Conan or Clonan?

In this post, I am referring to the new Conan: The Barbarian movie. Let me state first that I have spent most of my summer reading, and in some cases re-reading, all things Robert E. Howard.

I've always been a fan of Conan, and I've been a peripheral fan of REH; however, it was within the past two years that I became a hard core REH fan.

My introduction to the character of Conan came from issues of Marvel Comic's The Savage Sword of Conan. These comics coupled with the "Arnan" movie drove me to a thirst for all things Conan that has lasted twenty years. As an adolescent, I devoured every Tor Conan paperback that I came across, gleefully innocent of the fact that most didn't match up to the real thing, and over the years, I have followed Conan in comic book form, traveling from Marvel to Dark Horse.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to become a REH fan, but it did. I read other things besides Conan, namely Kull and a few, odd Solomon Kane stories, but I never felt the need to dive into Howard's other creations. This changed with the recent Del Rey Robert E. Howard library series.

I bought them all as they came out, and read the Conan stories immediately. I must admit, I believe this is the first time I had ever read all of the Conan stories, I'm sure I had read most of them in one form or another - mostly various comics adaptions, but never all of them. My initial experience to the true Howard Conan stories was also through the Lancer editions edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Thus, I had never read un-edited Howard.

As I said, it was not until early this past spring that I began reading everything Howard that I could get my hands on. I bought all of the Del-Rey trade paper backs as they came out (minus The Horror Stories of REH, which I for some reason missed). It started because I was so impressed by the Solomon Kane stories that I immediately launched into the Kull stories, followed quickly by Bran Mak Morn, both "Best of" books, El Borak and sadly the last in the series "Historical Tales".

Wow. I am hooked. That being said, I finally found time to see the latest Conan movie at my local second-run-bargain theater. Even though I am now a solid REH enthusiast, I am not an REH Purist; meaning, there are REH fans that loath pastiche. It has been years since I've read any Conan pastiche (other than in comics, which I have read a mountain or two of), and while I am certain I most likely would not enjoy the Tor pastiche novels as much as pure REH, I do have fond memories of reading them. I will have to revisit them one day.

Even though I am not an REH Purist, I did not have high hopes for the new film. My feeling was that if it was better then Conan The Destroyer, or at least as good as "Arnan" The Barbarian (which I still enjoy watching to this day), I would be happy.

I left the theater happy with the $3 I spent on watching it. My son, who is neither an REH fan, nor a particularly big Conan fan, enjoyed it as well. Yes, I have problems with the overall plot, particularly, I had problems with the fact that for nearly two hours our heroes are dreading the bad guy completing and activating the mask. Spoiler Alert: Big Bad Guy does so, but the mask doesn't seem to do much of anything. It was akin to Sauron gaining the One Ring and after much dread, it just looks pretty on his finger.

There are other quibbles, Jason Mamoa has brown eyes, not blue, etc.. However, it was a fun movie. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough of a box office smash to warrant more Conan movies and that is sad. I can promise you this, it's better then, and truer to Howard's vision then the television show Conan the Adventurer, and the cartoon of the same name and don't even get me started on Conan and the Young Warriors.

Overall, three stars. It is not Conan, but is just more Clonan, but check your brain at the popcorn stand and enjoy.

Conan, Illustrated through the Ages

In anticipation of the new Conan movie being released in August of this year, my mind and free reading time has been occupied with the writings of Robert E. Howard. I have not been reading his Conan stories, per se; however, I did recently read his Kull stories and his Bran Mak Morn tales. Currently, I'm reading El Borak.

The character of Conan has always intrigued me, but (and here REH enthusiasts are free to hate me) my favorite media to enjoy Conan tales has always been in the medium of comics, be those stories directly REH inspired or not.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good Conan yarn written by the man himself, "Red Nails" and "The Tower of the Elephant" being two of

my favorites, but I'm quickly finding that REH's writing was more powerful with his other, lesser known characters versus with Conan. I believe this is because in Conan he found a marketable character that become more "bread and butter" for him rather then exploratory.

I did a quick search of Conan illustrations, and found it interesting to show case how the Barbarian has been depicted in illustrative interpretations throughout the years.

Pictured above is, as far as I know, the first professional attempt at illustrating the character of Conan. It is an interior illustration from the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales. Consequently, "The Phoenix on the Sword" was Howard's first Conan tale successfully sold (and was of course a re-write of the Kull tale "By This Ax I Rule"). The illustration above is by Jayem Wilcox. I don't know much about Jayem Wilcox. A quick Google search didn't turn up a whole lot, but (as far as I know) he goes down in history as the first artist to render a drawing of Howard's Conan character.

Howard's Conan tales were granted "issue cover status" nine times in Weird Tales. All nine covers were by fan favorite Margaret Brundage. Brundage was known (and favored) for her images depicting bondage and flagellation of women, her women being soft, with a doe like innocence, their faces contorted with fear from the situations Brundage depicts them in. I find her illustrations charged with an undercurrent of repressed sexuality.

Of the nine Conan covers she painted, only three prominently featured the Cimmerian. Those were the May 1934 issue ("Queen of the Black Coast"), August 1934 ("The Devil in Iron") and December 1935 ("The Hour of the Dragon).

So from 1932 to 1935, these were the depictions of the Cimmerian.

The next time Conan would grace the cover of a magazine was in August 1948, issue 8 of Avon Fantasy Reader ("Queen of the Black Coast") then again in October 1949, issue 10 of the same ("A Witch Shall be Born").

Avon Fantasy Reader (hereby referred to as AFR) was published from 1946 to 1952 and ran for 18 issues in total.

AFR published (reprinted actually) works by REH, HPL, C.L. Moore and A. Merritt just to name a few.

I could find no information regarding who illustrated the covers for these two issues. While I find that I prefer the depictions of the damsels in Brundage's illustrations, I find the depiction of Conan on much the same mark as first Wilcox and later Brundage depicted him.

I find the cover of issue 10 interesting as it features a Conan without a "shaggy mane". Conan as depicted here has a decidedly Romanesque look to him, which I also noticed in Jayme Wilcox's interior illustration for "The Phoenix on the Sword". On another side note, I do dig the "target" bra worn by the damsel on the cover of issue 10. It is a bit, mesmerizing.

In 1950, Conan would move from magazine covers to his first collected book editions, the

hardback editions published by Gnome Press from 1950 to 1957.

GP would published seven volumes, collecting together not only those stories which first saw light in Weird Tales but also included previously unpublished tales. It was with Gnome Press that L. Sprague de Camp would begin his habit of rewriting Howard tales to "improve" upon them.

It was also in the final volume of these editions, The Return of Conan (1957) that the first Conan pastiche was born, written by Bjorn Nyberg.

Five of the seven volumes had Conan depicted upon their covers. 1950's Conan the Conquerer (AKA, The Hour of the Dragon) featured a simple drawing of another Romanesque Cimmerian by John Forte. Forte was primarily a comics artist best known for his work on Legion of Super Heroes.

The Coming of Conan, 1953, was for me the most interesting interpretation of Conan to date. The art is by Frank Kelley Freas. Freas was a Hugo award winning artist. He did illustrations for books, magazines, album covers and even NASA (more of his art can be found here).

It wasn't until Lancer Books published Conan the Adventurer in 1966, that Frank Frazetta would paint his character defining images that would influence every artist that depicted Conan after him.