An interview with Conan author Jim Zub

It's a great time to be a Conan fan right now: not only is Conan appearing in his ongoing title Conan the Barbarian, but he's also in the relaunched, quarterly Savage Sword of Conan, and we're even getting an event series called Conan: Battle of the Black Stone. 

Jim Zub is the lead writer for Conan at Titan Comics under the Heroic Signatures label, and not only is he an excellent writer, but he is also very generous with his time. He was very kind to exchange a few words for a brief interview about Conan chronology! 

I watched Jim's interview with Chris from ComicTropes last night (Chris is an awesome comic youtuber who I've been following for years and you should definitely check out) and he said something that I think is insightful:

"These stories are cool and exciting and wonderful. You don't have to worry about continuity: everywhere Conan goes, something exciting and amazing is going to happen, and the longer you read, the more you appreciate all these different places and these different eras of the character and all this cool stuff... but you don't need to know that to start. That's what makes me happy is you can just dive into any story and read them and enjoy them."

He's right! Below is what he had to say about Conan and some of the considerations he takes when placing a story in Conan's chronology.

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Conan Chronology: When writing Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword material today, how much concern do you give to the chronology of Conan’s career? Do you, for example, think, “This story is set shortly after ‘The Phoenix on the Sword’ and before ‘The Scarlet Citadel?’”

Jim Zub: Yes, absolutely. Since I’m the flagship writer on the series, I need to pay attention to how these stories work in and around the canon Conan tales written by Robert E. Howard. On the new Titan series, we are jumping around the timeline on each story arc, just like Howard did when he wrote the original prose stories, but there is an overall plan in place and I know where each one fits together.

Thankfully, Heroic Signatures has Jeff Shanks, an REH scholar who writes the essays in the back of each issue. He’s a resource on hand to provide additional feedback and suggestions when it comes to getting our details right.

​You told me that Heroic Signatures only considers the original REH typescripts to be the Conan canon. How much is Heroic concerned with the Conan timeline? Do you know if editorial has their own internal, fixed timeline of Conan’s career?

JZ: For the monthly comic series, Heroic does care a great deal about the overall timeline. When I started working on the new Conan comic series they gave me the timeline they decided upon in terms of story order and Conan’s age during each one, but so far they haven’t decided to publicize it.

On an anthology series like Savage Sword of Conan where all kinds of different creators are contributing their own self-contained tales, that master timeline is less of a concern. They’re not trying to subvert any of the canon stories, but also don’t need to chart every single anthology story into our overall plan.

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If I had to guess based on the first issue alone (I haven’t had a chance to pick up #2 yet!), Battle of the Black Stone seems to take place some time around “Beyond the Black River,” as Conan is in the Pictish Wilderness and the prologue implies that Conan is a decent way into his life. Have I placed that book near the right spot?

That’s correct. Battle of the Black Stone takes place just before the events of Beyond the Black River, with Fort Tuscelan and Conajohara, and we reference that Conan is older than in the previous stories we’ve done so far in the new series.

While some stories have clues as to their chronology, like Conan being in the Pictish Wilderness or being king, others are comparatively squishy, like your story Sacrifice in the Sand in Savage Sword #1. Do you have your own conclusion about when such stories take place, even if you don’t suggest them to the reader?

JZ: Yes, I have an internal sense of where it fits and, in the case of Sacrifice in the Sand, I might do another story to show when Conan first met Nkosi, the Stygian soldier he kills in that story.

​Have you ever explored the various Conan chronologies that Conan fans debate, and do you have one you think is most correct?

JZ: I’ve seen many of them and have read them over but have not spent much time comparing detailed notes between them. Once Heroic Signatures gave me their preferred timeline that was the one I started using and will stick to until they tell me otherwise.

I appreciate that there’s reader debate around the order of those stories but, in the end, that’s not how I measure an effective Conan story. I’m paying attention to where my stories fit and do want to get the details right, but I’m also not trying to tie off every single thread introduced in those tales or fill in every gap.

The larger plan I have for the comic series is built around those canon ‘pillars’, but it also uses a lot of new elements because I want to keep new readers and old guessing about what will come next.

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​Do you have a personal favorite period in Conan’s life? His thief period, his buccaneering days, his kingship, etc?

JZ: I’ve always been partial to Conan in his impetuous youth as a thief, exploring a lot of new places for the first time and getting into situations way over his head.

That said, I’ve been building a few new stories around King Conan and am really enjoying exploring that completely different side of his life, especially in the context of Howard’s classic “Civilization VS Savagery” theme.

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I'd like to thank Jim for being so generous with his time as to speak with a rando with a blog who's passionate about Conan. Jim Zub hosts his own blog as well as a Substack newsletter that you should check out; it's entertaining to read his thoughts on Conan, the medium of comics, and storytelling in general. It's cool to see that his circle consists of many of the Conan-adjacent people I've been reading from and quoting in this chronology for months. His Conan books are in comic shops, so go pick one up.