to writer Gerry Conway to script, Roy wasn't immediately sold on it. He felt that Man-Thing seemed too similar to the existing character The Heap and that Marvel already had a popular hero named The Thing, not to mention the eventual title Giant-Size Man-Thing is hilarious in a way that would probably chafe against the Code. The aspect that was unique about the book, though, is that that it would be a black-and-white magazine-sized comic, which was something Marvel didn't have at the time. It wasn't a completely original idea: Warren Publishing had been putting out Creepy and Eerie comic magazines since the mid-1960s. The paper size was a little bit larger, they cost more than a regular comic, and, importantly, as a magazine they were completely independent of the Comics Code Authority. Looking at early 70s comics side-by-side today, it's a little wild to think how restricted one was while the other couldn't be touched by the Code. The magazine dimensions are only about three-quarters of an inch larger than the height and width of a regular comic book. Brian Cronin at Comic Book Resources helps explain that it was essentially a stocking trick: since magazines and comic books were racked in different places at the newsstand, a non-Code magazine like Savage Tales wouldn't be sitting right next to a Code-approved Batman comic. It makes sense that Man-Thing's origin story would need to appear in a comic outside of Comics Code approval. It's terribly sad, features less-than-glorious depictions of the government, and deals with drugs, corruption, and artist Gray Morrow draws a woman in basically transparent clothes. Essentially, it's everything the Code wasn't keen on. It's also dynamite! Those early Savage Tales stories featuring Man-Thing, Ka-Zar of the jungle, and Conan the Barbarian are all wonderful Bronze-Age nuggets of weird storytelling. And in case the decapitated head on the cover wasn't a big enough clue, it was printed with a notice saying that "This publication is rated "M" for the mature reader!" It's a sort of anti-Comics Code Seal. Stan originally wanted a King Kull story instead of Conan- Stan liked how names that started with K looked on a cover better than names that started with a C, plus, they already had one Conan comic. Did they need two? For reasons unknown, Stan changed his mind and went with Conan; he and Kull are cut from the same cloth anyway. It makes sense that they would adapt the first chronological story "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" for the first issue. It's a simple and effective episode (surprisingly brief at only 11 pages). Brevity was always a skill both Robert E. Howard and Roy Thomas possessed, and it's one I decidedly don't have. Roy's dialogue and Barry Windsor-Smith's art in those 11 pages absolutely kick ass. Unfortunately, not everyone was as much of a fan of those early Savage Tales stories as I am. Marvel publisher Martin Goodwin, who had been working in comics since 1929 and had been with Marvel since the very beginning, cancelled the book after only one issue. Roy Thomas recalled the cancelling in 2008 like this: "I never got all the inside story, but there were several things that led to Savage Tales being cancelled after that first issue. Martin Goodman had never really wanted to do a non-Code comic, probably because he didn't want any trouble with the CMAA over it. Nor did he really want to get into magazine-format comics; and Stan really did. So Goodman looked for an excuse to cancel it. I also heard we weren't able to sell the mag in Canada, which ordinarily would probably have taken maybe 10% of the print run- that somebody at the competition, DC or Warren or wherever, told the Canadians it was salacious material. But I never got any confirmation of that, and it may be an urban legend. ![]() Roy had a second Conan story for the next Savage Tales issue already in the works, but since the book was canned, he moved it over to Conan the Barbarian. As you may have expected, the Comics Code censors made them rework a considerable amount of art drawn of female characters which Roy notes would have been "no problem" in the black-and-white pages. For a few years, Savage Tales lay dormant while Roy, Barry, John, and others chugged away at making the Comics Code-bound Conan the Barbarian a success. Goodman eventually backed Stan Lee when Stan wanted to publish an anti-drug Spider-Man comic which the Code denied. Marvel published the book anyway. Many people have noted that Stan may have gotten a little too much credit for his work in the 60s, frequently overshadowing collaborators who deserved more recognition, but Stan definitely took some principled, measured stands against the Comics Code for which he should be lauded. ![]() Partially as a result of Stan's efforts, the Code began to loosen ever so slightly. Goodman left Marvel in 1972 and Stan assumed the role of publisher, which meant that he didn't need Goodman's approval for a certain black-and-white, magazine-sized book. Still, Stan had lots of new responsibilities as publisher and president of Marvel, so he handed the reins of Savage Tales to Roy. Most of the stories they had originally planned for the second issue had already been printed, so Roy asked if he could make Savage Tales a more Robert E. Howard-focused mag. Stan said yes. Proudly declaring that it was "Back by popular demand," Savage Tales #2 hit stands in October of 1973, only 30 months after the first issue. This time, Conan was featured on the cover and the interior had an adaption of a top-tier Robert E. Howard story: "Red Nails." While the first issue had featured a "Conan the Barbarian starring in..." tag above the title, issue 2 now read "Savage Tales featuring Conan the Barbarian" with our Cimmerian hero's name as large as the title itself. John Buscema's painted cover already hints that this is not a Code-approved book as it has a nude woman, threatened by an executioner, and some conveniently-placed smoke obscuring her form. Any comic version of "Red Nails" would have had to look very different under the Code. Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith's adaption of it is extremely bloody and almost immediately features horrifying undead creatures. It's suggestively sexual: the words "throbs and pulses" appear together, in that order, and the story is very critical of power structures. The climax of the narrative has one fairly steamy gay scene as well, all wrapped around an attempt at human sacrifice. "Red Nails" was already one of Robert E. Howard's best Conan stories, but Roy's dialogue and Barry's intricate art really do live up to their charming claim on the title page that they adapted it "with aplomb." Instead of the short 11 pages allotted for "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" in the first issue, "Red Nails" was a two-parter, spanning 21 pages just for its first installment. In addition to "Red Nails" Barry Windsor-Smith also locked in to draw an illustrated version of Howard's poem "Cimmeria" and a full-page, in-house ad. Roy convinced Howard's agent, Glenn Lord, to write a biography of Howard for issue 2 as well. Savage Tales continued with Conan as the headline character for a few more issues, with the Cimmerian eventually sharing cover space with Ka-Zar, Lord of the Hidden Jungle. Those first five issues feature painted covers by some of the best artists working in comics at the time, covers whose intensity really lived up to the title of the book. The mag was hugely successful. After issue 5, Conan was spun off into his own book which would bear his name permanently in the title: The Savage Sword of Conan. Savage Sword was also unconstrained by the Comics Code, meaning that it could live up to all the bloody promise of Robert E. Howard's original character. Whereas other Marvel characters played in the backup stories of Savage Tales, Roy Thomas saw Savage Sword as a Howard showcase and wanted to use characters like King Kull and Solomon Kane for the backups. According to Roy Thomas, when you were assigned to write a Marvel comic in the 70s, as soon as it was given to you, it was "due yesterday, if not the day before." As such, getting assigned the first issue of Savage Sword meant a tight deadline, so he reluctantly re-purposed the next few plots he had figured out for Conan and slotted them into the new title. It's a little awkward as a first issue: Conan meets up with Red Sonja, who he clearly has a history with, but what that history is will be mostly lost on the reader if they haven't read Conan #23. I certainly hadn't when I first stumbled across Savage Sword, so I figured it was all to be left to my imagination. It is in this issue that Red Sonja acquires her signature chain-mail bikini, which was far too revealing for a Code-bound book like Conan the Barbarian, in which she wore a full-coverage, long-sleeve chainmail shirt. ![]() Savage Sword's first story, "The Curse of the Undead Man," would continue in Conan #43, which came out soon afterword. Roy lamented that since the black-and-white mag had a smaller readership than the color comic, some of its readers would miss the first half of the narrative, but people seem to have done okay. I think this kind of cross-pollination between books is much more acceptable in today's industry. The book was a success, Comics Code be damned, and Savage Sword would go on to run for more than 200 issues into the mid-90s. For many of the first 60 issues of Savage Sword of Conan, Roy adapted Howard's prose stories, but mixed in original yarns as well, jumping all over Conan's life. In addition to Roy Thomas and John Buscema, its place as uncensored playground of storytelling attracted some of the greatest talent in comics, including fantasy artist Boris Vallejo, X-Men mastermind Chris Claremont and my personal favorite Robin writer, Chuck Dixon, but Roy Thomas has always remained its greatest creator. He returned to the book in its later years after what most readers agree was a sag in quality, bringing the stories back up to their former glory for the final stretch of issues. Savage Sword is remembered as one of the peaks of the Bronze Age. While it was out of print for much of the 90s and 2000s, it's now been collected in omnibuses by Dark Horse, Marvel, and Titan Comics. The Comics Code was again revised in 1989, this time featuring much more sweeping changes. It is now presented within the text of the Code as a sort of optional seal of approval for comics which you can feel confident giving to young kids, rather than the arbiter between wholesome quality and evil smut. The submission procedure was changed to allow more conversation between comic editors and Code administrators. This time, editors could "discuss with the administrator the concerns raised with him and reach agreement on how the comic can properly bear the Code Seal either without being revised or within a mutually-agreeable set of alternate revisions." The standards were much more broad this time. They allowed for more nuance and reflected that times may change, making space for things like "contemporary styles and fashions" for character costumes. They still want to encourage "wholesome lifestyles" to be portrayed as desirable and for characters to be role models, but also actually acknowledges that there are comic books for adult readers. "The members of the Comics Magazine Association of America include publishers who elect to publish comics that are not intended to bear the Code Seal, and that therefore need not go through the approval process described above. Among the comics in this category may be titles intended for adult readers. Member publishers hereby affirm that we will distribute these publications only through distribution channels in which it is possible to notify retailers and distributors of their content, and thus help the publications reach their intended audiences. The member publishers agree to refrain from distributing these publications through those distribution channels that, like the traditional newsstand, are serviced by individuals who are unaware of the content of specific publications before placing them on display." ![]() By this time, comic books had reached a new level of maturity. Many of the tropes that are recognizable to modern readers had their progenitors around this time: the modern "event" book like Secret Wars, the convoluting and then exploding of decades worth of continuity in Crisis on Infinite Earths, the long-form graphic novel and meta deconstruction of the superhero genre in Watchmen. It would be difficult for anyone to argue at that time that comics were only for kids, and Conan helped solidify that. Conan had reached new heights too with two major motion pictures and a Red Sonja movie which it seems like we all agree to be the unofficial third in the trilogy. If you think I'm ever calling him Kalidor, you must think I was born yesterday. The Comics Code was still in effect until 2011 but with gradually diminishing influence. Marvel pulled their books from approval in 2001 in favor of giving their books a rating in-house. Ten years later, DC pulled theirs as well, and Archie was the final publisher to withdraw later that year. It quietly disappeared, and NPR's obituary for it begins with the line, "I come to bury the Comics Magazine Association of America, not to praise it." The Comics Code isn't forgotten, but it's usually the butt of the jokes these days. Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo recently had me laughing out loud by using a Comics Code Seal of Approval lookalike as the censor bars when the villain Blockbuster gets cussed out at the end of Nightwing #96. Every year, Banned Books Week falls somewhere in late September or early October. It's a celebration of our First Amendment right to read and an outward expression of resistance to censorship. It's celebrated by the American Library Association, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the National Council of Teachers of English (of which I am a card-carrying member), and more.
That means that every year, I teach about the Comics Code to my students. We'll dissect book bans spearheaded by anti-free speech groups like Moms for Liberty. We'll evaluate the PMRC's censorship of music and the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" label on music. We'll make the case for kids' rights to have access to books. And if I have time, I get to bring up some great comic book creators and how they fought censorship with everyone's favorite sword-and-sorcery character. Titan Comics recently revived the Savage Sword mag for a new print run which features some of the coolest writers and artists in comics today. It even throws back to classic Savage Sword artists like Joe Jusko doing painted covers again. Everyone loves it and you should check it out. Or, find the original run here. ![]() When I was doing research on the novel Conan: The Road of Kings which I finished on New Year's Eve 2024, I went over to Gary Romeo's blog to see what he had to say about the book. I always like reading Gary's work- he's a clear writer with impeccably-done research who always sheds light on topics I'm interested in. While I was going through that blog post, a May 1977 letter from L. Sprague de Camp caught my eye. I'm not sure where Gary finds these letters all the time: I know that pretty much all of Robert E. Howard's personal correspondence is published, but Gary always seems to find little ephemera from de Camp and the likes that are so cool to see. In this letter, L. Sprague de Camp relates to literary agent Kirby McCauley the planned series of Conan stories that he and Lin Carter are either in the process of writing or are planning to write, and they contain some interesting Conan story ideas that the world never got to see. Many of these stories: Conan the Liberator, "The People of the Summit," "The Star of Khorala," etc. were finished and made it to the page (and have been read and reviewed and placed in chronological order on this blog), but a lot of them were names that never made it to the published page. Researching these stories caused me to go buy L. Sprague de Camp's The Spell of Conan too and to look through at some of his thoughts, which yielded some other interesting tidbits. It's all below in listicle format. 1. "Conan the Barbarian"Obviously, Conan the Barbarian is the title of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that more than likely introduced most people to Conan, and there is a novelization of that movie under the same title. There's even a novelization that was written by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, and Catherine Crook de Camp that came out in 1982, but that novel is clearly not what's planned here. The movie goes far past Conan's adolescence and has him fight the Kull villain Thulsa Doom (though he's a lot more like Thoth-Amon than Thulsa Doom) and doesn't end with the fall of Venarium. The content described here actually sounds much closer to the novel Conan of Venarium, but that book wouldn't be published until 2003 and was written by Harry Turtledove, so it likely doesn't have anything to do with what Sprague planned here. Honestly, it's surprising to me that there isn't more stuff centering around the siege of Venarium since it's such a pivotal point in Conan's life. 2. "The King in the Dungeon"This story very clearly became "Shadows in the Dark" and was published in 1978, so it's really just a change of title. "The King in the Dungeon" might be a more generic fantasy title, but we have so many "shadows" in Conan titles that I think I might actually prefer it to the published name. 3. "The Eyes of Kali"This story sounds basically nothing like any published Conan story from de Camp or Carter. Conan did go to Vendhya in "The People of the Black Circle," but it takes place quite a bit after "A Witch Shall Be Born." Strangely, "Black Tears" is essentially an immediate sequel to "A Witch Shall Be Born," but that story had come out in 1968, so perhaps de Camp and Carter wanted to throw another story in between the two. This one sounds like it would be pretty fun and the name gives me Temple of Doom vibes, so I'm sad this one was left on the editing room floor, if it was ever written at all. Weirdly enough, in the pages of Savage Sword of Conan, at least three different sequels to "A Witch Shall Be Born" were written, all of which contradict each other. Who's to say which one is canon? 4. "The Oasis of Death"You know, I actually think this planned story would fill a hole in Conan's biography that needs filling as much as any other. At the end of "The Ivory Goddess," Conan is very far south on the Hyborian map and has been on the lamb, running from those he terrorized in "Jewels of Gwahlur." The nexxt time we see him, he's halfway around the world and is well-established as a scout for Aquilonia. I'd love to see a narrative that fills in how he got there, and "The Oasis of Death" sounds pretty fun. There are a number of issues of Savage Sword with similar-sounding titles as this, so it's not an unfounded concept. 5. Two or more King Conan storiesThere are several stories of Conan as king of Aquilonia that take place before he's old and (relatively) gray, all of which had been published by Sprague's 1977 letter: "The Phoenix on the Sword," "The Scarlet Citadel," The Hour of the Dragon, and The Return of Conan. That chronological list also happens to double as a ranking of King Conan stories best-to-worst (I mean, they're all really good except the last one). And there are several late-life King Conan stories (that we'll actually hit more on in a minute) but L. Sprague de Camp is suggesting specifically Conan stories written in his very young kingship. "The Scarlet Citadel" happens about a year or two after Conan gains the crown and The Hour of the Dragon happens within five years of his kingship, so there are a few unexplored years that you could play with there. There's been some good, new King Conan stuff in the recent issues 5 and 6 of the 2024 Savage Sword, so you should check those out if you want more Conan of Aquilonia adventures. 6. "The Day of Wrath"This is the only story on the list that I'm really glad never got written. The tetralogy that make up most of Conan's late kingship: "The Witch of the Mists," "Black Sphinx of Nebthu," "Red Moon of Zembabwei," and "Shadows in the Skull" are mostly stinkers. But even so, they end on a fairly satisfying, triumphant note with Conan having defeated his greatest enemy on the very edge of the world. It's not a terrible way to go out with Conan, supported by his son Conn, heading back to the Aquilonian army to help them finish fighting the ancient serpent people (though victory is already assured). So to see Conan go back to Aquilonia and be the aggressor, "punishing" other nations for their treachery? It just sounds mean-spirited and unneeded. Yes, Conan is a badass and is even vengeful at times when he's been wronged, but to take his entire army to invade another kingdom sounds contrary to how Conan apparently governs, and it sounds really hard to root for. 7. "The Son of Conan"Another story that I'm not exactly sad we missed out on. Conan's son Conn is in his mid-teens when we see him last in "Shadows in the Skull" and then is an adult himself during the events of Conan of the Isles, but he's pretty much a non-character in that book. Conn isn't a super interesting character in the material that we have of him, and I don't usually love stories that focus on the offspring of characters we care about, but I could see this working. Jason Aaron's "The Ensorcelled" storyline in recent issues of Savage Sword was excellent, and it hints at some potentially cool Conn stuff. I think it would be fighting an uphill battle to write a series of Conn stories. Maybe it's just me, but a character who was born to a poor blacksmith and fought his way to greatness is inherently a more interesting character than a kid who was born as royalty. Now I'm trying to figure out what good "Son Of..." stories exist. John Carter's Children of Mars? Children of Dune? Son of Batman? Son of Frankenstein? The next three Avatar sequels? Son of Baconator? Other suggested stories![]() In our May 1977 letter, L. Sprague de Camp is specifically responding to the literary agent of Karl Edward Wagner, who was hoping to write a novel about Conan becoming king of Aquilonia. He says that they're already working on that idea, but if Wagner would like, he can tackle a different area of Conan's life, one that sits in a narrative gap, and some of his suggestions are pretty cool. He suggests a story telling of Conan's adventures with the Aesir set between Conan's youngest days "Legions of the Dead," offering up the titles "Conan of the Northlands or "Red Swords of Asgard." I wonder if de Camp was aware that this area was explored to a small degree with some of Roy Thomas's earliest Conan the Barbarian comics in the earlier 70s. Sounds like a decent concept, but not one I'm jumping out of my seat for. ![]() de Camp suggests "Conan of Hyrkania" or "Lord of the Black Throne," based on some ideas outlined in the Amra zine. I was totally unfamiliar with what he was talking about so I grabbed a used copy of The Spell of Conan, a book of essays and short stories edited by de Camp. In an essay by P. Schuyler Miller, they basically make the case that Erlik would have been a cool character to further develop in the Hyborian Age. Many people swear by the god of the underworld (who always struck me as a sort of evil St. Peter-type character who might collect you when you die) and there are some Conan pastiches like The Sword of Erlik. Miller outlines some real-world Turkic and Mongol mythology and how Erlik had a lot of very sword-and-sworcery-ready elements like his black throne. In some ways, they're right. There aren't that many stories that take place over in Turan that were written by Howard, though Roy Thomas has Conan spend lots of time around the Vilayet Sea in the Conan the Barbarian comic. Honestly, I'm with de Camp and Miller on this one- most of it sounds like these ideas would make for a righteous Conan story. Some similarly-titled Conan novels would eventually get published with the names "Lord of the Black River" and "Death Lord of Thanza," but they're not what de Camp or P. Schuyler Miller were writing. His final suggestion is for a Conan story set in the jungles of the south, during Conan's first pirate period alongside Belit. This makes a lot of sense to me, as the weakest part of "Queen of the Black Coast" to me is that it feels as though Conan and Belit don't quite have enough time together to warrant being so wildly in love (I think the anime crowd would call them each others' "OTPs"). Conan stories from The Spell of ConanThere are a few original fantasy stories of just a few pages each that were published alongside de Camp's essays in The Spell of Conan. I didn't expect any Hyborian Age-set fiction in it, let alone how cool these three short stories ended up being. They're not actually unpublished, but I've never seen them referenced since they were only put out in a fan magazine. 1. "The Testament of Snefru" by John Boardman![]() This story is funny in a way I couldn't have predicted. Remember in The Hour of the Dragon when Conan infiltrates the Stygian port city of Khemi? There's a very minor character in this scene whom I had entirely forgotten. Conan steals the boat of a Stygian fisherman and uses it to get into Khemi. According to "The Testament of Snefru," that short episode completely fucks up the life of that fisherman, whose name is Snefru. This is hilariously humiliating for this poor fisherman. Conan and the Aquilonians arrive and steal the dude's boat (i.e. his livelihood) and even take his clothes. Snefru tells Conan what seems to be the Khemi gossip and is held hostage. When Conan comes back with the Heart of Ahriman, he instructs the crew to give the fisherman a helmet full of gold and to shove off back north. Even though Snefru is relieved to have escaped with his life, he's also made out pretty nicely since he gets all this money. As he tries to convert the money, he's arrested for having Aquilonian coins, convicted of treason for having "conspired" with Conan, and is sold into slavery. The story is being dictated while he lays on his deathbed in Zamboula, completely destitute and filled with rage at Conan. It's very entertaining. Author John Boardman, a physics professor, also at one point write a Conan parody called "Colon the Conqueror" so it makes sense that this story was pretty funny. 2. "The Lion's Bridge" by Ray Capella![]() Ray Capella was more of a sword and sorcery illustrator than an author, but he did also contribute a story to a different anthology book edited by L. Sprague de Camp. In addition to Conan, it seems like Capella was mostly associated with pulp heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow. This story takes place during the events of "The Scarlet Citadel." According to the characters, the "barbarian king of Aquilonia" has been defeated (we know he's really just briefly captured) and Tarantia is under siege by the Kothians. On the outskirts of Aquilonia, "The Lion's Bridge" tells the story of a mercenary named Berig and a mysterious stranger named Arquel the Argossean. There's some great scenery, some really cool magical elements, and some moral complexity to this one that was a lot of fun, so I read it twice in a row. 3. "When Set Fled" by Fritz Leiber![]() This is by far the shortest of the three narratives, and also probably my least favorite of the bunch. Author Fritz Leiber was a contemporary of Robert E. Howard, HP Lovecraft, and Michael Moorcock as one of the landmark sword and sorcery writers. Dude had a pretty impressive resume, not to mention interesting WWII activities. Like "Snefru," this one is darkly comic. A craftsman in Stygia gets his head lopped off by a barbarian warrior (Conan?) while pouring metal into a mold for a statue. This story is only about three pages, so there's not a ton to go off of and it's much harder to place in continuity. It's yet another look at a normal person in the Hyborian Age and how quickly things might change for them through violence. ![]() The "Road of Kings" is an east-west highway in the fictional Hyborian Age, and to my knowledge is the only named trade route or thoroughfare in the entire epoch. It begins in the coastal Argossean capital of Messantia and runs north along the Alimane River to the prairies that surround Tarantia, the capital city of Aquilonia. From there, it stretches east through the city-states of the central Hyborian kingdoms through Shadizar the Wicked and across the Kezankian Mountains. From the Kezankians through the Zuagir desert is probably its most treacherous part before it ends in the carpeted capital of the Turanian Empire, Aghrapur, on the coast of the Vilayet Sea. But the novel Conan: The Road of Kings by Karl Edgar Wagner takes place almost entirely in Kordava, Zingara, which is not anywhere along the road of kings. If, like I did, you thought that this book might be an adventure along the physical road, you'd had to be forgiven. Instead, the "road of kings" explored here is an entirely metaphorical one. It examines the psychological road one might go on when becoming a king, contrasting the road that Conan the Cimmerian will eventually take. As much as I hate to invoke a cliché, it seems like a statement on the old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Conan of Road of Kings is a bit of an angrier Conan, one who is at times less heroic and more barbarous, along the lines of Robert E. Howard's original creation. It seems to me that Karl Edward Wagner really gets Howard's civilization vs. barbarism themes and builds on them with a story preoccupied with economic mobility. While the novel takes place almost entirely in Kordava, Zingara, the city is a pretty imaginative and interesting place. Through a cataclysmic earthquake some time ago, the original city of Kordava had been destroyed, leaving rubble throughout the area. Instead of clearing away the refuse and re-building, the people of Kordava literally just built on top of the ruins of the old city, leaving a subterranean slum underneath the city proper, known as "The Pit." The Pit is occupied by thieves, criminals, and all other manner of "undesirables" in Kordava, including the thieving guild "The White Rose." It's not hard to see the symbolism of a city literally propped up on the lowest of society. In some interesting imagery that I think amounts to a clever version of foreshadowing, the Pit is not completely cut off from the rest of the city. Some of the taller buildings within the Pit have staircases that lead up into the regular city. While social mobility is minimal, there is a way to "ascend," as some characters will try to do. Those characters tend to get caught up in maintaining their newfound power, ultimately to their detriment. Conan, of course, with his detachment from society and Cimmerian's code, is immune to the rat race. The last line of the book reminds me of classic pulp writing subtlety, basically telling us the theme of the narrative. As Conan denies the crown of Kordava being offered to him, he says he won't take power yet: "I will not change my mind," Conan repeated. "Not until I know whether it is the man who corrupts the power, or the power that corrupts the man." ![]() Chronologically speaking, I think this story should probably land a little bit later than other people seem to think that it should. Conan is still described as a "youth," but he has a couple of signifiers that I think mean that this story should go later in the timeline. The Miller / Clark / de Camp chronology puts this story right after "Hawks Over Shem" and right before "Black Colossus," firmly in Conan's military commander days. Robert Jordan places it a little earlier, during Conan's days wandering between being a Turanian mercenary and "Queen of the Black Coast." I'm much more inclined to agree with where William Galen Gray puts this story: further into Conan's days as a military commander, right after "Shadows in the Dark." A couple of things tell me this: Conan speaks Zamorian "pretty well," which means he's been to Zamora in his thieving days. The book even makes specific mention of scaling the elephant tower in Zamora. But he's also very comfortable on the ocean, he's a strong swimmer, and is clearly already a skilled military commander capable of whipping the dreck of Kordavan society into a fighting force, which makes me think it needs to go later. Conan: The Road of Kings is a pretty good Conan tale that's imaginative in its settings and has something to say that fits with there rest of the Conan stories, even Howard's. It doesn't feel much like other Conan books, which might be a gripe for some people. Over on Dark Worlds Quarterly, G.W. Thomas quotes Karl Edward Wagner about his philosophy on Conan writing: "I have written Howard pastiches myself, so I can speak both as a reader and an author: Every author leaves his personal mark on whatever he writes; the only man who could write a Robert E. Howard story was Robert E. Howard. Read Howard pastiches as you will — but don’t let anyone kid you that you’re reading Robert E. Howard. It is far more than a matter of imitating adjective usage or analyzing comma-splices. It is a matter of spirit." While Robert E. Howard was extremely economical with his prose, covering a lot of ground in few words, not that interested in developing supporting characters, that's what this book focuses on. After the exposition with Conan being threatened with hanging, we spend quite a bit of time in the Pit, just getting to know the city and the other characters, for which I think your mileage will vary. Might this story deserve more than three stars? If only I had a half-star icon!
★★★☆☆ ![]() Around a year ago, I was crate-digging in a horrendously messy comic shop in Colorado Springs, about two hours away from where I live. I looked through stacks of comics piled shoulder-high from the floor as I asked the clerk if they had any Savage Sword of Conan without any real hope that they would, and he said, "We don't have many old issues, but we're going to get the new one." I was totally unaware there would be any new Conan stuff in comic form- I hadn't really been following new Conan releases since I hadn't really followed Marvel's modern output. But I'm sure glad that clerk said something. Comic shop employees are heroes when it comes to recommendations. Jim Zub is doing some awesome stuff over at Titan Comics with Conan. Back in October, I got to interview him about some chronology minutia and I asked him some questions about how the question of chronology works for him and the rest of the Conan team these days. "On the new Titan series, we are jumping around the timeline on each story arc, just like Howard did when he wrote the original prose stories, but there is an overall plan in place and I know where each one fits together. Thankfully, Heroic Signatures has Jeff Shanks, an REH scholar who writes the essays in the back of each issue. He’s a resource on hand to provide additional feedback and suggestions when it comes to getting our details right." "When I started working on the new Conan comic series [Heroic Signatures] gave me the timeline they decided upon in terms of story order and Conan’s age during each one, but so far they haven’t decided to publicize it." Jim and co. have made it clear that the current publishers consider only the Robert E. Howard stories to be canon to their timeline and that the rest are non-canon, legend-type stories. While reading both the new Conan the Barbarian title and Savage Sword of Conan, I got to thinking about what Heroic Signatures and Titan consider their canon Conan timeline to be. This question has only gotten more interesting to me as time goes on, seeing as some stories refer to plots, characters, and events that I wouldn't expect them to! I've currently read the first three Conan the Barbarian TPBs and the first six issues of Savage Sword of Conan, as well as the Battle of the Black Stone miniseries. Seeing as Titan has positioned the original REH works as the only true canon in their eyes, this is more of an exercise of where these stories might fall within that canon, rather than an attempt to map out what they consider the canon to be. It's all just for fun. So below is my best guess at how they order the original Robert E. Howard stories and their additions from the last year. Howard's originals are in black, Titan's new stories are in red, and my stray chronological notes are in blue. Stories whose canonicity seems shaky at best will be noted in green. A guess at the Titan Comics Conan timeline![]() Conan the Barbarian #9 - 12: "The Age Unconquered" Issues 9 through 12 of Conan the Barbarian, an arc called "The Age Unconquered," takes place in the Thurian Age, about 80,000 years before Conan is even born. Like much of his Conan work so far, Jim Zub implements Thulsa Doom of the Kull stories and even gives him a very cool new twist of a backstory that fleshes him out. Of course, Conan has to return to the Hyborian Age before too long... Savage Sword of Conan #6: "Forged" This short comic in the back of SSoC6 shows Conan as a young boy, learning to use a forge for the first time. Conan the Barbarian Free Comic Book Day issue The siege of Venarium happens when Conan is in his mid teens and the Free Comic Book Day issue shows him leaving Cimmeria for the first time pretty quickly afterword. A page at the end shows the events of "The God in the Bowl," "The Tower of the Elephant," the undead soon to be seen in the "Bound in Black Stone" arc, "Rogues in the House" and "Queen of the Black Coast," drawn beautifully by Roberto de la Torre. "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" This story's placement is always fought over whether it should be the first REH story or if it should land much later, but it's clear that for the Titan gang, it goes first. Savage Sword of Conan #6: "Madness on the Mound" Here's why I think "Frost-Giant" is early in the chronology: in the prose story "Madness on the Mound" by Matthew John, Conan is referred to as very young. On the first page, he's called "a young pup" and "a young lad," but the story explicitly takes place just a few days after "The Frost-Giant's Daughter." People don't generally refer to Conan this way once he's out of his teens, which is well before the other common "Frost-Giant" placement. In issue 1 of Conan the Barbarian, Conan says to another character that he "Travelled north to Asgard, south to Nemedia, the through Corinthia, Zamora, and other spots I barely remember. Each one a new experience, yet also very much the same." The "then" is the operative word there, implying that "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" is Conan's first adventure away from Cimmeria, then "The God in the Bowl" is the first thief story as it's the one that takes place in Nemedia, followed by "Rogues in the House" in Corinthia, and then "The Tower of the Elephant" in Zamora. "The God in the Bowl" Conan's first time thieving in Nemedia. This is his first encounter with Thoth-Amon. "Rogues in the House" Conan heads west from Nemedia to an unnamed city-state in Corinthia where he gets arrested and then goes to the house of the Red Priest Nabonidus and fights Thak. "The Tower of the Elephant" Conan lands in the thief city in Zamora where he meets the elephant alien Yag-Kosha. "The Hall of the Dead" The interesting thing about Conan recounting his early adventures in Conan #1 is that he leaves out "The Hall of the Dead." Perhaps he just rolled it into the "other spots I barely remember" line. Maybe Jim Zub felt like the speech bubble was a little wordy so he left it out. Some people treat the unfinished Conan stories as non-canon though, and one of Jeff Shanks's essays describes Conan's thief period as "God in the Bowl," "Rogues in the House," "Tower of the Elephant," "and a pair of other unfinished stories," so it kind of sounds like Titan doesn't consider "The Hall of the Dead" to be canon. ![]() Conan the Barbarian #1 - 4: "Bound in Black Stone" The first arc of the new Conan book, "Bound in Black Stone" begins in northern Aquilonia and says that Conan is closer to Cimmeria than he has been in 8 years, implying that Conan is now about 23. As already noted, he's already had his thief period and maybe some other adventures left up to the reader's imagination. There's a flashback in issue #4 to the Thurian Age. "The Hand of Nergal" This story has yet to be referenced by any of the Titan stories and the fact that it was unfinished by Howard doesn't bode well for its canonicity. It is the first story in which we see Conan's red cloak, which usually places it before "Queen of the Black Coast." Conan and the Spider God I don't actually think anyone at Titan Comics is considering this story canon, but the events of this novel are mentioned in SSOC6's "The Ensorcelled, Part Two" by Jason Aaron. "Queen of the Black Coast" Conan's first pirate experience with Belit, captain of the Tigress. ![]() Conan the Barbarian #5 - 8: "Thrice Marked for Death" Belit is a central figure in the "Thrice Marked for Death" arc, which puts Conan in Shadizar the Wicked, unhealthily mourning her death. Many of the original Howard stories have yet to be referenced in any of Titan's Conan books, so their placement in the chronology is extremely squishy. I could be entirely wrong here, but there's a long section between Conan's young days and his employment for Aquilonia where they haven't set many stories yet. "The Snout in the Dark" Conan is much further south on the map in this story, near Stygia. Savage Sword of Conan #1: "Sacrifice in the Sand" This short prose story by Jim Zub gives very, very few chronological clues except for the fact that it's set in Stygia and that Conan and the villain Nkosi have crossed paths before. I'm setting it here as Conan is a little more south and currently operating as a mercenary. "Black Colossus" Conan commands an army for the first time in this tale. "The Vale of Lost Women" I moved this one further back since Conan seems to go back to Shadizar immediately after Belit's death rather than working his way back north from the Black Kingdoms. Because this story was finished by Howard but never published during his lifetime, I'm not sure if Titan would consider it canon. "Iron Shadows in the Moon" "A Witch Shall Be Born" "Shadows in Zamboula" "Xuthal of the Dusk" "Drums of Tombalku" Another unfinished story of Howard's. Not sure if it's canon to Titan. "The Devil in Iron" This story is on the Vilayet Sea, near Hyrkania, which would lead in nicely to "Conan and the Dragon Horde." ![]() Savage Sword of Conan #1: "Conan and the Dragon Horde" This is the lead story in SSoC1, featuring Conan commanding troops on a Hyrkanian steppe. I was tempted to put this one with Conan's Turanian mercenary days like "The Hand of Nergal" but Conan seems older here and is also addressed by the rank of "general," which he doesn't usually achieve until later in life. It's also not even explicitly Turanians that he's traveling with. This one probably goes a little later than his Turanian days. Did I mention he fights a fucking dinosaur in this one? I'm putting it near his time in Vendhya, perhaps before gaining the chieftain role of the Afghuli hillmen of "The People of the Black Circle." "The People of the Black Circle" "The Pool of the Black One" "Red Nails" "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" Savage Sword of Conan #2: "Leaving the Garden" This is the lead story in SSoC2 by Jim Zub. Conan is headed across Shem, toward Argos. He says that he has "old debts" in Argos, which could refer to his legal trouble at the beginning of "Queen of the Black Coast." More definitively, though, is a splash page which shows Conan telling a young boy of his exploits. It includes Conan fighting frost giants, commanding armies, sneaking up on Thak, eyeing Belit, and fighting a dragon alongside Valeria, which would put it at least after "Red Nails." Savage Sword of Conan #3: "Wolves of the Tundra" I'm basically closing my eyes and throwing a dart at the board for this one. Conan doesn't seem necessarily old or young and is said to be a warrior "of some note," meaning it's probably not his younger days, but that's all we've got. Maybe he wanders in the north a bit before joining up with Aquilonia to make a few bucks. ![]() Savage Sword of Conan #4: "Birthright in Black" Both this story from SSoC4 and the Battle of the Black Stone event book take place during Conan's days as an Aquilonian scout in Conajohara. Because Fort Tuscelan is still standing, the book has to take place before "Beyond the Black River." Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone Like "Birthright in Black," the Conan of Battle of the Black Stone is Aquilonian scout Conan. "Beyond the Black River" "The Black Stranger" "Wolves Beyond the Border" Another unfinished story that may or may not be canon. "The Phoenix on the Sword" "The Scarlet Citadel" The Hour of the Dragon ![]() Savage Sword of Conan #5: "The Ensorcelled, Part One" This incredible King Conan story by Jason Aaron is set definitively in Conan's older days. He is sporting facial hair and has reigned for apparently quite some time in Aquilonia, placing it after the King Conan stories "The Phoenix on the Sword," "The Scarlet Citadel," and The Hour of the Dragon. Conan is in the mountains of Brythunia. Savage Sword of Conan #6: "The Ensorcelled, Part Two" This is the conclusion of Aaron's story that began in issue 5. Interestingly, dialogue brings up several things here that I did not expect to see mentioned. An enemy of Conan's verbally references many of the sorcerers Conan has defeated: Natohk of "Black Colossus," Xaltotun of The Hour of the Dragon, Thoth-Amon, of a half-dozen stories, the Black Seers of Yimsha from "The People of the Black Circle," Salome of "A Witch Shall Be Born." Additionally, he adds "The crimson witch of Razazel," which was unfamiliar to me. Apparently, it's from Jason Aaron's Marvel-era Conan book. With a certain Marvel character referenced at the end of Battle of the Black Stone and now this, I guess the Marvel Conan stuff is fair game! But that wasn't the only curveball in terms of references here. The narration mentions the skull gate of Hyperborea, something from L. Sprague de Camp's "The Witch of the Mists," and "the city of the Spider God in Zamora," which refers to Conan and the Spider God. It feels kind of like when we got a "Castle of Terror" reference late in Conan's life when I was sure we'd never see that story alluded to ever again. I mean, more than likely this was just a fun Easter egg that Aaron was throwing at fans rather than hinting at any actual canon, but a guy can dream. If "The Ensorcelled" is mentioning aspects of "The Witch of the Mists," it stands to reason that the three stories that make up its sequels are also in the realm of hazy canon. Their events are mentioned necessarily, but "Mists" doesn't really stand on its own: it's the first of a four-parter. "The Witch of the Mists" "Black Sphinx of Nebthu" "Red Moon of Zembabwei" "Shadows in the Skull" Conan of the Isles "The Ensorcelled" says that Conan may have spent his final days across the Western Ocean, clearly referring to the events of Conan of the Isles. Stories I couldn't placeA couple short stories in the new Savage Sword were pretty much impossible to place in the chronology. Like Ernie Chan's wordless panels in several of the old Savage Sword books from the Bronze Age, we get a few vignettes that don't have any hints as to where they lay. Savage Sword of Conan #3: "Lure of the Pit Creature" Conan falls down a pit and silent fun ensues, but I couldn't for the life of me even begin to guess at where or when it happens. Conan following a young woman kind of reminds me of him following Atali in "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," but he clearly means her no hard and looks to help her rather than to have his way with her, so your guess is as good as mine. Savage Sword of Conan #5: "Damn Thing in the Water" This short, two-page, nearly-wordless story could happen anywhere and anywhen between Conan's thief days and prior to his kingship. This one's funny! Well, that's my best guess as to the current canon over at Heroic Signatures, though I'm sure I'm wildly off on some of my guesses.
I think the best way to put the Titan canon is that the original REH stories are canon to these comics, but the comics are not necessarily canon to anything but themselves. The only thing I'm really truly wondering about are the unfinished Howard stories and their canonicity. I'm looking forward to all the cool new stuff they'll be doing in 2025 with "Scourge of the Serpent" on the horizon! Happy New Year! ![]() In an alternate universe, Roy Thomas and Marvel Comics acquired the rights to Lin Carter's hero Thongor, leading to the long-running comic Thongor the Barbarian, The Savage Sword of Thongor, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's star turn was as the big-screen Thongor. Maybe you're even tuning into Late Night with Thongor O'Brien. Or perhaps not (especially not that last one), since Thongor's not near as cool as Conan. But that was the goal at one point. In 1970, Stan Lee was looking for a sword-and-sorcery characters to acquire the rights to for Marvel Comics, and he called Roy Thomas into his office. Thomas listed off the pulp heroes he was aware of: Thongor, Kull, Conan, John Carter. Roy was passingly familiar with Conan, having bought a copy of Conan the Adventurer for the Frank Frazetta cover and was sort of nonplussed by "The People of the Black Circle." He'd eventually picked up a few more of the Lancer / Ace series for the Frazetta covers and liked a few of the stories within. Stan Lee was hoping to get the rights to Thongor. Stan, ever the salesman, thought the name looked better on a cover than a name like "Conan" that started with a C. I don't get why, but it led to Roy Thomas making an offer to adapt Thongor stories into Marvel books. Ultimately, the Lin Carter camp wanted too much for the rights and Marvel wasn't willing to pony up, so Thomas looked elsewhere. He ultimately wrote to Glenn Lord: Howard's estate executor and one of Conan's champions, offering $200 per issue ($50 more than Stan had allowed him to offer). Thankfully, Lord accepted and Thomas teamed with rookie artist Barry Windsor-Smith (at that point lacking the "Windsor") to adapt Conan. Side bar: if you've never read Barry Windsor-Smith's Monsters, get a copy now. It's a rejected Hulk story from the 80s, and one of the most deeply affecting comics I've ever read. ![]() To kind of approximate a costume like superhero comic readers probably would have been expecting, they gave young Conan a helmet with horns adorning the front and a necklace of three red pendants around his neck. Other than that, it was just a loincloth. Now, Roy and Barry didn't actually have the rights to any original Robert E. Howard material at first, and though that would soon change, it meant that the Conan the Barbarian comic for Marvel wouldn't be anything like straight adaptions of the character's stories. Unlike the original Howard stories, the Lancer books, or the eventual Savage Sword of Conan, this comic would be linear in narrative. With so much Conan stuff inherently appearing out of order, this feels like a deliberate choice now, but looking back, it was probably just the obvious move. Comic readers were used to Amazing Spider-Man #35 carrying on the story from Amazing Spider-Man #34, after all. This leads me to the chronology of Roy and Barry's Conan. I picked up the Titan Comics omnibus of the first 26 issues and was very interested in how it both mirrors and diverges from the usually-accepted chronology of Conan's life. In some places, it is remarkably similar, or even expands beautifully on throwaway lines from Howard's original stories. In other parts, it changes large aspects of Conan's history, while still sort of rhyming with the prose work, some parts of which hadn't even been written yet. Below, I compare many of the story beats we see in those first 26 issues. Arrows between issues that are red represent direct adaptions, while arrows that are in blue represent stories that rhyme with, seem to be inspired by, or in other ways mirror Conan's prose short stories. From the north came Conan![]() Conan's life begins in Cimmeria, being born on a battlefield. This is one of the indisputable aspects of Conan's life, though it's not shown in the Conan the Barbarian comic (which I'm going to abbreviate as "CtB" from here on). Whereas the prose stories frequently mention the Cimmerian raid on Aquilonia's Venarium fort, we don't see this is CtB. Instead, we skip to Vanaheim, where Conan is already raiding with those mentioned in "The Frost-Giant's Daughter." Conan is 17, but of course, already a great fighter. In Conan's prose adventures, he raids with the Aesir, which takes him to the castle of Haloga in Hyperborea. He's enslaved by the Hyperboreans, eventually escaping and fleeing south into the Brythunian mountains. His inquisitor is the witch queen Vammatar, who controls undead hordes. In the CtB comic, we get a progression where the details are entirely different but the broad strokes are ultimately the same. Conan still gets enslaved in Hyperborea, but with some futuristic societies, under very different circumstances. Conan's inquisitor this time is a leader of subhuman "Beast Men" named Moira. ![]() As Conan flees south from Hyperborea, in the third issue we get a digression from the prose stories entirely in the form of "The Twilight of the Grim Grey God," which is a really stellar issue. It has no prose equivalent in Conan's journey. There's a novel by Sean A. Moore with a similar title: Conan and the Grim Grey God, but the two seem to have entirely different plots. What Thomas was doing here was pulling a play from L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter's playbook: those two authors had been adapting non-Conan REH material into Conan stories since the mid-50s, so Thomas looked to the Conanless Howard historical tale "The Grey God Passes," AKA "The Twilight of the Grey Gods," AKA "Spears of Clontarf." Honestly, the first two issues of CtB aren't that great; I think Roy was finding his footing. While reading those first two stories, I was a little worried I had made a mistake ponying up the whopping $125 pricetag for the omnibus, but my fears were soon assuaged. The third rebounds hard and it's a compelling, original story. "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," while not adapted yet, will appear later on. A thief in the night![]() As I noted above, Marvel Comics didn't have the rights to adapt any actual Robert E. Howard Conan stories when they acquired the rights to the Cimmerian initially, but after Roy Thomas was able to convince both Glenn Lord and the Marvel execs to pony up for the rights to other REH work, it wouldn't take long for Roy to seek out the rights to his favorite Conan story, "The Tower of the Elephant." It's the only Conan story that Thomas adapted three different times: once in Conan the Barbarian in 1971, again in Savage Sword of Conan in 1977, and also in the Conan the Barbarian newspaper strip that ran from 1978 to 81. In the traditionally-accepted prose progression, Conan comes down from the north into the thief city of Zamora, where his first adventure is chronicled in "The Tower of the Elephant." It makes me happy to know that Roy Thomas agrees that the thief city is unnamed and is not Arenjun, as so many authors have conflated. Conan's first thief story being "Tower" contradicts the chronology I settled on, but I don't want to complicate things too much here, so ignore me for a bit. In the Howard stories, Conan follows "Tower" with thieving in Shadizar the Wicked in "The Hall of the Dead," then going over to Nemedia in "The God in the Bowl," and finally to an unnamed city-state in Corinthia for "Rogues in the House." ![]() In the CtB comic, Conan begins his thieving journey in Zamora just like he does in Howard's stories. Thomas's adaption of "Tower" is very faithful. Where he goes from there is more interesting, though. Conan leaves Zamora's Thief-City pretty quickly (at least compared to how much time he seems to have spent there in Savage Sword) and we see him next in a remote Zamorian village for issue 5, "Zukala's Daughter." Issue 5 was actually planned by Thomas and Smith prior to nabbing "The Tower of the Elephant," so it was the original issue 3 for the book. I don't think it's a great issue, unfortunately. Inspired by the REH poem "Zukala's Daughter" and pulling from other inspirational sources Roy Thomas can't quite remember, it's a one-and-done story that doesn't have any kind of equivalent in short story form. Conan then goes to Shadizar, which Roy Thomas was very excited about when writing. While Zamora is pretty well-defined in "Tower of the Elephant," Thomas was able to mold Shadizar much more to how he saw it seeing as its only appearance was in "The Hall of the Dead." We get a few issues there: the mediocre issue 6 in "Devil-Wings Over Shadizar" and then "The Lurker Within" for issue 7, which is their adaption of "The God in the Bowl." Issue 7 is a huge step up over the previous issues and, by my estimation, where the comic really finds its footing. There are very few duds for the next twenty issues! ![]() Issue 8 takes Conan to a moonlight city named Lanjau (rather than Larsha in the REH/dC version). The plot beats are quite similar, but the monsters are frankly cooler in Thomas's version, and it includes an unnamed Gunderman who mirrors the Gunderman Nestor of the prose version, but only slightly. Roy Thomas notes that issues 2-7 each saw declines in sales from the previous issue, leading to Stan Lee preparing to cancel the book. But 8 was where things started to change. It was the first book to sell better than the previous issue, and the title began an upward climb from there. For the next twenty years, he says, CtB was never on the chopping block again. Issue 9, "The Garden of Fear," is an original creation for which there's no prose equivalent. Rogues in the temple, and then in the house![]() CtB issues 10 and 11 are something really special. Marvel was implementing a change in which they would expand their output from 15-cent, 32-page books to 25-cent, 48-page books, which was something DC was doing at the time, too. As such, Thomas and Smith suddenly had a few more pages to play with in issues 10 and 11. Issue 10, "Beware the Wrath of Anu," seems wholly original for a while (the cover even promises "ALL NEW STORIES" somewhat deceptively). Conan is in an unnamed Corinthian city-state and happens to meet back up with the unnamed Gunderman from issue 7, named Burgun instead of Nestor. As Conan, Burgun, and an original character named Jenna burgle at temple to a bull god, all kinds of strange, cosmic shit happens. But the end of the issue reveals something: this is all lead-in to "Rogues in the House," which the comic adapts in issue 11. Roy Thomas masterfully expands on all kinds of throw-away lines and setup from the prose story to create an excellent prelude that is both wickedly entertaining and fills in all kinds of gaps. You know how they wrote that whole Solo movie around the throwaway line about how the Millennium Falcon could do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs? This is what they wish they were doing over at LucasFilm. ![]() Conan gets thrown in jail (as he appears at the beginning of "Rogues") due to their thieving activities in issue 10. It's revealed that the woman he seeks revenge on is actually Jenna, whose role is massively expanded form the short story. It's at this point where the CtB "Rogues" meets up with the prose version and follows REH's pretty closely, albeit with a much more purely simian Thak that I originally ever pictured. From the letters pages![]() Now that CtB's thief stories were completed with "Rogues in the House," which Roy Thomas rightly deemed to be a high point of comics in the 1970s, the REH canon joins Conan up with the Turanians, but we don't get that yet in CtB. Instead, there's a wholly original digression for a few issues, followed by an old stand-by re-ordered in the chronology. Remember how Marvel had inflated the page count of their books for CtB 10 and 11? It was almost immediately rescinded, bringing Roy and Barry's page requirements back down into the twenties. Pushed by a close deadline, the decided to use a story they had written for Savage Tales #2 which had been cancelled, leaving the story unpublished. This became CtB's 12th issue, "The Dweller in the Dark," for which there's no analogue in prose. Even more out of the box, though, is what they did next. Roy Thomas notes in an essay that when he was writing CtB, the sum total of authors who had published anything Conan-based was limited to himself, Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, and Bjorn Nyberg. He thought he might give someone else a shot. Opening up their bullpen to Conan pitches, issue 13 came from sword & sorcery writer John Jakes and resulted in "The Web of the Spider-God." Like the whole Grim Grey God situation detailed above, there's a Conan and the Spider God novel by de Camp that is entirely unrelated. Their next pitch came from British author Michael Moorcock, incorporating his character Elric of Melniboné, who is not nearly as dorky as he first seems. Issues 13 and 14 are a cosmic-as-fuck two-parter featuring Elric, and I enjoyed them way more than the covers made me think I would. Especially their last pages, for which the art is a serious show-stopper. These stories, with no traditional prose companions, take Conan south to the land of Koth much sooner than the short stories do. They've also caused me to look into Elric stories, which seem to be pretty awesome so far. After that, once again likely spurred on by tight deadlines, Roy and Barry reprinted their adaption of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" from Savage Tales as issue 15. This doesn't line up with where I put "Frost-Giant" in my chronology, or in the other popular placement after Conan's Turanian mercenary days, but it certainly seems like it landed here in CtB out of necessity, rather than as part of a grand plan. Additionally, the torch was passed by this point to Gil Kane as the lead illustrator, who I noted in my post about the first 100 issues of Savage Sword just... doesn't draw Conan to my liking. Barry will be back before too long. Go east, young man![]() If one is following the original REH canon, Howard sends Conan east after his thieving days so that he can join the army of Turan as a mercenary in the service of King Yildiz. I noted when reading through my chronology that this was one of the least-inspiring episodes of Conan's long career, and I've seen others chime in to that effect as well. However, it's kind of an important one: it's where Conan evidently learns to use a bow, to refine his horseman skills, and gains travel experience. Many note that Conan's physical description in his thief days keep him in sandals and a loin cloth, but Conan dons armors, helmets, and notably a scarlet cloak at the end of "The Hand of Nergal" that we'll see again in "Queen of the Black Coast," linking those two stories chronologically. If we're talking minutia, there's also the fact that "Nergal" mentions that Conan's horse was given to him by Murilo in "Rogues in the House," which implies that "Rogues" was shortly before "Nergal," it it's clear CtB isn't playing that same game. In Howard' chronology, Conan's Turanian days are limited to the single unfinished story "The Hand of Nergal." de Camp and Carter expanded that to six stories, though really only two of them have Conan completing a military mission given to him by King Yildiz. This is the biggest change for CtB so far, I'd say. For the next long stretch of issues, Conan is sent east, joining the Turanians, and having adventures with light connections to the Howard / de Camp / Carter stories. ![]() Issues 17 and 18 adapt the Conanless Howard story "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth," incorporating Conan into the narrative and introducing a character named Fafnir, who becomes a bit of a partner for Conan for several issues. Roy Thomas didn't even expect for Fafnir to appear after that two-part story, but Fafnir grows into an excellent character over the course of several issues together with Conan. The end of issue 18 explicitly shows Conan and Fafnir ending up on a Turanian war galley the Vilayet Sea being hired into the service of Prince Yezdigerd of Turan, therefore exploring part of his Turanian days unseen in Howard's work. Though I'm not the biggest fan of Conan's Turanian days in short story form, many of the issues from 17 to 26 are excellent comics. While issue 19 mostly confines the action to one Turanian ship, it's a great adventure. It feels a little similar to "The Hand of Nergal" to me, but CtB will eventually adapt "Nergal" itself. Issue 20 puts Conan at odds with the Turanian government and (sort of) has him resigning his commission from the country, dramatically leaping off the ship. Issue 21 puts Conan far to the east, and while it isn't a direct adaption of "The Curse of the Monolith," it rhymes with many elements of that story. Conan is tricked into going to the monolith by a priest, he's strapped to it, and there's a creature who wants to consume him that descends from the top of the monolith. The next few issues, up to the end of the first volume of The Original Marvel Years' first omnibus, have Conan floating around Hyrkania, Turan, and Khitai. Surprisingly, it has Conan spend what I felt was a huge stretch of time in the Turanian city of Makkalet, meeting Red Sonja and folding other non-Conan stories into the mix. Issue 22 is a reprint and therefore I won't include it here. Issue 23 is freely adapted from "The Shadow of the Vulture," and 25 is "inspired in part" by "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune," both originally lacking Conan (but the second is a Kull story, so that's close!). Freely adaptedAfter issue 24, Barry Windsor-Smith left the book for good. When Stan Lee asked Roy Thomas what he thought would happen to the book, he said that they would sell more comic books, but win fewer awards. At the end of issue 26, it seems like Conan is going to drift back west.
I can't wait to pick up the next volume of this series, which should hit shelves in just a few weeks. It's so interesting to me how Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Gil Kane were able to weave elements into their Conan canon in a way that freely adapted and rhymed with other parts of the Conan universe, while also feeling adventurously original. ![]() It dawns on me that Catherine Crook de Camp may be the severely under-sung hero of Conan the Cimmerian. Catherine was a double-major at Barnard College, a school that is not considered an Ivy League institution by seeming technicality alone, from which she graduated magna cum laude. She was a teacher after that (big ups to a fellow educator) before she became a science fiction writer as well as a nonfiction writer whose main concern seemed to be writing about other genre fiction. She was also, as some have noted, married to Lyon Sprague de Camp, a person I have mentioned on this blog probably more times than anyone other than Robert Ervin Howard. Because we've got two de Camps in this story, I'm going to refer to everyone by their first names for once. Catherine's resume says to me that she was a very skilled writer whose credits have been frustratingly erased, so we can really only speculate as to how much she did. However, it seems like she might be the mastermind behind the great 1980 Conan pastiche novel, Conan and the Spider God. Catherine's husband Lyon had begun working together with Lin Carter on Conan stories in the early 1950s, eventually producing a pretty sizable body of work- at least half of this blog has to be about their writing. Gary Romeo at Sprague de Camp Fan has an excellent, illuminating post about how the two writers worked together. Apparently, Lyon, being the writer with more experience, generally had Lin write the first draft and then he would iron out the second one. He claimed that this was because the more experienced writer would be more aware of things like errors, but I feel like it betrays something else about their partnership. "In collaboration with [Fletcher] Pratt and later with Carter, the collaborators found that it worked best if the younger writer (at least, younger in writing experience) did the rough draft and the older one the final. The younger writer is apt to have greater facility and be more fertile with ideas, while the older one is more alert for errors, infelicities, mistakes of grammar, inconsistencies, etc. With Pratt, he was the older; with Carter, he was the younger. In each case we got together and roughed out the plot first; then the junior author went home, wrote a synopsis or treatment (which he might or might not show the senior author) and then did the rough draft. The senior collaborator wrote the final draft and submitted it to the junior for minor changes before sending it out. We found out that when we reversed the procedure it didn’t work well." ![]() I could be wrong here, but this seems to me like Lyon all but admitting that he wasn't a very skilled plotter of stories (or at the very least that he was a worse plotter), and maybe I only think that because it really squares with my perception of these writers. Lin's writing seems to be a little ham-fisted and wonky, as I noted of Lin's posthumous collaboration with Robert E. Howard on "The Hand of Nergal." Many of the Conan stories written by Lyon and Lin were rewrites of stories Lin had created for his character Thongor: "The Thing in the Crypt," "The Curse of the Monolith," "The Lair of the Ice-Worm," "The Gem in the Tower..." But it seems like Lyon might have been the more skilled wordsmith- Lin without Lyon reads a little worse. Therefore, it's my belief that Lin was the person who was probably the better plotter, and responsible for most of the story elements, with Lyon punching up Lin's prose. The two had a long and fruitful partnership, but it didn't last forever. In the 1970s, Lin Carter starts to drop off the map of the Hyborian Age a bit. There are rumblings online of Lin and Lyon having a falling out between them. Details are scant, but it seems widely accepted that something happened. Lin was also struggling with alcoholism, so that may have negatively affected his ability to work with Lyon. The 1972 novel Conan the Liberator saw Lin pretty much drop the ball and exit the novel's writing process barely a month in. "Carter started on his part but pooped out early in 1972. (We began on January 27.) After some months of fiddling around and trying to get him to work, Catherine and I gave up, and Catherine did the rest of the collaboration." Though the 1978 short story "The Ivory Goddess" is credited to both Lin and Lyon, Lin apparently didn't write a word of it (though he still got paid). Who picked up the slack on Lin's end? Well, apparently it was Catherine. The same thing happened on the group's novelization of the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: Lin sat it out, but got a writing credit and a paycheck, while Catherine collected neither byline nor bag. So how did Conan and the Spider God, a novel written without Lin Carter and credited to L. Sprague de Camp alone get to be so good? It's probably Catherine! Lyon did credit her as having provided "editorial assistance," and the Conan lay scholarship online seems to be in agreement that this novel was largely her work. Conan and the Spider God, published by Bantam Books in 1980, is definitely one of the better novel-length Conan adventures, and it's a really fun story overall. The story takes place as the endpiece to Conan's Turanian mercenary days- there's a misunderstanding that causes Conan to flee Aghrupur in Turan for the west, back toward Zamora where he spent some of his prior years. To my delight, the start of this story connects nicely to the prologue of "The Blood-Stained God," which de Camp had written about 25 years earlier. We finally get to know what that "unruly episode" was! ![]() Conan gets blamed for the kidnapping of Jamilah, royalty of Turan, and eventually ends up at the Zamorian city of Yezud. Some of the events in the early part of the book feel a little random and like they're there to pad out the runtime, but it eventually settles in. Yezud is the home to the cult of Zath, gigantic spider god and all-around corrupt theocracy built up in Zath's temples. Conan takes an assumed identity (using his father's name, Nial) and works undercover as a blacksmith in the city for a while while getting closer to the people there. He is smitten with Rubadeh, a dancing girl and acolyte for Zath, who, unlike many women of Conan stories, has her own dreams, goals, and past, and isn't completely head-over-heels with our barbarian. Perhaps the deft hand of Catherine? Unlike many Conan novels, characters have time to become more fully-formed and we get more time to come to like friends like Captain Catigern, and loathe the villain Harpagus. It's paced well, albeit very differently than REH ever wrote. Instead of being a whiz-bang action story, it's more of a slow burn. Conan is surrounded by potential enemies: the empire of Turan is on his trail and wants him dead. The cult of Zath could find out at any moment who he really is. The high priest Harpagus probably already knows who he is but is eerily quiet about it. Conan is always in danger, well before the giant spider enters the story. The novel really begins to shine in the last 30 pages or so in which we get a daring rescue of Jamilah, a clever thievery scene that makes Conan infiltrate and work without his sword, and a truly horrifying episode in the tunnels beneath Yezud where lurks the giant spider Zath and the desiccated remains of her live meals. ![]() Like many of the best Conan stories, Conan and the Spider God has some valuable commentary about the nature of power, especially power claiming moral authority. Perhaps the most important line in the novel is when a character points out that the priests of Zath love virtue, almost to the point of vice. Conan, and us by extension, is forced to wait and watch as a huge herd of sheep are driven in front of him to be slaughtered to the spider god, and while lambs to the slaughter isn't exactly the most original metaphor, it feels appropriate. After all, this book was published at the dawn of the Reagan administration in which the Gipper and the "moral majority" stripped away social programs and gutted services for things like education. During my masters degree, we had several courses on the history of education and it feels like three-quarters of our problems in public ed. began with Reagan. And now I'm sitting here reading this novel about a month away from the start of another criminal presidency, waiting for him to unleash his Children of Zath. I know the Conan fanbase skews conservative, so I probably just had quite a few people close the tab they were reading this on. Anyway, isn't this blog supposed to be about the chronology of Conan stories? Let's get to that. Spider God takes place at the end of Conan's Turanian mercenary period, right before "The Blood-Stained God." It says that he spent about two years with the Turanians, and now he's back in Zamora for a little more theiving before heading over to the Western Ocean for "Queen of the Black Coast." It's noted several times that the effigy of Zath in the temple is more than twice the size of the spider Conan fought in "The Tower of the Elephant," and even Zath's children are larger than that arachnid. Conan makes several comments about the barbarity of supposed civilization and is working on holding his tongue a little better, which he definitely grows at. "Guarding his tongue" and "weighing his words" are one of his biggest adjustments to civilization, he says. This is much scarier when you're hiding amongst your enemies. While researching this novel, I came across a pretty hilarious review of it which can only be accessed via the Wayback Machine. While I almost completely disagree with it, the writer had some pretty funny lines lampooning what he saw as an inexcusably bad novel. "I fear no commentary of mine will be half so successful in furnishing the rope to hang it by than the book’s own turgid prose." He says of Conan's rescue of a witch early in the book: "But before he gets to Yezud though he does interrupt his journey just long enough to save a witch called Nyssa from being burnt at the stake. Again no readily plausible explanation is forthcoming about why he should choose to do this apart from the rather limp contention that “the protection of women, regardless of age, form, or station, was one of the few imperatives of his barbarian code”. The most risible aspect of this sorry episode comes though when Conan struggles to outdistance the pursuing pack of pitchfork wielding yokels and has to be saved by the witch casting a glamour spell of illusion. Memories of “The Black Stranger” and of a limping Conan outrunning a Pictish war-party can seldom have seemed more remote." About a scene in which Conan orders a more upscale wine than he is prone to: "Hook Howard’s grave up to a generator and I reckon the dynamo revolutions produced by this particular passage could power a city block." As the reviewer careens toward a conclusion: "As is all too painfully apparent from the above, this is a quite appalling book. Literally jaw droppingly abject in actual fact. I’m quite at a loss to recall the last time I came across a novel anywhere near as incompetently conceived and executed as this one. The whole sloppy narrative is entirely driven by contrivance and coincidence from start to finish. It is utterly impoverished in imagination and displays not even the most meagre sense of any sort of enthusiasm whatsoever on the part of the author." Unfortunately, our reviewer is not all fun and games. "And then you ventured your suggestion that the book was actually written by de Camp’s wife, and in an instant the reason for every one of the novel’s abundance of faults became blindingly clear. Simply put, this is a woman’s book and its Conan is a woman’s concept of what makes an acceptable hero... You do sound irreparably chauvinist, bud. It's sad how many times I've come across the assertion that women can't write sword & sorcery because they're somehow allergic to badassery or secretly trying to castrate male heroes. The assertion that Catherine Crook de Camp must be responsible for this book because women are more afraid of spiders than men, judging by the highly scientific study of cartoons and sitcoms is especially funny.
We agree that this book was probably mostly Catherine de Camp and less L. Sprague, but I've got to say that she's done an excellent job here to outpace her husband for one of the better Conan novels. ★★★★☆ ![]() Do you ever read something that hits you a little extra hard, not really through anything in the actual work, but rather because you're in the right frame of mind to accept it? I've been thinking about aging a lot recently. I'm a baseball fan, and recently a pretty good baseball player named Juan Soto signed an absolutely massive contract (it's actually the biggest contract in the history of sports) with the New York Mets for fifteen years. I did the math in my head and realize that I'll be almost fifty by the time that contract is up. My apologies to anyone who's fifty or over reading this, but that kind of hit me like a truck. I don't think it's necessarily the number itself; I know fifty isn't really even old. But what freaked me out is the fact that this is one event- Juan Soto's tenure with the Mets- that will end when I'm 48. I think it would have felt entirely different if it hadn't been framed as me being the length of essentially one baseball contract away from my fifties. So I was already kind of thinking about aging, but then this comes up in all my feeds on Reddit and Bluesky and such: James Mangold was a little hurt by audience reception to his Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny movie from last year. I thought Dial of Destiny was fine at best, but I was a little struck by his reasoning: "It hurt in the sense that I really love Harrison [Ford] and I wanted audiences to love him as he was and to accept that that’s part of what the movie has to say—that things come to an end, that’s part of life... You have a wonderful, brilliant actor who’s in his eighties. So I’m making a movie about this guy in his eighties, but his audience on one other level doesn’t want to confront their hero at that age. And I am like, I’m good with it. We made the movie. But the question is, how would anything have made the audience happy with that, other than having to start over again with a new guy?” This just got me thinking about where my sympathies lie. Mangold is absolutely right about accepting a person where they're at, that things end, and that maybe there's something to learn there. I'd certainly have a definitive ending that goes out on its own terms than endlessly recycling the old, which pop culture loves to do these days. That ghoulish CGI Ian Holm in Alien: Romulus. Shitass AI recreations of Chris Reeve and other actors in The Flash. Star Wars endlessly looping back on itself, only allowing things to happen because they happened in older, better movies. ![]() I guess that brings me to Conan. Conan of the Isles, the sixth Lancer book written by the team of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter (probably written by Carter and edited by de Camp?) picks up in about the twentieth year of King Conan's reign. Life has gotten immensely stale for the Cimmerian in more ways than one. Hot-blooded adventurers aren't cut out for litigating in a cushy kingship, but also I sense some reticence on the authors' part to make Conan anything but a Gary Stu king. His kingship is broadly popular. He's firm but fair. Nobody dares invade his boring, prosperous kingdom. Eventually, a mystic red shadow begins taking the lives of Aquilonian citizens both high and low. This, as it should, sends him out into the world for another adventure. For a moment, I thought this might mirror the beginning of Conan's life. The Cimmerian begins his career defending his homeland from a hostile colonizing force (remember how I said we're wondering where our sympathies lie?), I thought this might be an extended metaphor for colonizing forces defeating indigenous tribes through smallpox and the like. I was mostly wrong- it's not quite that interesting, but Conan of the Isles is still pretty decent and does indeed have something worthwhile to say. We follow Conan across the western ocean to what appears to be the islands that will one day dot the Gulf of Mexico (we were so close to being able to make "Conan retires to Florida" jokes!) judging by the Aztec- and Mayan-sounding names. I'm trying to not think too hard about the fact that the cultures in "Red Nails," over on the Hyborian continent, were also influenced by these same real-life cultures. As it ends, Conan still yearns for one last adventure or two and the book implies that he gets folded into the Quetzlcoatl myth in the New World. Much of the prose of this novel was really good. Especially in the beginning, it pounds away at this idea that Conan doesn't want to simply waste away in the tapestried halls of Tarantia. It does a great job setting up those themes. For a while, I was a freshman English major back in college reading "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" for the first time again. Conan pants, he aches, notes to himself that he used to be a little quicker. I'd imagine that it's really tough to see that you're not able to do things that used to come easy to you. Obviously, nobody is as physically capable as the superhero aptitude of Conan, but I suppose it's doubly hard for people who were once razor-sharp athletes. And whereas the two latter Indiana Jones movies are constantly winking at the audience and asking, "Isn't it hilarious that he's doing this now that he's old? Wasn't this a lot easier when Indy was in his prime?," Conan of the Isles is playing those questions straight. It is instead saying, "Wow, it sure seems like it must be hard to be past your prime." ![]() We get a more introspective Conan here that makes this all possible, a little bit more like the one in "Queen of the Black Coast" or in Jim Zub's current Conan the Barbarian run for Titan. Conan is raging against the dying of the light, as are some of his comrades. One of the best scenes involves Sigurd Redbeard being marched toward an altar of human sacrifice. He's afraid at first, but then realizes that much like Conan, he and death are old shipmates, and Sigurd ends up laughing out loud. At the end of the book, Conan sails off to a new continent that no Hyborian has explored. There's a whole section on this book's Wikipedia page about what happens after the events in of the Isles, but dude, listen to James Mangold up there at the top of this blog post. Let it go. Things come to an end, and that's part of life. For a definitive end to Conan's life, read "Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian." I'm going to be over here working on being okay with aging. ★★★☆☆ ![]() I wasn't originally going to read Conan the Buccaneer for this chronology, but now that I have, I can't remember why I was so resistant to the idea. I was at a Christmas party in Fort Collins, Colorado this weekend and toward the back of the house was a small shelf that I looked up on to see a whole slew of the Lancer / Ace books. One of the guys who lives there turned out to be a huge Conan fan with several Frazetta prints around the place, and he leant me Conan the Buccaneer and Conan of the Isles since those are the only two of the lot that I haven't read (thanks, Austin!). Conan the Buccaneer, written by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter and published in 1971 as part of the Lancer series of Conan books, is a fun little pirate adventure that takes place during Conan's days with the Barachans on the western ocean. I actually really enjoyed reading this one, but I feel like it highlights the difference between the writing of Robert E. Howard and his standard-bearers, de Camp and Carter. Conan is captain of the Wastrel, getting wasted in Zingara as he is want to do at the beginning of the novel. We are treated to the return of the "Treasure of Tranicos" character Black Zarono, which was very welcome for me- he was excellent in that story (chronologically speaking, though, this is Zarono's first appearance since "Tranicos" will take place right before Conan's kingship). The two pirate crews of Zarono's Petrel and Conan's Wastrel are at odds with one another, chasing each other down the coast to a mysterious Nameless Isle in search of treasure. We get to explore an ancient temple on that island before heading over to Kush to be reunited with Juma, one of Conan's best companions from "The City of Skulls" and we get up to all sorts of shenanigans fighting amazons and sentient trees. ![]() Chronologically, Conan the Buccaneer takes place after "The Pool of the Black One" and before "Red Nails." It says on page 58 that "less than a year had elapsed since, in this selfsame Wastrel, he had sailed with its former captain, the saturnine Zaporavo, to an unknown island in the west, where Zaporavo and several of the Zingaran crew had met their doom. Few things in Conan's adventurous life had been stranger or more sinister than the Pool of the Black One and its inhuman attendants." Additionally, the story place's itself in Conan's life by stating that Conan is now "over 35 and past the first flush of youth." There are two chronological curiosities for me in this narrative. One, Conan ends this story aboard the Wastrel headed south, which makes sense as he heads toward Xuchotl, but I feel like there's a slightly important episode that happens between the two that we're not privy to. Conan is well-outfitted, well-respected in Zingara now, and he has his full crew aboard his ship. When we see him next in "Red Nails" he's on land, shipless and crewless. Could be a good story there to fill in the gap. And two, Conan fights a sentient evil tree in Gamburu toward the end of the novel and remarks that it reminds him of his days fighting in an arena in Messantia, but I don't recall any adventures like that. Perhaps they're in something I somehow skipped over. This story's a good time. I don't mean to make it sound like this was one of the best Conan adventures by any means, but I was kind of surprised at how good it was because it was written right before the four "Old Man Conan" stories (which constantly reference Buccaneer) and all of those were absolute garbage. My main takeaway from Conan the Buccaneer, though, is how sharply it draws the difference between Howard's writing ability and the powers of de Camp & Carter. The lone review on its Wikipedia page agrees with me: "Reasonably good plot but substandard writing." Yeah, the plotting is good, but there's just something missing in the prose itself. Take this tomb description from Howard's "Black Colossus" as an example and let's compare it to a tomb description by de Camp and Carter. From "Black Colossus:" "Gingerly stepping over it, the thief thrust against the door, which this time slid aside, revealing the interior of the dome. Shevatas cried out; instead of utter darkness he had come into a crimson light that throbbed and pulsed almost beyond the endurance of mortal eyes. It came from a gigantic red jewel high up in the vaulted arch of the dome. Shevatas gaped, inured though he was to the sight of riches. The treasure was there, heaped in staggering profusion—piles of diamonds, sapphires, rubies, turquoises, opals, emeralds; zikkurats of jade, jet and lapis lazuli; pyramids of gold wedges; teocallis of silver ingots; jewel-hilted swords in cloth-of-gold sheaths; golden helmets with colored horsehair crests, or black and scarlet plumes; silver scaled corselets; gem-crusted harness worn by warrior-kings three thousand years in their tombs; goblets carven of single jewels; skulls plated with gold, with moonstones for eyes; necklaces of human teeth set with jewels. The ivory floor was covered inches deep with gold dust that sparkled and shimmered under the crimson glow with a million scintillant lights. The thief stood in a wonderland of magic and splendor, treading stars under his sandalled feet." And from Conan the Buccaneer: "The structure was of roughly cubical shape; but its surfaces, instead of being simple squares, were made up of a multitude of planes and curves of irregular form, oriented every which way. There was any symmetry to the structure. It was as if every part of the building had been designed by a different architect, or as if the building had been assembled from parts of a score of other structures chosen at random from many lands and eras... The temple looked wrong. The style was like nothing he had seen in his far voyaging. Even the ghoul-haunted tombs of Stygia were not so alien as this irregular block of black stone. It was as if the builders had followed some inhuman geometry of their own---some unearthly canon of proportion and design." ![]() Both of these passages describe mysterious, legend-haunted, treasure-packed, ancient, dangerous crypts, but one of them is captivating, and the other is just... fine. It's hard to even describe the difference in prose, but Howard's just feels more immediate, more alive, and like he's describing the tomb as he's standing in it rather than a game master talking about a dungeon to their players over their DM screen. The actual, physical thing de Camp and Carter are describing is even actually a little more unique than the tomb in Kuthchemes that Howard is describing, at least in its basic construction, but there's a magic in Howard's writing that is absent in de Camp and Carter's. Like many of de Camp and Carter's Conan forays, this story pulls from different parts of the Conan canon, bringing back characters and elements from previous stories, which, while something that Howard almost never did, is fun to see. Conan the Buccaneer was adapted in Savage Sword issues 40 through 43. I've now read the first 117 issues of Savage Sword and none of them have taken the opportunity to explore how Conan loses the wastrel and ends up near Xuchotl, but maybe one will soon... Since I also borrowed Conan of the Isles, I suppose I'll read that one next! About halfway through reading through every Conan story, I had the idea of trying to place every original Savage Sword of Conan story into the chronology to see where they fit. Savage Sword is my first love of Conan: it's where I was introduced to him and it's probably my favorite format to read his adventures. Published by Marvel Comics from 1974 to 1995, Savage Sword was a black-and-white bronze age comic series. It was magazine-sized to skirt the restrictive Comics Code Authority's regulations on violence and adult content, and it's so good. I love this comic. It has some of the best creators of the 70s and 80s working on it: shepherded by Roy Thomas for the first 60 or so issues and then mainly by Michael Fleisher for the years after that, Savage Sword mostly adapted stories of an older Conan. While there are several early stories that made it to the mag, almost everything after "Hawks Over Shem" was adapted. Many of the stories were originals, and those are the ones I'm going to try to fit into our chronology here. Some of them were adapted from Robert E. Howard's historical short stories and poems. Some adapted Conan pastiches. Some were truly original Conan stories from the likes of Barry Windsor-Smith, Roy Thomas, Chuck Dixon, Chris Claremont, and Michael Fleisher. I don't own every issue of the comic- far from it. But I own the first 11 omnibuses published by Dark Horse, so I have a little more than the first 100 issues. They include a few other titles in them occasionally like Savage Tales of Conan the Barbarian. I could be way off on some of these, and others I'm pretty confident of my placement. I looked at a number of factors to try to place stories:
It seems like Conan's Zuagir raider period and his time as a Barachan pirate are particular favorites among Savage Sword writers seeing as a disproportionate amount of stories refer to Conan as a Zuagir chief or a Barachan buccaneer. I'm assuming that's because they're kind of flexible roles that could happen over a large swath of the map. I sort of thought that there would be more stories in these issues about his time with Aquilonia (either as a scout or as a king) or over in Vendhya around "The People of the Black Circle," but I was wrong on both accounts. There are very few original King Conan stories in these first 100 issues. Below is my best attempt at fitting them into Conan's career. Stories added into the chronology by Savage Sword are marked in red. If a story was not adapted into a story in Savage Sword, but there is a comic adaption from one of the other Bronze Age anthology Conan books like Conan the Barbarian, King Conan, or Savage Tales, I've marked those as well, but I'm certainly not trying to collapse all Conan comic material into one timeline or anything like that. Let me know what you think! The Conan Chronology + Savage Sword of Conan's first 100 issuesSSOC adds two stories of Conan's early life before leaving Cimmeria before adapting several of the L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter stories that detail Conan's earliest career events. "Rite of Blood" - Savage Sword 89
"Hunters and Hunted!" - Savage Sword 83
![]() "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" - Savage Tales of Conan 1 "Legions of the Dead" - Savage Sword 39 "The Thing in the Crypt" - Conan the Barbarian 92 The thief stories begin with "The God in the Bowl." "The God in the Bowl" - Conan the Barbarian 7 "Rogues in the House" - Conan the Barbarian 10 - 11 "The Tower of the Elephant" - Savage Sword 24 "The Darksome Demon of Raba-Than" - Savage Sword 84
"The World Beyond the Mists" - Savage Sword 93
"The Sorcerer and the Soul" - Savage Sword 53
"The Stalker Amid the Sands" - Savage Sword 54
"Black Lotus and Yellow Death" - Savage Sword 55
"The Sword of Skelos" - Savage Sword 56
"The Eye of Erlik" - Savage Sword 57
"For the Throne of Zamboula" - Savage Sword 58
"The Cave Dwellers" - Savage Sword 77
"The Palace of Pleasure" - Savage Sword 81
"The Blood Ruby of Death" - Savage Sword 98
"The Hall of the Dead" - Conan the Barbarian 8 "The Hall of the Dead" is the end of the thief stories. Other than one small digression in SSOC 91's B story, the Turanian mercenary stories begin immediately. "The Beast" - Savage Sword 91
![]() "The Chain" - Savage Sword 91
"The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" - Savage Sword 13
"The Hand of Nergal" - Conan the Barbarian 30 "The City of Skulls" - Savage Sword 59 "The People of the Summit" "The Curse of the Monolith" - Savage Sword 33 "Night of the Rat!" - Savage Sword 95
"The Secret of Skull River" - Savage Sword 5
"The Colossus of Shem" - Savage Sword 72
"The Colossus of Shem" in SSOC 72 is functionally the end of the Turanian mercenary stories. In several original stories along with a few adaptions, Conan wanders west afterword. "The Blood-Stained God" - Marvel Super Special 9 (and reprinted in Conan Saga 80) "The Curse of the Undead Man" - Savage Sword 1
"The Forever Phial" - Savage Sword 8
"The Lair of the Ice Worm" - Savage Sword 34 "Child of Sorcery" - Savage Sword 29
"The Sea of No Return" - Savage Sword 66
"Queen of the Black Coast" marks the beginning of Conan's first pirate period. His first pirate crew is aboard the Tigress with Belit. "Queen of the Black Coast" - Conan the Barbarian 58 - 59 "The Leopard Men of Darfar" - Savage Sword 97
"Lion of the Waves" - Savage Sword 86
Conan comes ashore ending his first pirate period and here begins to wander north from the Black Kingdoms in his next experiences as a mercenary. "The Vale of Lost Women" - Conan the Barbarian 104 "The Castle of Terror" "The Snout in the Dark" - Conan the Barbarian 106 - 107 After "The Snout in the Dark," we move into a period of Conan's life unseen in the original REH canon where he acts as a mercenary for various city-states in Corinthia. "The Lurker in the Labyrinth" - Savage Sword 71
"Demons in the Firelight" - Savage Sword 78 - 79
"Devourer of Souls" - Savage Sword 90
![]() "The Ape-Bat of Marmet Tarn" - Savage Sword 96
"Forest of Fiends" - Savage Sword 91
"The Dweller in the Depths" - Savage Sword 70
"The Gamesmen of Asgalun" - Savage Sword 89
"Eye of the Sorcerer" - Savage Sword 69
"Hawks Over Shem" - Savage Sword 36 "Black Colossus" - Savage Sword 2 "At the Mountain of the Moon God" - Savage Sword 3
"Shadows in the Dark" "Colossus of Argos" - Savage Sword 80
"The Wizard-Fiend of Zingara" - Savage Sword 61
![]() "Death Dwarves of Stygia" - Savage Sword 94
"Children of Rhan" - Savage Sword 64
"The Temple of the Tiger" - Savage Sword 62
Conan here heads east to the Vilayet Sea and begins his second pirate period, this time with the crew known as the Red Brotherhood. "Iron Shadows in the Moon" - Savage Sword 4 "Sons of the White Wolf" - Savage Sword 37
"The Road of the Eagles" - Savage Sword 38 Here is the beginning of Conan's period as a Zuagir raider. This period is often visited in SSOC. "A Witch Shall Be Born" - Savage Sword 5 "Mirror of the Manticore" - Savage Sword 58
"Sleeper Beneath the Sands" - Savage Sword 6
"Citadel at the Center of Time" - Savage Sword 7
"Black Tears" - Savage Sword 35 "The Curse of the Cat Goddess" - Savage Sword 9
"Moat of Blood" - Savage Sword 63
"Isle of the Hunter" - Savage Sword 88
"Shadows in Zamboula" - Savage Sword 14 "The Star of Khorala" - Savage Sword 44 ![]() "The Hill of Horror" - Savage Sword 95
"The Country of the Knife" - Savage Sword 11
"One Night in the Maul" - Savage Sword 99
"When a God Lives" - Savage Sword 100 (!)
"The Haunters of Castle Crimson" - Savage Sword 12
"The Fangs of the Serpent" - Savage Sword 65
"Dominion of the Bat" - Savage Sword 76
"The Blood of the Gods" - Savage Sword 28
This is the end of Conan's Zuagir period. "The Slithering Shadow" - Savage Sword 20 "Drums of Tombalku" - Savage Sword 21 ![]() "Escape from the Temple" - Savage Sword 87
"The Devil in Iron" - Savage Sword 15 The Flame Knife - Savage Sword 31 - 32 "The Daughter of the God King" - Savage Sword 85
"Revenge of the Sorcerer" - Savage Sword 86
"The People of the Black Circle" - Savage Sword 16 - 19 "Black Cloaks of Ophir" - Savage Sword 68
Here is the beginning of Conan's third pirate period, this time with the Barachans. "The Gem in the Tower" - Savage Sword 45 "The Pool of the Black One" - Savage Sword 22 - 23 "Plunder of Death Island" - Savage Sword 67
"The Changeling Quest" - Savage Sword 73
![]() "The Temple of the Twelve-Eyed Thing" - Savage Sword 75
"The Demon in the Dark" - Savage Sword 82 - 83
"The Jeweled Bird" - Savage Sword 92
"A Dream of Blood" - Savage Sword 40
"The Quest for the Cobra Crown" - Savage Sword 41
"The Devil-Tree of Gamburu" - Savage Sword 42
"King Thoth-Amon" - Savage Sword 43
"The Informer" - Savage Sword 99
"Red Nails" - Savage Tales of Conan 2 - 3 "Jewels of Gwahlur" - Savage Sword 25 "The Ivory Goddess" - Savage Sword 60 Here is the end of Conan's Barachan pirate episodes. Next, we see a few wandering stories before his time as an Aquilonian scout. ![]() "The Armor of Zuulda Thaal" - Savage Sword 87
"Lady of the Silver Snows" - Savage Sword 74
"The Night of the Dark God" - Savage Tales of Conan 4
Here is the beginning of Conan's time in Aquilonia. First as a scout, then as king. "Beyond the Black River" - Savage Sword 26 - 27 "The Dark Stranger" - Savage Sword 88
"Moon of Blood" - Savage Sword 46 "The Treasure of Tranicos" - Savage Sword 47 - 48 "When Madness Wears the Crown" - Savage Sword 49
"When Madness Wears the Crown" - Savage Sword 50
"Satyrs' Blood" - Savage Sword 51
"The Crown and the Carnage" - Savage Sword 52
"Wolves Beyond the Border" - Savage Sword 59 "The Phoenix on the Sword" "The Scarlet Citadel" - Savage Sword 30 The Hour of the Dragon - Savage Sword 8 - 10 The Return of Conan - King Conan 5 - 8 Here is the end of Conan's young kingship and we see a time jump of around 10 years past the birth of his children. "The Witch of the Mists" - King Conan 1 "Challenge" - Savage Sword 93
![]() "Black Sphinx of Nebthu" - King Conan 2 "Red Moon of Zembabwei" - King Conan 3 "Shadows in the Skull" - King Conan 4 Conan of the Isles "Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian" - Savage Sword 8 "People of the Dark" - Savage Sword 6
Stories that were impossible to placeThere were a few stories told in Savage Sword that were just completely impossible to place. Unless I'm really missing something, they don't contain any contextual clues: Conan doesn't seem specifically young or old, there are no lines that indicate where the story takes place geographically, and there are no characters, items, or skills that give away a general time in Conan's life. Those are as follows: "The Lady of the Tower" - Savage Sword 98
"The Gift" - Savage Sword 100
I wrote in my little "Welcome" post this past summer that I wasn't sure how long it would take me to read every Conan story or if I would even finish, but finish I did, and it feels to me like it went pretty fast. Part of me is sad about that: I love middle chapters where you're deep into an adventure but still have a lot to go. Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, Temple of Doom... I guess I'd sort of like to live forever somewhere around "The People of the Black Circle" if I could. But here I am at the end of reading 45 short stories, one novella, three novels, one essay, two poems, and a shitload of comics in between (130 stories in the original Savage Sword and 5 in the relaunched title, with 26 in Marvel's Conan the Barbarian and 12 in Titan's) that basically comprise my own Conan headcanon. I also got to read several metatextual books on Robert E. Howard, Weird Tales, and their satellites, interview writer Jim Zub and talk to essayist Jeff Shanks, all of which were really great experiences. Mainly, I read every shred of Conan the Barbarian material written by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, Bjorn Nyberg, Catherine Crook de Camp, and a few other assorted authors. So where am I at with all of this? Well, I've consistently tired to avoid hagiography when writing about Howard. I find it trite when people hold up writers, especially ones as flawed and commercially-minded as Robert Ervin Howard, to be unassailable gods of their craft. While I think I did a decent job of not writing that way throughout this chronology, I have to admit that the best stories of this bunch really are those written by Howard. When I ranked all the original Howard material, then all the stuff that Howard wrote that may have also been edited or revised by someone else, and then just every story I read, the narratives written by anyone else didn't even crack the top ten. To be far, the bottom two stories also belong to ol' Bobby Howard. I kind of feel like I've read an incredible epic: a life chockfull of adventure. While I used to say that I didn't care so much for Conan as a character and really just wanted to ride shotgun on his adventures, I've reached a much deeper appreciation for the Cimmerian himself and the themes of these books. Conan is not a simple character despite what a shallow reading might suggest. In reading The Dark Barbarian by Don Herron, I came across a quote from John D. Clark quipping: "Don't look for hidden philosophical meanings or intellectual puzzles in the yarns- they aren't there." L. Sprague de Camp agreed with him. I, decidedly, don't. I felt the tension in that continuing battle between the savage simplicity of barbarism and the complexities of civilization much more deeply after reading all this material. These books can be throwaway adventure fare, but at their best, they do have worthwhile messages and something you can really connect with. Issues to resolve with the chronologyAfter trying to place every Conan story on a linear timeline, there are still some issues I think I need to address. The first is my methodology- I decided to do this for fun, so I wanted a roadmap to follow, and I'm left wondering how my chronology would look different if I had simply read the stories in publication order without using a pre-existing chronology as a template. However, like I said, this was mostly for fun, so it was never a scientific endeavor. There are still a few stories that present issues, as well. I'd like to clear those up here. I've deleted my "Progress" page on this site and combined everything into the page just as "The Chronology" now. I've re-ordered everything into where I think it goes chronologically, and I broke up and color-coded different periods of Conan's life just for easier viewing. That full PDF is down below for your viewing. As I look at my finalized chronology, I feel like it mirrors both Joe Marek's and Dale Rippke's in a few ways. Here are the big takeaways: 1. "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" is the first Conan story. |
21. The Vale of Lost Women More like "The Birth of a Hyborian Nation," amirite? This story's hideous racism is impossible to ignore, and it's not like it has a story at its core that would be that good if you could somehow strip the plot to its studs. The racism is essentially the entire point here. It's not compelling, and it deserves to be lost somewhere in the catacombs beneath a Stygian pyramid. |
20. Shadows in Zamboula (AKA "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula") This is the other of Howard's unforgivably racist Conan tales. This one edges out "The Vale of Lost Women" simply by having some moments of intrigue before Howard's prejudice sets in, and it has a slightly better villain in Baal-Pteor than a few other Conan stories. I also think it's the more interesting of the two, giving me a lot more to write about when I read it. Still, it's not enough to save the thing. In these worst stories, Howard's plotting and characterization seriously suffer from his poisonous beliefs. |
19. Shadows in the Moonlight (AKA "Iron Shadows in the Moon") It's not like there's anything wrong with "Iron Shadows in the Moon" (which I've taken to referring to this story as... it's a much better title than the one it was given at publishing), it's just that this story ultimately feels much more generic than most Hyborian narratives. The lost city Conan encounters, his one-off companion in Olivia, the monsters he fights, they all just feel a little uninspired. I noted in my entry about this story that Howard probably wrote this one for a paycheck and was playing to the market rather than trying to come up with something really solid, so I wonder if he would also consider it to not be his best work. |
18. Drums of Tombalku "Drums of Tombalku" is one of the fragments that Howard left behind and was ultimately finished by L. Sprague de Camp 30 years later. I honestly don't think that de Camp's revisions and additions do that much to improve this one. It really feels like a fragment, with some half-finished ideas that would later be fleshed out by stories like "The Slithering Shadow." It's so similar to that story that I really don't think this one should be considered canon to Conan's life, as it is almost entirely a retread of the ideas in "Slithering Shadow." It's not the worst. I really like the moment in which we see the horrifying god in Gazal, and it's interesting to spend an extended amount of time with characters other than Conan, but it's ultimately a much lesser story. |
17. The Slithering Shadow (AKA "Xuthal of the Dusk") "The Slithering Shadow" is marginally better than "Drums of Tombalku" and feels like the canon, more complete version of "Drums." This story's major contribution to Conan's journey is really the introduction of the Black Lotus flower and its hypnotic powder, which is a recurring element throughout the rest of Conan's stories. It's also perhaps the most completely beat-to-shit that we ever see Conan get, physically speaking, as he fights the titular slithering god-monster. I don't think it ultimately comes together that well, though. I'm probably in the minority here as I've read quite a few reviews that put this story up there with better ones, but it just didn't do a lot for me. |

16. A Witch Shall Be Born
For how iconic this story is, it's one of the most disjointed stories in the whole canon. There are certainly excellent aspects to it. I think the opening scene in which Salome and Taramis fight is pretty compelling. Olgerd Vladislav is a great foil for Conan. He acts like a slightly less charming, slightly less fair version of the Cimmerian and we see that it doesn't work out well for him most of the time. It's like a cautionary tale, showing us what Conan could have been if he was a little less heroic. Of course, the Tree of Death scene is an all-timer, maybe in the top 3 best individual scenes that Howard ever wrote, and even made it into the movie. However, I just don't think the rest of the story compares. The epistle in the middle feels random, like Howard couldn't figure out a way to bring the reader up to speed in a more elegant way. The ending recovers a little bit, but I've seen even just fans present ideas that feel more fleshed-out and tighter than what Howard wrote. "A Witch Shall Be Born" might be the Conan story that lives up to its potential the least.
For how iconic this story is, it's one of the most disjointed stories in the whole canon. There are certainly excellent aspects to it. I think the opening scene in which Salome and Taramis fight is pretty compelling. Olgerd Vladislav is a great foil for Conan. He acts like a slightly less charming, slightly less fair version of the Cimmerian and we see that it doesn't work out well for him most of the time. It's like a cautionary tale, showing us what Conan could have been if he was a little less heroic. Of course, the Tree of Death scene is an all-timer, maybe in the top 3 best individual scenes that Howard ever wrote, and even made it into the movie. However, I just don't think the rest of the story compares. The epistle in the middle feels random, like Howard couldn't figure out a way to bring the reader up to speed in a more elegant way. The ending recovers a little bit, but I've seen even just fans present ideas that feel more fleshed-out and tighter than what Howard wrote. "A Witch Shall Be Born" might be the Conan story that lives up to its potential the least.
15. Jewels of Gwahlur (AKA "The Servants of Bit-Yakin", "Teeth of Gwahlur") While I'm certainly not placing this story high in my rankings, I might be alone in placing it this high. I have rarely seen this story elicit more than a shrug of the shoulders from Conan fans, but I think it's a little better than that. Its opening scene features Conan climbing cliffs in the middle of a forest in order to get a map to a treasure that's being held onto by the bones of an ancient skeleton, propped in the wall so high that nobody can reach him. That fucks. I think a lot of this story just kind of scratches the Indiana Jones-style, pulpy adventure itch. There's a decent balance of tomb-raiding, fighting, traps, and angry gods, so I think it's a decently good time. |
14. The Pool of the Black One To me at least, "The Pool of the Black One" reads like a better version of "Iron Shadows in the Moon." There are more lost cities and weird, ancient races of people, but the magic of the titular pool is fun, and Conan's pirate companions are pretty entertaining as well. I feel Howard's writing to be more engaging here than the other stories to which it begs comparison. In a way, it feels like a classic fantasy story and like the Platonic ideal of a pulp adventure. |

13. The Devil in Iron
This story does what many others do, but it does them slightly better. There's a one-off woman companion for Conan named Octavia, and she's a much more enjoyable character than Olivia or Muriela. There's a thousand-year-old lost city, but it's got more going on than those in "The Pool of the Black One" or "Iron Shadows in the Moon." There are creepy wizard bad guys, but the setup is a little more unique and the stakes are more clear. It's also got a really banging introduction with a Yuetshi fisherman exploring the city of Xapur right before getting his shit rocked mysteriously. Howard's descriptions of the city of Dagon really do this story a service, too, as they're far more immersive than some of his other passages about lost cities. Conan sneaking around the city when he first arrives was full of intrigue and suspense.
This story does what many others do, but it does them slightly better. There's a one-off woman companion for Conan named Octavia, and she's a much more enjoyable character than Olivia or Muriela. There's a thousand-year-old lost city, but it's got more going on than those in "The Pool of the Black One" or "Iron Shadows in the Moon." There are creepy wizard bad guys, but the setup is a little more unique and the stakes are more clear. It's also got a really banging introduction with a Yuetshi fisherman exploring the city of Xapur right before getting his shit rocked mysteriously. Howard's descriptions of the city of Dagon really do this story a service, too, as they're far more immersive than some of his other passages about lost cities. Conan sneaking around the city when he first arrives was full of intrigue and suspense.

12. The God in the Bowl
Man, if not a lot happens in "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" as I argue below, even less actually happens in "The God in the Bowl." But I actually think that's pretty cool. Conan is cornered in a temple (that is also a museum?) by guards after the slaying of a prominent citizen and is essentially forced to talk his way out of his situation, which he's not very good at during this early point in his career. This story is unique, though. It's all paranoia and tension as we try to figure out the real way that Kallian Publico died. I wouldn't say that Robert E. Howard is ultimately a gifted detective story author, as it's pretty clear from the very beginning that Conan isn't the assailant and he leaves too-obvious clues as to who or what the murderer really is, but the story's good. It's really supported by its horrifying ending and is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe (I'm not even talking "Murders in the Rue Morgue" this time, I'm thinking more like "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" here) in how it finishes with a real bang. It's a fun time.
Man, if not a lot happens in "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" as I argue below, even less actually happens in "The God in the Bowl." But I actually think that's pretty cool. Conan is cornered in a temple (that is also a museum?) by guards after the slaying of a prominent citizen and is essentially forced to talk his way out of his situation, which he's not very good at during this early point in his career. This story is unique, though. It's all paranoia and tension as we try to figure out the real way that Kallian Publico died. I wouldn't say that Robert E. Howard is ultimately a gifted detective story author, as it's pretty clear from the very beginning that Conan isn't the assailant and he leaves too-obvious clues as to who or what the murderer really is, but the story's good. It's really supported by its horrifying ending and is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe (I'm not even talking "Murders in the Rue Morgue" this time, I'm thinking more like "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" here) in how it finishes with a real bang. It's a fun time.

11. The Frost-Giant's Daughter
I think I'm alone in putting this story so low. It's a good story! I like it! I just don't like it as much as some of the other ones to follow. Its opening on a bloody battlefield in which Conan and one other combatant are the only men standing is a pretty stellar way to start us off. The snowy wastes of Nordheim set this story apart from many of the others that more commonly are set in jungles, deserts, or at sea. Atali, the daughter in the title, is an interesting villain, too. It's not affecting my ranking, but there's lots of good art of this story. I'd say this is one of the simplest Conan stories in existence, at least in regards to plot construction. Not a ton actually happens, though it's an enjoyable, creative ride through Conan getting bewitched by a frost giant.
I think I'm alone in putting this story so low. It's a good story! I like it! I just don't like it as much as some of the other ones to follow. Its opening on a bloody battlefield in which Conan and one other combatant are the only men standing is a pretty stellar way to start us off. The snowy wastes of Nordheim set this story apart from many of the others that more commonly are set in jungles, deserts, or at sea. Atali, the daughter in the title, is an interesting villain, too. It's not affecting my ranking, but there's lots of good art of this story. I'd say this is one of the simplest Conan stories in existence, at least in regards to plot construction. Not a ton actually happens, though it's an enjoyable, creative ride through Conan getting bewitched by a frost giant.

10. The Hour of the Dragon (AKA "Conan the Conqueror")
This is without a doubt the most epic story in Conan's life. It takes us all over the map and has Conan fit himself back into the roles he's taken over the course of his career. He's once again a thief, a pirate, a commander, a king. It has a lot going for it like its really compelling villain and a great romp through an ancient Stygian pyramid's guts, but the story is a little hamstrung by being too long. It's four or five times longer than most Conan stories and it makes you realize that one thing Howard is very adept at usually is trimming the fat from his narratives. They're usually spartan to a fault. The pacing is a little off in this story as some characters disappear for chapters at a time, not to be mentioned for large lengths of the novel, only to be casually mentioned again many pages later. It's also a little held back by the fact that in the epic moment of the evil wizard's defeat, Conan isn't even there. The whole climax of the story takes place with one-off characters and Conan's like a mile away, unaware of any of it happening.
Similar to how "Drums of Tombalku" and "The Slithering Shadow" feel largely like retreads of one another, The Hour of the Dragon has certain times it mirrors "The Scarlet Citadel." Whereas "Scarlet Citadel" focuses more on Conan's capture and escape with an abbreviated battle at the end, Hour of the Dragon speeds through a capture and escape to focus on the military campaign afterward. It's a good story, but its faults keep it from being one of the best.
This is without a doubt the most epic story in Conan's life. It takes us all over the map and has Conan fit himself back into the roles he's taken over the course of his career. He's once again a thief, a pirate, a commander, a king. It has a lot going for it like its really compelling villain and a great romp through an ancient Stygian pyramid's guts, but the story is a little hamstrung by being too long. It's four or five times longer than most Conan stories and it makes you realize that one thing Howard is very adept at usually is trimming the fat from his narratives. They're usually spartan to a fault. The pacing is a little off in this story as some characters disappear for chapters at a time, not to be mentioned for large lengths of the novel, only to be casually mentioned again many pages later. It's also a little held back by the fact that in the epic moment of the evil wizard's defeat, Conan isn't even there. The whole climax of the story takes place with one-off characters and Conan's like a mile away, unaware of any of it happening.
Similar to how "Drums of Tombalku" and "The Slithering Shadow" feel largely like retreads of one another, The Hour of the Dragon has certain times it mirrors "The Scarlet Citadel." Whereas "Scarlet Citadel" focuses more on Conan's capture and escape with an abbreviated battle at the end, Hour of the Dragon speeds through a capture and escape to focus on the military campaign afterward. It's a good story, but its faults keep it from being one of the best.
9. The Phoenix on the Sword In the very first Conan story ever published, Howard got it right. "The Phoenix on the Sword" is an excellent story full of action and magic, even as it's mostly confined to one location. King Conan has lost none of his adventuresome spirit. Seeing him defend himself in his chambers against would-be assassins while only half armored was a great scene. I think the high point of this story is his vision of Epemitreus the Sage, which we later learn transported Conan to an ancient tomb underneath Mount Golamira in Gunderland. It seems as though the gods really do favor Conan. Thoth-Amon, Conan's archenemy, makes a great villain in this story and the narrative even has some interesting themes about the nature of power and servitude that make this one interesting to discuss as well as to read. |
8. The Scarlet Citadel "The Scarlet Citadel" features some of Howard's best writing ever. His descriptions in the mad scientist hallways below the citadel of the title are an absolute blast to read through. While a lot of Conan stories are pretty predictable and even tropey (at least for today's reader), I never knew what horrors would be around the next corner in this tale. For me, this story does most things better than its similarly-plotted big brother The Hour of the Dragon. It gets the fantasy and horror right, keeping things brief, and ultimately making for a killer story of capture and escape. It's got so much going for it: a great villain, an unpredictable wizard, political intrigue, horror, action, fantasy! |

7. The People of the Black Circle
From this placement on, every single one of these stories is a solid five-star ripper. I might even have to change a few of the placements depending on how I'm feeling day-to-day, but they're all ultimately just about everything you could ask for from a fantasy story.
"The People of the Black Circle" is phenomenal. Like The Hour of the Dragon, its scope is appropriately epic. It takes us from the cities of Vendhya (which we've never had the privilege of spending time in yet) into the Himelian Mountains. Conan is fun and heroic throughout this adventure which takes us from one action scene to another with little wait time- the pacing is excellent. What really pushes it into top-tier territory is its climactic battle between Conan and the wizards of the Black Circle on Mount Yimsha. There are so many great moments in this extended battle that are so much fun to read, like when the wizards send evil bubbles after Conan's crew, or when they're escaping and have to be careful of where they breathe because of incantations that eliminate air in certain spots. As an adventure story, it's breathless, and you'll feel like you've been away from your world for about a month once you put it down. Excellent escapism.
From this placement on, every single one of these stories is a solid five-star ripper. I might even have to change a few of the placements depending on how I'm feeling day-to-day, but they're all ultimately just about everything you could ask for from a fantasy story.
"The People of the Black Circle" is phenomenal. Like The Hour of the Dragon, its scope is appropriately epic. It takes us from the cities of Vendhya (which we've never had the privilege of spending time in yet) into the Himelian Mountains. Conan is fun and heroic throughout this adventure which takes us from one action scene to another with little wait time- the pacing is excellent. What really pushes it into top-tier territory is its climactic battle between Conan and the wizards of the Black Circle on Mount Yimsha. There are so many great moments in this extended battle that are so much fun to read, like when the wizards send evil bubbles after Conan's crew, or when they're escaping and have to be careful of where they breathe because of incantations that eliminate air in certain spots. As an adventure story, it's breathless, and you'll feel like you've been away from your world for about a month once you put it down. Excellent escapism.
6. Rogues in the House I might be one of the few people to put "Rogues in the House" this high. I think it's earned, though. "Rogues" is perhaps the funniest story in the Conan canon, with some of the best characters we ever get to spend time with. Conan's stuck with the Red Priest Nabonidus and the young aristocrat Murilo and their time together does make for a fun adventure that's delivered in a fresh, tight package. It's so seldom that Howard lets colorful characters really bounce off one another, but he does it here well. There are imaginative traps and gadgets all through this story that make for a very entertaining time. Conan's climactic battle with the subhuman servant Thak led to so much iconic art for a reason. While all of the thief stories are pretty good, this is almost the best of the bunch. |

5. Queen of the Black Coast
"Queen of the Black Coast" has a lot of firsts in it. It's the first story in which we see Conan at sea, the first in which he has a love interest on equal footing, it's the first time we go really far south on the Hyborian map. As I noted in my post on the story, I still think Everett F. Blieler was on to something when he said "Queen of the Black Coast" was "probably the best of the Conan stories, perhaps because it is the only one based on another emotion than lust, greed, or hatred." Bêlit is such an awesome foil for Conan. Several other Robert E. Howard characters have gotten spinoffs in the following decades, and Bêlit is one of the only ones that I think I would like to continue her adventures with.
This story is supported by the smaller moments: a conversation between Bêlit and Conan is its heart. We so seldom get to see Conan open up to someone of his own free will that it's really charming. Howard does some of his best writing in this story, and it makes it an undisputed classic.
"Queen of the Black Coast" has a lot of firsts in it. It's the first story in which we see Conan at sea, the first in which he has a love interest on equal footing, it's the first time we go really far south on the Hyborian map. As I noted in my post on the story, I still think Everett F. Blieler was on to something when he said "Queen of the Black Coast" was "probably the best of the Conan stories, perhaps because it is the only one based on another emotion than lust, greed, or hatred." Bêlit is such an awesome foil for Conan. Several other Robert E. Howard characters have gotten spinoffs in the following decades, and Bêlit is one of the only ones that I think I would like to continue her adventures with.
This story is supported by the smaller moments: a conversation between Bêlit and Conan is its heart. We so seldom get to see Conan open up to someone of his own free will that it's really charming. Howard does some of his best writing in this story, and it makes it an undisputed classic.

4. Red Nails
"Red Nails" feels like a tour de force in speculative fiction for Howard. The central pillar of his whole personal philosophy is the battle between civilization and barbarism, and Hoard takes a reliance on civilization to its natural endpoint here. He always says that barbarism beats civilization every time, and he makes a great case for that idea here. We see a decaying culture that has hobbled along for too long, unnatural in most ways, threatening to destroy itself at any minute. The cities and people he creates in this story are indelible not only for their entertainment but for the philosophical conversations they inspire. It has a fun one-off mate for Conan with Valeria, whose entrance kicks the story off right. There's little padding in this one as Conan and Valeria are introduced constantly to confounding and crazy characters, locations, and situations.
In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, Howard got it exactly right: "Sent a three-part serial to Wright yesterday: 'Red Nails,' which I devoutly hope he'll like. After Conan yarn, and the grimmest, bloodiest, and most merciless story of the series so far. Too much raw meat, maybe, but I merely portrayed what I honestly believe would be the reactions of certain types of people in the situations on which the plot of the story hung..." It's a great story. As the last Conan story to hit the page before Howard's suicide, it was an excellent final hurrah.
"Red Nails" feels like a tour de force in speculative fiction for Howard. The central pillar of his whole personal philosophy is the battle between civilization and barbarism, and Hoard takes a reliance on civilization to its natural endpoint here. He always says that barbarism beats civilization every time, and he makes a great case for that idea here. We see a decaying culture that has hobbled along for too long, unnatural in most ways, threatening to destroy itself at any minute. The cities and people he creates in this story are indelible not only for their entertainment but for the philosophical conversations they inspire. It has a fun one-off mate for Conan with Valeria, whose entrance kicks the story off right. There's little padding in this one as Conan and Valeria are introduced constantly to confounding and crazy characters, locations, and situations.
In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, Howard got it exactly right: "Sent a three-part serial to Wright yesterday: 'Red Nails,' which I devoutly hope he'll like. After Conan yarn, and the grimmest, bloodiest, and most merciless story of the series so far. Too much raw meat, maybe, but I merely portrayed what I honestly believe would be the reactions of certain types of people in the situations on which the plot of the story hung..." It's a great story. As the last Conan story to hit the page before Howard's suicide, it was an excellent final hurrah.

3. Beyond the Black River
I wrote in my post about this story that it's probably the most philosophically-rich of all Howard's Conan stories, so I'll try to not just repeat myself here. "Beyond the Black River" is a "weird western" that makes it super unique for Conan. Transporting the American frontier to the Hyborian Age allows Howard to play with all kinds of tropes in new ways. It comprises a perfect pair when teamed up with "Red Nails."
The story is action-packed, sure, but I think the thing that makes it so excellent is Conan's new friends Balthus and Slasher. I happen to really like when Conan gets paired up with someone for a story. Sometimes he's in a tenuous pact with a would-be enemy. Sometimes he's rescuing a damsel in distress. But here, Conan is paired up with a prairie kid who seems much like a young version of Conan himself, as well as the loyal dog Slasher. There's a certain wide-eyed purity to Balthus and Slasher that gives the story a fun lightness, and the plotting is some of Howard's best ever.
On certain days, I think of "Beyond the Black River" as my personal favorite Conan story, but I think it's probably more appropriately ranked here.
I wrote in my post about this story that it's probably the most philosophically-rich of all Howard's Conan stories, so I'll try to not just repeat myself here. "Beyond the Black River" is a "weird western" that makes it super unique for Conan. Transporting the American frontier to the Hyborian Age allows Howard to play with all kinds of tropes in new ways. It comprises a perfect pair when teamed up with "Red Nails."
The story is action-packed, sure, but I think the thing that makes it so excellent is Conan's new friends Balthus and Slasher. I happen to really like when Conan gets paired up with someone for a story. Sometimes he's in a tenuous pact with a would-be enemy. Sometimes he's rescuing a damsel in distress. But here, Conan is paired up with a prairie kid who seems much like a young version of Conan himself, as well as the loyal dog Slasher. There's a certain wide-eyed purity to Balthus and Slasher that gives the story a fun lightness, and the plotting is some of Howard's best ever.
On certain days, I think of "Beyond the Black River" as my personal favorite Conan story, but I think it's probably more appropriately ranked here.

2. Black Colossus
Eat your heart out, The Hour of the Dragon. This is what a Conan epic can truly be. This one stands up there with other all-timers of fantasy fiction like The Lord of the Rings and shows why Robert E. Howard is the greatest sword-and-sorcery author of all time. "Black Colossus" opens with one of the best openings in any of Conan's stories and never lets up once it introduces everyone's favorite barbarian. It's a huge turning point in Conan's life as he begins to step away from isolated adventures and commands hordes of soldiers for the first time, defending a country against an evil sorcerer. But this story's greatest strength isn't it's plotting. Every word of Howard's prose here pulses with life. His descriptions shimmer on the page so much that it becomes the most engrossing writing he would ever do.
There's really a little bit of everything in this story. Tomb-raiding, military campaigns, politicking, evil wizards, creepy monsters... what more could you ever want? The battles are cinematic to a point that I'm dying to see this get adapted to the big screen, and I don't usually desire filmed adaptions of books or comics very much. If you haven't read this story and you have even the slightest interest in Conan, close this website and go read it now.
Eat your heart out, The Hour of the Dragon. This is what a Conan epic can truly be. This one stands up there with other all-timers of fantasy fiction like The Lord of the Rings and shows why Robert E. Howard is the greatest sword-and-sorcery author of all time. "Black Colossus" opens with one of the best openings in any of Conan's stories and never lets up once it introduces everyone's favorite barbarian. It's a huge turning point in Conan's life as he begins to step away from isolated adventures and commands hordes of soldiers for the first time, defending a country against an evil sorcerer. But this story's greatest strength isn't it's plotting. Every word of Howard's prose here pulses with life. His descriptions shimmer on the page so much that it becomes the most engrossing writing he would ever do.
There's really a little bit of everything in this story. Tomb-raiding, military campaigns, politicking, evil wizards, creepy monsters... what more could you ever want? The battles are cinematic to a point that I'm dying to see this get adapted to the big screen, and I don't usually desire filmed adaptions of books or comics very much. If you haven't read this story and you have even the slightest interest in Conan, close this website and go read it now.

1. The Tower of the Elephant
I'm not usually your escapism guy. I really like talking about themes of stories and how they're constructed and trying to figure out what they mean on a human level. But every now and then, there's escapist fiction that is just so fucking good that you don't even have time to stop and read between the lines because the lines themselves are so engrossing. These are the kinds of stories that make you want to live in another time, on another world, and completely detach yourself from reality. This is the kind of story that "The Tower of the Elephant" is.
At one of the earliest points in Conan's life, he's not the large, invincible superhero we'll see him become later, so it's easier to cast yourself as Conan as you go on a brief but engrossing adventure with him. The Zamorian City of Thieves is an excellent setting- there's danger, but also the promise of gold around every corner. The tower of the elephant itself is such a great location too, completely inundated with monsters and guards and animals, all the while having this mysteriously smooth exterior that promises so much on the inside. It never disappoints.
Yag-Kosha, the ancient elephant alien, is a wonderful twist toward the end of the story and whisks you even further into escapism. It's full of pathos and imagination that you don't even mind when the tower falls and Conan walks away empty-handed. There's nothing else quite this good that Howard put to paper. It's what all adventure stories could aspire to.
I'm not usually your escapism guy. I really like talking about themes of stories and how they're constructed and trying to figure out what they mean on a human level. But every now and then, there's escapist fiction that is just so fucking good that you don't even have time to stop and read between the lines because the lines themselves are so engrossing. These are the kinds of stories that make you want to live in another time, on another world, and completely detach yourself from reality. This is the kind of story that "The Tower of the Elephant" is.
At one of the earliest points in Conan's life, he's not the large, invincible superhero we'll see him become later, so it's easier to cast yourself as Conan as you go on a brief but engrossing adventure with him. The Zamorian City of Thieves is an excellent setting- there's danger, but also the promise of gold around every corner. The tower of the elephant itself is such a great location too, completely inundated with monsters and guards and animals, all the while having this mysteriously smooth exterior that promises so much on the inside. It never disappoints.
Yag-Kosha, the ancient elephant alien, is a wonderful twist toward the end of the story and whisks you even further into escapism. It's full of pathos and imagination that you don't even mind when the tower falls and Conan walks away empty-handed. There's nothing else quite this good that Howard put to paper. It's what all adventure stories could aspire to.
Ranking Howard's original Conan stories PLUS the additions
Below is my ranking of not only REH's original Conan stories, but also those that were edited or finished by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. The new additions I have added their own short paragraphs to.
30. The Vale of Lost Women
29. Shadows in Zamboula
28. Wolves Beyond the Border
"Wolves Beyond the Border" just wasn't that compelling. I went in hoping that it would be interesting seeing the Hyborian Age from a more mortal perspective, but we actually get that fairly frequently in small bursts, so this story felt very disposable.
27. Iron Shadows in the Moon
26. The Hand of Nergal
"The Hand of Nergal" is just lacking in anything making it great. It was entertaining enough, but feels like a very skippable chapter in Conan's life, even though it's his first chapter as a Turanian mercenary. It began its life in the 1930s as a Conan story, but it was unfinished at the time of Howard's death, so Lin Carter finished it in the 60s. As I noted in my post about this story, some of the prose is a little weird and random, too. Ultimately, it's just okay.
25. Drums of Tombalku
24. Xuthal of the Dusk
23. A Witch Shall Be Born
22. Jewels of Gwahlur
21. Hawks Over Shem
I liked "Hawks Over Shem," but this story frankly felt a little different, and not in a good way, like how "Rogues in the House" or "Beyond the Black River" stand out. Unlike the 3 other stories REH published without Conan that de Camp and Carter would later write Conan into, this one is the one where you really feel that. I know I'm more of a fan of those three others than most, but I feel like it's because the others blended quite a bit better. There are fewer Howard fingerprints on this story in my estimation.
20. The Pool of the Black One
19. The Devil in Iron
18. The Snout in the Dark
"The Snout in the Dark" is a story that I felt was underrated when I finished it, but have gradually forgotten what I liked so much about it. I do think that it's better than most people give it credit for (nobody ever talks about this story), but somehow feels more like a de Camp / Carter creation than a Robert E. Howard original. It was based on an untitled fragment of Howard's, but I'm wondering how much Howard actually wrote and how much was added by the later collaborators.
17. The God in the Bowl
16. The Frost-Giant's Daughter
15. The Hour of the Dragon
14. The Flame Knife
The Flame Knife is really fun. It's got a good sense of adventure to it and takes us to parts of the Hyborian world we hadn't ever been to before. It's definitely helped by bringing back Olgerd Vladislav, who might be second or third in line to the title of Conan's arch-nemesis.
13. The Hall of the Dead
I really dig "The Hall of the Dead." There's so much fun to be had with the giant slug creature, the ancient city of Larsha is really fun, and the hall of the dead itself is phenomenally creepy. Conan's single-serving friend Nestor is a fun addition to the story and I'm glad to see that he makes it out alive since most of Conan's companions meet their ends in the stories in which they're introduced. This one deserves more recognition than it gets.
12. The Blood-Stained God
What a fun tomb-plunderer. I don't get why more people don't like this story. The 1930s Afghanistan setting of the original "Trail of the Blood-Stained God" transfers perfectly to the Hyborian Age. Additionally, the actual temple of the blood-stained god makes for an unpredictable ending, as Conan has to think his way out of a trap instead of just burying his sword in everyone's neck. It's tons of fun!
11. The Road of the Eagles
Do not @ me for putting this one so high. This story is great. Honestly, the castle nestled in the mountains with its sheer walls and the one, treacherous path to it is one of the best story conceits that Howard ever dreamed up. It's not incredibly thematically-rich or anything, but it's a hell of a good time and very imaginative.
10. The Phoenix on the Sword
9. The Scarlet Citadel
8. The Treasure of Tranicos (AKA "The Black Stranger")
"The Treasure of Tranicos" followed kind of a strange path to get where it sits now. It began as "The Black Stranger," a Conan story. When it got rejected for publication, it was re-written to be just a pirate story. When that also got rejected, it was shelved. de Camp re-introduced Conan to it and retitled it to "The Treasure of Tranicos" and we should all be so glad he did. This story rocks. It's got some of the tightest plotting Howard ever did, some truly wonderful characterization scenes, and excellent stakes. The fact that there are so many competing interests working together toward a goal makes it so that you always feel someone is about to betray another. It's definitely the best L. Sprague de Camp or Lin Carter-influenced addition to the canon.
7. The People of the Black Circle
6. Rogues in the House
5. Queen of the Black Coast
4. Red Nails
3. Beyond the Black River
2. Black Colossus
1. The Tower of the Elephant
I always have fun ranking things. Let me know your own rankings in the comments if you've got them! At the very least, what are your own top 5?
29. Shadows in Zamboula
28. Wolves Beyond the Border
"Wolves Beyond the Border" just wasn't that compelling. I went in hoping that it would be interesting seeing the Hyborian Age from a more mortal perspective, but we actually get that fairly frequently in small bursts, so this story felt very disposable.
27. Iron Shadows in the Moon
26. The Hand of Nergal
"The Hand of Nergal" is just lacking in anything making it great. It was entertaining enough, but feels like a very skippable chapter in Conan's life, even though it's his first chapter as a Turanian mercenary. It began its life in the 1930s as a Conan story, but it was unfinished at the time of Howard's death, so Lin Carter finished it in the 60s. As I noted in my post about this story, some of the prose is a little weird and random, too. Ultimately, it's just okay.
25. Drums of Tombalku
24. Xuthal of the Dusk
23. A Witch Shall Be Born
22. Jewels of Gwahlur
21. Hawks Over Shem
I liked "Hawks Over Shem," but this story frankly felt a little different, and not in a good way, like how "Rogues in the House" or "Beyond the Black River" stand out. Unlike the 3 other stories REH published without Conan that de Camp and Carter would later write Conan into, this one is the one where you really feel that. I know I'm more of a fan of those three others than most, but I feel like it's because the others blended quite a bit better. There are fewer Howard fingerprints on this story in my estimation.
20. The Pool of the Black One
19. The Devil in Iron
18. The Snout in the Dark
"The Snout in the Dark" is a story that I felt was underrated when I finished it, but have gradually forgotten what I liked so much about it. I do think that it's better than most people give it credit for (nobody ever talks about this story), but somehow feels more like a de Camp / Carter creation than a Robert E. Howard original. It was based on an untitled fragment of Howard's, but I'm wondering how much Howard actually wrote and how much was added by the later collaborators.
17. The God in the Bowl
16. The Frost-Giant's Daughter
15. The Hour of the Dragon
14. The Flame Knife
The Flame Knife is really fun. It's got a good sense of adventure to it and takes us to parts of the Hyborian world we hadn't ever been to before. It's definitely helped by bringing back Olgerd Vladislav, who might be second or third in line to the title of Conan's arch-nemesis.
13. The Hall of the Dead
I really dig "The Hall of the Dead." There's so much fun to be had with the giant slug creature, the ancient city of Larsha is really fun, and the hall of the dead itself is phenomenally creepy. Conan's single-serving friend Nestor is a fun addition to the story and I'm glad to see that he makes it out alive since most of Conan's companions meet their ends in the stories in which they're introduced. This one deserves more recognition than it gets.
12. The Blood-Stained God
What a fun tomb-plunderer. I don't get why more people don't like this story. The 1930s Afghanistan setting of the original "Trail of the Blood-Stained God" transfers perfectly to the Hyborian Age. Additionally, the actual temple of the blood-stained god makes for an unpredictable ending, as Conan has to think his way out of a trap instead of just burying his sword in everyone's neck. It's tons of fun!
11. The Road of the Eagles
Do not @ me for putting this one so high. This story is great. Honestly, the castle nestled in the mountains with its sheer walls and the one, treacherous path to it is one of the best story conceits that Howard ever dreamed up. It's not incredibly thematically-rich or anything, but it's a hell of a good time and very imaginative.
10. The Phoenix on the Sword
9. The Scarlet Citadel
8. The Treasure of Tranicos (AKA "The Black Stranger")
"The Treasure of Tranicos" followed kind of a strange path to get where it sits now. It began as "The Black Stranger," a Conan story. When it got rejected for publication, it was re-written to be just a pirate story. When that also got rejected, it was shelved. de Camp re-introduced Conan to it and retitled it to "The Treasure of Tranicos" and we should all be so glad he did. This story rocks. It's got some of the tightest plotting Howard ever did, some truly wonderful characterization scenes, and excellent stakes. The fact that there are so many competing interests working together toward a goal makes it so that you always feel someone is about to betray another. It's definitely the best L. Sprague de Camp or Lin Carter-influenced addition to the canon.
7. The People of the Black Circle
6. Rogues in the House
5. Queen of the Black Coast
4. Red Nails
3. Beyond the Black River
2. Black Colossus
1. The Tower of the Elephant
I always have fun ranking things. Let me know your own rankings in the comments if you've got them! At the very least, what are your own top 5?

How does Conan of Cimmeria die? If you're an author envisioning the end, a better question might be: How do you kill Conan the fucking Barbarian? He's gone toe-to-toe with gods, wizards, monsters, the greatest warriors in all of history. He's been a thief, a reaver, a slayer, a pirate, an Avenger...
How do you possibly tell a story of his death that is satisfying? Well, maybe you don't tell one. Lin Carter didn't, and I think it was the right move. The Hyborian world entered ours through a poem, describing Conan's homeland of Cimmeria, and our final work in that universe is a poem as well: "Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian."
"Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian" is a decently good narrative poem (though not as good as most of Robert E. Howard's poetry) and while I'm not about to put it up there with Hughes and Coleridge, it does a decent enough job in that it acts as a sort of retrospective and final act for Conan, while avoiding the problem of competing with his greatest stories for a satisfying ending.
It was first published in 1972 in the zine The Howard Collector which was run by REH's publisher Glenn Lord. I first came across it in Savage Sword 1, which was printed in the Dark Horse omnis that I love so much.
How do you possibly tell a story of his death that is satisfying? Well, maybe you don't tell one. Lin Carter didn't, and I think it was the right move. The Hyborian world entered ours through a poem, describing Conan's homeland of Cimmeria, and our final work in that universe is a poem as well: "Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian."
"Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian" is a decently good narrative poem (though not as good as most of Robert E. Howard's poetry) and while I'm not about to put it up there with Hughes and Coleridge, it does a decent enough job in that it acts as a sort of retrospective and final act for Conan, while avoiding the problem of competing with his greatest stories for a satisfying ending.
It was first published in 1972 in the zine The Howard Collector which was run by REH's publisher Glenn Lord. I first came across it in Savage Sword 1, which was printed in the Dark Horse omnis that I love so much.
Throughout the poem, we get general references to the events of Conan's life. Since it was written in 1972 by one of the architects of the post-Howard Conan apparatus, I'm assuming that Carter considered all of the material he, L. Sprague de Camp, and Bjorn Nyberg had written to be canon, so I suppose it's looking back on all the Conan material up until that point, not just Howard's writing.
The first two stanzas refer pretty generally to Conan's adventures and how he lived life to the fullest, unconcerned with the difficulties that would have ended another, weaker, man's adventures. It gets a little more specific in the third stanza, as Conan's youth is recounted:
The first two stanzas refer pretty generally to Conan's adventures and how he lived life to the fullest, unconcerned with the difficulties that would have ended another, weaker, man's adventures. It gets a little more specific in the third stanza, as Conan's youth is recounted:
"A boy, from the savage north I came
To cities of silk and sin.
With torch and steel, in blood and flame,
I won what a man may win:"
Pretty much direct references to the first three chronological Conan stories that take place in the "savage north:" "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," "Legions of the Dead," and "The Thing in the Crypt," as well as the poem "Cimmeria."
The cities of "silk and sin" at the very least refer to Zamora's city of thieves in "The Tower of the Elephant," and probably places like Xuthal, Zamboula, Xuchotl, and Tarantia, seeing as he might mean silk and/or sin.
Stanza four alludes to some supporting characters in the whole saga.
The cities of "silk and sin" at the very least refer to Zamora's city of thieves in "The Tower of the Elephant," and probably places like Xuthal, Zamboula, Xuchotl, and Tarantia, seeing as he might mean silk and/or sin.
Stanza four alludes to some supporting characters in the whole saga.
"And there were foeman to fight and slay
And friends to love and trust:
And crowns to conquer and toss away
And lips to taste with lust:"
Foemen: Thoth-Amon, Olgerd Vladislav, Nahtohk, Xaltotun?
Friends: Juma, Prospero, Jamal, Balthus, Nestor?
Crowns: Aquilonia... that's it, right?
Lips: Belit's, Zenobia's, Valeria's, Yasmela's?
It does note in stanza five that many of the gems and gold crumble into "clods," which is a great inclusions seeing as many of the treasures Conan seeks either end up to be whole-cloth lies, Conan abandons them to accomplish another goal, or they literally crumble in his hands.
Friends: Juma, Prospero, Jamal, Balthus, Nestor?
Crowns: Aquilonia... that's it, right?
Lips: Belit's, Zenobia's, Valeria's, Yasmela's?
It does note in stanza five that many of the gems and gold crumble into "clods," which is a great inclusions seeing as many of the treasures Conan seeks either end up to be whole-cloth lies, Conan abandons them to accomplish another goal, or they literally crumble in his hands.
Within the poem, I really appreciate that Conan's devil-may-care attitude to death is in tact: he knows that it is all part of life, and he has eaten, he has slain, he is content to go into that good night, albeit not gently.
That brings me to the last line of the poem, which ends with an all-caps "The road which endeth HERE!" I really like that touch since it implies that Conan's going out with some fire. If something's taking him down, he's not going without a fight, whatever it may be.
Having now read all the Conan material I set out to read (and a whole heck of a lot more that I didn't), I'm going to start processing my placements in the timeline and where everything sits in my mind.
That brings me to the last line of the poem, which ends with an all-caps "The road which endeth HERE!" I really like that touch since it implies that Conan's going out with some fire. If something's taking him down, he's not going without a fight, whatever it may be.
Having now read all the Conan material I set out to read (and a whole heck of a lot more that I didn't), I'm going to start processing my placements in the timeline and where everything sits in my mind.
This is the last map of Conan's movements I'll be making. Check them all out over on the Maps page. As I make my final edits to the chronology, some of them will become out of date.
1. Conan begins "The Witch of the Mists" on a hunting trip in Gunderland with Conn and Prospero.
2. Following the kidnapped Conn, Conan heads into the Border Kingdoms. It takes him about three days to cross after which he enters Hyperborea at a very cool gate adorned with a mammoth skull. He heads to the city of Pohiola. The rest of the story, including Conan's reunification with Thoth-Amon, takes place there. I can't find any existing maps that place Pohiola, but I figure it can't be too far into Hyperborea because of Conan's time to get there only being three days.
3. Conan returns to Tarantia, capital of Aquilonia to raise his forces.
4. At the start of "Black Sphinx of Nebthu," Conan is said to lead his military south through Zingara, Argos, and Shem before entering Stygia and attacking the black sphinx in Nebthu.
5. In "Red Moon of Zembabwei," Conan leads the Aquilonian army southeast across the Black Kingdoms into Zembabwei, specifically to the ancient city of Old Zembabwei.
6. Conan marches even further south, to the southern coast of the world, where he finds the skull-shaped fortress of the serpent people. Here, in "Shadows in the Skull," he fights Thoth-Amon one last time on a beach nearby.
1. Conan begins "The Witch of the Mists" on a hunting trip in Gunderland with Conn and Prospero.
2. Following the kidnapped Conn, Conan heads into the Border Kingdoms. It takes him about three days to cross after which he enters Hyperborea at a very cool gate adorned with a mammoth skull. He heads to the city of Pohiola. The rest of the story, including Conan's reunification with Thoth-Amon, takes place there. I can't find any existing maps that place Pohiola, but I figure it can't be too far into Hyperborea because of Conan's time to get there only being three days.
3. Conan returns to Tarantia, capital of Aquilonia to raise his forces.
4. At the start of "Black Sphinx of Nebthu," Conan is said to lead his military south through Zingara, Argos, and Shem before entering Stygia and attacking the black sphinx in Nebthu.
5. In "Red Moon of Zembabwei," Conan leads the Aquilonian army southeast across the Black Kingdoms into Zembabwei, specifically to the ancient city of Old Zembabwei.
6. Conan marches even further south, to the southern coast of the world, where he finds the skull-shaped fortress of the serpent people. Here, in "Shadows in the Skull," he fights Thoth-Amon one last time on a beach nearby.
Author
Hey, I'm Dan. This is my project reading through the career of everyone's favorite sword-and-sorcery character, Conan the Cimmerian, in chronological order.
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