Ok this post is a long time coming and will probably have companion posts in the future... but i started reading CONAN BOOKS!
My small stint in sword and sorcery got me hooked and now I'm trying to make a more earnest effort. I have also been a huge Frank Frazetta fan all my life, his cover art is so amazing and a huge interest for me. I imagine all the stories in these books as though they were his paintings in my mind. They are all short stories published in pulp magazines in the 20s and 30s. Which is kind of crazy- these stories are a hundred years old. The oldest books I've read for fun by far.
The guy who wrote these was MY age when he did so! And he committed suicide super early in his life (30) because the great depression hit, and he could no longer survive in writing and he just hated doing anything else. He's a Lovecraft contemporary, and actually had a long mail correspondence with him, where they bickered back and forth for years. Their ancient discord dms...
I read three stories so far they each took 2-3 hours to read
He's just SUCH a boy character like I love when guys make up a big buff unstoppable guy character and pit them against bad things. Its something I obviously do with Ike but like, characters like conan or the hulk are sooooo adorable to me. Like they were thought up by someone’s inner child for comfort and adventure and to be this metaphysical limb that they can extend to destroy things that are awful and frustrating. And the fact he sometimes get babes- yes, very cool
Robert E Howard actually really wanted to write ancient Irish warrior stories (his own culture) He loved writing historical fiction more than anything else! But they took him too long to write- if he wanted to do the proper research on them. So his solution was crazy. He MADE UP a fake, alternative history Eurasia continent and then wrote a small book cataloguing it's histories and cultures, added fantasy elements, and then set all of his stories in it… it's called the Hyborean Age. (weirdly enough, Todd Howard actually wanted to set the elder scrolls game in the Hyborean Age, but changed his mind and made his own mythos)
The first Conan story I read was called the black colossus and it's referred to as having the craziest ending of any Conan book and it sure did. It's about this princess who dreams of a black shadow overtaking her kingdom and enslaving her, so she asks her gods if there's anything she can do to stop it. and because gods are real in this setting they literally told her "go out into the street and the first person you walk into will save your kingdom" and she runs into Conan… LOL and he literally holds her up by the arm and hes like "U ARE TOO BEJEWELED AND UR HOOD IS TOO SILKEN 2 BE ON THE STREET!!!! if I listen to you I know for a FACT that this is an ambush and some shitty thieves are gonna kill me" and shes like "no no no i am actually here because my gods told me to do it!" and whats so funny is that Conan IS a barbarian and his culture has shamans so he just goes like "oh omg why didn't you say so" and just immediately believes her LOL I thought it was so funny…
Next I read the #1 most essential story, called "The Tower of the Elephant" and it was INSANE. Instead of the usual "he fights a giant snake" the circumstances of the story end up with Conan at odds with a cosmic and non literal mystery and uhh it was just so crazy. If I were to recommend any Conan story to anyone in a vacuum itd be this one, it just gets so strange.
Here is a link to the story if you would like to read it.
The last story I read is kind of cheating but I read an 80 page comic adaption of a Conan story- "Red Nails" by french artist Didier Cassegrain and it was AMAZING! All dialogue unaltered from the original story. I am not 100 percent into how Conan looks here (idk why hes wearing brown jeans LOL) it was tonally exactly what i like about these… it was about Conan searching for treasure but he ends up getting involved in a race war instead and he's like uhm this is weird.
I am currently trying to lowball some dudes on ebay for this first issue HAHA the cover art is so insanely lustful and awesome yes
Anyways this is secret art of mine but I drew him and Red Sonja. This is how he looks in my mind's eye. Your reward for reading this post
dededos
turnnoffyourmind
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
