Stone Says: Conan Rules
Conan the Barbarian (also known as Conan the Cimmerian, from the name of his homeland, Cimmeria) is a fictional character often associated with sword & sorcery genre. He is perhaps the most famous fictional barbarian, and indeed one of the best known and most universally recognizable iconic figures in modern popular culture.
Created by Robert E. Howard in 1932 via a series of fantasy pulp stories sold to Weird Tales magazine, Conan has since appeared in books, comics, films, television and video games, contributing to popularity.
Conan the Barbarian is also the name of a Gnome Press collection of stories published in 1954, a comic published by Marvel Comics beginning in 1970, a film and its novelisation in 1982. Conan is a barbarian of the far north. He was born on a battlefield and is the son of a blacksmith. Conan matured quickly as a youth and, by age fifteen, he was already a respected warrior who had participated in the destruction of the Aquilonian outpost of Venarium. After its destruction, he was struck by wanderlust and began his adventures, encountering skulking monsters, evil wizards, tavern wenches and beautiful princesses.
More recently being pulished from Dark Horse Comics with great sucess. Dark Horse started their Conan run by re-printing the now classic issues from Marvel Comics. Right from the beginning Conan was an incredible comic book with such great talent in the comics field working on the title such as Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith (one of my fav’s), Gil Kane, John Buscema, & Neal Adams just to name a few. All the Marvel comics issues are now availble in trade paper back for a reasonable price.
The current ongoing series is simply amazing the feel the creative teams have put into the book from storytelling to the artwork makes this book just flow with the intencity of a raging river. I would expect no less with people such as Kurt Busiek, Greg Ruth, Cary Nord,P. Craig Russell & Timothy Truman bring us the further adventures of the most infamous barbarian of them all every month. Like most people at one time or another we’ve been pulled into the pages of a book and gotten lost in a story so amazing we feel like we’re one with the story. Conan is no different this series is one big long adventure from month to month the story never ends since it’s the life of one of the most popular characters in the world of fantasy.
Some poeople I’ve talked to liked some of the more main stream art work styles like that say in “Avengers” but once I convinced a few to give it a chance most of the “new readers” found like I did that sometimes the story makes the book not the art…ok we all like great art on the titles we love to read but the art is great here just a little different. The art here feels to the flow of Conan. So you might not want to make the leap to try a new book but trust me be like Mikey from the old Life cereal commercials and try it. Most of you really liked Lord of the Rings movies, Braveheart, & Highlander if you like any of these you’ll love the new Conan series so try and tell me if I’m right.
How did you first hear about Conan…to be honest the way most of us did growing up in the 70’s & 80’s Conan the Barbarian (1982) & Conan the Destroyer (1984). Conan was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Below is a list of DVD’s, TV, and Video games check them out.
There were three animated series both entitled Conan the Adventurer, as well as a second animated series entitled Conan and the Young Warriors.But it didn’t stop there years later we had (the hercules style) Conan: The Adventurer (Live-action TV series) was a low-budget television series loosely based on Conan. There have also been several video games based on the character from 1984 – 2007 the most recent being Age of Conan, a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) by Funcom, will be released. All in all Conan is a timeless character from the novels, magazines, comics, movies, television (animated & live action), computer games, role playing & card games. If you havn’t read Conan since you were younger then do yourself a favor and run to your nearest comic shop and grab some conan either the classic trades or the newer issues & mini-series…oh there are lots of those. Kick back read and enjoy Robert E. Howard made a world so easy to get lost in you may never want to return to civilazation again.
About Stone (also known as Bill): I never realized that I was a fanboy until I sold my comic book collection five times over, and then each time would go and buy back most of the real good stuff. I work at part time as the assistant manager at Wildtime Comics, a real full service comic book shop that’s been around for over 20 years a huge selection of back issues. To find out more about me, please visit my webpage at myspace.com/jokerfan.