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Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Conan Chronologies



One of the first things I noticed, on the first page of "Conan the Barbarian" Vol. 1 Issue #116, was a line beneath the story credits.  It read “Note on Conan Chronology: This special story takes place between Conan #12 & 13. Relax and enjoy!”  I wondered at this, as comic book stories usually follow one another in sequential order.  But then I shrugged, and continued on with “Crawler in the Mist!” figuring the staff had decided to throw in an occasional out-of-sequence story.  I hadn’t read any of those early comics, but my interest was piqued by the note, as I knew that Marvel’s early “Conan the Barbarian” comics drew heavily on Robert E. Howard’s original stories. 

Fans of historically important people often read all the biographical information they can get their hands on, then wonder what the person did between recorded events.  Early Christians attempted to fill the gaps in the canonical gospels with stories about Jesus’ early years.  Perhaps the ultimate compliment a fan can pay an author is to attempt a timeline for their favorite fictional character.  Steven Brust’s character of Vlad Taltos certainly inspires such devotion.  Robert E. Howard’s Conan is another.

Howard wrote a score of Conan stories, and one novel, over a four-year period.  (Sadly, the last four years of his too-short life).  In my youth, I became aware of the character through the twelve paperback books edited by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter.  The two men structured the series as one long, sweeping narrative of Conan’s life, so I assumed Howard had written his stories sequentially as well.  In fact, what I hadn’t realized was that the first Conan story Howard wrote, “The Phoenix on the Sword,” took place late in the character’s life, after he had become king of Aquilonia.  This is one of the reasons why Patrice Louinet served as editor for The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.  By presenting the stories in the order Howard wrote them, he felt he could show fans how Howard saw the character, and how his concept of Conan evolved with each subsequent story.


Intriguingly, the first attempt to construct a chronology of Conan’s life seems to have begun during Howard’s life.  According to Wikipedia, Howard reviewed it in draft form in 1936 (the year of his death), and gave it his provisional blessing.  P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark published it two years later, in fanzine “The Hyborian Age.”  L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter used this as a basis for structuring their twelve book series, updating the chronology to encompass the stories they added to the Conan canon.  Since then, others (including celebrated Wheel of Time series author Robert Jordan, who wrote several Conan novels during his also too-short life) have contributed their own Conan chronologies.  This process will likely continue, as more stories and novels are written about this simple barbarian with whom fans seem eternally fascinated.

As I’m always interested in learning more about the stories I read, as well as the people who wrote them, I did a little research on “Conan The Barbarian” Vol. 1 Issue #116.  Apparently, Len Wein’s story was originally created for Power Records, a division of Peter Pan Records.  Power Records produced a series of “Book and Record” sets, combining one or more comic book adventures with a 45 RPM 7-inch record.  Children could read the comic book, or listen to the story, or do both simultaneously, giving them an audio-visual experience for $1.49 (roughly 4-5 times the price of a single comic book).  Power Records published “The Crawler in the Mists!” in 1976.  Four years later, after a slight alteration to the title, additional artwork, and changes in exposition, dialogue, and coloring, Marvel republished it in Issue #116. 


Literary canons and character timelines don’t necessarily include comic book adventures, but I’m glad Marvel republished “Crawler in the Mist!”  Like so many one-off stories and missing adventures, I’d never have known it existed, had it been left outside Marvel’s chronology of Conan’s life.  And now you can read it too, and even listen to it, by following the link below.  In the words of the mighty Marvel, “Relax and enjoy!”

Dragon Dave

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