Part 1 (1/2)

The Co of Conan The Cimmerian

Robert E Howard

Foreword

The Co haul

As I sit here, reviewing the drawings and paintings I contribute to this book, the work of well over a year and a half I h to know that you are up to the job of capturing the visual essence of the most famous creation of one of your favorite authors, a literary lodestone that has repeatedly drawn you back since childhood, so long as you don't actually have to execute those visuals Believe me, there have been many, ed in the ”what if” game and every time been very impressed with the perfect phantoh the world behind my eyelids

But when it comes time to belly up to the bar, put your money where your rand designs that have previously flitted through your happily uncommitted mind aye, there's the rub

Robert E Howard's Conan has not been so easy to illustrate as I iined he would be I think this is in part because, while Conan and his Hyborian Age are no hosts of brave warriors, fields of savage battle, and deeds of strength and bravery and derring-do as is the tradition of heroic fantasy, what reat is a deeper, darker context Horote them in a personalized style that is very post-heroic, is very much a part of a twentieth-century literary tradition which eschews the floridity, gallantry and nobleness of cause associated with the epic

Howard took the nominal eleenteel sensibilities typically associated with the form hell no he took those eleenda, which included railing at his personal circu loose with a literary snarl and bark at the limitations and frustrations of the world he knew isolated central Texas post oak scrubland and oil field

What I'et at is that while Howard's Conan stories live in the frauts the heart that drives the beast is a ineered and pushed forward at Howard's faritty directness and stripped-down, take-no-prisoners attitude that is unique to Howard; an expression of his rage at his irim merely because he liked it that way, rather it is fast and furious and grim because that was a true expression of who Hoas Howard's genius was that he took literary forms that appealed to him and added to them and subtracted from them and molded them into entities that darkly reflected his deeply felt personal beliefs; his view of life as unending struggle and ulti the way, if you were lucky

The Coet the Old World tradition of the heroic epic as interpreted through the sensibilities of a Texan steeped in the lore of his home state the violent history of its blood feuds and Indian wars, as well as its rich Southern United States folk storytelling tradition, with all its ghosts and swa new, and for one hell of a ride, but it has also, for et back to ht On one hand I'eantry and stateliness, the awesoe, Conan's story as epic, andto the finest traditions of classic illustration On the other hand, it is Howard's New World spontaneity, his white-hot e that ive them life far beyond that of their contemporaries, and to properly capture that calls for visuals that are bold, i a Howard story No one will ever write Conan, or any other sword and sorcery creation, with the ferocity and terrible beauty of Howard There will never be a true Conan that was not written by Howard Conan is too personal a creation, all wrapped up in Howard's own strengths and foibles and idiosyncrasies, and that makes it easy to see why Conan is by far Howard's best known creation

Hoas all about story first and foremost there's no dishonor in that but with Conan he seerowth as a fictioneer where he appreciated the ieneral public will enjoy a particular literary concept, featuring an i around a well-turned plot, once or twice, but if the author wants theain to that world, he needs it anchored by an attractive and unique character who is ot that with Conan, pulling personality frohnecks he well knew, and created a series of stories that in popularity have eclipsed all his other fine worlds

In Conan we get that rarity in fantastic literature, a hero who actually changes and grows froe, insecure Conan who kills ahi bully who has his heart broken in The Queen of the Black Coast is not the sains to understand that o all the way in Black Colossus is not the sa patronizes the arts (the arts, for Cro after he is gone, in The Phoenix on the Sword

Conan grows and matures, and ely restricted to that of a scowling, jaw-clenched,machine Horote him as so much hs at himself as well as others loves and loses, doubts and falters, acts altruistically and es He is, above all, totally charismatic; no outsider co trust and loyalty and devotion He's no simple brute; he's a multidimensional character, and I've donehim in a variety of moods and attitudes

Not every one of the stories in this volu for monthly publication at a white-hot pace, and perfection is never possible under those circumstances

Even so, even such es of wonderfully turned prose check out Livia's view of the slaughter in the village for as co and compact a portrait of the horror of hostly lunar beauty in Livia's descent into the haunted vale

But the bulk of these stories are great, and The Tower of the Elephant and The Queen of the Black Coast are indisputable classics of fantastic short fiction, richly deserving recognition and appreciation outside the genre

The ame My hope is that, if you do not care for my interpretations of his words, you are able to look beyond the prose, from the perspective of your inner eye

Mark Schultz 2002

Introduction

When the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales appeared on newsstands, Robert E Howard (1906-1936) probably didn't i history The Phoenix on the Sword, introducing his new character, Conan of Cimmeria, had been written in March of that year, and even if editor Farnsworth Wright thought the story had ”points of real excellence,” it was not enough to warrantit the cover story The first Conan story was si others in that particular issue of Weird Tales

Seventy years later, the character has achieved international fame Virtually every country in the world has published the Conan tales One success leading to another, the character has been featured in motion pictures, comic books, cartoons, pastiches, television series, toys and role- playing games In the process, Howard's creation has been diluted to the point that it is often nearly ie of the fur-clad, hyper- muscled super-hero he has become in the public's mind Such a phenomenon is not rare in the history of popular culture When a fictional character becomes such an icon, it is bound to escape its creator and take on a life of its own, the character taking precedence over the creator

Dracula, Fu Manchu and Tarzan are instantly recognizable figures, while creators Brahs enjoy a popularity both inferior to and dependent upon these particular creations As an exahs readers had their first exposure to Tarzan by way of the movies or coinal books They could then judge for theinal In Howard's case, however, this has been impossible: until the present publication, Howard's Conan stories had never been published as Horote them, in the order in which he wrote the inherently wrong with the idea of establishi+ng a character's ”biography,” no Sherlock Hol Conan Doyle's original stories in the order of their occurrence in Holmes' life rather than the order in which they ritten, or inserting pastiches amidst the established canon This was, however, exactly as done with the Conan stories: not only were they presented following soraphy,” but pastiches of arguable quality (to say the least) were interpolated a Howard's tales Further, some of Howard's own stories were rewritten, other non-Conan Howard tales were artificially transforht too little of to finish were completed by other writers This whole concept of ”posthumous collaboration,” as it was termed, made it very difficult for the casual reader to deter or rewriting in those volumes In other words, people lured to Howard's Conan stories after encountering adaptations or pastiches si detailed information to separate the wheat from the tares This has made critical assess: the Texan has often been judged on writings that were either not his or had been taested why the stories should not be presented in the order they occurred in the character's life: ”In writing these yarns I've always felt less as creating the his adventures as he told the a regular order The average adventurer, telling tales of a wild life at random, seldom follows any ordered plan, but narrates episodes widely separated by space and years, as they occur to him” Consequently, the stories in this volume are published as they ”occurred” to Howard, in the order they ritten and as they ritten by Howard no pastiches, no changes for the sake of ”consistency,” no rewriting Such a presentation not only respects Howard's intentions, it also casts a very different light on the character and his evolution, and provides us with new insights to some of the major themes of the series