A Hero Misunderstood for Years: Who is Conan the Barbarian?

Conan is a fantasy literary character created by American author Robert Ervin Howard. He became widely known all over the world with his hugely successful comic book series and subsequent films. Howard wrote nearly two dozen "Conan the Cimmerian" adventures from 1932 to 1936.

Howard, who ended his career by shooting himself in the head in a vehicle in front of his house in 1936, at the age of thirty, is considered the creator of the Sword and Sorcery genre, which is considered a sub-branch of the style known as fantasy literature. There are commentators who have difficulty associating it with mainstream literature due to the pulp magazines in which it is published.

Conan the Barbarian (also known as Conan the Cimmerian) is a fictional sword and sorcery hero who originated in pulp magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, films (including Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer), television programs (animated and live-action), video games, and role-playing games. Robert E. Howard created the character in 1932 for a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales magazine.

Howard wrote nearly two dozen "Conan the Cimmerian" adventures from 1932 to 1936. After Robert Ervin Howard's tragic suicide in 1936, the Conan stories were published in book form in the 1950s. Howard's stories were rewritten by De Bjorn Nyberg in this series. It gained worldwide popularity in the 1960s with cover art by Frank Frazetta and stories by Nyberg. In 1970, Marvel, Stan Lee, and Roy Thomas decided to publish Conan as a comic book and began the "Conan The Barbarian" series in color. Roy Thomas's stories were drawn by a young Englishman named Barry Smith. The first issue was published in October 1970.

The character Conan is a fictional Chimerian warrior who lived 1200 years ago (in the era defined by Howard as Hyboria), 8000 years after the sinking of Atlantis. The Conan character in the comics is not perfect; He steals, gambles, and lies. However, although the character appears before the reader at different times as a barbarian, thief, mercenary, or king, he is always a warrior and adventurer.

It is known that Conan's creator, Robert E. Howard, was inspired by the great Mongol emperor Genghis Khan when creating this character. Because Conan, like Genghis Khan, set out to avenge his father. Conan's character resembles Genghis Khan with his warrior nature, stubbornness, cruelty, self-confidence, and passion for women.

Cinema

The Conan character was also adapted into a movie in 1982 under the name "Conan the Barbarian". After this film, directed by John Milius and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, and Max von Sydow, the Conan character became known worldwide, and the second film was shot by director Richard Fleischer in 1984 under the name "Conan the Destroyer". In the second movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the leading role again.

The following statement appears in the introduction to Conan's stories:

Know this, My Prince, that just after the surging oceans swallowed Atlantis and its magnificent cities, an era unlike any before had begun on Earth. In this age when the sons of Aryas were born, empires and civilizations on Earth were as scattered but distinct as the blue sparkles of the stars in the sky. It was around this time that Conan the Cimmerian arrived. This dark-haired, hawk-eyed brave man, who never let go of his sword from his steel-wristed hand, wanted to trample all empires under his sandaled feet.

The first hero of the Sword and Sorcery style is the Atlantean Kull. He first appears in the pages of Weird Tales in the Shadow Kingdom, a story about an attempted coup d'état involving mainly snake men nesting in secret spaces in the palace.

“Kull's serpent men invading Valusia are no more fantastical than Shakespeare's ghost-inhabited Elsinore, but who would label Hamlet 'Sword and Sorcery'?”

Conan vs. Aragorn

In many countries of the world, the two opposite poles of this genre are the stories of Conan of Cimmeria and The Lord of the Rings. Conan and his predecessor Kull are characters frequently referred to as the ancestors of the genre. Moreover, according to Lin Carter's report from Sprague De Camp, who met face to face with The Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien, this writer, an expert on Scandinavian history and languages, "quite liked" Conan.

To understand who Conan is - or who he is not - it is a very interesting and attractive idea to compare the Conan stories with The Lord of the Rings. According to Tolkien, power comes from nobility, and according to Howard, power comes from power. Here, the individual of a nation that has adopted a thousand-year-old aristocratic tradition is confronted with a naturalist who has broken the chains of tradition with the power of his arm and sword. While Strider—Aragorn—claims power on the basis of his royal descent, despite having wandered for centuries as a forest ranger, Conan claims power on the basis of the opposite, when he confronts the kings of Koth and Ophir, who dethroned him in a conspiracy:

“… Do you think that just because I am a barbarian, I would sell my kingdom and its people for my life and your filthy gold? Hah! How did you and that black-faced pig with you get your crowns? Your fathers endured war and suffering and presented you with their crowns on golden plates.—Except perhaps for poisoning a few of your brothers—you inherited without lifting a finger—for which I fought.

You can find many similar examples to explain the Howard - Tolkien contrast. You can also read this as pitting the American style against the aristocratic tradition of the British Empire or the United Kingdom.