Howard would go on to write a total of 17 Conan stories and novellas for Weird Tales, with the latter being serialized across multiple issues. Conan swore by a god named Crom, but didn't exactly worship him, because Crom was a colder, more distant god than that. Even when he became a king, as he did in that first 1932 story, it was through a combination of circumstance and his martial skill, never anything to do with birthright or inheritance. Also, whereas Kull hailed from Atlantis and had adventures on that mythical continent, Conan came from a place called Cimmeria, but never visited it in any of Howard's stories. Conan was always a wanderer, an outsider in the kingdoms where he found himself. The two characters were similar in many respects, although Conan was more interested in women. Let's follow those travels, and trace the history of an icon. Before long, it's always time to move on to the next adventure.Ĭonan the Barbarian, who originated both a character archetype and a style of fantasy fiction, has wandered over the years from prose to comic books to film and TV.
He has companions at times, and loves many women along the way, but he rarely gets too close to anyone.
He's a wanderer, a warrior, at times a criminal, and at times a king. He's also smarter than you might expect from watching him swing his bloody sword in his loincloth and horned helmet. He's big, strong, and skilled at fighting. Before Dungeons & Dragons, before He-Man or Thundarr or Claw the Unconquered, there was Conan the Barbarian.Ĭonan was created roughly a century ago by writer Robert E. That idea of the barbarian as a brutal but often heroic warrior, frequently with many weapons and few clothes, comes primarily from one character. Instead, we generally understand the barbarian as an archetype in fantasy fiction, or as a class in Dungeons & Dragons, which is almost the same thing. When we talk of barbarians these days, it's rarely in the context of the dismissive stereotype of less "civilized" cultures that the word once represented.
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