In 1975, comic artist Barry Windsor-Smith was coming off a run of 22 issues of Conan the Barbarian and several of the all-time best issues of Savage Sword of Conan. Both titles would become widely acknowledged as some of the greatest Marvel comics of the 1970s.

And then he quit comics.

For a while, at least.

Barry was disillusioned with the business side of comics in which editors and corporations made demands of artists and seemed to hate having to draw hordes of superhero characters for which he cared little. Barry left the commercial comic game for a few years. He founded The Studio, where he and other artists worked in New York City outside of the rat race of comics designed to sell floppies off the spinner rack. For a time, Barry tried to elevate the comics medium, working on adult-oriented fantasy stories.

Barry's style had evolved over the years from a simple Jack Kirby clone to an intricate, unmistakable personal brand. You can literally watch Barry develop his own touch in the pages of just a handful of Ka-Zar stories, allowing himself to make extensive use of shadows and elaborate hatching. He begins to draw characters with less friendly boxy features than artists like Kirby or Romita, and frequently gives faces small features with high cheekbones and deep contouring. As the 70s progressed and he worked away from comics aimed at kids, that style continued to evolve until it evoked an otherworldly and fable-like quality.

After drawing the comics for an in-universe comic artist in the Oliver Stone movie The Hand in 1981, Barry headed back to comics full-time.

Barry returned to Marvel in 1983, after nearly 8 years away, working on a Marvel Fanfare title featuring The Thing and with Herb Trimpe on the title Machine Man. He picked the workflow back up quickly and was soon writing, penciling, and inking entire books by himself.

His output at Marvel was well-received, but limited. He only contributed to a few books a year, doing just a handful of superhero books for the rest of the 80s: a few X-Men here, some Fantastic Four there. Perhaps he knew he would get burned out again if he fully committed to the grind of daily comics work. His long-awaited quasi-return to Conan happened in 1987, when he painted nine gorgeous covers for the Conan reprint mag Conan Saga. Each cover is staggering, but Barry didn't always feel that way.

His first few were genuine artistic efforts, reflecting what he felt was his best-ever work on the character. By his sixth of nine covers, he was feeling less invested in the project. He openly says that it was his last cover that he felt like he was actually trying to create a "real picture" of Conan. For his final set, he doesn't disparage his own artwork, but considers them little more than elaborate pinups. Over the course of the 9 covers, he depicts action scenes, calm moments, and direct references to Robert E. Howard stories. Even Barry's phoned-in work is as good as most people's best.

Barry's work at Marvel continued for a time. He created the modern origin story for Wolverine in Weapon X,  experimenting with bold color and grotesque modifications to the character. During the comics boom of the early 90s, he bounced from Marvel to Valiant Comics to Malibu Comics, each trying to court him as a unique artistic voice to add to their bullpen.

​At Malibu, he created the character Rune, a disgusting vampire being with a skullet haircut and double-hinged jaw, giant bat wings, and mystical powers. Rune was both terrifying and pathetic; he was frequently down on his luck (forcing down the blood of alcoholics in alleyways) in addition to being a genuine super-powered threat. His self-titled book ran for a little less than 20 issues, at which point Malibu was bought by Marvel Comics, specifically to get ahold of their digital coloring techniques. Marvel cancelled all of Malibu's "Ultraverse" titles in 1994, including Rune.

Rune was now owned by the same publishing house that still had the rights to Conan, so Barry pitted the two titans against one another in 1995's Conan vs. Rune #1, whose issue number deceptively promises us more than one issue, though the story would technically be continued in Conan #4 and Conan the Savage #4 (neither of which would be written or drawn by Barry). It was the first time since his 1973 adaption of "Red Nails" that Barry had worked on an actual Conan story. I can't find online whether it was pitched by the company hoping to cross-pollinate its fanbases or by Barry himself, pairing some of his oldest work with his newest.

In Conan vs. Rune, the Cimmerian wanders the wastes of Turan in a state of desperation when he happens to cross a seemingly dead city. The city is not entirely unoccupied, Conan soon realizes, when he becomes trapped inside and hears something horrific outside eating his horse.

Most of the city's inhabitants have been completely eviscerated, though, with piles of human flesh and sinew strewn throughout the darkened ruins. Hey, this was a 90s comic after all. Conan meets a lone survivor who tells him of their clan finding a dark, god-like creature in the desert, who they nursed back to health. Once healthy, this god being turned on them (Surprise! It's Rune.) and sucked the life out of most of the city. Conan challenges the evil being and the two do battle.

The story is gloriously violent and gory, making full use of Conan's power and Rune's malevolence. 

The artwork is stellar too: Barry renders Conan a little beefier here than he had when penciling his Conan the Barbarian issues back in the early 70s. Design-wise, he's drawn a little closer to the Platonic ideal of Conan that John Buscema created. Rune has ditched the skullet for a samurai top-bun and a set of black armor, making him more imposing than ever. 

Barry Windsor-Smith's official site details a spat that Barry had with the colorists before the book was published. As noted before, Malibu was one of the first comic companies using digital coloring, which was mostly done for Barry's art by Albert Calleros. But Albert had left Malibu before Conan vs. Rune, leaving other, more amateurish colorists to fill in. The result was disastrous and removed the fantastical quality from Barry's art. I remember thinking this style of digital coloring looked kind of cool when I stared at the comics on the magazine rack at Safeway when I was 10 years old in 2001, but by 2008 when I was checking out trade paperbacks of Ultimate X-Men from my high school library, it looked painfully dated.

Barry threatened to sue Marvel if they went forward with publishing the digitally-colored version. He quickly touched-up some of his painted color guides and those were the ones used in the final print, still not up to Barry's standards since he claims they were scanned in poorly.

While I'm usually pretty averse to crossover comics and stuff that reeks of marketing, Conan vs. Rune is a really cool one-shot. The story won't change anyone's life, but the artwork is beautiful through and through.

While Marvel's marketing states that Conan #4 would continue the story begun here, Rune's presence amounts to little more than a teaser at the end of that book. Conan the Savage #4, the ostensible conclusion, is more of a real story, but doesn't make a ton of sense. That issue written by Chuck Dixon is a King Conan story, implying that Rune has apparently been hanging out in the Hyborian age for at least a few decades without doing much of note. Additionally, he's drawn without the knobby knees or grotesque features that Barry gave him, making him a far more one-dimensional gargoyle supervillain. It makes him less interesting.

After reading more of Barry's 90s work, I've wanted to check out some of his other creations like Archer & Armstrong, but much of it has not been collected into accessible paperbacks. The way Barry tells it, he's routinely reached out to Marvel to discuss reprinting old material or even augmenting titles like Weapon X with bonus artwork and story pages, but they seem uninterested or they outright ghost him.

If you haven't read Barry's Monsters, published in 2021, it's incredible. Certainly in my list of top 3 comics published this decade so far. Barry is an artist in not just literally, but in the most philosophical sense of the word. He can elevate even a gory, 90s fight one-off into something better, and I hope that we see more of his work hitting the printer again soon.

The current Conan the Barbarian title from Titan Comics did something recently that really surprised me. Jim Zub, its author, has frequently set stories in the periphery of canonical Howard classics: we see the aftermath of "Queen of the Black Coast," we see an interpretation of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter."

But issue 21 goes somewhere I didn't think they would go: one of Robert E. Howard's worst, most vitriolically racist stories, "The Vale of Lost Women."

When I did my first read-through of all the stories in my Conan timeline, "The Vale of Lost Women" was the first one-star review I gave, and the first real stinker. In case you're unfamiliar, here's the most basic rundown of the plot: a girl named Livia has been captured by the Bakalah tribe in the Black Kingdoms. She pleads to Conan, who is currently acting as one of their chiefs, to rescue her. The two strike a up a deal for Conan to rescue her in return for sexual favors. Livia then gets away from the tribe after Conan beheads their leader, is attacked by a demon bat before Conan  saves her. Conan ultimately refuses to collect his reward and promises to take Livia to the Stygian border so that she can return to her home country of Ophir. 

This story is rough for a few reasons. The last third in which Livia gets away and is attacked by the devil bat from Outer Dark doesn't really have much to do with the first two-thirds, so the plot is kind of loosely connected at best. The story is dark and violent, not a fun way, but in a gratuitous way that Howard scholar Bob Byrne describes as being "heavily charged with the imagery of rape."

Most of it, though, is that the crux of the plot is extremely racist. Black characters are described throughout as disgusting, evil, violent, subhuman creatures- particularly their chief, who the prose likens to a frog. Livia is livid that Conan, a white man, would let a white woman be touched by "black dogs."

And,

I could go on with myriad examples, but that feels gross. There's no evidence that Howard ever submitted "The Vale of Lost Women" for publication, so perhaps even he knew it wasn't his best work. 

​Usually, when I have brought up Howard's racism, a few things happen. Some commenters call me a name and leave. But most fans hand-wave it and say, "He was a Texan a hundred years ago, what do you expect?" I always get the sense that when people bring up that he was a southerner decades ago, it comes with a shrug of the shoulders and the suggestion that we just never need to speak of it again. I've even seen people propose that he might have actually been progressive on race compared to other central Texans of the Depression era. L. Sprague de Camp says in his essay "Howard and the Races" in the collection The Blade of Conan, "Howard was, if a racist, a comparatively mild one" and then goes on to describe the unpublished Howard story "The Last White Man," which is almost comical in how racist it is considering de Camp's "mild" racism line.

But every time someone says that Howard was no more racist than anyone else of his day, I'm reminded of one of my favorite professors from undergrad, and a phrase he used to say often: "Just because we historicize, doesn't mean we excuse."

​Though we understand why Robert E. Howard would be racially intolerant in a southern US state in the 1930s, doesn't make it suddenly okay. I'm not sitting here trying to advocate that we apply postcolonial theory and modern-day standards of "positive representation" or anything like that, I am merely proposing that we acknowledge that Howard was, by basically any measure, a racist. And I love most of the writings of Robert E. Howard, but I think we should talk about it.

I'm not here to shame anyone or try to take a Conan story you love from you or anything, but I would like to engage honestly about what we do with pretty racist stories in today's world. It makes for an interesting problem to be solved if you're going to try to adapt one of them.

Here's where we get to Jim Zub's Conan #21 "Slaves of the Magi," which picks up toward the end of "Vale of Lost Women" right as Conan slays the devil bat, with a first page that mirrors the cover of Marvel's Conan #104 from 1979. Conan takes Livia north to Stygia, where they encounter a strange village that is a little too welcoming for comfort.

Zub smartly reframes key aspects of this story, leaving behind the undesirable racist elements. He begins in medias res, therefore jettisoning the lackluster plot construction of the original. Instead of Conan saving Livia "simply because of the color of [her] hide" in "Vale," this is part of a calculated infiltration plan he's had with the Bamula tribe. Zub fills in some of the backstory between the Bamulas and the Bakalahs, making them long-time enemies. Now, it's a political conflict rather than a racial one.

He also spends a few panels at the beginning of the issue getting readers up to speed on where Conan's been recently. The narration makes clear that Conan has befriended the Bamulas- like him, they're strong and smart, and he feels a sense of "kinship and camaraderie" with them that he's been missing recently. While the setting is the same, Conan is now a friend and equal to these characters because of who they are, not an outsider because of the color of his skin. As Conan and Livia ride north, they are accompanied by some Bamula tribesmen, of whom Livia is not afraid or intolerant.

I was pretty floored. Jim was able to salvage a story I had written off entirely as an irredeemable piece of garbage and reframe key aspects that remove it from its racist context entirely. It's already been made clear that Jim Zub's an excellent writer, but that takes a very deft pen to do! Oddly enough, he's not actually the only Conan writer to have accomplished this same feat.

"Black Canaan" is one of Robert E. Howard's most infamous weird tales. It carries with it a reputation of being impressively racist. This one involves an American southerner named Kirby Buckner rushing home to the land of his youth, a backwoods swampland called Canaan. The descendants of enslaved Black Americans are seemingly about to stage an uprising, banding together against the White citizens of the area to claim Canaan as a Black-only swath of land. Led by a voodoo priest named Saul Stark, the Black Canaanites use ancient tribal magic and trying to fight against the White Canaanites.

The narrative is an all-around horrifying read today. I've decided to show you just one passage from "Black Canaan" to illustrate its intolerance.

It's always important when you come across a narrative with racist characters to interrogate whether that story is depicting racism or if it's endorsing racism. With "Black Canaan," it's obviously endorsing the racism of the main characters. The quote above is never dealt with, nobody learns a positive lesson, the Black characters are the villains not only because of the spooky voodoo of Saul Stark, but because they're the enemies of the Whites, who we're obviously supposed to side with.

"Black Canaan" has only one good scene, in which Kirby Buckner comes across Saul Stark's abandoned cabin. There's some solid suspense to be had as he approaches the door, sweating about what might be contained within. The rest feels like Klan propaganda. And honestly, that kind of makes sense from a Texan. The Texas Rangers were known as "Los Diablos Tejanos" (The Texas Devils) at the time and were essentially a racial death squad that acted with impunity.

Now imagine my surprise when I open Conan the Barbarian #82 to see that it is adapting "Black Canaan" as a Conan story in the Marvel continuity.

Like Jim Zub did this year with "Vale," Roy Thomas played with a few small aspects to distance the story from its racist origins.

In moving the story to the Hyborian Age, Roy has already done something kind of interesting. He sets his version, "The Sorceress of the Swamp" and "The Dance of the Skull" in southern Stygia, on the border of the Black Kingdoms. By doing this, Roy has already shaved off some of the racial conflicts. Instead of White vs. Black, this is a story of Stygians vs. Kushites, both of whom are people of color. Conan has frequent conflicts with Stygians (I'd argue wizards from that country give him more trouble than anyone from just about anywhere else), so he doesn't join them based on skin color.

The Stygians try to enlist Conan on their side because he's clearly not Black, but is very tan and therefore kind of similarly pigmented to the Stygians. He, noting his closeness with the Black Corsairs, denies their offer based on race and says that he chooses his comrades based on things other than skin color. Instead, Conan fights against the sorcerer Toroa (this version's Saul Stark), who is clearly a malevolent psycho. Not because of his skin color, but because he's turning people into crocodile monsters in the bog. We all know how Conan feels about wizards.

Elsewhere, Roy drops some of the more outdated characteristics. One character with an extremely stereotypical, uneducated, southern Black accent in "Black Canaan" speaks normally in the Conan version. I'd argue that some of Roy's touches went a long way in the 70s. When adapting "Queen of the Black Coast," Roy expands the character of the pirate N'Yaga, mentioned only twice by name in Howard's story, into a full-fledged character who acts as a loving mentor and father figure to the Shemite Belit, who is White.

So what's the proper course of action when dealing with some of Robert E. Howard's racist source material?

SF and fantasy author Jason Sanford, as a father to mixed-race kids, makes a compelling argument that we just shouldn't read him anymore. Like Jason says, I struggle to imagine myself recommending a story like "Shadows in Zamboula" to one of my friends who isn't White.

​Scottish blogger Al Harron has a very different take in response to Jason. Part of me wonders how much experience Al has with southern, American racism since he's from the UK and if that influences his opinions.

Gary Romeo, who writes the Sprague De Camp Fan blog and is someone I respect a lot, penned a very good (now-deleted) article on Howard's racism back in the day.

I do appreciate that everyone I've listed above seems to come at this argument in good faith. I'd really like to hear what some Black writers, or at least some non-White authors would have to say on the subject. As far as I'm aware, there aren't too many creators of color who've worked on Conan. Christopher Priest and Larry Yakata wrote some of Savage Sword in the 80s. Stephen Graham Jones published a short story a few years ago. There were always a few Filipino artists and colorists working for Marvel in the 70s. But I'd be really interested in seeing a story by someone like comic writer and race scholar Ta-Nehisi Coates work on Conan.

I'm just a white guy from Colorado, so I'm not the expert here. I absolutely don't think we need to throw out Howard entirely. I also don't think we should just claim that he wasn't a racist and move on.

I keep thinking about Disney's 1946 film Song of the South. This very poorly-aged film is not available to watch anywhere and Disney is content to let nobody know that it exists. The film hasn't been shown since a 1986 theater re-release. However, its characters in the Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland and Disney's unofficial theme song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" live on, without many people knowing where they came from at all. I was in my 20s before I'd ever even heard of Song of the South. I don't think hiding away the darker aspects of the past are the way to do it (though I understand why Disney, as a corporation, would want to do that), but I think there are lessons to be learned here. 

"Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" is a fun little iconic song that pretty much everyone knows. We don't need to trash it for its association with Song of the South, but I wish the film was available if only for educational purposes. That would allow people to engage with the prejudices of the past, see how things have changed, and hopefully not repeat those mistakes.

There's this thing I like to tell my students when I'm teaching writing: stealing is good. Sometimes students get a little silly with this- last year, some students tried to make "Stealing is good" their class yearbook quote, but most of the time it goes over well.

Here's what I mean by that. Plagiarism is bad, but stealing is good. When you're just starting out, "stealing" from our influences is how you develop your own creative skills. I'm sure if you've ever tried your hand at creative writing, you looked back at your draft later and realized you were just ripping off your favorite authors, even if you weren't conscious of it. When I started writing songs with my first band when I was 17, I was completely and totally just ripping off Green Day, Blink-182, and the Misfits, even though I wasn't necessarily trying to. Heck, this blog basically started with me aping Tom Breihan's "The Number Ones" concept but with Conan stories. 

But I think this is a very important part of someone's development as a writer or artist or musician. When you see a turn of phrase you like from your favorite author, steal it. When you are stuck while writing a song, ask yourself, "How would [musician I really admire] write this?" That's how you become better. Ultimately, you get to a point where you've sort of developed your own voice and you're chasing your own ideas, and you don't have to steal anymore, you just have your influences that you're standing on.

Now having read The Wizard of Lemuria, it makes a lot of sense that Carter was easily able to uproot his story "Black Moonlight" and turn it into the Conan tale "The Gem in the Tower" so easily.

I've been digging into Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series recently. In spring I read A Princess of Mars and I'm currently working my way through the second title, The Gods of Mars. It's almost impressive how much The Wizard of Lemuria reads like a John Carter story that Lin Carter shoehorned Conan into. Heck, there are a couple of lines in The Gods of Mars that seem lifted wholesale into Thongor's. John Carter at one point narrates in a moment of desperation, "To think, with me, is to act." Likewise, "For Thongor, to conceive of a plan was to attempt it." I just happened to read those two lines on the same exact day and got deja vu. Lin Carter writes a hell of a lot like Burroughs- a lot more than he writes like Robert E. Howard, and that's something that separates his work a little more from Conan.

A while back, I was made aware of an audio drama LP starring Conan. Reddit user IHaveSpoken000 posted it in r/ConantheBarbarian, and then the best Conan Youtuber Stygian Dogs, who owns a copy and did a video about it, showed up in the comments to discuss. It's a pretty cool little Conan curiosity!

Weirdly enough though, there is very little information about this LP out there! I've been trying to reach out to those who might know more, and I have a little bit to add, but not much.

We know that the illustrations were done by Neal Adams, and we know that the producer was Cornel Tanassy. Stygian Dogs knew that Len Wein was involved in writing at least one of the stories, "The Crawler in the Mists," with J.M. DeMatteis helping turn it into a full comic for Conan the Barbarian #116 in 1980. But mostly, everything else has been lost. We don't have voice actor credits at all!

I reached out to Peter Pan Records, which is the owner of Power Records, the label that put the LP out, and my email was answered by the literal CEO of the company. Wild. Unfortunately, they had nothing new to offer us. I know 1976 was a long time ago, but I'm surprised that they don't have anything more in their archives than what's literally printed on the cover.

I have reached out to Continuity Studios to see if they have anything they could tell us, but I haven't received anything back yet. I'll update this post if they do respond.

Fortunately, I do have one new thing to add! I was browsing some old Savage Sword of Conan issues and came across an essay in the back of Savage Sword #40 about the Power Records release! Author of the essay Fred Blosser goes through each of the stories and notes the writing credits as he goes. We now know exactly to whom to credit each story.

"The Jewel of the Ages:" Plotted and scripted by Len Wein
"Shadow of the Stolen City:" Plotted by Len Wein and scripted by Roy Thomas
"The Thunder Dust:" Plotted by Len Wein and scripted by Roy Thomas
"The Crawler in the Mists:" Plotted and scripted by Len Wein

Fred also mentions that Roy Thomas wasn't overly thrilled that there was a comic book adaption of "The Crawler in the Mists" packaged with a 45 version of the audio drama seeing as that was now the first Marvel Conan comic that he didn't write (there would be many, many more very soon, though). 

​I'll put scans of that entire essay down below.

Stygian Dogs is fairly convinced that the narrator of the Power Records stories is voice actor Dick Tufeld. Tufeld sounds about right- he's got one of those voices that I think of as an AM radio voice- it's kind of powerful, but not overly deep, with just a little bit of scratch in it.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Neal's Continuity Studios will know a little bit more about the album. The fact that Fred mentions in his essay about how Neal said they didn't sell very well tells me that maybe his studio was a little more involved in the production than just being commissioned to do the art, but who knows? Maybe he just asked and they told him it was a bust.

One other cool thing that I found is that there are two other Conan audio drama LPs out there as well. Produced by Moondance Productions in 1975 and 1976, they're productions of existing Conan stories, unlike the Power Records originals. The 1975 album focuses on Howard classics: "The Tower of the Elephant" and "The Frost-Giant's Daughter." The 1976 record is almost all L. Sprague de Camp- it's even narrated by him! That one features "The Blood-Stained God" and "The Curse of the Monolith." I found the "Tower of the Elephant" record on Youtube, but not the rest. Luckily, their Discogs pages are pretty well-developed. We know the music and voice credits for both of them, and honestly, the 1975 record's cover fucking rips.

Included below is Fred Blosser's complete essay, "The (Almost) Forgotten Tales of Conan" from the back of SSOC #40. What an illustrative title that these were almost forgotten 45 years ago, and here we are, digging them up again in 2025!

In December of 2024, I published a project I had been working on for quite some time: putting the first 100 issues of The Savage Sword of Conan into chronological order. I have since then continued to read as much Savage Sword as I can, continuing to place the stories in an attempt at chronological order.

While a lot of people have tried to collapse all the Marvel Comics Conan stories into one chronology, I won't be doing that. Once or twice, the comics cross over (like when SSOC #1 continues a story from CTB #42, which had come out just a bit earlier) and sometimes they reference each other (like when SSOC #204 involves characters introduced years prior in CTB #84-94). But the two often offer conflicting accounts several times: for example, they each have different stories about how Conan gained the name Amra. Additionally, Conan the Barbarian frequently teams Conan up with original companions  for a length of a few issues who, if these stories were happening concurrently, would have those characters be weirdly and intermittently absent. And finally, the two just feel like very different beasts. Even though the two technically take place in the same timeline, I'll mostly leave Conan the Barbarian out.

Like in my previous post, there are a few factors that I used to place these stories:

1. Explicit chronological clues like a line referring to past events or places Conan has already been. 
2. Life periods. Many stories set themselves in one of the accepted periods of Conan's life: they say on the first page or two that Conan is currently a young thief or a pirate with the Red Brotherhood.
3. Conan's characterization. Does he seem experienced and shrewd? Or fresh and foolish?
4. How other characters treat Conan. Sometimes he is referred to as "young man" or even "pup" by others. Sometimes his reputation precedes him and people recoil in awe.
5. Location. There were many stories that could fit a bunch of different places in the timeline but I've placed them next to stories where Conan doesn't have to move as much across the map to avoid the "mad dash across the Hyborian world" problem. For example, if a story takes place in Zamboula with no other chronological clues, I might place it near to "Shadows in Zamboula."

Below is my updated attempt to put all these stories into an order. I'd say "a coherent order" but one character having this many adventures in one lifetime truly doesn't make any sense at all.

​​Stories added into the chronology by Savage Sword are marked in red. If a story was not adapted into a story in Savage Sword, but there is a comic adaption from one of the other Bronze Age anthology Conan books like Conan the Barbarian, King Conan, or Savage Tales, I've marked those as well. Notes are marked in blue.

I hope this thing isn't so long that it takes forever to load.

"Rite of Blood" - Savage Sword 89

• This is the backup story in SSOC 89. Conan is said to be in his 12th year and takes place in Cimmeria.

"Hunters and Hunted!" - Savage Sword 83

• This is the backup story in SSOC 83. It features Conan as a teenager before he leaves Cimmeria as a young adult for the first time.

​
"Old Garrad's Heart" - Savage Sword 203

• This adaption of a Robert E. Howard story is the backup in issue 203. It takes place when Conan is 14, less than one year before the siege of Venarium.

"Day of Manhood" - Savage Sword 227

• This story features a 14 year-old Conan earning his manhood by doing the Cimmerian version of a Bar Mitzfah: fighting a bull. Conan references the "building of a fort," clearly referring to the fort at Venarium, which he will soon lay siege to.

"The Black Hound of Death" - Savage Sword 219

• In this issue, which is mostly a flashback from his kozak days back to Cimmeria, Conan is 15 years old, one summer on from Venarium. He meets the evil Commander Grimm.​

"The World Beyond the Mists" - Savage Sword 93

• This story is a direct sequel to SSOC 84. It features the Brotherhood of the Falcon, who were the baddies in issue 84, seeking revenge on Conan. This one takes Conan to another plane of existence where he sees a funhouse mirror version of his future where he's King Konar of Aquiloria with his wife, Zenoria.​

Conan and the Sorcerer - Savage Sword 53 - 55

• Andrew J. Offutt's trilogy of Conan stories are adapted out of order. They all are intended to take place right after "The Tower of the Elephant."

Conan the Mercenary - Savage Sword 217 - 218

The Sword of Skelos - Savage Sword 57 - 58

"Autumn of the Witch" - Savage Sword 130

• Like Issue 129, Conan is clad in his "red cloak" costume. This story takes place in Brythunia, a little farther to the west than Zamora.

"The Forever Phial" - Savage Sword 8

• Takes place in Brythunia, I'm guessing on Conan's way back north to where "Lair of the Ice Worm" takes place. Conan uses a bow, which he learns how to do as a Turanian mercenary, so it has to take place after his Turanian service. There aren't too many clues as to this story's continuity other than that.

"A Horror of a Different Color" - Savage Sword 227

• As Conan passes through the Border Kingdom, apparently having just fought an evil wizard, he has a short encounter with a local terror. Not many clues other than his location, so it fits that he would be passing through after Brythunia on his way west.

"The Lair of the Ice Worm" - Savage Sword 34

"The Sea of No Return" - Savage Sword 66

• Another really tricky story to place. Conan is said to be young and recently from mercenary work which he found unsatisfying. It could be talking about his days with the Turanians seeing as, by my estimation, he seemed to be less satisfied with that than other merc work he did in his career. Since it takes place between Poitain and Argos, I'd say it might be right before "Queen of the Black Coast," as Conan is moving southwest from this direction toward Messantia, where "Queen of the Black Coast" opens.

"The Debt of the Warrior" - Savage Sword 123

• The B-story in issue #123 takes place one year after Conan's Turanian mercenary experience in which he stumbles across the family of a man he killed during war. The location is unstated.

"Queen of the Black Coast" marks the beginning of Conan's first pirate period. His first pirate crew is aboard the Tigress with Belit. Many authors have told extended adventures of Conan and Belit together, which usually happen between the first and second chapters of "Queen of the Black Coast." 

"Queen of the Black Coast," Chapter I - Conan the Barbarian 58

"Hawks Over Shem" - Savage Sword 36
​
"Black Colossus" - Savage Sword 2

"At the Mountain of the Moon God" - Savage Sword 3

• This story, original to SSOC, is a direct sequel to "Black Colossus."

"Shadows in the Dark"

"Colossus of Argos" - Savage Sword 80

• Takes place in Messantia. Conan seems young, but pretty mature. It says he's "toppled mighty monuments" in his day, so it's probably after "The City of Skulls" and it's definitely before his kingship based on one line in the story. This one is tough to place.

"Isle of the Faceless Ones" - Savage Sword 115

• Accompanied by his friend Tebnar, Conan travels to an island in the western ocean in search of gold. He seems about the same age as Tebnar, and they both seem like they're in their 20s. Because it takes place in Zingara, this placement seems as likely as any.

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"The Wizard-Fiend of Zingara" - Savage Sword 61

• Conan is acting as a mercenary for Zingara, which is in close proximity to Messantia, so this is my best guess for this issue.

"The Mud Men of Keshan" - Savage Sword 111

• Conan takes on some small-timers on the coast of Shem before heading to Zamboula and then into the jungles for a time. Conan name-drops himself as Amra, but doesn't seem to be known in Zamboula, so my best guess is that it's after "Queen of the Black Coast" and before his Zuagir raider days.

"Sons of the White Wolf" - Savage Sword 37

• Another story "freely adapted" by Roy Thomas. It's explicitly a kozaki raider story that takes place near the Vilayet Sea. Since I figured it was placed somewhere around "The Road of the Eagles," and I'm placing it right before it since "Eagles" is in the following issue and there are sometimes issues that follow directly from their predecessor.

"The Road of the Eagles" - Savage Sword 38

​Here is the beginning of Conan's period as a Zuagir raider. This period is often visited in SSOC.

"A Witch Shall Be Born" - Savage Sword 5
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"Mirror of the Manticore" - Savage Sword 58

• One possible sequel to "A Witch Shall Be Born," featuring an explanation of how Olgerd Vladislav survived. Contradicts Savage Sword issue 6.

​"Sleeper Beneath the Sands" - Savage Sword 6

• Another possible sequel to "A Witch Shall Be Born" featuring Olgerd Vladislav. It's a different situation than "Mirror of the Manticore," so the two can't exist in the same continuity.

"Citadel at the Center of Time" - Savage Sword 7

• Yet another alternate sequel to "A Witch Shall Be Born."

"Black Tears" - Savage Sword 35

"The Toll" - Savage Sword 114

• On the border of Iranistan and Vendhya, Conan is accosted to pay a bridge toll. He makes sure that someone pays, but it's not him. ​

"The White Tiger of Vendhya!" - Savage Sword 103

• Conan is raiding Turan as a thorn in King Yezdigerd's side with the other raiders. It takes him to Vendhya.​

"There Will Come a Dark Stranger" - Savage Sword 124

• While Conan begins this story alone in Afghulistan, he gradually gains the admiration of the Afghuli hillmen, likely placing this one in a slot not long before "The People of the Black Circle" and "The Daughter of the God King."

"The Daughter of the God King" - Savage Sword 85

• Conan is with the Afghulis, placing this one before "The People of the Black Circle."

"Revenge of the Sorcerer" - Savage Sword 86

• ​Part two of "The Daughter of the God King."

"The Daughter of Raktavashi" - Savage Sword 234

• In SSOC's penultimate issue, its greatest creators Roy and Big John begin their final two-parter together. Loosely based on the REH story, "The Daughter of Erlik Khan," Conan is reunited with some old allies in Vendhya during his time as hetman to the hillmen. 

"A Rage of Goblins" - Savage Sword 235

• This story, one of two in the final issue, concludes what was begun in "The Daughter of Raktavashi." There are some eight-foot-tall, lumbering hairy creatures in this story that worship Raktavashi's daughter and I think they're kind of adorable. They became my favorite part. As I noted in my article tracking the ups and downs of SSOC, this story ends with a bit of a thud, with Conan yawning and saying he'd like to get some sleep. The story is great, but kind of an odd ending to 235 issues of sword and sorcery action. It makes me wonder if the Savage Sword creative team knew it would be their last issue when Roy was scripting it.

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"The People of the Black Circle" - Savage Sword 16 - 19

"The Road to Shondakar" - Savage Sword 228

• This backup in issue 228 is an illustrated verse that's less than 20 lines long. Conan and his "Vendhyan belle" fight a winged warrior.

"...In the Eye of the Beholder" - Savage Sword 111

• Conan passes through Iranistan.

"Star of Thamazhu" - Savage Sword 120

• Conan passed through the city of Kadath in Koth. This issue by Larry Yakata is kind of strange. With both a wolfman and a lizard-like alien, it crosses pretty close to sci-fi. But it also has some familiar elements to it. In "Star of Thamazhu," Conan is warned to stay away from the city of Kadath, which he ignores and checks in at the inn. He is put on a quest to rescue a lowly dancing girl whose lover has gone insane. Conan enters a fortress to rescue the dancing girl, who is guarded by a hulking sentry named Vajeenu. Conan eventually rescues the dancing girl who reveals herself to actually be royalty and gives Conan the Star of Thamazhu, a precious gem, as reward. This all sounds eerily a lot like "Shadows in Zamboula." In that story, Conan is warned to stay away from the inn in Zamboula, which he ignores and checks in at the inn. He is put on a quest to rescue a lowly dancing girl whose lover has gone insane. Conan enters a fortress to rescue the dancing girl, who is guarded by a hulking sentry named Baal-Pteor. Conan eventually rescues the dancing girl who reveals herself to actually be royalty and gives Conan the Star of Khorala, a precious gem, as reward. Maybe it's just me.

"Master of the Broadsword" - Savage Sword 132

• I'd like to be honest- I don't like the placement of this story, but there are very, very few places where I feel like this story fits. Conan is in the northern reaches of Khitai, very far away from where he usually gets to. In other Khitan adventures, Conan is on the western edges of the empire or on the seas southeast of the country. Conan has apparently traveled all the way there from Argos, according to character dialogue. This one just makes no sense at any point in Conan's travels. It's way too far. 

"The Siren" - Savage Sword 101

• With pirates swearing by Erlik and invoking the Tarim, this story sure seems like it should take place somewhere on the Vilayet Sea, but it mentions them being attacked by the Barachans, so it must be on the western sea. Conan is not actually buccaneering in this story, but does end the story at sea, so perhaps it fits right before his Barachan pirate period.

"The Blossoms of the Black Lotus" - Savage Sword 122

• This issue is one of the more fun ones put together by Don Kraar and Ernie Chan. Don and Ernie design a gang hideout in the Stygian port city of Khemi for Conan to play rival gangs against one another. I place this right before his third pirate period for a few reasons. He ends the issue heading north on a ship toward Zingara. Additionally, he displays a level of cunning in this story akin to his skills in "The Treasure of Tranicos."

Here is the beginning of Conan's third pirate period, this time with the Barachans. 

"The Sea Mage's Daughter" - Savage Sword 129

• Explicitly a Barachan pirate story set off the coast of Zingara (and not a very good one, at that).

"Seventh Isle of Doom" - Savage Sword 136

• A forgettable Barachan pirate story.

"Daughter of the Western Sea" - Savage Sword 213

• This story is helped out by being just a few pages long. Conan accidentally invites a sea monster aboard his Barachan pirate ship while it's in disguise as a beautiful woman. I'm sure many of us would have made the same mistake.

"The Gem in the Tower" - Savage Sword 45

"Treasure" - Savage Sword 227

• This illustrated verse, an adaption of a poem by Jim Neal, takes place right after Conan and the Barachan pirates leave Siptah's Isle in "The Gem in the Tower."

"The Pool of the Black One" - Savage Sword 22 - 23

"Red Nails" - Savage Tales of Conan 2 - 3

​Conan and the Gods of the Mountain - Savage Sword 211 - 213, 215, 217

• Following an adaption of Conan and the Spider God, Roy Thomas turns to adapt the 1993 novel Conan and the Gods of the Mountain, a direct sequel to "Red Nails." Unfortunately, it's really long in the tooth. This story is told over five issues, interrupted by other stories, and it would have been much stronger if he could have trimmed the fat.

"Black Cloaks of Ophir" - Savage Sword 68

• This story says that Conan is not quite forty years of age, and also features a short piece of "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" that implies Conan may go to Ophir after his Barachan pirate period, placing this one here. It's a good one and nobody ever talks about it!

"Reunion in Scarlet" - Savage Sword 127

• I don't love the placement of this story, but I don't really have a better place to put it. Set on the Vilayet Sea, Conan is reunited with Valeria. Both these contextual clues mean it has to come after his Red Brotherhood days, and he has to know Valeria, but Conan doesn't ever seem to return as far east as the Vilayet after "The Devil in Iron." So I'm shrugging my shoulders here.

"Jewels of Gwahlur" - Savage Sword 25

"The Ivory Goddess" - Savage Sword 60

Here is the end of Conan's Barachan pirate episodes. Next, we see a few wandering stories before his time as an Aquilonian scout.

"The Night of the Dark God" - Savage Tales of Conan 4

• This one was adapted from "The Dark Man" by Robert E. Howard. It takes place on the Isle of Swords, which several online maps will place in Vanaheim. It shows many of the foes Conan has fought through the years (Taramis from "A Witch Shall Be Born," a gorgon from "Black Tears" or "The God in the Bowl," Yag-Kosha from "The Tower of the Elephant," and an ape beast from either "Black Colossus" or "Rogues in the House"). I'm only placing it before Conan's time in the Pitcish Wilderness because it has to be later in his career and he meets Picts in the story.

Savage Sword 144 - 150

• Conan is crossing the Graaskal Mountains in Brythunia by himself when he runs into Red Sonja. Issue 144, "The Waiting Doom," and its sequel in 145 are some of Chuck Dixon's highlights. Conan then fights as a gladiator and military commander for Nemedia.

"The Dwellers Under the Tombs" - Savage Sword 224

• This banger of a tale is penciled by John Watkiss, who was mostly a covers artist for Savage Sword. Adapted from a Cthulu Mythos story by Robert E. Howard with the same name, Conan has a love affair with an older woman and then visits some truly terrifying creatures that, as advertised, dwell under tombs. This story rocks. It's like if you gave everyone in Scooby-Doo a sword. Anyway, it takes place in Corinthia, with Conan seemingly a little bit older. He has great intuition (for example, seems drawn to help the town, but can't tell why) and is calm, collected, and smooth. He's still noticeably younger than the woman he is with romantically, but he doesn't seem like a young man when he was soldiering for Corinthia in his younger days.

"The Boon" - Savage Sword 116

• I'm not usually a Don Kraar fan, but this backup story in SSOC116 hits pretty hard. Seemingly in Argos after defeat in a battle, Conan is in a military camp and bargains for the life of his friend Aristus. Conan references a friend saving his life "at the siege of Khemi, when we fought the Stygians," so this appears to be a quasi-sequel to SSOC 108's story "The Fear of Crom." It appears to take place much later than 108.

Here is the beginning of Conan's time in Aquilonia. First as a scout, then as king.

"Three Lives for N'Garthl" - Savage Sword 135

• Conan is scouting for the Aquilonians, deep in the Pictish Wilderness. At the end of the story, Conan comes across a fort, which is unnamed other than being called a civilized border fort. Is this his first time at Fort Tuscelan? Does he walk in and ask for a job? Who knows...

"The Lost Legion" - Savage Sword 137

• Conan and the mighty, but distasteful, XXI Legion of the Aquilonian army plunge deep into Pict country. Seal Team 6 they are not.

"Riddle of the Demuzaar" - Savage Sword 114

• Conan, up in the Pictish Wilderness, seems to have lost his memory.  As you may have guessed, there's some dark magic afoot.

"Blood and Honor" - Savage Sword 143

• This Pictish Wilderness story could be moved around the other issues prior to "Beyond the Black River."

"Lair of the Lizard God" - Savage Sword 138

• Fort Tuscelan stands, placing this story prior to "Beyond the Black River." Valeria shows up!

"Garden of Blood" - Savage Sword 139

• Picking up where issue 138 left off, Conan is still with Valeria.

"The Girl of the Haunted Wood" - Savage Sword 140

• Conan leaves Valeria behind as this story continues on from issue 139.

"Beyond the Black River" - Savage Sword 26 - 27

"The Dark Stranger" - Savage Sword 88

• Another illustrated poem. I'm placing this one here for two thin reasons. One: Conan is carrying an Aquilonian broadsword rather than the "cold Hyrkanian steel" he so frequently refers to. Two: He's sullen after a loss of a battle, which could be the loss of Balthus at Fort Tuscelan, detailed in "Beyond the Black River."

"Mitra Defend Us" - Savage Sword 112

• This short B story involves Conan with a priest of Mitra who's trying to evangelize in the frontier beyond the Black River, ultimately meeting the Picts in his holy(?) quest. The narration makes it sound as though the situation is dire and the Aquilonians are being pushed back, which makes it seem like this one takes place after "Beyond the Black River," not before it.

"Moon of Blood" - Savage Sword 46

"The Treasure of Tranicos" - Savage Sword 47 - 48

Conan the Liberator - Savage Sword 49 - 52

• Roy adapts the novel Conan the Liberator in four issues.​

"Wolves Beyond the Border" - Savage Sword 59

• This is one of Howard's only Conan stories to not actually feature the big guy. It takes place during Conan's campaign against King Numedides, but we don't actually see him. It takes place concurrently with the novel Conan the Liberator.

"The Reign of Thulandra Thuu" - Savage Sword 214

• Conan is referred to as the "newly-crowed king of Aquilonia" in this, placing it before "The Phoenix on the Sword." Issue 214 is one of several issues that has a seemingly futuristic robot animal on the cover. It works a lot better in the narrative than on the cover. I will say this robot demon horse looks a lot like our beloved Blucifer here in Denver.

"The Phoenix on the Sword"

"The Phoenix in the Shadow" - Savage Sword 227

• The last of four short tales in issue 227, this sequel to "The Phoenix on the Sword" picks up just seconds after the end of the original, opening with the line, "I've still one more foe to slay!" The art by Fred Harper in this one is excellently cinematic.

"The Scarlet Citadel" - Savage Sword 30

The Hour of the Dragon - Savage Sword 8 - 10

The Return of Conan - King Conan 5 - 8

Here is the end of Conan's young kingship and we see a time jump of around 10 years past the birth of his children.

"The Witch of the Mists" - King Conan 1
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"Challenge" - Savage Sword 93

• An illustrated poem in the form of a letter to Thoth-Amon. This recaps the four times Conan and Thoth have crossed paths ("The God in the Bowl," Conan the Buccaneer, "The Treasure of Tranicos," and "The Phoenix on the Sword") and says that Conan's coming for Thoth's head. It's written from the perspective of Conan right after "The Witch of the Mists" since it mentions Thoth's plot against Conan's son Conn, seen in "Mists."

Well, that's my best attempt. You may noticed that there are still about 30 issues missing, which I don't currently own. I'll continue to update this page.

As I said last time, this was more of a nerdy chronology exercise than any kind of suggestion to read in this order. I've never been a fan of complicated comic book reading orders; they're unnecessary and add very little, like this one would.

Are there any clues that I missed in these stories? I'd love to refine this if there's something that I haven't taken into account. Let me know in the comments, if so.