 If you ask people about the comic book history of Conan the Cimmerian, it seems like there are three major eras folks think of. There's the original 70s glory days, with the first volumes of Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword of Conan ending in 1993 and 1995, respectively (and to a slightly lesser extent, Conan the King). There's the second peak with Dark Horse's mid-2000s Conan series led by Kurt Busiek, Cary Nord, and Tim Truman. Then there's the current Titan line which shares the same titles as the original Marvel series. That means that there are two somewhat neglected little periods in there that don't get much attention. One of them is Marvel's second volume of Conan the Barbarian in the 90s, which Tennessee Fats recently did a good video on. The other is this little three-year stint right before Titan picked up the license where Conan was back at Marvel. For how much talent was in the creative pool, it almost makes it weird that this tenure isn't talked about more. From 2019 to 2021, Marvel gave the reigns to Jason Aaron who took over the eponymous title for a dozen issues before handing it to future barbarian stalwart Jim Zub, where it ended on legacy issue #300. Ron Garney, Patch Zircher, Mike Deodato Jr., Esad Ribic, and Greg Smallwood were all handling art at some point, so it's not exactly a slouchy team!  The curiosity for me is the Savage Sword title itself. Conan the Barbarian by Jason Aaron makes sense to me. Savage Avengers is new, and extremely cool. But Savage Sword is kind of the odd duck. The original Savage Sword was born out of necessity- skirting the Comics Code Authority to tell more brutal, bloody stories than a monthly comic book could. It was instantly, obviously different: oversized magazine format, double or triple the length of a monthly issue, painted covers, black and white newsprint pages, backup stories or essays or prose. 2019's Savage Sword of Conan by Gerry Duggan is (almost) none of those things, which just makes it odd they gave it that title. It's a standard comic format and it's not any bloodier than the Jason Aaron title, seeing as the Comics Code is long-dead. The most obvious thing it does have in common with the original is painted covers, this time done by GOAT Alex Ross. Marvel did apparently issue a black-and-white version of the story in trade paperback, but I've only ever come across the color version. Additionally, they print part of Scott Oden's story "The Shadow of Vengeance" in the back of the issues, which is cool. Luckily enough for us, all of the hand-wringing I'm doing about inconsistencies above is extremely secondary. Duggan and artist Ron Garney do a great job with a fun, Stygia-set adventure.  Conan has been captured at sea by a pirate crew and is gradually nursed back to health by a fellow prisoner named Suty, who he doesn't realize has asked for his freedom in exchange for keeping Conan alive. Conan, of course, needs no help escaping, but because Suty is shackled to him, Suty ends up going with him. The Cimmerian accidentally catches a magical glance of a map belonging to Koga Thun, Stygian sorcerer of some ill repute. Conan and Suty also cross paths with a librarian who teams up with them and they venture into a labyrinth beneath the city for more hijinks to ensure. Duggan nods to REH's serpent men for some pleasant surprises that help you feel like he's done his homework on the history of Conan, and there are some really good lines sprinkled throughout. The thing that feels most notable about their five-issue arc is that it is a perfect case study for how comic book storytelling has changed from Conan's comic heyday in the 70s. The scope of this story isn't too expansive; I can't help but feel that this five-issue story would've occupied a single issue of the original Savage Sword of Conan. A sixty-page adventure broken into a prologue and three or four parts doesn't seem out of place, rather than a 100-plus page treatment it got. I don't necessarily think that would've yielded a better or worse result, but it serves to show how much comic book storytelling has changed in the last fifty years. A bloody story with hand impalements, head lopping, and lots of venom stings doesn't feel as visceral as it might have when that sort of thing was now. If slotted into Marvel's original SSOC volume, it would be somewhere in the middle of the pack.  The incredible Alex Ross covers seem to heighten this comparison. Explicit send-ups to the classic Marvel era abound in Ross's gorgeous photorealistic paintings. In one, Conan fights alongside the Black Corsairs and clearly the Marvel Comics version of Bêlit (the furry britches give it away). In another, Ross riffs on Barry Windsor-Smith's iconic cover for Marvel Treasure Edition #4. In another, he literally has Conan stand in front of a slew of old SSOC covers. It's very much different from the thing it's throwing back to. It's a little odd having this low-level pulse when it doesn't really evoke what it's gesturing at. But Duggan and Garney's Savage Sword of Conan is still worth your time.
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 When "Hellsgarde" was published in the April 1939 edition of Weird Tales, the C.L. Moore that weird fiction readers knew was almost gone. Bobby Derie points out that "Weird Tales had been sold and the offices moved to New York City; the editor Farnsworth Wright would soon be fired and, in 1940, would die. Moore’s connections to the magazine were fraying." Her final contribution to the Jirel mythos would also be her final contribution to the magazine. She married author Henry Kuttner in 1940 and collaborated with her new husband, mostly under his name, until his death in 1958 at the age of just 42. She had only a few years of fiction writing left, as she turned her prospects to teaching creative writing at the university level in southern California and then quit writing entirely in 1963. Moore stuck around the scene for a while, receiving the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 1980 and the title of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master. She passed away in 1987 while battling Alzheimer's. And while her shelf was not completely devoid of hardware and she even has the honor of being one of the first women to be nominated for a Hugo Award, I can't help but feel like there's a dearth of C.L. Moore in the world.  There are no comprehensive biographies, no documentary films, no C.L. Moore House & Museum historical site in Indiana. She's certainly a big name to the insular sword & sorcery community and to retro science fiction lovers, but ever since I discovered her, I've felt like it's an injustice that she's limited to that. Her stuff in Weird Tales was generational. She produced incredible work in a very short amount of time. And then, for more than 80 years, Jirel sat quietly.  Art by Saprophial, from NESS #3 A few years back, publisher Oliver Brackenbury came knocking on the door of the C.L. Moore estate for his excellent New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine. There are a lot of interesting new, independent S&S mags popping up, by New Edge is the clear leader of the pack for me. Jirel's had a consistent presence in its pages; as early as the 2022 Issue #0 featured a piece from German Jirel banner-carrier Cora Buhlert entitled "C.L. Moore and Jirel of Joiry: The First Lady of Sword & Sorcery." That was actually my introduction to the character, causing me to track down and devour all of the original stories. But the more exciting thing was that issue #3 would feature a new Jirel story, written by speculative fiction author Molly Tanzer. The Moore estate apparently gave no guidelines and had no demands about how new Jirel material needed to be written. By all accounts, they were easy to work with and just seemed excited that there was new interest in the material. The first result of these talks was "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth," which debuted in 2024. Fret not about how difficult it might be to shake the dust of a character after so long; "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth" fully lives up to Moore's legacy. The action is exciting, Jirel's characterization is consistent, and the supernatural elements keep it grounded in the Weird Tales ballpark.  Art by Saprophial, from NESS #3 When writing her new story, the first in over eight decades, Molly realized that Jirel had always left her world and gone to another one in her original stories: an underworld, a magic painting, Pav's Dark Land, Hellsgarde, and then came back, so she wanted to reintroduce her by having her begin in this other world and then return to her own. Our lady of Joiry begins the narrative as the Lady of Coquaigne, seemingly a queen, in love with her consort Etizenne. The name Joiry means nothing to her. Tanzer adds the character of Thevin, Jirel's booze-loving stewardess, and I don't really think it's a spoiler to tell you that Etizenne is yet another dashing but diabolical man in the lady of Joiry's Tinder DMs. Thevin especially adds a lot to the story. It's really the first time Jirel's had another female as a confidant. When I first spoke to Molly about her new Jirel stories, I asked if she was trying to imitate Moore's style or just remain consistent with Moore's vision, and she said the latter. She doesn't try to ape C.L. Moore's writing style, but the change isn't jarring the way jumping from a Robert E. Howard to Robert Jordan Conan story might be. She still writes Jirel as a hothead with good intuition. And when it comes to style, Molly says she likes sword & sorcery because you can get florid in your prose and nobody tries to fight you. We're here for it.  Me meeting Molly Tanzer at a "And Side By Side They Wander" release event If you've read anything by Molly Tanzer, you know she's an extremely philosophical author. Her most recent novella, And Side By Side They Wander, is basically a sci-fi art heist that masks a really heady discussion of copies, art, reproduction, and AI. So imagine my surprise when I asked if she was trying to cook deep themes into her Jirel work and she said no, that she's just swinging blades around for fun. Actually, I'm not that surprised. One time I told John C. Hocking I spent his whole Conan and the Emerald Lotus novel thinking it was Conan Says No to Crack and he said no, too. So I've been way off before. Intentionally or not, Moore's work with Jirel is terribly interesting when it came to its themes, grappling with regret, bodily autonomy, revenge, and women's relationships to powerful men. I read a lot of those original stories as kind of obliquely feminist, but I'm not sure how much of that was purposefully done by C.L. Moore. It seems to me that "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth" picks up those threads. Because of the way the characters are released from a spell one by one and are originally broken from that spell through a conversation no one else can see or hear, I immediately thought that this was a depiction of whisper networks used by women to keep themselves safe from abusive men (you may knowof those "Are we dating the same guy?" Facebook groups and the like). Sharing their experiences one at a time to clue people in breaks the spell a manipulator may have on a group. I bought this up to Molly at a brewery and she furrowed her brow, and stared past her beer for a moment before saying that wasn't what she'd had in mind, but that she didn't mind the interpretation. I've also asked her about the ending of the story, in which (actual spoilers ahead now) Jirel is shown by the strange Mirror of Truth an image of herself covered in glistening, silvery scars. The scars do not mar her image, but add to it, each one seemingly a beautiful stitch on her. I thought that this might be tied to one discovering a more true self-image, having broken free from one where you're seen as lesser. Perhaps you can finally appreciate yourself, scars and all. But nope, that seems to be my read on the story alone. Even when she says she's just doing it for fun, writing her take on the slightly meatheaded jock with terrible taste in men that is our lady Joiry, I think she can't help but produce really interesting stuff between the lines. If you haven't checked out New Edge, the digital editions are pretty reasonable in price, and the new Jirel novella, Blue Fire, has been recently fully-funded, so that should be out soon enough.  Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories.  We've got a live one today. In January of 1935, Robert E. Howard was basking in the acceptance of his story "Beyond the Black River" for Weird Tales, which editor Farnsworth Wright called "his best Conan story so far." Howard seemed jazzed about the direction of the story, telling HP Lovecraft in a letter that he would like to try his hand at a longer yarn, "of the same style, a serial of four or five parts." "The Black Stranger" was probably written soon after, as Patrice Louinet notes in his essay "Hyborian Genesis" that there are partial drafts of other stories found on the backs of the pages of "The Black Stranger" that seem to be from the end of 1934 or very beginning of 1935. This leads Louinet to believe that it was probably written in January or February of 1935. Another thing that I love about what Louinet has to say of the story is that it is a criminally-overlooked story: "The Black Stranger has never received the critical attention it is due, primarily because it was not published in its original form until 1987, when Karl Edward Wagner included it in an anthology. In all its previous appearances, the story had been mercilessly butchered. The tale is simple enough on its surface, mixing elements of piratical adventure and Indian warfare, but should definitely not be dismissed in a cavalier way, as has been done sometimes. The Black Stranger is an extremely complex tale once one has understood that it is replete, consciously or unconsciously, with autobiographical elements, much more so than any of the stories Howard had written to date."  Patrice is right. For a long time, "Black Stranger" was swallowed up by the L. Sprague de Camp version, known as "The Treasure of Tranicos" as well as two other versions of the story, neither of which feature Conan. In L. Sprague de Camp's interesting but somewhat self-important essay "The Trail of Tranicos," de Camp notes that Glenn Lord thinks the story is a little older than Louinet does, perhaps written in 1933 or 34, but doesn't list any reasons why. The other rewritten versions of this story include "Black Vulmea's Vengeance," published in Golden Fleece and the variant "Swords of the Red Brotherhood." de Camp's "Treasure of Tranicos" version itself had several different versions, edited by Lester Del Rey seemingly without de Camp's permission (how do you like it, Sprague?). "Treasure of Tranicos" was specifically tied more intentionally to the rest of the Conan mythos by de Camp, inserting Thoth-Amon, King Numedides, and the Aquilonian revolution that seats Conan on the throne. Howard's original cut would not see publication in full until 1987, when it was included by Karl Edward Wagner in his first Echoes of Valor collection, a series well worth the money if you find it available. de Camp and Wagner continue to disagree about the real-life chronology of the manuscript, with de Camp saying, "There is reason to believe that the pirate version came before the Conan one" and Wagner countering, "I have the photocopy of Howard's original manuscript of 'The Black Stranger', which clearly shows Howard's efforts to change the story from the Conan to the Black Vulmea version." I agree with Louinet that it's unfortunate that this story seems so maligned by the other versions of it that came after it (well, technically before it). It has the story threads knotted up and difficult to untangle. Because of de Camp's meddling, I think the story's chronology has historically been misplaced. Every single other notable chronology places this story after "Beyond the Black River," and before "Wolves Beyond the Border." But I think they're all wrong. I was wrong too. When I first blogged about this story in October of 2024, I set it as part of a "Pictish trilogy" with "Black River" and "Moon of Blood." But I now think that was totally incorrect. Let's look at our chronological markers.
 Most of these chronological clues above point to this story being a later one, but the last two limit how late it can be. Because Conan goes back to being a Barachan pirate at the end of it, that leads me to believe that "The Black Stranger" is the last Barachan pirate story, not the last story prior to Conan's kingship. The fact that this story takes place so close to "Beyond the Black River," geographically speaking, I think has been historically overrated. The "Tranicos" version does explicitly tie it more directly to Conan's kingship, so it makes sense to put it later if that's the version you're using, but that's not the Howard original. The traditional wisdom has been that this story acts as a bridge between Conan's scouting days and his kingship, but I argue that it would more correctly be seen as a bridge between Conan's final pirate period and his Aquilonian scouting. I think it's likely that in the three years between Conan's ship going down in the ocean and him rearing his head again in "Black Stranger," Conan may have disappeared inland, to see the events of "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" and "Red Nails" take place, both of which mention Conan's recent Barachan pirate period. Though, if we want to assume Conan's Barachan period is longer, it could take place after "The Pool of the Black One" and prior to "The Servants of Bit-Yakin." "The Black Stranger" is a very interesting Conan story. It feels like a cross between Howard's Pictish wilderness story "Beyond the Black River" and the Barachan pirate story "The Pool of the Black One." It's very good, and its chronology was far more interesting to mull over than I thought it would be. Thus stands our most updated version of the chronology.
It's funny how movies change in your estimation depending on the time if your life and the state of the media landscape. For example, The Mask of Zorro came out when I was seven. When I was a kid, I thought it was pretty decent. Not incredible, just a fun distraction. Let me tell you that I know now- I was wrong. That movie fucking rips. I promise we'll get to Red Sonja in a moment.  It's kind of funny, both Sonja and Zorro technically came from the pulps (Sonya, with a "y," from Magic Carpet, and Zorro from All-Story) and these two films are continuations of those legacies. The Mask of Zorro really goes for it in ways that we don't see today, even from the very beginning. Zorro, silhouetted by light and fog, carves and flaming Z into the air followed by a wildcat roar and flame explosion into the title. That's tight as shit. Modern films seem pretty afraid to do anything that's pure iconography like that (remember when Batman films ended with Batman running directly toward the camera with the batsignal behind him?). The movie was originally set to be directed by Robert Rodriguez before it passed to Martin Campbell, director of Goldeneye and eventually Casino Royale, and Campbell's clearly doing a successful Rodriguez pastiche. He's not usually the most stylish filmmaker, more of a work-for-hire type of guy, but this movie is positively greased with style. The action is classic adventure material. Sword fights, acrobatics, and western pistols are clanging and thundering throughout, pacing the film fantastically. One dude gets shot while flying through the air not once, but twice.  One of the only complaints about millennials that I agree with is that a lot of "millennial writing" in films comes across as jokey, but not actually funny. It's that "He's right behind me, isn't he?" type of writing. And once again, I promise I'll get to to Red Sonja. The humor in this film is a little cartoonish, as Zorro stabs a solider in his ass or tries to jump onto his horse only to have it move out of the way at the last second. But it all works, eliciting smiles all the way through. Antonio Banderas should be more rightfully remembered for his solid comedic timing and not just for his dashing good looks. The most integral piece to the whole thing might be the heart of the film. Zorro fights corruption in the upper class, for the people, and this particular incarnation of Zorro is one of the common people. It's righteous and a total blast to see the rich pricks getting what's coming to them at the end of it. It makes sense when you learn that Steven Spielberg was an executive producer whole played a heavy hand in it.  Shot in and around Mexico City, the whole film feels tactile and real, which doesn't sound like much of a compliment, but really is when many films shot today look like they were filmed in front of a green screen in a high school gym in Atlanta. It's beautifully atmospheric when lit torches lick the walls of haciendas and caves, and it's even delightfully grimy and dusty at times. It's something I never noticed before every blockbuster movie started feeling sterile. Seriously, for the longest time, I thought of The Mask of Zorro as just a fine movie. A seven out of ten, and I think that's similar to how most people have viewed it. But it's sharply risen in the last several years, and I now see it as a wildly entertaining movie. Anyway, everything I spoke about positively above does not apply to Red Sonja. I decided to watch it after Molly Tanzer told me it was horrendous. She was right. Stiff, uncompelling, and completely derivative, this thing is a slog. The script is dead on arrival, the performances don't do anything to save the material, and everything looks like it was rendered on a PlayStation 3. And why's there an orc in the Hyborian Age?
Zorro's cool, though.  In the modern day, a mother hawks her son's old comic books and some tapes, which are apparently interviews about some old pulp author named C.K. Cole. Some decades ago, a young biographer tapes interviews with an old woman named Lilith about her experiences in the 1930s, playing governess to an unruly girl. Her charge is the daughter of C.K. Cole. In midst of the Depression, we see the the memories of Lilith and her frustrations at taking care of the drunken hot mess that is Helen Cole. And briefly, but never for too long, we see Helen's experiences in another world: a sword & sorcery landscape replete with head-loppings and aloof gods. Helen of Wyndhorn is a 2024/25 miniseries written for Dark Horse by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, the same team responsible for the unforgettable Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. While I think it's fantastic in its own right, it feels especially so for Robert E. Howard fans. While writing pastiche of REH's writing is a dime a dozen, writing pastiche of the man himself is something I haven't seen before. As the mythology goes, Robert E. Howard wrote his sword & sorcery, western, and horror pulp narratives throughout the Depression in the middle of nowhere in Cross Plains, Texas. He said, hyperbolically as he was prone to, that it was almost as if he wasn't writing his Conan of Cimmeria stories, but just recording them as they were narrated to him by the barbarian himself. A lot of his work plays with this theme of remembrance, filtered through time, most notably the James Allison story "The Valley of the Worm." Helen of Wyndhorn takes this premise and literalizes it. What if Robert E. Howard's stories actually were records of things that had actually happened? In Wyndhorn's version, the REH analogue, C.K. Cole, spends the 30s recording the adventures of his father, Barnabas Cole, known both in literature and his other world as Othan, a great warrior. C.K. leaves behind a daughter, Helen, when he commits suicide, once again mirroring Howard (though Howard had no children), who is then brought to the family estate where she will live with her grandfather.  As Helen lives at the Wyndhorn mansion, she gradually learns the true nature of her father's writing and her grandfather's life, which we see unfold slowly. Each character in this story is so well-drawn, terribly flawed and chafing against one another, yet they're all extremely lovable. When the usually-imperious governess Lilith describes Helen as "my Helen," it becomes clear that this story is as much the story of being able to love completely lost people as it is about sword & sorcery action. You might be surprised at how much is withheld in this story, far more than is shown. I mean that in the best possible way, as it all deepens the appeal. In the final issue, a peculiar panel kicks off what may be the most important conversation in the story. During a poetry lesson, one of Lilith's word balloons is obscured behind a support column. I love when comics use the medium to create something that could not exist in film or novels. Helen goes on to ask Lilith if she is "real," saying, "Everything that's happened since father died- none of it makes any sense. This world, the Other World, I'm in one of his stories. There's something wrong with me. I'm not like everyone else, I'm being told." Helen is, of course, not real to us, but she is real in the fiction of her story.   I think this is the most compelling thing the book has to say. Helen is equally real as the stories her father so deftly recorded. Perhaps Conan and the Hyborian Age are no less real than Robert E. Howard and his Underwood No. 5 typewriter. The stories still have all the magic and power you could ever want them to. This brings me back to the frame narrative I mentioned up top. The comic sort of moves forward and backward in time at the same moment. It opens in the 70s with a biographer named Thomas Rogers interviewing Lilith about her time at Wyndhorn, but then follows Lilith's story back to the 30s and the tapes themselves forward, as they get put up for auction, sold cheaply at a fan convention, and finally seem to be unearthed one last time in a garage. Everything is layered like a palimpsest: obscuring the past each time. The book ends with Rogers saying to his husband, "You peel back layers looking for the center of a thing, and then you lose the thing itself. Maybe the nanny was right. Maybe it's better to make it all up." Maybe we're all made up, no less real than Helen, Othan, Conan, Solomon Kane, Niord... But I don't want to peel back the layers too far. Our stories are just as vulnerable to the rot of time that the pages of an ill-kept paperback are. Each time Cole's stories or Rogers's tapes pass into new hands, there's a new opportunity for someone to discover their magic, but there's also the risk that those tapes, seemingly the only copy, will be lost forever. Having gotten to know the pulp community over the past years, this struck me. People like Rusty Burke and Bill Cavalier have done four decades of work to continue the legacy of Howard. Oliver Brackenbury was the first person in 85 years to ask the C.L. Moore estate about the rights to her stories, to keep their flame lit. Without people like these, the stories become forgotten. It takes real stewardship to bring them to the next generation. If you're a sword & sorcery fan, you simply must read Helen of Wyndhorn. I know Tom King has a certain reputation for having personally cradled Dick Cheney's balls while constructing the Iraq War, but his work with Bilquis Evely is one of a kind. The art is gorgeous and the story is deeply moving and refreshing, reminding me what I love so much about this genre. I hope you pick it up.  Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories.  "Drums of Tombalku" is a title given to an untitled synopsis and fragment left behind by Robert E. Howard, first published in 1986 as the fragment and then in 1988 as its synopsis. The untitled work, set near and in an ancient city named Gazal, was given its "Drums of Tombalku" title by L. Sprague de Camp when he heavily edited the work and prepared it for publishing in 1966's Conan the Adventurer. Patrice Louinet notes in "Hyborian Genesis" that Howard's 29-page draft originated as his attempt at a novel, probably written in mid-March 1934 after he wrote "The People of the Black Circle." While the novel ultimately didn't come to fruition in this form, Louinet notes that one line about an invasion of Aquilonia from Nemedia would become the framing device for Howard's successful novel attempt: The Hour of the Dragon. The Gazal fragment is a little peculiar in that Conan is really only a supporting character who shows up toward the end of the fragment. I will defend this fragmentary narrative insofar that it has one near-great horror sequence within the red tower of Gazal. And I wonder how many copies of The Complete Chronicles of Conan have the same typo mine has: Amalric is referred to as "Almaric" on page 827. Was that Howard's typo, or just the book's? Let's see what sort of chronological markers this thing has:
Due to Howard's penchant for making subtle changes to things like names (in all likelihood, just forgetting what he had done the first time), I believe all the above accounts are of the same time in Conan's life. It seems like after Conan left the Black Corsairs at the end of "Queen of the Black Coast," on his way north he became part of the Free Companions who were working in service of Koth's army. Or perhaps the Free Companions tenure grew out of his time with Koth, continuing on with some of the other veterans following the dissolution of the Kothian army. Since the story must follow "Queen of the Black Coast" and is in conversation with "Xuthal" and "Iron Shadows," it seems to be the eighth or ninth story in our chronology right now. Actually though, I think this story is so close in premise and structure that I would probably consider it non-canonical. It rhymes far too much with "Xuthal of the Dusk" to ignore - "Xuthal" is clearly the completed version of this fragment. But if it goes anywhere on the chronology, it goes adjacent to it. These stories are not traditionally grouped very close together. The chronologies from Miller/Clark/de Camp, Robert Jordan, Dale Rippke, and William Galen Gray all have them fairly spread out. Only the Joe Marek chronology really groups them very closely. 1. The Frost-Giant's Daughter
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Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories. Twenty entries! Cheers!
The Shumballa fragment, later edited, re-written, and retitled "The Snout in the Dark" by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, is an unfinished draft begun in the 1930s by Robert E. Howard. The de Camp / Carter version appeared for the first time in Conan of Cimmeria, but the original Howard version would not be made public until the Donald Grant publication ten years later in Jewels of Gwahlur.
Sometimes this story is referred to as "Untitled draft (Amboola awakened slowly...)" because of the first line of the story, but I've taken to calling it "the Shumballa fragment" due to its setting. de Camp and Carter renamed the city to "Meroê."
Because there's so little information about this fragment, and because Conan is in very little of it, this will probably be one of the shortest entries in this column. Let's see what we've got:
Sometimes this story is referred to as "Untitled draft (Amboola awakened slowly...)" because of the first line of the story, but I've taken to calling it "the Shumballa fragment" due to its setting. de Camp and Carter renamed the city to "Meroê."
Because there's so little information about this fragment, and because Conan is in very little of it, this will probably be one of the shortest entries in this column. Let's see what we've got:
- The story takes place in Kush, southward on the Hyborian Age map, in the capital city of Shumballa. Kush is mentioned in many Conan stories, but is not the most oft-visited. None of the other stories that take place in or near Kush ("Queen of the Black Coast," "Xuthal of the Dusk," or "Red Nails") make mention of Shumballa.
- When Conan makes his entrance to the story a good ways in, he says that he has previously been a pirate: "I came here to seek my fortune. I was formerly a corsair."
- But what type of pirate? A Black Coast buccaneer? A Red Brotherhood member harrying the cities of Turan? A Barachan scoundrel terrorizing the traders of Messantia? Well, luckily for us, we find out in the next sentence.
- Conan is identified as Amra the Lion: "We have heard tales of you, whom men call Amra the Lion. But if you are no longer a corsair, what are you now?" Conan responds, "A penniless wanderer." This means that the story takes place at least after "Queen of the Black Coast."
Conan ended "Queen of the Black Coast" setting his ride (Bêlit's ship, the Tigress) aflame. That would render him owning only the clothes on his back and in need of a way to get back north. This is not the strongest thread to go on, but it makes sense for the Shumballa fragment to then fall right after "Queen of the Black Coast" because of Conan's geographical and economic situation connecting the two.
Here's the most recent version of our chronology with this in mind:
1. The Frost-Giant's Daughter
2. The God in the Bowl
3. Rogues in the House
4. The Tower of the Elephant
5. The Nestor synopsis ("The Hall of the Dead")
6. Queen of the Black Coast
7. The Shumballa fragment ("The Snout in the Dark")
8. Xuthal of the Dusk
9. Iron Shadows in the Moon
10. The Devil in Iron
11. The People of the Black Circle
12. A Witch Shall Be Born
13. The Man-Eaters of Zamboula
14. Black Colossus
15. The Pool of the Black One
16. The Servants of Bit-Yakin
17. Red Nails
18. Beyond the Black River
19. The Phoenix on the Sword
20. The Scarlet Citadel
21. The Hour of the Dragon
It's hard not to consider modern ideas the impetus for a lot of C. L. Moore stories. Much of her work feels more recent than the 1930s, in the way that it anticipates second-wave feminism and even modern-day issues like consent. If I'm being a good former English major, I know that I shouldn't be presentist like that, but I think that speaks to the strength of C. L. Moore's creations: that they feel so prescient almost one hundred years later.
"The Dark Land" is the fourth Jirel of Joiry story penned by Moore, appearing in the January 1936 issue of Weird Tales, sandwiched between a Paul Ernst Doctor Satan story and the second part of the serialized Hour of the Dragon. I can't find much about when Moore began "The Dark Land" but its seed apparently began with a drawing- the same one that graces the title page of the story in Weird Tales. She did her own illustration and meant to attach it to "The Black God's Kiss," but didn't end up using it. It worked similarly with "The Dark Land," and it seems she built the story around the idea of using the illustration again.
After a bit of a dip in quality in "Jirel Meets Magic," the lady of Joiry returns with a vengeance here in what might be my second-favorite of the bunch.
"The Dark Land" is the fourth Jirel of Joiry story penned by Moore, appearing in the January 1936 issue of Weird Tales, sandwiched between a Paul Ernst Doctor Satan story and the second part of the serialized Hour of the Dragon. I can't find much about when Moore began "The Dark Land" but its seed apparently began with a drawing- the same one that graces the title page of the story in Weird Tales. She did her own illustration and meant to attach it to "The Black God's Kiss," but didn't end up using it. It worked similarly with "The Dark Land," and it seems she built the story around the idea of using the illustration again.
After a bit of a dip in quality in "Jirel Meets Magic," the lady of Joiry returns with a vengeance here in what might be my second-favorite of the bunch.
Jirel has been magically stolen out of her deathbed, bleeding out from a stab wound, when she's suddenly transported into the world of Romne, the Dark Land lorded over by the dark man (wizard? devil? god? demigod? dungeon master?), Pav. Pav is possibly the most terrifying antagonist in any of the Jirel stories, embodying this deep, endless blackness while also physically echoing pop culture depictions of Satan (short pointy beard, wide smile, halo of flame). He oscillates between a cool suaveness and a literal furnace blast of anger, based on how Jirel responds to him.
Pav wants Jirel to shack up with him, but only if she wants to, oddly enough. He's determined to convince her to give herself over willingly.
Pav wants Jirel to shack up with him, but only if she wants to, oddly enough. He's determined to convince her to give herself over willingly.
"What I take I do not lightly give up. No, there is in you a heady violence that I desire, and will not surrender. But I do not wish you against your will."
Croatian artist Saša Đurđević is doing the most incredible Jirel work today.
This whole premise seems to me to anticipate the issue of bodily autonomy, not that I think that phrase even existed in 1936. In a lot of ways, it also anticipates the Roy Thomas version of Red Sonja, who will have sex with a man, but only if he bests her in combat (which Bobby Derie noticed as well).
I don't think body autonomy is necessarily the right word here, though.
Jirel, throughout her stories, sometimes refers to herself as "Joiry." She sits on the throne and is not just the Lady of Joiry, she is its whole. She does that here in "The Dark Land," too.
I don't think body autonomy is necessarily the right word here, though.
Jirel, throughout her stories, sometimes refers to herself as "Joiry." She sits on the throne and is not just the Lady of Joiry, she is its whole. She does that here in "The Dark Land," too.
"Do you think to take Joiry like some peasant wench to answer to your whims? I'm Joiry, man! You must be mad!"
Jirel is Joiry and Joiry is Jirel. And interestingly enough, in this story, Pav is Romne and Romne is Pav. In this mystical place that is not a place, it's somehow an extension of Pav. The story doesn't really go into how this works (thank god) but Pav appears to be omnipresent and omniscient in Romne, able to mold the world to his liking with merely a thought.
"For Pav was the center of that inferno's might, and he could be no human thing who radiated such an infinity of power. What was he? What could he be?"
With Jirel being Joiry and Pav being Romne, this question of marriage and ownership also becomes one of sovereign nations invading the other- a struggle between Joiry and Romne, so perhaps bodily sovereignty would be the better term to label what this story is about. It takes on a larger scope than just a conflict between two people, and brings it slightly more in line with most of the rest of Moore's Jirel stories, where there's usually an invading man from another realm. Jirel is defending Joiry by asserting her own agency.
And I haven't even gotten to the corpse witch, who is cool as fuck. I watched the New Edge Sword & Sorcery livestream with current Jirel author Molly Tanzer discussing this story with a few other writers, and they loved the corpse witch as much as I do. I'm inclined to believe that the story sets up enough contrasts (the white against the darkness of Romne, the line about how the witch seems so "apart" from the rest of the landscape) that she is Jirel's predecessor: the last woman that Pav decided to marry. It's cool as hell.
By this point, "Hellsgarde" (which is up next) is my favorite of the Joiry stories, follow by "Black God's Kiss," "The Dark Land," "Black God's Shadow," and finally "Jirel Meets Magic."
Anyway, I'm off to start a doom band called Corpsewitch.
And I haven't even gotten to the corpse witch, who is cool as fuck. I watched the New Edge Sword & Sorcery livestream with current Jirel author Molly Tanzer discussing this story with a few other writers, and they loved the corpse witch as much as I do. I'm inclined to believe that the story sets up enough contrasts (the white against the darkness of Romne, the line about how the witch seems so "apart" from the rest of the landscape) that she is Jirel's predecessor: the last woman that Pav decided to marry. It's cool as hell.
By this point, "Hellsgarde" (which is up next) is my favorite of the Joiry stories, follow by "Black God's Kiss," "The Dark Land," "Black God's Shadow," and finally "Jirel Meets Magic."
Anyway, I'm off to start a doom band called Corpsewitch.
REH and the Question of Adaptation (or, The Kinda-Sorta Adaptations of Robert E. Howard's Works)
6/18/2026
Robert E. Howard exists in a kind of unique space when it comes to adaptation. His works and his universe are sort of "up for grabs" in a way that other literary works aren't. Like, can you imagine if JK Rowling died tomorrow and then the publishing house which had been putting out her work suddenly went all-in on rewriting all her Robert Galbraith stories as Harry Potter books? Re-setting them at Hogwarts and adding magic? That would be phenomenally weird.
But that's what's been happening to Robert E. Howard since the 50s.
It goes the other way, too. In 1976, Lin Carter published a Thongor the Barbarian story called "Black Moonlight." And then two years later, re-wrote it to be a Conan story entitled "The Gem in the Tower," and added it to his and L. Sprague de Camp's expanded Conan mythos. Wouldn't that be wild if an author published a science fiction novel, and then two years later reused the exact same story for a Star Wars story set on Tatooine?
But that's what's been happening to Robert E. Howard since the 50s.
It goes the other way, too. In 1976, Lin Carter published a Thongor the Barbarian story called "Black Moonlight." And then two years later, re-wrote it to be a Conan story entitled "The Gem in the Tower," and added it to his and L. Sprague de Camp's expanded Conan mythos. Wouldn't that be wild if an author published a science fiction novel, and then two years later reused the exact same story for a Star Wars story set on Tatooine?
For most of his literary life, which extends much past his 30 brief years on Earth, Robert E. Howard's works have experienced these weird periods of half-adaptation and revision in a way that many other writers have never had.
Following Howard's death in 1936, his trunk full of unpublished and unfinished works passed into the care of his literary estate executors, and it was picked through by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. Posthumous material would roll out gradually for the next two decades.
This was where we saw what we might call the first batch of questionable adaptations. Publisher Martin Greenberg suggested to the sci-fi writers that they turn some of Howard's unpublished stuff into Conan stories. In 1955, Howard's El Borak story "Three-Bladed Doom" was turned into the Conan story The Flame Knife, his Kirby O'Donnell adventure "The Trail of the Blood-Stained God" dropped "The Trail of" and Conan was added, his desert-set "Hawks Over Egypt" moved to Shem, and his 16th-century Türkiye romp became "The Road of the Eagles." I think I'm solidly in the minority when I say that these stories are actually pretty enjoyable, with the weakest one being "Hawks Over Shem." "The Road of the Eagles," in particular, is a really fun, memorable tale.
Following Howard's death in 1936, his trunk full of unpublished and unfinished works passed into the care of his literary estate executors, and it was picked through by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. Posthumous material would roll out gradually for the next two decades.
This was where we saw what we might call the first batch of questionable adaptations. Publisher Martin Greenberg suggested to the sci-fi writers that they turn some of Howard's unpublished stuff into Conan stories. In 1955, Howard's El Borak story "Three-Bladed Doom" was turned into the Conan story The Flame Knife, his Kirby O'Donnell adventure "The Trail of the Blood-Stained God" dropped "The Trail of" and Conan was added, his desert-set "Hawks Over Egypt" moved to Shem, and his 16th-century Türkiye romp became "The Road of the Eagles." I think I'm solidly in the minority when I say that these stories are actually pretty enjoyable, with the weakest one being "Hawks Over Shem." "The Road of the Eagles," in particular, is a really fun, memorable tale.
But like I said, this is just the first wave of weird adaptation. These stories set a precedent. Where Conan would be kinda-sorta adapted the most, though, is in comic books.
I'm mostly talking about the color Conan the Barbarian title here - Savage Sword adapted stories more cleanly (but not always!) - but Conan the Barbarian was a lot more checkered. And Roy Thomas and the rest of the Conan creative team continued in the tradition of adapting Conanless Howard stories into Conan comics for a long time, like issue #38's "The Were-Woman" coming from Howard's "The House of Arabu," but I'm not going to talk about those ones since there are far too many for a blog post. Sometimes Conan the Barbarian would half-adapt a story. Sometimes it would seemingly adapt two stories at the same time by throwing them into a blender. Sometimes it would adapt a story a second time, sort of re-writing the original adaptation!
The first of these happens in Conan #21, during the War of the Tarim arc. The credits page claims that it is "Inspired in Part" by Robert E. Howard's "The Black Stone" story. But that "in part" phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, because this story feels much more like an adaptation of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter's story "The Curse of the Monolith." Like "Curse of the Monolith," it's set in Conan's Turanian mercenary period. He's lured to a large, stone monolith under false pretenses, strapped to the monolith, and then an eldritch beast descends slowly down toward him from the top of the monolith. In both stories, metal bands are a secret to the whole ruse. But it's far from a straight adaptation, so it seems to kind of split the middle without making any mention of de Camp or Carter.
I'm mostly talking about the color Conan the Barbarian title here - Savage Sword adapted stories more cleanly (but not always!) - but Conan the Barbarian was a lot more checkered. And Roy Thomas and the rest of the Conan creative team continued in the tradition of adapting Conanless Howard stories into Conan comics for a long time, like issue #38's "The Were-Woman" coming from Howard's "The House of Arabu," but I'm not going to talk about those ones since there are far too many for a blog post. Sometimes Conan the Barbarian would half-adapt a story. Sometimes it would seemingly adapt two stories at the same time by throwing them into a blender. Sometimes it would adapt a story a second time, sort of re-writing the original adaptation!
The first of these happens in Conan #21, during the War of the Tarim arc. The credits page claims that it is "Inspired in Part" by Robert E. Howard's "The Black Stone" story. But that "in part" phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, because this story feels much more like an adaptation of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter's story "The Curse of the Monolith." Like "Curse of the Monolith," it's set in Conan's Turanian mercenary period. He's lured to a large, stone monolith under false pretenses, strapped to the monolith, and then an eldritch beast descends slowly down toward him from the top of the monolith. In both stories, metal bands are a secret to the whole ruse. But it's far from a straight adaptation, so it seems to kind of split the middle without making any mention of de Camp or Carter.
Issue #31 quasi-adapts "The Thing in the Crypt." Roy had been trying to get the rights to the original story, but while Lin Carter was game, Sprague was not, so he decided to write his own young Conan crypt story, replacing "Thing in the Crypt" in the timeline. What we got was "The Shadow on the Tomb," which works far better than it should have. Funnily enough, they later did get the rights to the original story and used it as the basis for issue #92.
While the supernatural element is different in both: a sentient, corporeal shadow in one and a living-dead sentry in the other, the issues are basically the same. Conan is chased into a cave by an animal, discovers a cursed sword which he disturbs, fights its protector, and then uses fire to kill the sentry. Conan #31 adds a really fun wraparound narrative that helps attach the book to the comic continuity, but otherwise are remarkably similar. We either have to accept that Conan had two remarkably similar adventures very close to one another in time and made the same mistakes in both, learning nothing from the first, or that one of these stories overwrites the other. If I remember right, Roy Thomas considers the "Shadow on the Tomb" version the more canon of the two.
While the supernatural element is different in both: a sentient, corporeal shadow in one and a living-dead sentry in the other, the issues are basically the same. Conan is chased into a cave by an animal, discovers a cursed sword which he disturbs, fights its protector, and then uses fire to kill the sentry. Conan #31 adds a really fun wraparound narrative that helps attach the book to the comic continuity, but otherwise are remarkably similar. We either have to accept that Conan had two remarkably similar adventures very close to one another in time and made the same mistakes in both, learning nothing from the first, or that one of these stories overwrites the other. If I remember right, Roy Thomas considers the "Shadow on the Tomb" version the more canon of the two.
Issue #37 from 1974 tries once again to adapt two stories at the same time, honestly to the betterment of both of them. It was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Neal Adams, making me wish we got a hundred more Neal Adams-penciled Conan comics. This issue, "The Curse of the Golden Skull," simultaneously adapts Howard's unpublished short (short) story of the same name alongside de Camp and Carter's Conan yarn, "The City of Skulls." Really though, what it does is graft "Curse of the Golden Skull" onto "City of Skulls'" golden bones. It follows all the story beats of "City of Skulls:" Conan and Juma get captured and taken to a tropical bowl in the middle of a mountain range, they're enslaved for a time, the risk a daring escape, and they fight a giant monster that they end up using to kill their enslaver. The comic really just takes the villain and turns it into Rotath of Lemuria, a Thurian Age-villain transplanted to the Hyborian Age. It could be the pacing, it could be Rotath, it could be Neal Adams's incredible art, but it works a whole lot better than the prose piece it cribs mostly from.
Stories like these occupy a somewhat odd place in the literary world. I don't want to make it sound like this has only ever happened to Howard. For example, you may know that the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie stemmed from an unrelated Tim Powers pirate novel titled On Stranger Tides, which they threw Jack Sparrow into and used as the basis for that film.
And I didn't even touch on another whole tangle of related ideas with the debate over editing and revision to Howard stories. Since his death, writers have not just been adapting his stories very freely, but also making edits that range from a few words to entire revisions to the very structure of the text. This wasn't meant to be exhaustive, because there are dozens if not hundreds of examples of this. Which ones did I miss?
And I didn't even touch on another whole tangle of related ideas with the debate over editing and revision to Howard stories. Since his death, writers have not just been adapting his stories very freely, but also making edits that range from a few words to entire revisions to the very structure of the text. This wasn't meant to be exhaustive, because there are dozens if not hundreds of examples of this. Which ones did I miss?
Guest post by Kenyon Tysklind
I’m a sucker for a shared universe. Have been since I was a kid and was trying to figure out how the Universal Monster movies should be watched chronologically, or when it became clear that Superman: The Animated Series and Batman: The Animated Series shared the same world.
I was introduced to Conan of Cimmeria one afternoon after school when I was 5 years old. I wasn’t able to catch every episode, but enough to know I liked it, but thanks to the wonky syndication scheduling of cartoons of the 90s, I never really got too invested. A year or so later my dad and I started watching the 1982 movie, but my mom came home and put a stop to that as I was only 6. A few years later the film “Kull the Conqueror” came out and I just made fun of the trailer. I was 11 and I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of Hercules at the time. My dad, on the other hand, was pretty excited for the movie and told me how Kull was around long before Conan. To this day I’m not sure if he meant that Robert E. Howard created Kull first, or that Kull was set thousands upon thousands of years before Conan. But my dad clearly loved this stuff.
When I was around 16 I became quite interested in H.P. Lovecraft, and started reading his stories heavily. I made a bold attempt at a Lovecraft timeline, but while doing my research and reading stories, it became very clear that several other writers were sharing Lovecraft's little universe at the time. But, anytime I tried to find any Howard, I just kept running into L. Sprague de Camp. And my dad did not have a favorable opinion about him. Finding pure Howard stories in the late 90s and early 2000s was no easy feat and it led me down a rabbit hole.
I’m 40 now.
I was introduced to Conan of Cimmeria one afternoon after school when I was 5 years old. I wasn’t able to catch every episode, but enough to know I liked it, but thanks to the wonky syndication scheduling of cartoons of the 90s, I never really got too invested. A year or so later my dad and I started watching the 1982 movie, but my mom came home and put a stop to that as I was only 6. A few years later the film “Kull the Conqueror” came out and I just made fun of the trailer. I was 11 and I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of Hercules at the time. My dad, on the other hand, was pretty excited for the movie and told me how Kull was around long before Conan. To this day I’m not sure if he meant that Robert E. Howard created Kull first, or that Kull was set thousands upon thousands of years before Conan. But my dad clearly loved this stuff.
When I was around 16 I became quite interested in H.P. Lovecraft, and started reading his stories heavily. I made a bold attempt at a Lovecraft timeline, but while doing my research and reading stories, it became very clear that several other writers were sharing Lovecraft's little universe at the time. But, anytime I tried to find any Howard, I just kept running into L. Sprague de Camp. And my dad did not have a favorable opinion about him. Finding pure Howard stories in the late 90s and early 2000s was no easy feat and it led me down a rabbit hole.
I’m 40 now.
Here’s what I found out: the world of the Cthulhu Mythos and the Howardverse are one and the same. Howard and Lovecraft were pen pals, along with fellow poet and writer Clark Ashton Smith, and would share ideas with each other. The Cthulhu Mythos were always built up with the help of Smith and Howard, and at the end of the day, Howard wrote more than both of them. And he was actively building his world and lore. So, in a weird way, the first expanded canon of Robert E. Howard’s work wasn’t the works of de Camp or Carter, but rather the works of Lovecraft and Smith. To be fair, this has been debated for decades, and it really comes down to preference. Now, for me personally, the more the merrier I say. The idea that the world where Satampra Zeiros was a master thief in Uzuldaroum is the same world that Steve Costigan fought Kid Camera fills me with absolute glee.
In 2023, Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures began publishing their own Howardverse stories. Jim Zub and Titan Comics are really going all out on the concept of a shared universe of these characters in crossovers like “Battle of the Black Stone” and “Scourge of the Serpent”. They’ve also been publishing a whole lot of new Solomon Kane and Kull stories.
Very early on in the marketing for the “Battle of the Black Stone” event, Howard’s characters were referred to as the “Sentinels”, the heroes who watch the borders between our world and the encroaching darkness. Conan, Solomon Kane, El Borak, and many other characters Howard created could be considered Sentinels. And when you throw in the likes of Nyarlathotep and Tsathoggua, you’re really gonna need somebody who is willing to throw down and fight.
While statements about what is and isn’t canon haven’t really been made by Titan or Heroic Signatures (other than Howard’s original stories are the purest canon), there have been several hints about how they’re going about it. One thing that’s clear is they seem to be taking a Star Wars Legends approach to older pastiches by writers like de Camp and Jordan. It’s not canon, but events similar to those MAY have happened, but they may also be completely different. It’s the have your cake and eat it too approach, and frankly, I’m fine with it.
So I made a timeline. One that incorporates all of Howard’s stories, all of the Titan and Heroic Signatures stories, and most of the Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith stories. This gives us a shared universe that covers a vast amount of time (and a fair bit of outer space) starting from roughly before 750,000 years ago to millions of years into the future. Now, some of these dates are wild speculation made purely on vague clues or pure and simple “vibes” as the kids say nowadays. Is it contradictory in places? Yes. Full of anachronisms? Yes. Would I recommend this list to someone reading these stories for the first time? No, probably not, but if for some reason you just happen to have all these stories, comics and poems at hand, and you’ve never read any of it, I suppose you could, but I would really suggest just reading them in a collection first. Also, how did you get here?
Since this was originally supposed to be a simple timeline covering Titan Comics, I’ll spend most of my time here covering the Conan section, but we’ll take a quick trip through each section of the timeline.
Let’s get into it then. The Titan/Heroic Signatures Howardverse Timeline V1.
In 2023, Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures began publishing their own Howardverse stories. Jim Zub and Titan Comics are really going all out on the concept of a shared universe of these characters in crossovers like “Battle of the Black Stone” and “Scourge of the Serpent”. They’ve also been publishing a whole lot of new Solomon Kane and Kull stories.
Very early on in the marketing for the “Battle of the Black Stone” event, Howard’s characters were referred to as the “Sentinels”, the heroes who watch the borders between our world and the encroaching darkness. Conan, Solomon Kane, El Borak, and many other characters Howard created could be considered Sentinels. And when you throw in the likes of Nyarlathotep and Tsathoggua, you’re really gonna need somebody who is willing to throw down and fight.
While statements about what is and isn’t canon haven’t really been made by Titan or Heroic Signatures (other than Howard’s original stories are the purest canon), there have been several hints about how they’re going about it. One thing that’s clear is they seem to be taking a Star Wars Legends approach to older pastiches by writers like de Camp and Jordan. It’s not canon, but events similar to those MAY have happened, but they may also be completely different. It’s the have your cake and eat it too approach, and frankly, I’m fine with it.
So I made a timeline. One that incorporates all of Howard’s stories, all of the Titan and Heroic Signatures stories, and most of the Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith stories. This gives us a shared universe that covers a vast amount of time (and a fair bit of outer space) starting from roughly before 750,000 years ago to millions of years into the future. Now, some of these dates are wild speculation made purely on vague clues or pure and simple “vibes” as the kids say nowadays. Is it contradictory in places? Yes. Full of anachronisms? Yes. Would I recommend this list to someone reading these stories for the first time? No, probably not, but if for some reason you just happen to have all these stories, comics and poems at hand, and you’ve never read any of it, I suppose you could, but I would really suggest just reading them in a collection first. Also, how did you get here?
Since this was originally supposed to be a simple timeline covering Titan Comics, I’ll spend most of my time here covering the Conan section, but we’ll take a quick trip through each section of the timeline.
Let’s get into it then. The Titan/Heroic Signatures Howardverse Timeline V1.
The Elder Age
Before humanity, before civilization, before anyone was keeping records or building cities or arguing about which kingdom was the best, there was an age when the Great Old Ones walked the earth openly, just being awful. When things that should not exist thrived in the frozen dark and everything probably smelt like mildew and mold. Whenever Brule speaks of those days when werewolves were just freely roaming about like it was nothing, this would be that time frame.
The poem “The Symbol” by Robert E. Howard, like many of the poems on this list, could really be placed in a lot of different places. I feel like it works as a nice introduction to the savage and weird world we’re wading into. The Zukala poems tell of a bard-like trickster god. Howard really painted this guy out to be something special and was one of the rare instances where Howard clearly made a deity-like character. He was featured in a draft of “Isle of Eons” which itself has several drafts and fragments. I didn’t give a date to those as they’re freakin’ timeless.
Our earliest dated stories are Clark Ashton Smith’s Hyperborea Cycle. Not to be confused with Howard’s Hyperborea, Smith’s Hyperborea is essentially ancient (Miocene, or Pleistocene, according to some sources) Greenland. If you’ve never read these stories, do yourself a favor and get on that now. They’re some of my favorites among all these yarns, especially “Seven Geases”. If you’re a fan of things escalating from bad to worse to even worse than that, but in a very sardonic sort of way, you’ll enjoy it.
I’ve placed them around 750,000 years ago as that’s what Clark Ashton Smith had to say about the subject. Now Lovecraft did state that he felt that his Lomar, Howard’s Valusia and Smith’s Commorium were contemporaries of each other (and personally this is my favorite approach), but I’ve gone with the more accepted and scholarly dates.
Ice eventually consumes Hyperborea, and the world enters an age of turbulent climate changes, and massive cataclysms that change the very foundation of the world itself.
The poem “The Symbol” by Robert E. Howard, like many of the poems on this list, could really be placed in a lot of different places. I feel like it works as a nice introduction to the savage and weird world we’re wading into. The Zukala poems tell of a bard-like trickster god. Howard really painted this guy out to be something special and was one of the rare instances where Howard clearly made a deity-like character. He was featured in a draft of “Isle of Eons” which itself has several drafts and fragments. I didn’t give a date to those as they’re freakin’ timeless.
Our earliest dated stories are Clark Ashton Smith’s Hyperborea Cycle. Not to be confused with Howard’s Hyperborea, Smith’s Hyperborea is essentially ancient (Miocene, or Pleistocene, according to some sources) Greenland. If you’ve never read these stories, do yourself a favor and get on that now. They’re some of my favorites among all these yarns, especially “Seven Geases”. If you’re a fan of things escalating from bad to worse to even worse than that, but in a very sardonic sort of way, you’ll enjoy it.
I’ve placed them around 750,000 years ago as that’s what Clark Ashton Smith had to say about the subject. Now Lovecraft did state that he felt that his Lomar, Howard’s Valusia and Smith’s Commorium were contemporaries of each other (and personally this is my favorite approach), but I’ve gone with the more accepted and scholarly dates.
Ice eventually consumes Hyperborea, and the world enters an age of turbulent climate changes, and massive cataclysms that change the very foundation of the world itself.
The Savage Age
If the Elder Age belonged to the Old Ones, the Savage Age belongs to humanity's first stumbling steps toward civilization. The ice has begun to recede, the great beasts still roam freely, and the ancestors of the Atlanteans and Picts are just starting to figure out that there might be strength in numbers. It's brutal, it's cold, and nobody is having a good time.
This era owes a debt to Paul Lewis Anderson, a writer whose Ta-an stories inspired Howard enough that he created his own character living among that tribe. Anderson's stories follow the struggles of early humanity against prehistoric terrors and each other, and Howard clearly loved the concept. Bear with me here as we wade into some speculative theory and headcanon.
Howard's contribution to this era comes through Am-ra of the Ta-an. Fair warning: the Am-ra fragments get pretty racist pretty quickly. It's a sharp turn too, because the first few stanzas of "Am-ra the Ta-an" are honestly great before things take a drastic turn. Setting that aside, the worldbuilding Howard managed in these fragments is genuinely interesting. Am-ra is a man who can communicate with the Wild Folk (the animals) which the Priests of the Ta-an consider heresy, and so they cast him out. His comrade Gaur, who fought alongside him in the war against the Sons of the Eagles, slays the High Priest and flees into the wilderness to join his friend. A later fragment gives us Old Gaur, now ancient, regaling the people with stories of their battles. I've always loved the idea of these stories filtering down through the ages, Am-ra becoming a mythic figure like Hercules or Gilgamesh, a name invoked around fires long after anyone remembers what he actually did.
That's where "Spear and Fang" comes in. While a popular theory places it after the Hyborian Age as evidence of humanity's slow climb back from savagery, my headcanon is that Ga-nor is a descendant of Gaur, raised on stories of Am-ra's heroics, which is what drives him to take on the gur-na and eventually the Serpent Men. "Fang and Spear" by Jim Zub in Savage Sword of Conan #10 picks up directly from there, a direct sequel that ends grimly for Ga-nor and A-aea's people, but with enough of a spark of hope to suggest the fight isn't over.
And as the years pass, these scattered tribes would eventually unite and wrest the City of Wonders from the Serpent Men, laying the foundation for the first true civilization.
This era owes a debt to Paul Lewis Anderson, a writer whose Ta-an stories inspired Howard enough that he created his own character living among that tribe. Anderson's stories follow the struggles of early humanity against prehistoric terrors and each other, and Howard clearly loved the concept. Bear with me here as we wade into some speculative theory and headcanon.
Howard's contribution to this era comes through Am-ra of the Ta-an. Fair warning: the Am-ra fragments get pretty racist pretty quickly. It's a sharp turn too, because the first few stanzas of "Am-ra the Ta-an" are honestly great before things take a drastic turn. Setting that aside, the worldbuilding Howard managed in these fragments is genuinely interesting. Am-ra is a man who can communicate with the Wild Folk (the animals) which the Priests of the Ta-an consider heresy, and so they cast him out. His comrade Gaur, who fought alongside him in the war against the Sons of the Eagles, slays the High Priest and flees into the wilderness to join his friend. A later fragment gives us Old Gaur, now ancient, regaling the people with stories of their battles. I've always loved the idea of these stories filtering down through the ages, Am-ra becoming a mythic figure like Hercules or Gilgamesh, a name invoked around fires long after anyone remembers what he actually did.
That's where "Spear and Fang" comes in. While a popular theory places it after the Hyborian Age as evidence of humanity's slow climb back from savagery, my headcanon is that Ga-nor is a descendant of Gaur, raised on stories of Am-ra's heroics, which is what drives him to take on the gur-na and eventually the Serpent Men. "Fang and Spear" by Jim Zub in Savage Sword of Conan #10 picks up directly from there, a direct sequel that ends grimly for Ga-nor and A-aea's people, but with enough of a spark of hope to suggest the fight isn't over.
And as the years pass, these scattered tribes would eventually unite and wrest the City of Wonders from the Serpent Men, laying the foundation for the first true civilization.
The Thurian Age
If you want to understand why I love the Thurian Age, start with this: we know there are Seven Kingdoms, but nobody (not scholars, not historians, not even the people living there) knows which kingdoms are actually part of the Seven. This is a civilization so ancient that its own inhabitants have lost track of when it began. Valusia, the golden heart of the known world, has been there so long that its origins are pure myth even to the Valusians. I love that shit and it’s exactly what makes this era so compelling, and it's a big part of why I love Kull. My dad also loved Kull, which probably explains a lot of it as well.
My placements for Kull lean heavily on the research of Dale Rippke, with a few personal adjustments. “Exile of Atlantis” is first, and features Kull in the wilds of Atlantis alongside Gor-na and young Am-ra (possibly named after the legendary hero from days long past), and shows how Kull gets, well, exiled from Atlantis.
“The Curse of the Golden Skull” is one that I completely agree with Rippke’s assessment of the story, and have placed it before “The Shadow Kingdom”, taking place as Kull leads a band of brigands, at behest of King Borna of Valusia, to help the Lemurians deal with a rogue sorcerer. The story also features an interlude and then flashes forward to the 1920s, as an unnamed explorer has found the skull of Rotath.
"By This Axe I Rule" gets placed close to "The Shadow Kingdom" because Kull specifically mentions months having passed since taking the throne, and there's a reference to a Serpent Temple that ties the two stories together neatly. I have moved “Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” away from Rippke’s placement as well. He has it much later in Kull’s life, and while I originally agreed with this assessment, Kull just seems far too naive in the story for it to be when he’s older. Plus, Brule is really his only ally in the story and it just seems odd that Kelkor is absent (granted that has more to do with the fact that Howard hadn’t created Kelkor when he wrote this story). “The Cat and the Skull” and “The Screaming Skull of Silence” both feature the character Kuthulos, not to be confused with Kathulos AKA Thulsa Doom, who is present in “The Cat and the Skull”. That’s not confusing at all, right?
When it comes to Titan and Heroic Signatures, we have "The Talons of Deep Time", “The Invisible Assassin", and “The Undoomed Man”. “Talons” makes multiple references to Kull's fight with the Serpent Men and Brule's dynamic with Kull still feels very early in their friendship, so it sits near the beginning of his reign. “The Invisible Assassin” from Savage Sword #9 on the other hand has Kull carrying himself like a man who has been king long enough to have opinions about it, so it lands a bit later. “The Undoomed Man” takes place when Kull is still a slave in Valusia and so must be placed earlier in his life. I’ve placed that before “The Curse of the Golden Skull”.
Titan and Heroic Signatures have more stories in the pipeline, so this section is going to grow. There's an enormous amount of untouched territory here and I cannot wait to see what they do with it. With that said, a lot of Kull’s stories are fragments or unfinished drafts, so it’ll be interesting to see how that affects the timeline. It could very well change things significantly and have stories be moved all around.
“Kings of the Night” I feel is more of a Bran Mak Morn story and is placed with those tales, but I definitely feel like we’ll be seeing that be brought into the forefront in the coming years with Titan Comics, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kull aspects of that story are expanded upon in future stories.
There’s a lot to play with in the Thurian Age. While Atlantis during Kull’s time was still in a state of savagery, all signs point to them reaching a prosperous period in the waning years of the Thurian Age, eventually rivalling even Valusia.
But then the world breaks.
My placements for Kull lean heavily on the research of Dale Rippke, with a few personal adjustments. “Exile of Atlantis” is first, and features Kull in the wilds of Atlantis alongside Gor-na and young Am-ra (possibly named after the legendary hero from days long past), and shows how Kull gets, well, exiled from Atlantis.
“The Curse of the Golden Skull” is one that I completely agree with Rippke’s assessment of the story, and have placed it before “The Shadow Kingdom”, taking place as Kull leads a band of brigands, at behest of King Borna of Valusia, to help the Lemurians deal with a rogue sorcerer. The story also features an interlude and then flashes forward to the 1920s, as an unnamed explorer has found the skull of Rotath.
"By This Axe I Rule" gets placed close to "The Shadow Kingdom" because Kull specifically mentions months having passed since taking the throne, and there's a reference to a Serpent Temple that ties the two stories together neatly. I have moved “Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” away from Rippke’s placement as well. He has it much later in Kull’s life, and while I originally agreed with this assessment, Kull just seems far too naive in the story for it to be when he’s older. Plus, Brule is really his only ally in the story and it just seems odd that Kelkor is absent (granted that has more to do with the fact that Howard hadn’t created Kelkor when he wrote this story). “The Cat and the Skull” and “The Screaming Skull of Silence” both feature the character Kuthulos, not to be confused with Kathulos AKA Thulsa Doom, who is present in “The Cat and the Skull”. That’s not confusing at all, right?
When it comes to Titan and Heroic Signatures, we have "The Talons of Deep Time", “The Invisible Assassin", and “The Undoomed Man”. “Talons” makes multiple references to Kull's fight with the Serpent Men and Brule's dynamic with Kull still feels very early in their friendship, so it sits near the beginning of his reign. “The Invisible Assassin” from Savage Sword #9 on the other hand has Kull carrying himself like a man who has been king long enough to have opinions about it, so it lands a bit later. “The Undoomed Man” takes place when Kull is still a slave in Valusia and so must be placed earlier in his life. I’ve placed that before “The Curse of the Golden Skull”.
Titan and Heroic Signatures have more stories in the pipeline, so this section is going to grow. There's an enormous amount of untouched territory here and I cannot wait to see what they do with it. With that said, a lot of Kull’s stories are fragments or unfinished drafts, so it’ll be interesting to see how that affects the timeline. It could very well change things significantly and have stories be moved all around.
“Kings of the Night” I feel is more of a Bran Mak Morn story and is placed with those tales, but I definitely feel like we’ll be seeing that be brought into the forefront in the coming years with Titan Comics, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kull aspects of that story are expanded upon in future stories.
There’s a lot to play with in the Thurian Age. While Atlantis during Kull’s time was still in a state of savagery, all signs point to them reaching a prosperous period in the waning years of the Thurian Age, eventually rivalling even Valusia.
But then the world breaks.
The Post Cataclysm
Atlantis sinks. Lemuria shatters. The great continent of the Thurian Age splinters and reshapes itself over thousands of years of geological catastrophe, and everything is swallowed by the sea or scattered to the winds. What survives does so in fragments: bloodlines, half-remembered myths, the occasional stubborn sorcerer clinging to the last scraps of the old world.
And there are a lot of stubborn sorcerers.
This is where I've placed Clark Ashton Smith's Poseidonis Cycle. Poseidonis is the last remaining island of what was once Atlantis. A tiny remnant of a drowned empire where the old magic still lingers and the sorcerers who remain are desperately, futilely trying to hold back the inevitable. It's elegant and melancholy and deeply weird, which is everything Smith does best. Slight spoiler: the planet Venus is involved in the finale in a way that comes completely out of nowhere and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.
"The Epiphany of Death" is set in Ptolemides, a city contemporary with Poseidonis, and feels like it could be the last flickering light between the ancient world and the rise of the mysterious Acheron Empire. The gap between the fall of Valusia and the rise of Conan's world is roughly 80,000 years, longer than the entire recorded history of human civilization multiplied many times over. Civilizations rise and fall, whole peoples migrate and transform, and the ancestors of the Cimmerians and Aquilonians and Stygians slowly become who they'll need to be.
Placing these stories here may be a stretch, but they’re fun and I love them. And they do directly reference Hyperborea which ties directly into the Cthulhu Mythos which ties back to Howard, so yeah.
This, of course, leads us into our next section. You may have heard about it before.
And there are a lot of stubborn sorcerers.
This is where I've placed Clark Ashton Smith's Poseidonis Cycle. Poseidonis is the last remaining island of what was once Atlantis. A tiny remnant of a drowned empire where the old magic still lingers and the sorcerers who remain are desperately, futilely trying to hold back the inevitable. It's elegant and melancholy and deeply weird, which is everything Smith does best. Slight spoiler: the planet Venus is involved in the finale in a way that comes completely out of nowhere and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.
"The Epiphany of Death" is set in Ptolemides, a city contemporary with Poseidonis, and feels like it could be the last flickering light between the ancient world and the rise of the mysterious Acheron Empire. The gap between the fall of Valusia and the rise of Conan's world is roughly 80,000 years, longer than the entire recorded history of human civilization multiplied many times over. Civilizations rise and fall, whole peoples migrate and transform, and the ancestors of the Cimmerians and Aquilonians and Stygians slowly become who they'll need to be.
Placing these stories here may be a stretch, but they’re fun and I love them. And they do directly reference Hyperborea which ties directly into the Cthulhu Mythos which ties back to Howard, so yeah.
This, of course, leads us into our next section. You may have heard about it before.
The Hyborian Age
The Adventures of Young Conan the Thief
"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of."
This is it. This is what everything has been building toward. The Elder Age gave us cosmic horror and ancient sorcery. The Savage Age gave us humanity's first stumbling steps. The Thurian Age gave us kingdoms and kings and the first great clash between human ambition and inhuman evil. The Post Cataclysm gave us the long slow darkness between one world and the next. And now, emerging from that darkness like a barbarian kicking down a tavern door, we have the Hyborian Age.
This is the world of Conan the Cimmerian. A world of scheming sorcerers and warrior queens, of kingdoms built on conquest and held together by nothing but the will of whoever happens to be sitting on the throne that week. It's loud and dangerous and gloriously alive in a way the earlier ages, for all their cosmic grandeur, never quite managed. Howard didn't just write stories set here, he wrote an entire fictional history of the age, tracing the rise and fall of civilizations with the same care a real historian might bring to Rome or Babylon. That essay, "The Hyborian Age", sits at the top of this section for a reason.
Another reason is because the last lines of the Hyborian Age lead beautifully into the next item on the timeline:
This is the world of Conan the Cimmerian. A world of scheming sorcerers and warrior queens, of kingdoms built on conquest and held together by nothing but the will of whoever happens to be sitting on the throne that week. It's loud and dangerous and gloriously alive in a way the earlier ages, for all their cosmic grandeur, never quite managed. Howard didn't just write stories set here, he wrote an entire fictional history of the age, tracing the rise and fall of civilizations with the same care a real historian might bring to Rome or Babylon. That essay, "The Hyborian Age", sits at the top of this section for a reason.
Another reason is because the last lines of the Hyborian Age lead beautifully into the next item on the timeline:
“The origins of other races of the modern world may be similarly traced; in almost every case, older far than they realize, their history stretches back into the mists of the forgotten Hyborian age....”
And here is the first line of the poem “Cimmeria”:
“I remember.”
Anyway, before we get lost in the poetry of it, there’s a timeline to anchor. Most sources agree that Kull's era was roughly 100,000 years ago, and Titan Comics has confirmed that Conan lived 80,000 years after Kull, putting his birth at around 20,000 BCE. That date is the anchor for everything that follows. If we want to really get down in the trenches Conan’s birth year would be closer to 20,028 or so, but for now I’m just keeping it 20,000 BCE for simplicity’s sake.
Titan Comics made an early decision not to do straight adaptations of Howard's original stories, which is an interesting creative choice that sets this run apart from every previous comic adaptation. The closest they've come is an extended riff on "The Frost Giant's Daughter" in the "Frozen Faith" arc, which grows naturally out of themes introduced in the Free Comic Book Day 2023 release "Looking For Lands Beyond" (an absolute masterpiece, for the record). Alongside the mainline comic I've been including the Savage Sword of Conan Reforged reprints as a compromise rather than incorporating the full Roy Thomas Marvel run.
And here's something I noticed that suggests this is all more coordinated than it might appear: when "Spawn of the Serpent God" released in October 2025, Titan was simultaneously running the "Scourge of the Serpent" event covering "God in the Bowl" and "The Shadow Kingdom", while Savage Sword Reforged was releasing colorized versions of "Frost Giant's Daughter" and "Tower of the Elephant." The next Reforged release was "Devil in Iron", the very story “Spawn of the Serpent God” serves as a prequel to. Titan said they wouldn't adapt the older stories. They never said they wouldn't re-release the older adaptations. Tim Waggoner's "Spawn of the Serpent God" is split across two time periods (Conan at 18 and Conan at 33) and I've split it accordingly on the timeline, though I'd suggest reading it as a complete novel.
A few specific placement notes worth flagging: "Forged" from Savage Sword #6 features a very young Conan but contradicts the Titan comic in a few places, so treat it with skeptical eyes. It should be noted that the next page is a pin-up by Marco Rudy depicting a drunk and sleeping Conan. Maybe it was just a dream? "Madness on the Mound" takes place after “Frozen Faith”, but Conan must’ve joined back up with Niord’s men again sometime shortly after the conclusion of Zub’s yarn.
"Lethal Consignment" is a tricky one. Author Shaun Hamill intended it to take place before "Tower of the Elephant", but it places Conan in Zingara, somewhere he's rarely noted to be this early in his life. I've kept Hamill's intended order as the primary placement out of respect for his author's note while listing an alternate. Howard’s own response to questions about Conan’s life states that Conan was enslaved by the Hyperboreans for a brief period, and he escaped south, making his way towards Zamora and Nemedia. It’s not impossible that Conan traveled to Zingara before Zamora, just highly improbable. But, that’s kind of going to become a thing here. Conan travels a lot, and all over the place, sometimes in incredibly short amounts of time.
And I'll be honest, I'm still on the fence about "Rogues in the House." I personally prefer it after "Tower of the Elephant", but Conan lists his adventures in issue 1 of the mainline comic as Nemedia, Corinthia, Zamora and countless other places, which feels like Zub deliberately giving us a rough order. For now it sits where Zub's geography suggests it should. Plus, Dan Yergert’s arguments for this order are pretty well-founded and my reasoning is simply due to how I originally read it so we’ll be going with “Rogues” taking place before “Tower of the Elephant”.
The first half of “Spawn of the Serpent God” takes place weeks after “Tower of the Elephant” and specifies Arenjun as the setting to both stories. “The Amulet of Nakamar” by Brendan Deneen also takes place weeks after “Tower” and also is set in Arenjun and ends with Conan leaving the city for bigger and better things.
From the context of “The Green God of Leng” by Gavin G. Smith we know Conan spent some time in Shadizar with a woman named Ileetha which led to him being kidnapped and forced to kill a god on the Plateau of Leng. The Plateau of Leng is a setting Lovecraft used for a lot of his stories including “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”. This story, which was released while I was already writing this, really gives credence to this whole project. Getting to read about Conan taking on fungi from Yuggoth and the satyr-like Men of Leng is the whole reason this project even started. The setting is north of Shadizar to the border of Brythunia and Zamora. He heads south from here.
Conan the Mercenary
“I remember.”
Anyway, before we get lost in the poetry of it, there’s a timeline to anchor. Most sources agree that Kull's era was roughly 100,000 years ago, and Titan Comics has confirmed that Conan lived 80,000 years after Kull, putting his birth at around 20,000 BCE. That date is the anchor for everything that follows. If we want to really get down in the trenches Conan’s birth year would be closer to 20,028 or so, but for now I’m just keeping it 20,000 BCE for simplicity’s sake.
Titan Comics made an early decision not to do straight adaptations of Howard's original stories, which is an interesting creative choice that sets this run apart from every previous comic adaptation. The closest they've come is an extended riff on "The Frost Giant's Daughter" in the "Frozen Faith" arc, which grows naturally out of themes introduced in the Free Comic Book Day 2023 release "Looking For Lands Beyond" (an absolute masterpiece, for the record). Alongside the mainline comic I've been including the Savage Sword of Conan Reforged reprints as a compromise rather than incorporating the full Roy Thomas Marvel run.
And here's something I noticed that suggests this is all more coordinated than it might appear: when "Spawn of the Serpent God" released in October 2025, Titan was simultaneously running the "Scourge of the Serpent" event covering "God in the Bowl" and "The Shadow Kingdom", while Savage Sword Reforged was releasing colorized versions of "Frost Giant's Daughter" and "Tower of the Elephant." The next Reforged release was "Devil in Iron", the very story “Spawn of the Serpent God” serves as a prequel to. Titan said they wouldn't adapt the older stories. They never said they wouldn't re-release the older adaptations. Tim Waggoner's "Spawn of the Serpent God" is split across two time periods (Conan at 18 and Conan at 33) and I've split it accordingly on the timeline, though I'd suggest reading it as a complete novel.
A few specific placement notes worth flagging: "Forged" from Savage Sword #6 features a very young Conan but contradicts the Titan comic in a few places, so treat it with skeptical eyes. It should be noted that the next page is a pin-up by Marco Rudy depicting a drunk and sleeping Conan. Maybe it was just a dream? "Madness on the Mound" takes place after “Frozen Faith”, but Conan must’ve joined back up with Niord’s men again sometime shortly after the conclusion of Zub’s yarn.
"Lethal Consignment" is a tricky one. Author Shaun Hamill intended it to take place before "Tower of the Elephant", but it places Conan in Zingara, somewhere he's rarely noted to be this early in his life. I've kept Hamill's intended order as the primary placement out of respect for his author's note while listing an alternate. Howard’s own response to questions about Conan’s life states that Conan was enslaved by the Hyperboreans for a brief period, and he escaped south, making his way towards Zamora and Nemedia. It’s not impossible that Conan traveled to Zingara before Zamora, just highly improbable. But, that’s kind of going to become a thing here. Conan travels a lot, and all over the place, sometimes in incredibly short amounts of time.
And I'll be honest, I'm still on the fence about "Rogues in the House." I personally prefer it after "Tower of the Elephant", but Conan lists his adventures in issue 1 of the mainline comic as Nemedia, Corinthia, Zamora and countless other places, which feels like Zub deliberately giving us a rough order. For now it sits where Zub's geography suggests it should. Plus, Dan Yergert’s arguments for this order are pretty well-founded and my reasoning is simply due to how I originally read it so we’ll be going with “Rogues” taking place before “Tower of the Elephant”.
The first half of “Spawn of the Serpent God” takes place weeks after “Tower of the Elephant” and specifies Arenjun as the setting to both stories. “The Amulet of Nakamar” by Brendan Deneen also takes place weeks after “Tower” and also is set in Arenjun and ends with Conan leaving the city for bigger and better things.
From the context of “The Green God of Leng” by Gavin G. Smith we know Conan spent some time in Shadizar with a woman named Ileetha which led to him being kidnapped and forced to kill a god on the Plateau of Leng. The Plateau of Leng is a setting Lovecraft used for a lot of his stories including “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”. This story, which was released while I was already writing this, really gives credence to this whole project. Getting to read about Conan taking on fungi from Yuggoth and the satyr-like Men of Leng is the whole reason this project even started. The setting is north of Shadizar to the border of Brythunia and Zamora. He heads south from here.
Conan the Mercenary
This stretch covers Conan's transition from thief to mercenary. Still young, still figuring out what kind of man he is, but starting to range further from Zamora and the haunts of his thieving days.
"The Garden of Fear" is an interesting case. This James Allison technically takes place in the 1930s, but the heart of it is set in the ancient past. For many years most scholars placed the James Allison stories after the end of the Hyborian Age entirely, but the "Battle of the Black Stone" crossover and the novel "Cult of the Obsidian Moon" make it clear that the events of "Garden of Fear" happen roughly a decade before that book. So here it sits, opening this era.
"Eastern Horizons" begins with Conan leaving Ophir and heading east in search of treasure, and it reads like his first time venturing that far in that direction, which puts it early in his mercenary days. Worth noting: he receives a necklace of three golden medallions at the story's end that's very reminiscent of his classic Marvel look, which played no small part in deciding its placement here. With that said, that same necklace from the Marvel run is worn by a young Conan in flashbacks in “Frozen Faith”. It’s a bit of an Easter Egg in both regards I surmise so I suppose using it to anchor any type of continuity is a bit shaky, but let’s be absolutely real here: most of the time, all explanations for continuity are mostly shaky headcanon.
A word on the War of Tarim. In the Roy Thomas Marvel stories this conflict falls squarely in this period, and while Savage Sword did publish a sequel to Marvel issue #28 (Savage Sword #7), picking up just a few days after the events of the comic, and making references to the events of previous issues, the mainline comic has steered clear of this era so far. I'm taking the Star Wars Legends approach: something very similar probably happened, just not exactly as Thomas told it. The same goes for "Conan and the Spider God" by de Camp, which has been referenced a few times in Savage Sword and the novel “Songs of the Slain”, but clearly isn't strict canon given that Conan's father isn’t named Nial in the Titan continuity. Something similar happened. Probably. “Spawn of the Serpent God” also serves as a prequel to the “Spider God” and thus secured its placement on the timeline.
There are several Belit centered stories that take place in this timeframe as well. “Bone Whispers” by Michael A. Stackpole is great and gives us a young Belit in her first year or so on the seas. “Becoming a Goddess” from Savage Sword #14 features Belit being possessed by Althea, an ancient goddess who is bound to a temple on an uncharted island. It does not go well for Althea. “Shipwrecked” by V. Castro has an alligator man who attempts to try and seduce Belit. It does not go well for Mr. Alligator Man.
“Damn Thing in the Water” has Conan wearing a helmet so I’m placing it before “Queen of the Black Coast” due to the most obvious logic of all: Conan has a helmet.
Recently “Grim Tidings” was released for Free Comic Book Day 2026 and is the beginning of the “Tides of the Tyrant King” storyline. I’ve placed in before “Queen of the Black Coast” mostly due to it being on the border of Argos and Zingara, and ending with Conan looking out to the sea. Until we have more clues from the future releases, this may very well be a temporary placement as I’m not too confident about it.
Conan the Privateer
"The Garden of Fear" is an interesting case. This James Allison technically takes place in the 1930s, but the heart of it is set in the ancient past. For many years most scholars placed the James Allison stories after the end of the Hyborian Age entirely, but the "Battle of the Black Stone" crossover and the novel "Cult of the Obsidian Moon" make it clear that the events of "Garden of Fear" happen roughly a decade before that book. So here it sits, opening this era.
"Eastern Horizons" begins with Conan leaving Ophir and heading east in search of treasure, and it reads like his first time venturing that far in that direction, which puts it early in his mercenary days. Worth noting: he receives a necklace of three golden medallions at the story's end that's very reminiscent of his classic Marvel look, which played no small part in deciding its placement here. With that said, that same necklace from the Marvel run is worn by a young Conan in flashbacks in “Frozen Faith”. It’s a bit of an Easter Egg in both regards I surmise so I suppose using it to anchor any type of continuity is a bit shaky, but let’s be absolutely real here: most of the time, all explanations for continuity are mostly shaky headcanon.
A word on the War of Tarim. In the Roy Thomas Marvel stories this conflict falls squarely in this period, and while Savage Sword did publish a sequel to Marvel issue #28 (Savage Sword #7), picking up just a few days after the events of the comic, and making references to the events of previous issues, the mainline comic has steered clear of this era so far. I'm taking the Star Wars Legends approach: something very similar probably happened, just not exactly as Thomas told it. The same goes for "Conan and the Spider God" by de Camp, which has been referenced a few times in Savage Sword and the novel “Songs of the Slain”, but clearly isn't strict canon given that Conan's father isn’t named Nial in the Titan continuity. Something similar happened. Probably. “Spawn of the Serpent God” also serves as a prequel to the “Spider God” and thus secured its placement on the timeline.
There are several Belit centered stories that take place in this timeframe as well. “Bone Whispers” by Michael A. Stackpole is great and gives us a young Belit in her first year or so on the seas. “Becoming a Goddess” from Savage Sword #14 features Belit being possessed by Althea, an ancient goddess who is bound to a temple on an uncharted island. It does not go well for Althea. “Shipwrecked” by V. Castro has an alligator man who attempts to try and seduce Belit. It does not go well for Mr. Alligator Man.
“Damn Thing in the Water” has Conan wearing a helmet so I’m placing it before “Queen of the Black Coast” due to the most obvious logic of all: Conan has a helmet.
Recently “Grim Tidings” was released for Free Comic Book Day 2026 and is the beginning of the “Tides of the Tyrant King” storyline. I’ve placed in before “Queen of the Black Coast” mostly due to it being on the border of Argos and Zingara, and ending with Conan looking out to the sea. Until we have more clues from the future releases, this may very well be a temporary placement as I’m not too confident about it.
Conan the Privateer
Belit and her story with Conan is the emotional centerpiece of his entire young life. Now, I’m not saying to split up Howard’s “Queen of the Black Coast”, but I am saying that there are a few stories that take place in between Chapters 1 and 2 of “Queen of the Black Coast”. The Marvel Comics continuity famously devoted nearly 50 issues to their time together. Titan and Heroic Signatures only have a few stories covering this era so far.
"Terror from the Abyss" by Henry Herz is set during this window, and the first two parts of "Twisting Loyalties" tell the tale of a heist gone wrong during Conan and Belit's time together. The next two parts pick up after the conclusion of "Queen of the Black Coast" and follow Conan through his first raw days of mourning. "Coils of the Golden Empress" picks up directly after "Twisting Loyalties" closes.
"The Child" could arguably be placed in a few areas on the timeline, but I’ve chosen this section primarily as it has Conan moving north, and by the end he's thinking about heading back to Zamora. That northward drift is what makes everything that follows geographically coherent.
And this is actually the detail that got me started on this whole project. In Conan the Barbarian #5, Conan is in Shadizar mourning Belit, which is a long way from where he left her. Later it becomes clear that "Thrice Marked For Death" takes place before "Vale of Lost Women", which means Conan makes quite the journey: south to north to south again. After "The Child" pushes him north toward Shem, the events of “Cult of the Obsidian Moon” take place, which connects directly back to “Garden of Fear”. Afterwards, Conan makes way for Shadizar, and we move into "Thrice Marked For Death" and "The Age Unconquered". Conan travels back to the time of Kull and faces off against Thulsa Doom in what may be one of the coolest storylines I’ve ever read. Some people may roll their eyes at cameos by Yag-Kosha or things of similar nature, but I love it. It’s fun and that’s kind of the point, is it not?
"Xuthal of the Dusk" then serves as the bridge. Its backstory has Conan joining a rebel prince from Koth, cutting a path of destruction through Shem, getting harried by Stygians, and generally having a terrible time, until he ends up stranded in the desert with a very thirsty Natala. From there Conan makes his way south.
Conan the Raider
"Terror from the Abyss" by Henry Herz is set during this window, and the first two parts of "Twisting Loyalties" tell the tale of a heist gone wrong during Conan and Belit's time together. The next two parts pick up after the conclusion of "Queen of the Black Coast" and follow Conan through his first raw days of mourning. "Coils of the Golden Empress" picks up directly after "Twisting Loyalties" closes.
"The Child" could arguably be placed in a few areas on the timeline, but I’ve chosen this section primarily as it has Conan moving north, and by the end he's thinking about heading back to Zamora. That northward drift is what makes everything that follows geographically coherent.
And this is actually the detail that got me started on this whole project. In Conan the Barbarian #5, Conan is in Shadizar mourning Belit, which is a long way from where he left her. Later it becomes clear that "Thrice Marked For Death" takes place before "Vale of Lost Women", which means Conan makes quite the journey: south to north to south again. After "The Child" pushes him north toward Shem, the events of “Cult of the Obsidian Moon” take place, which connects directly back to “Garden of Fear”. Afterwards, Conan makes way for Shadizar, and we move into "Thrice Marked For Death" and "The Age Unconquered". Conan travels back to the time of Kull and faces off against Thulsa Doom in what may be one of the coolest storylines I’ve ever read. Some people may roll their eyes at cameos by Yag-Kosha or things of similar nature, but I love it. It’s fun and that’s kind of the point, is it not?
"Xuthal of the Dusk" then serves as the bridge. Its backstory has Conan joining a rebel prince from Koth, cutting a path of destruction through Shem, getting harried by Stygians, and generally having a terrible time, until he ends up stranded in the desert with a very thirsty Natala. From there Conan makes his way south.
Conan the Raider
By this point Conan has put some distance between himself and the Black Coast, but the grief is still there under the surface. "The Vale of Lost Women" shows him restless and increasingly dissatisfied, which sets up everything that follows in this stretch nicely.
"A Nest of Serpents" picks up right after "The Vale of Lost Women" and delivers a full Conan in Stygia adventure built around his history with Thoth-Amon. In Marvel, Thoth-Amon and Conan clashed repeatedly and dramatically, but Howard himself only ever hinted at their connection. Zub is clearly building toward something here and I for one cannot wait to see where it goes.
"Conan and the Emerald Lotus", "Black Starlight" and "Conan and the Living Plague", all by John C. Hocking, take place in this same window, with Conan ranging back and forth between Shem and Stygia. These are considered genuine classics by most Howard fans and deservedly so. Hocking has mentioned having more Conan ideas in the pipeline and I really hope he gets the chance to tell them. Are you reading Heroic Signatures?
There are several poems that have been featured in Savage Sword, accompanied by gorgeous artwork. Some of these poems are originally by Robert E. Howard and some are new pieces. I’ve included them in the timeline, and like many of the other poems, its placement is very much speculation. “Call Thee To Crom” is an original poem by Jim Zub and truly could be placed anywhere on this timeline during the Hyborian Age.
Savage Sword stories are notoriously difficult to place and "Treasure of the Vermin Queen" is no exception. The Shem and Stygia mercenary period felt like the most logical home for it. "Ghosts and Echoes" from the mainline comic presented a similar challenge, though the Khoraja setting and the fact that Conan hasn't yet reached his generalship both suggest it belongs before "Black Colossus." I may be wrong. Hell, I may be wrong about a lot of this. But that's where it sits. And it's worth noting that Savage Sword Reforged #4 is a colorized reprint of "Black Colossus". Yet more proof in what I'm increasingly convinced is a very deliberate publishing strategy from Titan. The synergy keeps showing up. I'm all for it.
"Iron Shadows in the Moon" is quite possibly the most frustrating story in this entire timeline to place. The tone feels early, with a young and impulsive Conan, but then Howard drops in a reference to Conan smirking when asked about pirates, and a comment about making Olivia the "Queen of the Blue Sea" that only makes sense if Belit is already a memory. "Spawn of the Serpent God" then confirms Conan is roughly 33 at this point, shortly after his time with the Red Brotherhood on the Vilayet Sea. That settles it. "Iron Shadows" belongs here.
And now Conan is back to his pirating ways.
Conan the Commander
"A Nest of Serpents" picks up right after "The Vale of Lost Women" and delivers a full Conan in Stygia adventure built around his history with Thoth-Amon. In Marvel, Thoth-Amon and Conan clashed repeatedly and dramatically, but Howard himself only ever hinted at their connection. Zub is clearly building toward something here and I for one cannot wait to see where it goes.
"Conan and the Emerald Lotus", "Black Starlight" and "Conan and the Living Plague", all by John C. Hocking, take place in this same window, with Conan ranging back and forth between Shem and Stygia. These are considered genuine classics by most Howard fans and deservedly so. Hocking has mentioned having more Conan ideas in the pipeline and I really hope he gets the chance to tell them. Are you reading Heroic Signatures?
There are several poems that have been featured in Savage Sword, accompanied by gorgeous artwork. Some of these poems are originally by Robert E. Howard and some are new pieces. I’ve included them in the timeline, and like many of the other poems, its placement is very much speculation. “Call Thee To Crom” is an original poem by Jim Zub and truly could be placed anywhere on this timeline during the Hyborian Age.
Savage Sword stories are notoriously difficult to place and "Treasure of the Vermin Queen" is no exception. The Shem and Stygia mercenary period felt like the most logical home for it. "Ghosts and Echoes" from the mainline comic presented a similar challenge, though the Khoraja setting and the fact that Conan hasn't yet reached his generalship both suggest it belongs before "Black Colossus." I may be wrong. Hell, I may be wrong about a lot of this. But that's where it sits. And it's worth noting that Savage Sword Reforged #4 is a colorized reprint of "Black Colossus". Yet more proof in what I'm increasingly convinced is a very deliberate publishing strategy from Titan. The synergy keeps showing up. I'm all for it.
"Iron Shadows in the Moon" is quite possibly the most frustrating story in this entire timeline to place. The tone feels early, with a young and impulsive Conan, but then Howard drops in a reference to Conan smirking when asked about pirates, and a comment about making Olivia the "Queen of the Blue Sea" that only makes sense if Belit is already a memory. "Spawn of the Serpent God" then confirms Conan is roughly 33 at this point, shortly after his time with the Red Brotherhood on the Vilayet Sea. That settles it. "Iron Shadows" belongs here.
And now Conan is back to his pirating ways.
Conan the Commander
The second part of "Spawn of the Serpent God" picks up in the weeks immediately following "Iron Shadows in the Moon", which is the final nail in the coffin for anyone who wants to place that story earlier in Conan's life. His first stint with the Red Brotherhood is recent and he is explicitly 33. The text doesn't leave much wiggle room.
"The Devil in Iron" follows shortly after, and it's set on an island in the Vilayet Sea. Scott Oden's "The Shadow of Vengeance" picks up three months later and is excellent, capturing Howard's voice without trying to imitate it directly. If you haven't read it, fix that.
This brings us to the Hyrkanian Steppe days, and I'll be honest, this is the section where the chronology gets genuinely messy as it’s a bit of a hodge podge of Savage Sword tales. These are stories that could arguably slot into Conan's earlier Turanian mercenary period, but something about the way Conan carries himself in most of them suggests a man with more miles on him than the young thief from Zamora. He's harder here. More deliberate. Less interested in proving himself and more interested in getting paid and getting out. It's a subtle shift but it's there if you're looking for it.
A word on Liam Sharp: if you see his name on a Conan story, clear your schedule. "Tattered Wings" in particular is the kind of thing that makes you remember why you fell in love with this character in the first place. His writing and art are so wildly beautiful, it’s a crime not to be reading his stories.
This stretch of stories leads us toward "The People of the Black Circle", which is widely considered one of Howard's finest achievements. A full novella with political intrigue, a memorable antagonist in the Black Seers of Yimsha, and Conan at arguably his most competent and charismatic. It's a high point before the long road to kingship begins and may be my favorite Conan story overall. That changes on a weekly basis it seems though.
After the events of "The People of the Black Circle", I’ve placed “A Witch Shall Be Born” and Conan’s Zuagir days. This is another one that has bounced around a bit, and may do so again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s all tentative.
Now, Titan has released a few stories that take place after “A Witch Shall Be Born”. “Twice Paid Debts” takes place a decade after Conan and Belit were betrayed in “Twisted Loyalties”, and Conan is working with the Free Companions. “Dwellers in the Oasis” takes place eight months after “A Witch Shall Be Born” and shows how Conan’s wounds were healed. Now, “Sacrifice in the Sand” has to take place after “Twice Paid Debts” because the character Captain Nkosi is featured in both, and dies in one of them, so that kind of solidifies that.
Soon after, Conan heads northwest. "Leaving the Garden" has him escorting a caravan west before turning toward colder climates, and "Wolves of the Tundra" and "The Wuthering" (another Liam Sharp story) both take place in the frozen north. There's a bleakness to these stories that feels right for this moment in his life. He's accomplished, experienced, and completely directionless. Which for Conan usually means something interesting is about to happen. Which it does. He turns into a werewolf for a bit of time and has a run in with a tavern possibly full of Serpent Men, and bears witness to an Aesir man’s final moments. Eventually, from events yet unseen, Conan ends up back on the coast and you’ll never believe what happens.
Conan becomes a pirate again. Look, it happens a lot. The man loves the sea. The events of “The Pool of the Black One” take place which then leads into “The Treasures of Tortage” by Robbie MacNiven.
Conan the Buccaneer
"The Devil in Iron" follows shortly after, and it's set on an island in the Vilayet Sea. Scott Oden's "The Shadow of Vengeance" picks up three months later and is excellent, capturing Howard's voice without trying to imitate it directly. If you haven't read it, fix that.
This brings us to the Hyrkanian Steppe days, and I'll be honest, this is the section where the chronology gets genuinely messy as it’s a bit of a hodge podge of Savage Sword tales. These are stories that could arguably slot into Conan's earlier Turanian mercenary period, but something about the way Conan carries himself in most of them suggests a man with more miles on him than the young thief from Zamora. He's harder here. More deliberate. Less interested in proving himself and more interested in getting paid and getting out. It's a subtle shift but it's there if you're looking for it.
A word on Liam Sharp: if you see his name on a Conan story, clear your schedule. "Tattered Wings" in particular is the kind of thing that makes you remember why you fell in love with this character in the first place. His writing and art are so wildly beautiful, it’s a crime not to be reading his stories.
This stretch of stories leads us toward "The People of the Black Circle", which is widely considered one of Howard's finest achievements. A full novella with political intrigue, a memorable antagonist in the Black Seers of Yimsha, and Conan at arguably his most competent and charismatic. It's a high point before the long road to kingship begins and may be my favorite Conan story overall. That changes on a weekly basis it seems though.
After the events of "The People of the Black Circle", I’ve placed “A Witch Shall Be Born” and Conan’s Zuagir days. This is another one that has bounced around a bit, and may do so again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s all tentative.
Now, Titan has released a few stories that take place after “A Witch Shall Be Born”. “Twice Paid Debts” takes place a decade after Conan and Belit were betrayed in “Twisted Loyalties”, and Conan is working with the Free Companions. “Dwellers in the Oasis” takes place eight months after “A Witch Shall Be Born” and shows how Conan’s wounds were healed. Now, “Sacrifice in the Sand” has to take place after “Twice Paid Debts” because the character Captain Nkosi is featured in both, and dies in one of them, so that kind of solidifies that.
Soon after, Conan heads northwest. "Leaving the Garden" has him escorting a caravan west before turning toward colder climates, and "Wolves of the Tundra" and "The Wuthering" (another Liam Sharp story) both take place in the frozen north. There's a bleakness to these stories that feels right for this moment in his life. He's accomplished, experienced, and completely directionless. Which for Conan usually means something interesting is about to happen. Which it does. He turns into a werewolf for a bit of time and has a run in with a tavern possibly full of Serpent Men, and bears witness to an Aesir man’s final moments. Eventually, from events yet unseen, Conan ends up back on the coast and you’ll never believe what happens.
Conan becomes a pirate again. Look, it happens a lot. The man loves the sea. The events of “The Pool of the Black One” take place which then leads into “The Treasures of Tortage” by Robbie MacNiven.
Conan the Buccaneer
If Belit was the great love of Conan's life, Valeria of the Red Brotherhood is his equal. A swordswoman who doesn't need rescuing, doesn't want a throne, and has absolutely no interest in being anyone's queen. She's one of Howard's finest creations and one of the most underutilized characters in the entire canon, which makes this stretch of the timeline one of the most exciting in terms of what Titan Comics might do with it.
S.M. Stirling's "Blood of the Serpent" gives us their first meeting and is the lead-in to "Red Nails", Howard's last Conan story and arguably one of his best. "Red Nails" is a claustrophobic, brutal yarn and features Conan fighting a dinosaur dragon. "The Sunless Isle" by Patch Zircher picks up after these events. I suspect whatever Zub has planned for the mainline comic, which at the time of writing this is coming very soon, probably takes place sometime after “Red Nails”, but I really have no idea.
After Valeria, Conan heads north again. "The Halls of Immortal Darkness" and "Lord of the Mount" cover this stretch, with Conan ranging through cold country processing what he's left behind.
That northward journey eventually brings him to the Pictish Wilderness where the events of the “Battle of the Black Stone” begin for Conan. The crossover spans thousands of years of in-universe time, connecting Conan in the Pictish frontier to Solomon Kane and Dark Agnes in 16th century Europe, El Borak in the early 20th century, and James Allison in a Texas farmhouse having visions of all of it simultaneously. This has to be placed before the fall of Fort Tuscelan in "Beyond the Black River". If you've never read stories featuring these characters before, this is a genuinely thrilling introduction to the full scope of what Howard created. It's a lot of fun, although I will say James Allison takes a beating that feels slightly personal on Zub's part.
"Beyond the Black River" and "The Black Stranger" follow, and "The Black Stranger" in particular requires this placement as it can't come before "The Pool of the Black One", so anyone who's ever argued for moving these stories earlier in the timeline runs into a hard wall there. It's worth noting that Howard's unfinished fragment "Wolves Beyond the Border" references events four years after "Beyond the Black River". He'd revised that figure down from ten years in an earlier draft, which suggests he was thinking carefully about the timeline even in an unfinished piece. I spent a lot of time trying to factor that in, even making some major continuity blunders in the process. Considering that Titan has been pretty vague about how fragments are being handled, I decided it may not be the best idea to center everything around a quick reference in an unfinished story that may not be referenced in any way, shape or form in the future. With that said, when Zub's run concludes at issue fifty and we have a clearer picture of how everything connects, it may turn out to matter quite a bit and I’ll probably restructure things significantly. EIther way, it all leads to the same destination, be it one month later, four years later, or ten years later.
That destination is "The Conquering Crown", and it's exactly what it sounds like. Jim Zub handles it with the right combination of inevitability and surprise. Everything in this timeline has been building to this moment almost as much as it built to the Hyborian Age. Dear Conan has come a long way. This is a man who was born in a barbarian village at the edge of the civilized world, who spent his youth as a thief and his early manhood as a mercenary, a pirate, a soldier of fortune, a general, and somehow, through a combination of audacity, competence, and the kind of luck that looks a lot like destiny, ended up on the throne of Aquilonia, the most powerful kingdom in the western world. Howard didn't treat this as a punchline or a fantasy. He treated it as the logical conclusion of everything Conan is. Of course he became a king. What else was ever going to hold him?
King Conan
S.M. Stirling's "Blood of the Serpent" gives us their first meeting and is the lead-in to "Red Nails", Howard's last Conan story and arguably one of his best. "Red Nails" is a claustrophobic, brutal yarn and features Conan fighting a dinosaur dragon. "The Sunless Isle" by Patch Zircher picks up after these events. I suspect whatever Zub has planned for the mainline comic, which at the time of writing this is coming very soon, probably takes place sometime after “Red Nails”, but I really have no idea.
After Valeria, Conan heads north again. "The Halls of Immortal Darkness" and "Lord of the Mount" cover this stretch, with Conan ranging through cold country processing what he's left behind.
That northward journey eventually brings him to the Pictish Wilderness where the events of the “Battle of the Black Stone” begin for Conan. The crossover spans thousands of years of in-universe time, connecting Conan in the Pictish frontier to Solomon Kane and Dark Agnes in 16th century Europe, El Borak in the early 20th century, and James Allison in a Texas farmhouse having visions of all of it simultaneously. This has to be placed before the fall of Fort Tuscelan in "Beyond the Black River". If you've never read stories featuring these characters before, this is a genuinely thrilling introduction to the full scope of what Howard created. It's a lot of fun, although I will say James Allison takes a beating that feels slightly personal on Zub's part.
"Beyond the Black River" and "The Black Stranger" follow, and "The Black Stranger" in particular requires this placement as it can't come before "The Pool of the Black One", so anyone who's ever argued for moving these stories earlier in the timeline runs into a hard wall there. It's worth noting that Howard's unfinished fragment "Wolves Beyond the Border" references events four years after "Beyond the Black River". He'd revised that figure down from ten years in an earlier draft, which suggests he was thinking carefully about the timeline even in an unfinished piece. I spent a lot of time trying to factor that in, even making some major continuity blunders in the process. Considering that Titan has been pretty vague about how fragments are being handled, I decided it may not be the best idea to center everything around a quick reference in an unfinished story that may not be referenced in any way, shape or form in the future. With that said, when Zub's run concludes at issue fifty and we have a clearer picture of how everything connects, it may turn out to matter quite a bit and I’ll probably restructure things significantly. EIther way, it all leads to the same destination, be it one month later, four years later, or ten years later.
That destination is "The Conquering Crown", and it's exactly what it sounds like. Jim Zub handles it with the right combination of inevitability and surprise. Everything in this timeline has been building to this moment almost as much as it built to the Hyborian Age. Dear Conan has come a long way. This is a man who was born in a barbarian village at the edge of the civilized world, who spent his youth as a thief and his early manhood as a mercenary, a pirate, a soldier of fortune, a general, and somehow, through a combination of audacity, competence, and the kind of luck that looks a lot like destiny, ended up on the throne of Aquilonia, the most powerful kingdom in the western world. Howard didn't treat this as a punchline or a fantasy. He treated it as the logical conclusion of everything Conan is. Of course he became a king. What else was ever going to hold him?
King Conan
The King Conan stories have a different texture from everything that came before. "The Phoenix on the Sword" opens his reign with an assassination plot and establishes immediately that the crown is going to be heavier than the sword ever was and gives us a nice example of the cyclical nature of time that Howard believed in, as the story was originally “By This Axe I Rule”. History repeats itself.
"The Scarlet Citadel" puts Conan through genuine humiliation and loss in a way the younger Conan rarely experienced. He also meets Satha, a giant snake, who actually will be showing up later. And then there is "The Hour of the Dragon", Howard's only full Conan novel, originally written for an English publisher that unfortunately went under before the book could be released. It's Conan at his most tested and most triumphant, a story that encompasses dungeons and sorcery and political intrigue and a quest across the entire Hyborian world. It’s also essentially a rewrite of a lot of his previous adventures and has a very “Greatest Hits” feel to it, but that’s not a complaint. It's been broadly accepted for about ninety years now that Conan is somewhere around 44 or 45 during these events, which puts them a few years into his reign.
"Songs of the Slain" by Tim Lebbon feels later still. If I'm reading it correctly Conan is closer to 60, though I'll freely admit I may be wrong about that. What I'm not wrong about is that it belongs after "Hour of the Dragon" and that it confirms pipes exist in the Hyborian Age. Make of that what you will.
And then "The Nomad."
I won't say much about it because it deserves to be experienced rather than explained. What I will say is that Jim Zub found an ending for Conan that feels true to everything Howard built. Not a final battle, not a death, not a triumphant last stand, but something quieter and stranger and more honest than any of those would have been.
It's perfect. I cannot think of a better way to end our time with Conan the Cimmerian, but knowing Zub, I suspect he's got something else up his sleeve for later down the line. In fact, he confirmed it. He’s contracted to issue 50 and he plans on making it mean something. I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it, and I’m about to lose control and spend far too much time arguing with myself about the time it takes to travel from Zingara to Nemedia.
And that brings us to the end of Conan’s time in the Hyborian Age. Obviously there will be more stories to come, and this section will probably keep growing for years to come. But while this may be the end of the Conan stories, the Hyborian kingdoms don't fall quietly. Some 500 years after the time of Conan, the Hyborian kingdoms begin to splinter and a Pict named Gorm takes his chance to bring ruin to the once prosperous kingdoms. Then, somewhere around 10,900 BCE, a catastrophic event, the real world Younger Dryas, a period of rapid cooling that genuinely reshaped human civilization, strikes the known world with the force of a second cataclysm. The gleaming cities crumble. The great kingdoms fragment into wandering tribes. The ancestors of the Cimmerians become the Celts, the Picts push into what will eventually be Scotland, and the Hyborian Age dissolves into the deep sediment of pre-history, remembered only in the myths and legends of the civilizations that come after. James Allison's visions of his past lives give us a glimpse of this dying world.
Memories with James Allison
"The Scarlet Citadel" puts Conan through genuine humiliation and loss in a way the younger Conan rarely experienced. He also meets Satha, a giant snake, who actually will be showing up later. And then there is "The Hour of the Dragon", Howard's only full Conan novel, originally written for an English publisher that unfortunately went under before the book could be released. It's Conan at his most tested and most triumphant, a story that encompasses dungeons and sorcery and political intrigue and a quest across the entire Hyborian world. It’s also essentially a rewrite of a lot of his previous adventures and has a very “Greatest Hits” feel to it, but that’s not a complaint. It's been broadly accepted for about ninety years now that Conan is somewhere around 44 or 45 during these events, which puts them a few years into his reign.
"Songs of the Slain" by Tim Lebbon feels later still. If I'm reading it correctly Conan is closer to 60, though I'll freely admit I may be wrong about that. What I'm not wrong about is that it belongs after "Hour of the Dragon" and that it confirms pipes exist in the Hyborian Age. Make of that what you will.
And then "The Nomad."
I won't say much about it because it deserves to be experienced rather than explained. What I will say is that Jim Zub found an ending for Conan that feels true to everything Howard built. Not a final battle, not a death, not a triumphant last stand, but something quieter and stranger and more honest than any of those would have been.
It's perfect. I cannot think of a better way to end our time with Conan the Cimmerian, but knowing Zub, I suspect he's got something else up his sleeve for later down the line. In fact, he confirmed it. He’s contracted to issue 50 and he plans on making it mean something. I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it, and I’m about to lose control and spend far too much time arguing with myself about the time it takes to travel from Zingara to Nemedia.
And that brings us to the end of Conan’s time in the Hyborian Age. Obviously there will be more stories to come, and this section will probably keep growing for years to come. But while this may be the end of the Conan stories, the Hyborian kingdoms don't fall quietly. Some 500 years after the time of Conan, the Hyborian kingdoms begin to splinter and a Pict named Gorm takes his chance to bring ruin to the once prosperous kingdoms. Then, somewhere around 10,900 BCE, a catastrophic event, the real world Younger Dryas, a period of rapid cooling that genuinely reshaped human civilization, strikes the known world with the force of a second cataclysm. The gleaming cities crumble. The great kingdoms fragment into wandering tribes. The ancestors of the Cimmerians become the Celts, the Picts push into what will eventually be Scotland, and the Hyborian Age dissolves into the deep sediment of pre-history, remembered only in the myths and legends of the civilizations that come after. James Allison's visions of his past lives give us a glimpse of this dying world.
Memories with James Allison
"The Valley of the Worm" features Niord, a warrior who faces Satha, the same ancient serpent from "The Scarlet Citadel," and steals its venom to face the Wyrm in a battle so legendary it echoes down through every dragon-slaying myth humanity has ever told. "Marchers of Valhalla" shows us the Aesir during this twilight period, the Sons of Aryas beginning their long march toward what will eventually become recorded history.
And then the world changes in a quieter, stranger way.
And then the world changes in a quieter, stranger way.
The Mythic Age
As the Hyborian kingdoms crumble into the dust of forgotten history, the world enters a twilight of legend. An era of thinning veils, where the waking world and the Dreamlands frequently intersect.
The Dreamlands stories here are Lovecraft at his most purely imaginative. Less concerned with cosmic dread than with the strange beauty of a world that exists just beyond the edge of sleep. If you've never read the Dreamlands cycle, think of it as Lovecraft writing a secondary world fantasy, closer in spirit to Lord Dunsany than to "The Call of Cthulhu." "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" is the one most directly connected to the broader timeline, but all of them are worth your time. Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle is personally my favorite of his works. They’re just so trippy and paint these lovely little pictures in my mind’s eye. There is a bit of continuity between the stories as well. “The Cats of Ulthar” must precede “The Other Gods” and “The Quest of Iranon” must be after “The Cats of Ulthar” and “The Doom That Came to Sarnath”. “Azathoth” probably should be placed either in the 1920s or, closer to the beginning, but it’s such an odd little fragment, I’ve opted to just keep it closer with the others. Personally, I always tie “Azathoth” into “What the Moon Brings” and “Ex Oblivione” due to the concept of creepy dream shit.
Robert Bloch's "Black Lotus" appears here as well. Bloch was part of the same Weird Tales circle as Howard, Lovecraft and Smith (in fact Lovecraft mentored him directly), and his contribution fits naturally into this era. I may go back and begin entering in other stories that directly tie into the Cthulhu Mythos written during Lovecraft’s lifetime by other members of his “Circle”, but for now, we’ll be sticking with the core three mostly.
From this point the timeline begins intersecting with known history, introducing us to an entirely new cast of Howard's characters; Bran Mak Morn, last king of the Picts; Cormac Mac Art, Irish reaver and reluctant hero; Godric de Villehard, Norman knight; and eventually Solomon Kane, the grim Puritan wanderer who will carry Howard's themes of justice and violence into the 16th century and beyond. The Howardverse turns out to be a much bigger place than even Conan's world suggests.
The Dreamlands stories here are Lovecraft at his most purely imaginative. Less concerned with cosmic dread than with the strange beauty of a world that exists just beyond the edge of sleep. If you've never read the Dreamlands cycle, think of it as Lovecraft writing a secondary world fantasy, closer in spirit to Lord Dunsany than to "The Call of Cthulhu." "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" is the one most directly connected to the broader timeline, but all of them are worth your time. Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle is personally my favorite of his works. They’re just so trippy and paint these lovely little pictures in my mind’s eye. There is a bit of continuity between the stories as well. “The Cats of Ulthar” must precede “The Other Gods” and “The Quest of Iranon” must be after “The Cats of Ulthar” and “The Doom That Came to Sarnath”. “Azathoth” probably should be placed either in the 1920s or, closer to the beginning, but it’s such an odd little fragment, I’ve opted to just keep it closer with the others. Personally, I always tie “Azathoth” into “What the Moon Brings” and “Ex Oblivione” due to the concept of creepy dream shit.
Robert Bloch's "Black Lotus" appears here as well. Bloch was part of the same Weird Tales circle as Howard, Lovecraft and Smith (in fact Lovecraft mentored him directly), and his contribution fits naturally into this era. I may go back and begin entering in other stories that directly tie into the Cthulhu Mythos written during Lovecraft’s lifetime by other members of his “Circle”, but for now, we’ll be sticking with the core three mostly.
From this point the timeline begins intersecting with known history, introducing us to an entirely new cast of Howard's characters; Bran Mak Morn, last king of the Picts; Cormac Mac Art, Irish reaver and reluctant hero; Godric de Villehard, Norman knight; and eventually Solomon Kane, the grim Puritan wanderer who will carry Howard's themes of justice and violence into the 16th century and beyond. The Howardverse turns out to be a much bigger place than even Conan's world suggests.
The Age of Antiquity
The Hyborian Age has passed into myth, and in its place we see the rising empires of Sumer, Tyre, and Rome. Howard had a lot to say about this era. He wrote prolifically about ancient civilizations, Celtic warriors, and the long slow death of the old world, and a surprising amount of it is grounded in genuine historical research. For placement purposes I've largely followed the order established in collections like "Swords of the North" and the Del Rey editions, with adjustments where the historical dates are clear enough to anchor a story more precisely.
The most fascinating thread running through this entire period is what happened to the Picts. They’ve fallen quite a bit from where they were in the days of Brule the Spear-Slayer. In Conan's time they were a terrifyingly savage force beyond the Black River. By the Age of Antiquity they've become a civilization in long, grinding decline, retreating before Roman legions, clinging to their identity. And at the end of that long retreat stands Bran Mak Morn, last king of the Picts and descendant of Brule the Spear-Slayer himself (and Brissa…which means he may be the descendent of Conan as well. Gonna have to wait and see). The same bloodline that stood beside Kull in the Thurian Age ends here, in the rain and mud of Roman Britain, fighting a war that's already lost. Howard wrote it as a tragedy and it reads like one.
Bran's placement has a straightforward answer and a complicated one. Howard envisioned his stories taking place between 295 and 300 CE. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. But then Karl Edward Wagner wrote "Legion from the Shadows" in 1976, a full length Bran Mak Morn novel picking up directly after "Worms of the Earth", and his dating solidified the early 3rd century as the standard among most scholars. I've gone with that consensus. The biggest issue here is actually getting one’s hands on a copy of “Legion from the Shadows”.
Titan and Heroic Signatures have been dropping hints that Bran in particular will be playing a significant role in upcoming mainline stories, which makes this section one of the more exciting ones to watch develop. To be fair, this has been very clear from the start. The Black Stone and Bran Mak Morn are intricately linked as Bran’s proverbial deal with the devil and his ultimate fate is centered on the Black Stone.
They did publish a Bran Mak Morn short story “Red Waves of Slaughter”, but I’ve placed that story in the mid-1930s as that’s when its frame story takes place. I know that kind of goes against the grain of what’s been happening so far, especially when given consideration to the James Allison stories, but trust me on this. The story makes more sense set in the 30s than being placed with these tales here. It’s a great story. Steven Shrewsbury wrote a fun one there with a whole lot of fun references.
We also have Cormac Mac Art, an Irish reaver operating in the same post Roman chaos as Bran. He's a bit different from Bran. Less tragic, more interested in survival than destiny. He was featured in his own story in Savage Sword #12, “Wolves”. Hopefully the first of many more. I feel like the fragment “Temple of Abomination” would be prime territory for a fun update.
The most fascinating thread running through this entire period is what happened to the Picts. They’ve fallen quite a bit from where they were in the days of Brule the Spear-Slayer. In Conan's time they were a terrifyingly savage force beyond the Black River. By the Age of Antiquity they've become a civilization in long, grinding decline, retreating before Roman legions, clinging to their identity. And at the end of that long retreat stands Bran Mak Morn, last king of the Picts and descendant of Brule the Spear-Slayer himself (and Brissa…which means he may be the descendent of Conan as well. Gonna have to wait and see). The same bloodline that stood beside Kull in the Thurian Age ends here, in the rain and mud of Roman Britain, fighting a war that's already lost. Howard wrote it as a tragedy and it reads like one.
Bran's placement has a straightforward answer and a complicated one. Howard envisioned his stories taking place between 295 and 300 CE. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. But then Karl Edward Wagner wrote "Legion from the Shadows" in 1976, a full length Bran Mak Morn novel picking up directly after "Worms of the Earth", and his dating solidified the early 3rd century as the standard among most scholars. I've gone with that consensus. The biggest issue here is actually getting one’s hands on a copy of “Legion from the Shadows”.
Titan and Heroic Signatures have been dropping hints that Bran in particular will be playing a significant role in upcoming mainline stories, which makes this section one of the more exciting ones to watch develop. To be fair, this has been very clear from the start. The Black Stone and Bran Mak Morn are intricately linked as Bran’s proverbial deal with the devil and his ultimate fate is centered on the Black Stone.
They did publish a Bran Mak Morn short story “Red Waves of Slaughter”, but I’ve placed that story in the mid-1930s as that’s when its frame story takes place. I know that kind of goes against the grain of what’s been happening so far, especially when given consideration to the James Allison stories, but trust me on this. The story makes more sense set in the 30s than being placed with these tales here. It’s a great story. Steven Shrewsbury wrote a fun one there with a whole lot of fun references.
We also have Cormac Mac Art, an Irish reaver operating in the same post Roman chaos as Bran. He's a bit different from Bran. Less tragic, more interested in survival than destiny. He was featured in his own story in Savage Sword #12, “Wolves”. Hopefully the first of many more. I feel like the fragment “Temple of Abomination” would be prime territory for a fun update.
The Age of Faith and Steel
The old world is gone. The Picts have made their last stand. Rome has fallen. And in the long turbulent centuries that follow, the world Howard loved to write about takes shape. Vikings carving their names into history with axes, Crusaders marching toward holy wars that were anything but, Irish kings fighting to hold their islands against impossible odds, and wandering swordsmen who'd sell their skills to whoever was paying that week. Howard had genuine passion for this era and it shows. His historical fiction from this period is some of his most grounded and visceral writing, rooted in real events and real battles even when the supernatural creeps in at the edges. It’s good soup.
Turlough Dubh O'Brien enters the timeline here, the brooding Irish warrior who Howard wrote three versions of the same story for. Granted, one of them takes place a bit later on the timeline. “Spears of Clontarf” and “The Gray God Passes” tell the same story, but one plays it a bit more straight than the other. These stories center on the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, the legendary clash where Brian Boru broke Viking power in Ireland, at the cost of his own life. "The Dark Man" connects directly to Bran Mak Morn's legacy, tying this era back to everything that came before in a way that rewards readers who've followed the full timeline.
This is also where Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne Cycle takes root and flowers across several centuries. Averoigne is Smith's fictional province of medieval France. The Averoigne stories span from roughly the 12th century to the 16th, growing stranger and more melancholy as they go. They have ties back to Hyperborea and the Cthulhu Mythos here and there, but mostly they stand alone as some of the finest weird fiction of the pulp era. If you've enjoyed the Smith stories earlier in this timeline, these are even better. They pair particularly well with the Solomon Kane stories that follow. Both cycles are fundamentally about what happens when righteousness and darkness occupy the same world.
Howard's historical characters multiply in this stretch. Cormac Fitzgeoffrey is a Crusader-era Irish mercenary. Brutal, pragmatic, and considerably less interested in holy righteousness than most of his contemporaries. He operates in the same tradition as Conan but grounded in actual history. He was featured in a story in Savage Sword #8.
De Montour was the star of Howard’s second published story in “Weird Tales” and is notable because werewolves are frickin’ awesome. There are actually three De Montour stories, but “Wolfdung” is essentially Howard doing a parody of himself in that one. Also, it’s harder than sin to track down.
Dark Agnes de Chastillon, a 16th century French swordswoman who refused every role the world tried to assign her, carved out her own existence through skill and sheer stubbornness in a time when that was genuinely dangerous. She has been featured in a few stories by Titan Comics. And was a major player in the “Battle of the Black Stone” event.
Titan and Heroic Signatures have only lightly touched this era so far, which honestly makes it one of the most exciting sections of the timeline in terms of untapped potential. There's centuries of rich material here and barely any of it has been adapted. With that said, I highly doubt Titan will be touching upon Gottfried von Kalmbach and Red Sonya of Rogatino anytime soon due to the fun and confusing world of rights and licenses.
So, at the tail end of the Age of Faith and Steel, we see the rise of the Puritan avenger himself: Solomon Kane. The chronology of Solomon Kane has been fiercely debated by scholars for decades. Historically, there have been a few competing birth years for Kane like Fred Blosser’s date of 1530 or Richard Toogood’s 1549. But for this timeline, I’ve gone with 1542.
Why 1542? It makes his early continental adventures historically plausible, puts him in his absolute physical prime for his African odyssey, and gives his final stories a heavy, emotional weight without making him cartoonishly ancient.
Our timeline kicks off in 1562 when Kane is 20 years old. “Master of the Hunt” by Patch Zircher takes place on All Hallow’s Eve, and “The Lair of Mari Lwyd” by Shaun Hamill takes place on Christmas. I love this as I’m a fan of holiday specials.
By 1563, Kane made his way into Europe. In “Blood from a Stone” at 21 Kane finds himself as a soldier in the Carpathian Mountains during the Habsburg-Ottoman conflicts, working for Ferdinand I. This story has to take place before July 1564, as that’s when ol’ Ferdinand died. This story also ties directly into “The Battle of the Black Stone” event, placing Kane in Stregoicavar. We’ll be returning to Stregiocavar in a few hundred years in Howard’s “The Black Stone”.
Next up is “The Serpent Ring” in 1566. This comic has a massive geographic sweep, taking Kane from an English galleon on the Barbary Coast, to Venice, and eventually down to Pungo Andongo in Angola. Kane’s later adventures in “Red Shadows” take place in the dense West African jungles, where he acts like he’s seeing the landscape for the first time. Because “The Serpent Ring” takes place in the rocky Angolan highlands, it preserves that continuity.
After a four year gap, which likely contains some Mediterranean privateering, Kane enters 1570 with “Rattle of Bones”, “The Castle of the Devil” and “Death’s Black Rider”, fighting evil in the dark taverns and creepy castles of the Black Forest.
In 1576, Kane is in Ireland for “The Wolves of Dundalk” (a date confirmed by the writer, Enrique Duenas, which actually helped me anchor a lot of this list!). At 34 years old, Kane is navigating the Elizabethan plantation era and the Desmond Rebellions while dealing with goblins. Fighting goblins is one thing, but doing it in a country steeped in extreme religious and political tension between English Protestantism and Gaelic Catholicism gives Kane’s service to the Queen a ton of heavy moral texture, but more importantly, goblins are cool and I like seeing Kane fight goblins.
After his time in Ireland, Kane heads back to a life on the sea in “The Blue Flame of Vengeance”. This is typically placed a bit later in 1589 during the time of the Spanish Armada, but we have a hard date set by “The Battle of the Black Stone” event that kind of forces “Blue Flame” to be placed a few years earlier due to the lack of the Staff of Solomon which he has by 1584. Not going to lie, I completely blanked over this and had things placed a lot differently, but that’s the nature of doing a timeline sometimes. You hyperfixate on one thing and something super obvious goes unseen.
By 1578, we hit a hard historical anchor: “The One Black Stain”. This poem ties Kane to Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe, specifically the execution of Thomas Doughty in Patagonia. Separated from Drake’s fleet in the Pacific, Kane ends up shipwrecked in Japan during the Azuchi-Momoyama period in 1579’s “Banquet of Souls”. Apparently, everyone in 16th century Japan speaks perfect English. It’s pulp fiction. Just roll with it.
After finding his way back from the Pacific, we hit a massive milestone in 1581 with “Red Shadows”, Howard’s very first published Solomon Kane story. At roughly 40 years old, Kane is in the absolute prime of his life, fully formed as the relentless wandering avenger Howard originally envisioned. He tracks the French villain Le Loup from Europe all the way to the dense jungles of West Africa. This story is crucial not just because it's his debut, but because it marks his first meeting with the shaman N'Longa.
Thus begins his great odyssey, encompassing classics like “The Moon of Skulls” and “The Hills of the Dead”, where he is gifted the Staff of Solomon (or Juju Staff) by his blood-brother, N'Longa.
The poem “The Return of Sir Richard Grenville” has to take place sometime after 1591 as that’s when Grenville died. I’ve set it a year later, with Kane still in Africa. This then brings us to “Wings in the Night” where Kane finds the tattered remnants of a tribe called the Bogonda who have been recently attacked by a race of terrible winged bat men. Not a stretch to think that these malevolent beasts are the same that Conan dealt with so many thousands of years ago who possibly came here from the planet Almuric where they are known as the Yagas. There’s some pretty heavy connections to Atlantis in this tale too. It’s a classic.
In the middle of all of this we have Ivan Sablianka, a Cossack hunting down a ruthless Ottoman corsair whom he may have a connection to from his past. This is “The Road of the Eagles” which was famously turned into a Conan tale by de Camp, and I kind of like that it takes place smack dab in the middle of the Solomon Kane stories.
Next we have “The Hound of God” by Jonathan Maberry which is set in 1598 and forgets to include the staff entirely. A soft continuity error we'll just have to forgive. Considering the next few stories by Howard don’t feature the staff either, I suppose it’s actually really easy to forgive.
This eventually leads us to a 63 year old Kane in Shaun Hamill’s “Suffer the Witch”. This novel opens brilliantly with references to the events of “Death's Black Riders”, using that encounter as a haunting memory from Kane's past. This sets the stage beautifully for an older Kane who is no longer in his prime. Called away back to England from hunting down a coven of vampires, Kane visits a Puritan town that has been plagued by a series of bizarre murders the townspeople blame on a so-called witch. This is a great book. The testimony of Solomon Kane in the trial of the young witch Sybil is absolutely outstanding. This is followed up by “Where the Whitehorn Meets the Black” where we see Kane still in England dealing with bizarre happenings in a tavern, which then leads to “The Skull in the Stars” and “The Red Right Hand of Doom” where Kane has traveled to Torkertown. The staff isn’t mentioned by Howard in these tales, and originally I had placed them much earlier, but there’s a reference to “the King’s men” in “Right Hand” and that kind of solidifies it has to be set after 1603. So, here we have Kane’s Torkertown duology.
Finally, in 1610, a 68 year old Kane earns his “rest” in the poem “Solomon Kane's Homecoming” where retirement proves to be too boring for the Puritan Avenger who hits the road one last time.
Solomon Kane rules. Pure and simple. A man out of time even within his own era, wandering without fixed purpose, kicking ass and taking names for the Lord. The fact that scholars, writers, and fans have spent decades arguing over his timeline is a testament to how fully realized Howard’s Puritan truly is. And with Titan Comics preparing to launch another Kane mini-series soon, I’m sure I’ll be updating this list again. Color me excited.
Turlough Dubh O'Brien enters the timeline here, the brooding Irish warrior who Howard wrote three versions of the same story for. Granted, one of them takes place a bit later on the timeline. “Spears of Clontarf” and “The Gray God Passes” tell the same story, but one plays it a bit more straight than the other. These stories center on the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, the legendary clash where Brian Boru broke Viking power in Ireland, at the cost of his own life. "The Dark Man" connects directly to Bran Mak Morn's legacy, tying this era back to everything that came before in a way that rewards readers who've followed the full timeline.
This is also where Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne Cycle takes root and flowers across several centuries. Averoigne is Smith's fictional province of medieval France. The Averoigne stories span from roughly the 12th century to the 16th, growing stranger and more melancholy as they go. They have ties back to Hyperborea and the Cthulhu Mythos here and there, but mostly they stand alone as some of the finest weird fiction of the pulp era. If you've enjoyed the Smith stories earlier in this timeline, these are even better. They pair particularly well with the Solomon Kane stories that follow. Both cycles are fundamentally about what happens when righteousness and darkness occupy the same world.
Howard's historical characters multiply in this stretch. Cormac Fitzgeoffrey is a Crusader-era Irish mercenary. Brutal, pragmatic, and considerably less interested in holy righteousness than most of his contemporaries. He operates in the same tradition as Conan but grounded in actual history. He was featured in a story in Savage Sword #8.
De Montour was the star of Howard’s second published story in “Weird Tales” and is notable because werewolves are frickin’ awesome. There are actually three De Montour stories, but “Wolfdung” is essentially Howard doing a parody of himself in that one. Also, it’s harder than sin to track down.
Dark Agnes de Chastillon, a 16th century French swordswoman who refused every role the world tried to assign her, carved out her own existence through skill and sheer stubbornness in a time when that was genuinely dangerous. She has been featured in a few stories by Titan Comics. And was a major player in the “Battle of the Black Stone” event.
Titan and Heroic Signatures have only lightly touched this era so far, which honestly makes it one of the most exciting sections of the timeline in terms of untapped potential. There's centuries of rich material here and barely any of it has been adapted. With that said, I highly doubt Titan will be touching upon Gottfried von Kalmbach and Red Sonya of Rogatino anytime soon due to the fun and confusing world of rights and licenses.
So, at the tail end of the Age of Faith and Steel, we see the rise of the Puritan avenger himself: Solomon Kane. The chronology of Solomon Kane has been fiercely debated by scholars for decades. Historically, there have been a few competing birth years for Kane like Fred Blosser’s date of 1530 or Richard Toogood’s 1549. But for this timeline, I’ve gone with 1542.
Why 1542? It makes his early continental adventures historically plausible, puts him in his absolute physical prime for his African odyssey, and gives his final stories a heavy, emotional weight without making him cartoonishly ancient.
Our timeline kicks off in 1562 when Kane is 20 years old. “Master of the Hunt” by Patch Zircher takes place on All Hallow’s Eve, and “The Lair of Mari Lwyd” by Shaun Hamill takes place on Christmas. I love this as I’m a fan of holiday specials.
By 1563, Kane made his way into Europe. In “Blood from a Stone” at 21 Kane finds himself as a soldier in the Carpathian Mountains during the Habsburg-Ottoman conflicts, working for Ferdinand I. This story has to take place before July 1564, as that’s when ol’ Ferdinand died. This story also ties directly into “The Battle of the Black Stone” event, placing Kane in Stregoicavar. We’ll be returning to Stregiocavar in a few hundred years in Howard’s “The Black Stone”.
Next up is “The Serpent Ring” in 1566. This comic has a massive geographic sweep, taking Kane from an English galleon on the Barbary Coast, to Venice, and eventually down to Pungo Andongo in Angola. Kane’s later adventures in “Red Shadows” take place in the dense West African jungles, where he acts like he’s seeing the landscape for the first time. Because “The Serpent Ring” takes place in the rocky Angolan highlands, it preserves that continuity.
After a four year gap, which likely contains some Mediterranean privateering, Kane enters 1570 with “Rattle of Bones”, “The Castle of the Devil” and “Death’s Black Rider”, fighting evil in the dark taverns and creepy castles of the Black Forest.
In 1576, Kane is in Ireland for “The Wolves of Dundalk” (a date confirmed by the writer, Enrique Duenas, which actually helped me anchor a lot of this list!). At 34 years old, Kane is navigating the Elizabethan plantation era and the Desmond Rebellions while dealing with goblins. Fighting goblins is one thing, but doing it in a country steeped in extreme religious and political tension between English Protestantism and Gaelic Catholicism gives Kane’s service to the Queen a ton of heavy moral texture, but more importantly, goblins are cool and I like seeing Kane fight goblins.
After his time in Ireland, Kane heads back to a life on the sea in “The Blue Flame of Vengeance”. This is typically placed a bit later in 1589 during the time of the Spanish Armada, but we have a hard date set by “The Battle of the Black Stone” event that kind of forces “Blue Flame” to be placed a few years earlier due to the lack of the Staff of Solomon which he has by 1584. Not going to lie, I completely blanked over this and had things placed a lot differently, but that’s the nature of doing a timeline sometimes. You hyperfixate on one thing and something super obvious goes unseen.
By 1578, we hit a hard historical anchor: “The One Black Stain”. This poem ties Kane to Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe, specifically the execution of Thomas Doughty in Patagonia. Separated from Drake’s fleet in the Pacific, Kane ends up shipwrecked in Japan during the Azuchi-Momoyama period in 1579’s “Banquet of Souls”. Apparently, everyone in 16th century Japan speaks perfect English. It’s pulp fiction. Just roll with it.
After finding his way back from the Pacific, we hit a massive milestone in 1581 with “Red Shadows”, Howard’s very first published Solomon Kane story. At roughly 40 years old, Kane is in the absolute prime of his life, fully formed as the relentless wandering avenger Howard originally envisioned. He tracks the French villain Le Loup from Europe all the way to the dense jungles of West Africa. This story is crucial not just because it's his debut, but because it marks his first meeting with the shaman N'Longa.
Thus begins his great odyssey, encompassing classics like “The Moon of Skulls” and “The Hills of the Dead”, where he is gifted the Staff of Solomon (or Juju Staff) by his blood-brother, N'Longa.
The poem “The Return of Sir Richard Grenville” has to take place sometime after 1591 as that’s when Grenville died. I’ve set it a year later, with Kane still in Africa. This then brings us to “Wings in the Night” where Kane finds the tattered remnants of a tribe called the Bogonda who have been recently attacked by a race of terrible winged bat men. Not a stretch to think that these malevolent beasts are the same that Conan dealt with so many thousands of years ago who possibly came here from the planet Almuric where they are known as the Yagas. There’s some pretty heavy connections to Atlantis in this tale too. It’s a classic.
In the middle of all of this we have Ivan Sablianka, a Cossack hunting down a ruthless Ottoman corsair whom he may have a connection to from his past. This is “The Road of the Eagles” which was famously turned into a Conan tale by de Camp, and I kind of like that it takes place smack dab in the middle of the Solomon Kane stories.
Next we have “The Hound of God” by Jonathan Maberry which is set in 1598 and forgets to include the staff entirely. A soft continuity error we'll just have to forgive. Considering the next few stories by Howard don’t feature the staff either, I suppose it’s actually really easy to forgive.
This eventually leads us to a 63 year old Kane in Shaun Hamill’s “Suffer the Witch”. This novel opens brilliantly with references to the events of “Death's Black Riders”, using that encounter as a haunting memory from Kane's past. This sets the stage beautifully for an older Kane who is no longer in his prime. Called away back to England from hunting down a coven of vampires, Kane visits a Puritan town that has been plagued by a series of bizarre murders the townspeople blame on a so-called witch. This is a great book. The testimony of Solomon Kane in the trial of the young witch Sybil is absolutely outstanding. This is followed up by “Where the Whitehorn Meets the Black” where we see Kane still in England dealing with bizarre happenings in a tavern, which then leads to “The Skull in the Stars” and “The Red Right Hand of Doom” where Kane has traveled to Torkertown. The staff isn’t mentioned by Howard in these tales, and originally I had placed them much earlier, but there’s a reference to “the King’s men” in “Right Hand” and that kind of solidifies it has to be set after 1603. So, here we have Kane’s Torkertown duology.
Finally, in 1610, a 68 year old Kane earns his “rest” in the poem “Solomon Kane's Homecoming” where retirement proves to be too boring for the Puritan Avenger who hits the road one last time.
Solomon Kane rules. Pure and simple. A man out of time even within his own era, wandering without fixed purpose, kicking ass and taking names for the Lord. The fact that scholars, writers, and fans have spent decades arguing over his timeline is a testament to how fully realized Howard’s Puritan truly is. And with Titan Comics preparing to launch another Kane mini-series soon, I’m sure I’ll be updating this list again. Color me excited.
The Wild Frontiers
The world expands. The age of Crusader knights and Puritan avengers is giving way to something newer and louder and considerably more gunpowdery. We’re treated to adventures on the high seas, horrors in the desert and the might of Breckinridge Elkins. Cowboys and pirates are the main focus of this timeframe and here’s something absolutely shocking: Howard wrote a lot of westerns. He was quite prolific when it came to westerns and near the end of his life it was becoming more and more his main focus for his writing.
Several of his pirate tales are rewrites of previous adventures. “Swords of the Red Brotherhood” is “The Black Stranger” with a different coat of paint and “Blades of the Brotherhood” is “The Blue Flame of Vengeance” with Malachi Grimes instead of Solomon Kane. Howard rewriting his older stories to make a new story set in a different time frame goes hand in hand with his thoughts of the cyclical nature of time so it works well for the timeline.
Now, when I say that Howard wrote a lot of westerns, I cannot stress to you how much this man wrote. We're talking weird westerns, straight westerns, funny westerns, tragic westerns, westerns that are barely westerns and westerns that are nothing but. Most prevalent of his western characters is the mighty Breckinridge Elkins. A modern day Hercules (well modern in 1885) and all of his stories are told to us, the reader, by Breckinridge in his own words. They’re outstanding and ridiculous. He was given a story in Savage Sword #7 where he fights a zombie witch bear.
Howard would occasionally rewrite Breckinridge slightly and sell the result to a different magazine under a different name. These would be the adventures of Pike Bearfield and Buckner J. Grimes. Sometimes that cyclical nature of time happens within a five year period.
There’s also Steve Allison AKA The Sonora Kid, who seemingly had adventures ranging from the 1870s to the 1920s. I’m going with Matthew Baugh’s research on this one and just saying that one is clearly Steve Allison Jr. The research and work of the great chronologers of the Newton Wold Theory are some of the best out there and it would be a foolhardy thing to ignore them. Now, clearly, if Titan or Heroic Signatures decide to make some stories for the Sonora Kid and begin laying down a new foundational year for stuff, I’ll be shifting things about. But for now, much respect and kudos to the Newton Wold Theory.
As we edge closer to the 20th century, the creeping dread of Lovecraft’s tales begins slithering in. A lot of the dates for the Lovecraft stories have come from several different sources, but seem to be generally agreed upon by most scholars.
We’re also introduced to Kirby O’Donnell AKA Ali el Ghazi. An adventurer in Afghanistan and although chronologically he is the first of the “modern day adventurers” from Howard, in all reality, El Borak was first. But that’s because El Borak was Howard’s first character. The dates for the Kirby O’Donnell and Lal Singh stories come from the research of Rick Lai and his excellent “Legend of El Borak” essay. Again, Newton Wold.
Several of his pirate tales are rewrites of previous adventures. “Swords of the Red Brotherhood” is “The Black Stranger” with a different coat of paint and “Blades of the Brotherhood” is “The Blue Flame of Vengeance” with Malachi Grimes instead of Solomon Kane. Howard rewriting his older stories to make a new story set in a different time frame goes hand in hand with his thoughts of the cyclical nature of time so it works well for the timeline.
Now, when I say that Howard wrote a lot of westerns, I cannot stress to you how much this man wrote. We're talking weird westerns, straight westerns, funny westerns, tragic westerns, westerns that are barely westerns and westerns that are nothing but. Most prevalent of his western characters is the mighty Breckinridge Elkins. A modern day Hercules (well modern in 1885) and all of his stories are told to us, the reader, by Breckinridge in his own words. They’re outstanding and ridiculous. He was given a story in Savage Sword #7 where he fights a zombie witch bear.
Howard would occasionally rewrite Breckinridge slightly and sell the result to a different magazine under a different name. These would be the adventures of Pike Bearfield and Buckner J. Grimes. Sometimes that cyclical nature of time happens within a five year period.
There’s also Steve Allison AKA The Sonora Kid, who seemingly had adventures ranging from the 1870s to the 1920s. I’m going with Matthew Baugh’s research on this one and just saying that one is clearly Steve Allison Jr. The research and work of the great chronologers of the Newton Wold Theory are some of the best out there and it would be a foolhardy thing to ignore them. Now, clearly, if Titan or Heroic Signatures decide to make some stories for the Sonora Kid and begin laying down a new foundational year for stuff, I’ll be shifting things about. But for now, much respect and kudos to the Newton Wold Theory.
As we edge closer to the 20th century, the creeping dread of Lovecraft’s tales begins slithering in. A lot of the dates for the Lovecraft stories have come from several different sources, but seem to be generally agreed upon by most scholars.
We’re also introduced to Kirby O’Donnell AKA Ali el Ghazi. An adventurer in Afghanistan and although chronologically he is the first of the “modern day adventurers” from Howard, in all reality, El Borak was first. But that’s because El Borak was Howard’s first character. The dates for the Kirby O’Donnell and Lal Singh stories come from the research of Rick Lai and his excellent “Legend of El Borak” essay. Again, Newton Wold.
The Age of Modern Dread
This section covers a lot. We have Howard’s Middle Eastern adventures, his Sonora Kid stories, pretty much the entirety of Lovecraft’s work and a whole lot of Clark Ashton Smith. This doesn’t even begin to include what Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures have been doing in this time either. As of writing this, I’ve already had to make a few changes based on the Free Comic Book Day 2026 issue of Conan the Barbarian where it establishes that “Skull-Face” takes place in 1924 and not 1927 as I originally had placed it. Granted, that date came from the research of Matthew Baugh so I can’t really make the claim to that, but that means I would expect a lot of these stories to shift here and there.
Again, a lot of the dates for the Lovecraft stories come from James Bowman’s “Cthulhu Mythos Timeline”, or the Omnimulti Timeline. It’s been around for years now as I was going to it when I was in high school. It’s a fantastic resource and that timeline is far more complex than my long list. Getting into the specifics of this era alone is its own article really so forgive me if we just kind of take a quick looksie and move along.
The way the stories are presented via this timeline gives us an interesting dynamic. The 20th century starts with high adventure across the deserts of the middle east and the declining wild west. From there, as the world falls into war, the horror of Lovecraft begins to seep in, and in response, we also see the rise of the boxer stories. As the 1920s are roaring, cosmic horror is becoming more and more a weekly event, and the heroes of the past have been relegated to hashish addicts and foul-mouthed sailors. And then, when the Great Depression hits, we get to start seeing the seedy and strange side of things with Steve Harrison. It’s a wild time. Clark Ashton Smith’s contributions to this era are many and plenty, giving us that same beautiful, but sardonic style that I’ve come to love. It pairs nicely with Lovecraft and Howard.
John Kirowan and John Conrad are two big Howard characters of this timeframe and have played a part in two of the big events from Titan Comics. They’ve been featured in a handful of Howard’s Cthulhu Mythos adjacent stories, and are both gentlemen of high intellect. They seem to know more about the ancient pre-history of the world than most, and even what they know is very little, but that’s half the fun. If I was betting man I’d say they’re gonna play a part in the grand finale Grim Jim Zub has planned for us, someway, somehow.
As we reach the end of this section, the stories begin to turn more and more into science-fiction, leading us into the future.
Again, a lot of the dates for the Lovecraft stories come from James Bowman’s “Cthulhu Mythos Timeline”, or the Omnimulti Timeline. It’s been around for years now as I was going to it when I was in high school. It’s a fantastic resource and that timeline is far more complex than my long list. Getting into the specifics of this era alone is its own article really so forgive me if we just kind of take a quick looksie and move along.
The way the stories are presented via this timeline gives us an interesting dynamic. The 20th century starts with high adventure across the deserts of the middle east and the declining wild west. From there, as the world falls into war, the horror of Lovecraft begins to seep in, and in response, we also see the rise of the boxer stories. As the 1920s are roaring, cosmic horror is becoming more and more a weekly event, and the heroes of the past have been relegated to hashish addicts and foul-mouthed sailors. And then, when the Great Depression hits, we get to start seeing the seedy and strange side of things with Steve Harrison. It’s a wild time. Clark Ashton Smith’s contributions to this era are many and plenty, giving us that same beautiful, but sardonic style that I’ve come to love. It pairs nicely with Lovecraft and Howard.
John Kirowan and John Conrad are two big Howard characters of this timeframe and have played a part in two of the big events from Titan Comics. They’ve been featured in a handful of Howard’s Cthulhu Mythos adjacent stories, and are both gentlemen of high intellect. They seem to know more about the ancient pre-history of the world than most, and even what they know is very little, but that’s half the fun. If I was betting man I’d say they’re gonna play a part in the grand finale Grim Jim Zub has planned for us, someway, somehow.
As we reach the end of this section, the stories begin to turn more and more into science-fiction, leading us into the future.
The Future
The future as written by men born more than 100 years ago. You may notice some Howard titles are missing from these sections, and to be quite frank, this list requires you to turn a blind eye to a lot of blatant racism. A lot. I’ve included most stories, even if they’re not great and really racist, but there are a few I’m just not gonna even bother with that take place in the so-called future of 1999. This is me acknowledging them.
With that said, Smith gave us a whole lot of delightful future tales that are just fucking grotesque and beautiful all at the same time. Smith’s Mars Cycle is an interesting take on a common idea, and his Xiccarph tales are hauntingly surreal. But the real stars of this section are Zothique.
While his Hyperborea tales showed us an ancient civilization that was destroyed by ice, the Zothique tales give us the final era of Earth under a red sun. A terrible time with necromancers like Mmatmuor and Sodosma who attempt to enslave corpses in “The Empire of Necromancers”, or the sorcerer Namirrha who knew how to hold a grudge in “The Dark Eidolon”. Or the necromancer who used a horde of crabs to fight his enemies in “The Master of the Crabs”. Zothique is a strange time and place and it’s a beautiful capstone to a timeline composed of mostly weird tales.
It felt only appropriate to end the timeline with Howard himself though. “The Gondarian Man” is a fun tale with a pretty predictable twist, but done really well and “The Last Laugh” which just seemed like the best ending. A dark haired warrior laughing as he takes on something far larger and more powerful than he.
And that’s that.
That’s the timeline. There’s a lot I didn’t cover, and to be fair, this was originally just made to cover the Titan Comics. It kind of ballooned out of control. I found myself looking for a discussion on the Titan Comics continuity that led me to Dan Yergert’s article on guessing the Titan continuity. From there I just kind of built off of that, and then starting adding more and more until somehow eventually winding up here, somewhere between the frozen jungles of Hyperborea and the dying red sun of Zothique, trying to argue that a foul-mouthed sailor and an ancient Cimmerian king and a Puritan avenger with a staff he got from a West African shaman all live in the same world. They do. I'm absolutely sure of it, and I think my dad would agree. And I'm already looking forward to updating this when Titan Comics proves me wrong about half of it.
With that said, Smith gave us a whole lot of delightful future tales that are just fucking grotesque and beautiful all at the same time. Smith’s Mars Cycle is an interesting take on a common idea, and his Xiccarph tales are hauntingly surreal. But the real stars of this section are Zothique.
While his Hyperborea tales showed us an ancient civilization that was destroyed by ice, the Zothique tales give us the final era of Earth under a red sun. A terrible time with necromancers like Mmatmuor and Sodosma who attempt to enslave corpses in “The Empire of Necromancers”, or the sorcerer Namirrha who knew how to hold a grudge in “The Dark Eidolon”. Or the necromancer who used a horde of crabs to fight his enemies in “The Master of the Crabs”. Zothique is a strange time and place and it’s a beautiful capstone to a timeline composed of mostly weird tales.
It felt only appropriate to end the timeline with Howard himself though. “The Gondarian Man” is a fun tale with a pretty predictable twist, but done really well and “The Last Laugh” which just seemed like the best ending. A dark haired warrior laughing as he takes on something far larger and more powerful than he.
And that’s that.
That’s the timeline. There’s a lot I didn’t cover, and to be fair, this was originally just made to cover the Titan Comics. It kind of ballooned out of control. I found myself looking for a discussion on the Titan Comics continuity that led me to Dan Yergert’s article on guessing the Titan continuity. From there I just kind of built off of that, and then starting adding more and more until somehow eventually winding up here, somewhere between the frozen jungles of Hyperborea and the dying red sun of Zothique, trying to argue that a foul-mouthed sailor and an ancient Cimmerian king and a Puritan avenger with a staff he got from a West African shaman all live in the same world. They do. I'm absolutely sure of it, and I think my dad would agree. And I'm already looking forward to updating this when Titan Comics proves me wrong about half of it.
You can find Kenyon's full spreadsheet here.
Author
Hey, I'm Dan. This is my project reading through the career of everyone's favorite sword-and-sorcery character, Conan the Cimmerian, in chronological order.
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