Amph The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian

Any true lover of science fiction and fantasy owes it to him, or herself to go back and read Robert E. Howard's original stories of this iconic character. For years this was next to impossible because of the lack of copyrights where Howard's stories were plaugerized, re-written, or his name simply stolen. But over the past two years they've been gathering together Howard's true work and releasing his excellent short stories and single novel about Conan the barbarian, thief, warrior, pirate, adventurer, and king.

 

I want to read the stories about him, but I'm really confused as to what books to buy.

 

This isn't a sale, but as I mentioned, there's a company that's been collecting all of Howard's real work, and printing them in order of release. In other words, the way that Conan occured to his creator. They've released three books so far:

The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian
The Bloody Crown of Conan
The Savage Sword of Conan

Anything else is just pretenders.

 

I first saw the Conan film many years ago. It was my first intro to the character, I knew nothing of Robert Howard. I came across his books in a used book store and RH became one of the authors who have spoiled me for good writing.

Although it is correct to say the film was based loosely on the books I think the film lives up to the legendary status of Conan. It's a brutal flick, a bit dark, and the music is epic.

If you can find the Steve Jackson Games supplement GURPS Conan it is a good piece of information on Conan and has a good rundown of the order of the books, and a great look at Conan's world. You don't even need to know anything about the GURPS game system to get anything out of it.

And of course if you run into Conan, you run into Frazetta:

[image=http://frazetta.ragnarok.no/images/frank_frazetta_thebarbarian.jpg]

Go ahead and open that badboy in a new window.

There is another popular piece of cover art that Frazetta painted as a serious work, but it has a joke attached. The secondary title is "Is that a snake in your loincloth or are you just happy to see me".

[image=http://www.craice.com.br/Frazetta/Frazetta_Conan_the_Usurper.jpg]

 

As much as I love Howard, he did get repetitive. Nearly every other story had Conan battling either a giant Snake, or a viscious ape-like creature.

 

...or a powerful wizard or lions. I know what you mean. I hope people are reading the current Conan comic book series. THAT is some good Conan stuff. Very good art and well done stories.

 

As soon as I'm finished with "The Magician's Nephew" I'm going to start in on that third collection of Howard stories.

 

I love stories from Connan's world. Robert E. Howard is a really good author.
The movie dissapointed me, but I love books and comics.

 

I recently read this book and it gave me a whole new appreciation of Conan, theres a lot more to him than the barbarian killing machine people think of when they hear about him. I like the first movie, but I'm not sure it entirely does him justice.

 

It's a great film for what it is, I think Howard would have been proud, but it's only one facet of the character. Had director John Milius been able to continue with his Conan Trilogy, then perhaps we would have seen more.

 

I think Milius mentioned that he not only wanted a trilogy but he also was hoping Arnold would come back to the character from time to time in the same way actors go through James Bond films. It could have been a life long saga of movies.

 

That would have been exellent. Unfortunately the belief is that Destroyer and Red Sonja pretty much killed all future Conan endeavers. Then again, if the Bat can survive Joel Schoemaker and resurect himself several years later, why not the future king of Aquilonia?

 

Conans too good a character not to be resurrected someday. Like Batman begins you just need people with a passion for the character to get things started.

 

The material is there. Someone just has to be able to translate Howard's passion to film. It can be done.

 

The current comic series is awesome, one of the best books on the market.

 

I just picked up #24 today. I knew nothing about the nude vs clothed cover. I have the non-nude cover, but juts for the sake of collection I'll go hunt down the nude cover.
The Tower Of The Elephant issues were great and spot on perfect. I have no idea when they are going to get to ti but I can't wait for People Of The Black Cirlce for the Master Of Yimsha. Evisceration anyone?

 

The third part Tower of the Elephant I was not keen on at all. The art just fell apart in my opinion. Normally, the comic has some of the best art around, period, but that time... not so much. It was so bad that the comic was almost unreadable.

Something I've noticed is that the Howard stories don't seem to be translating well into comics. The original stories in the series have almost always been on par, and in some cases better in my opinion.

 

Blasphemy!

 

I'm not meaning to say that their better than the original print versions: just that Howard's stories aren't translating as well as might be expected into comic form. The God in the Bowl, one of Howard's weaker stories, has been the strongest comic so far in my opinion.

 

I can't be the judge as I don't have the opportunity to collect comics anymore.

 

I finally started reading through the latest edition of Howard's collected works, The Savage Sword of Conan, only to learn that this is sadly the final volumn. He died about 10 months after completing the last story listed in the book and there is no record of any further story ideas or notes for Conan. I know this is from way back in 1939, but it still affected me.

 

A Short Biography of Robert E. Howard

 

Thank you so much for the link. I've seen most of that information before, but all the publications I've read have avoided talking about his suicide. It's tragic, but does answer a lot for me. The article has also inpired me to look beyond Conan and into some of Howard's other works.

 

I'm surprised that noone pointed out the link between the Conan movies and the theme of this website. Did anyone else notice that Thulsa Doom and Lord Vadar kinda sound the same?


That also made the first movie worthy of a sequel. Just not that sequel.

 

Here is a well done map of Conan's World I think you might like.

It comes from THIS PAGE which is a D20 RPG conversion site. There is an official D20 Conan rulebook so the stats might not be the same but it appears well researched. Clicking on the links to the stats pages also feature orginal artwork from Weird Tales, and the characters are given basic summaries of their part in the Conan Saga.