Thanks to Zach Davisson for the heads-up on the cover art contest:

Conan the Barbarian returns in the most beloved tale of his career next month when Conan the Barbarian #1 by Brian Wood and art by Becky Cloonan hits shelves, and we want you, with a sword in hand–or pencil or paintbrush–to draw, paint, or collage a Conan Cover to rival all Covers. Stoke up the savage fire, Amp up the action shot and bring Conan to life in your own hand.  

We want you to Create a Conan cover like we’ve never seen before.  Think hard, get some inspiration and bring Conan to life! Send us your entry at Contests [at] darkhorse [dot] com. 

If your Conan Cover is the strongest, manliest, sexiest, and most savage piece we recieve we will print your art in the back of an upcoming issue of Conan the Barbarian. If you think you’ve got what it takes to bring Conan to life, show us. Never bare a weapon unless you intend to use it. Ladies and Gentleman, show us what you’ve got.

All Entries are due upon the Jan 31st, 11:59pm Deadline. We’ll choose a winner on Feb. 1st, 2012 and announce it on this blog post within several days after. And look for an Album on our Facebook Page of all entries. 

Winner will receive a complimentary copy the issue with their artwork as well as The Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 9 TPB, Conan vol 10: Iron Shadows in the Moon TPB , Conan Vol. 9 Free Companions TPB and a Conan Limited Edition Action Figure.

(Don’t forget to read the fine print!)

Cromrades, this could be an excellent opportunity to show your stuff. But if you’ll endulge me…

There’s a lot of great Conan art out there, no question. Be it the inimitable Frazetta or a youngster on DeviantArt, you can find some true quality artwork out there. However, as with any subject, there tends to be a great repitition of themes. Conan will usually be either fighting, or posing contemplatively; he will be clad in a fur loincloth, Greco-Romanesque regalia, or some Heavy Metal-style partial armour. Women will usually be clutching – or be clutched by – Conan, lounging around seductively, or cowering in fright; they will almost always be near-nude. Any other figures will either be half-naked savages in a chaotic throng, soldiers of the Ancient World, or a horde of beast-men. The monster, of course, will be apish, serpentine, cthulhoid or draconian, and Conan will always face it heroically.

Wouldn’t it be nice to try something different? Conan is a man of gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, a man who’s experienced stark terror: let’s see those emotions in action. Dress him in something different – eastern hillman garb, desert nomad attire, mercenary armour, pirate regalia. Depict a female who isn’t fawning or lounging or half-naked. Draw something other than an action scene. Maybe even pick a scene directly from the stories. There was more to the Conan stories than the action, sex and violence, and it would be awesome to see more of that in evidence.

Or just do another picture of Conan with a girl and a monster, they seem to go down well. If you want to stick to action scenes – it’s what Howard did best, after all – then give it all you have.

I haven’t posted much on the blog due to my moratorium, but I feel that this news is important to anyone who calls themselves a Conan fan. The news has come that Glenn Lord has died.

If you know who Glenn Lord is, then you know no amount of words can really convey how important he was to Robert E. Howard’s legacy. If you don’t know who Glenn Lord is, then his Wikipedia page (which was composed by Howard scholar Lee Breakiron) will show an inkling of just how vast his influence and impact was:

A Korean vet and a paper warehouse manager by trade, he discovered Howard through Skull-Face and Others (1946) around 1951. He sought out earlier publications with REH’s work, most notably the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. Starting in 1956, he scoured the country for all REH stories, poems, and letters. Over the course of his life he has amassed the world’s largest collection of such publications and original manuscripts (actually typescripts).

Lord became literary agent for the Howard heirs around March, 1965, and served as such for 28 and a half years. In 1965, he tracked down the contents of Robert E. Howard’s famous storage trunk; the contents of which were then owned by pulp writer and Howard friend E. Hoffmann “Ed” Price. The contents consisted of tens of thousands of pages typed by Howard, including hundreds of unpublished stories, poems, and fragments. Using the contents of the trunk as well as his vast collection of previously published REH materials, Lord provided the source text for almost every published Howard work appearing in books, magazines, or chapbooks from 1965 through 1997, including collections of REH letters. Lord also provided introductions, afterwords, or commentary for dozens of REH books.

Tirelessly promoting Howard’s stories, Lord secured their publication in any promising venue, leading directly to the Howard Boom of the 1970s. This included books by Ace, Arkham House, Avon, Baen, Ballantine, Bantam, Barnes & Noble Books, Baronet, Berkley, Beagle, Belmont, Bonanza, Carroll & Graff, Centaur, Century-Hutchinson, Chelsea House, Chaosium, DAW, Dell, Delta, Dodd-Mead, Dorset, Doubleday, Fawcett Gold Medal, FAX, Fedogan & Bremer, Fictioneer, Five Star, Gollancz, Grafton, Gramercy, Donald M. Grant, Grossett & Dunlap, Harper Collins, Jove, Kaye & Ward, Lancer, Leisure, MacFadden, Manor, Mayflower, Meys, Morning Star Press, New English Library, Neville Spearman, Orbit, Oxford University Press, Pan, Panther, Prentice-Hall, Putnam, Pyramid, REH Foundation Press, Robinson, Ryerson, Science Fiction Book Club, Sidgwick & Jackson, Signet, Sphere, Taplinger, TOR, Tower, Underwood-Miller, University of Nebraska Press, Walker & Co., Warner Books, WH Allen, Xanadu and Zebra; periodicals such as Amazing Science Fiction Stories, Amazing Stories, Ariel, Chacal, Coven 13/Witchcraft & Sorcery, Different Worlds, Fantastic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories/Fantastic Stories of Imagination, Fantasy Book, Fantasy Commentator, Fantasy Crossroads, Fantasy Crosswinds, Fantasy Tales, The Haunt of Horror, Heavy Metal, Lost Fantasies, Magazine of Horror, Pulp Review, The Riverside Quarterly, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, Spaceway Science Fiction, Startling Mystery Stories, Sword and Sorcery, Trumpet, Weird Tales, Weirdbook, The West, White Wolf Magazine, Worlds of Fantasy, Xenophile, and Zane Grey Western Magazine; and several series of Marvel comic books and magazines. In many cases, he was also the uncredited editor of the published version of the REH works. And this is not counting the literally hundreds of books and magazines in non-English languages to which he supplied texts, including Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Yugoslavian, nor the hundreds of amateur publications.

In the fall of 1977, he arranged with Berkley Medallion to put out three Conan paper- and hardbacks of Conan stories edited by Karl Edward Wagner, the first Conan series without any posthumous revisions and pastiches, which previous collections had in excess.

Lord published a few REH collections on his own, such as the periodical The Howard Collector #1-18 and the chapbook Etchings in Ivory. In The Howard Collector, from 1961 to 1973, Lord featured previously unpublished (or very rare) pieces by Howard, letters by REH and those who knew him, indices of poems and stories, reprints of articles related to Howard, and news about upcoming publications and other events. Thereafter, he published similar material in fanzines of the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, the Hyperborian League, and the Esoteric Order of Dagon (E.O.D. — an amateur press association primarily concerned with the writings of Howard Phillips Lovecraft).

An early admirer of Howard’s poetry, Lord published the first Howard poetry collection Always Comes Evening (1957) through famed Arkham House, subsidizing the costs of the printing himself. Later, he was instrumental in the publication of the Howard verse collections Etchings in Ivory (1968), Singers in the Shadows (1970), Echoes from an Iron Harp (1972), The Road to Rome (1972), Verses in Ebony (1975), Night Images (1976), Shadows of Dreams (1989), and A Rhyme of Salem Town and Other Poems (2007).

He published the first comprehensive bibliography of Howard, complete through 1973, in his The Last Celt: A Bio–Bibliography of Robert Ervin Howard (1976), a bible for REH scholars and collectors. The book also contains biographical and autobiographical material about Howard, as well as letters, story synopses and fragments, ephemera, covers illustrating REH stories, and photographs. Lord wrote many articles on Howard (e.g. in The Dark Barbarian). Lord contributed much information to the latest bibliography, The Neverending Hunt (2006, 2008), by Paul Herman and the online bibliography Howardworks.

When Conan Properties was incorporated in 1978 to establish a single entity to deal with Hollywood in negotiations that led to the two Conan movies, Lord served as a corporate director.

Lord has befriended, assisted, advised, and mentored two generations of Howard fans, scholars, and editors, providing copies of his typescripts, letters, and vast knowledge to many of them. For his dedication, achievements, and scholarship, Lord received the World Fantasy Convention Award in 1978 and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the professional fanzine, The Cimmerian, in 2005. The next year, he was Guest of Honor at the Centennial Robert E. Howard Days festival in Howard’s hometown of Cross Plains, Texas, and in 2007 was GoH at PulpCon 36 in Dayton, Ohio. He is currently Director Emeritus of the Robert E. Howard Foundation.

If you are a fan of Robert E. Howard, Conan, or any of his creations, then you owe Glenn Lord your thanks. If you picked up a Lancer or Sphere or Berkeley in the Howard Boom of the ’60s and ’70s, you can thank Glenn Lord for getting the stories printed across dozens of publishers. If you tore through an issue of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, you can thank Glenn Lord for providing Roy Thomas with indespensible advice and assistance, and even then-unpublished stories for adaptation. If you watched Conan the Barbarian in 1982, you can thank Glenn Lord for negotiating the deal to make and film it. If you’ve enjoyed anything related to Kull, Solomon Kane, or the other creations of the Man from Cross Plains, then you owe Glenn Lord for promoting all of Howard’s work beyond just Conan. If you’ve read any scholarly material on Howard or his creations, be it a critical anthology or a wiki site, you can thank Glenn Lord for being the man to start it all.

No one in 80 years has done more for Howard and his creations than Glenn Lord.

Those who’ve followed my personal blog will know I’ve been producing a fairly lengthy series discussing the relation of John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian to the original Robert E. Howard stories, patterned after the Encyclopedia of Arda’s Filmgoer’s Guides to the Lord of the Rings film adaptations. It seems inevitable, then, that I would produce another one for the upcoming film. This won’t be as lengthy or detailed as the Filmgoer’s Guide ’82, and will stick to bullet points and quotes. A more in-depth edition of the Filmgoer’s Guide will likely follow in due course.

As with the Filmgoer’s Guide ’82, this is not intended to denigrate or criticize the film’s cinematic merits, but simply to serve as a guide. It isn’t about saying the film is bad, just that it’s different. For opinions on the film’s quality, one can go to the multitude of excellent and insightful reviews across the internet, or my review and critique, but this is strictly an impartial assessment – save for a few scathing remarks which I’ve retained for my own sanity, mostly in the film references section.

Anyone with any suggestions/corrections/observations, please let me know in the comments.

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In what is looking increasingly like a screwball comedy, Hollywood Reporter reports (ahem) that Stan Lee Media Inc. are still trying to get Conan.

In August, just as Conan the Barbarian 3D was released, Stan Lee Media Inc. filed a lawsuit in an effort to reclaim ownership on the fictional Conan character. The move by SLMI, which was founded by comic book legend Stan Lee but now operates independently, is part of a larger campaign to put back the pieces from a turbulent bankruptcy from nearly a decade ago.

SLMI believes that finally having a court-recognized board of directors will give it the necessary standing to pursue reclamation of its intellectual property, but the current owners of the Conan character say it’s too late.

SLMI went into bankruptcy in 2001 and soon thereafter, Stan Lee resolved differences with Marvel, bringing over rights to characters including Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, X-Men, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor, and more.

As SLMI continues its fight against Lee and Marvel in an attempt to convince judges that rights to these characters were unlawfully transferred, SLMI also is seeking to regain additional turf in a separate lawsuit against Conan Sales Co., Paradox Entertainment, and others who aided the allegedly improper transfer of Conan in 2002.

Back then, a bankruptcy judge stopped transfer of SLMI assets, but allowed Conan Sales Co. to reclaim the character it once held per a “Settlement Approval Order.” Now, in the current lawsuit, SLMI says the judge’s order should be declared void because 1,800 SLMI shareholders were not provided sufficient notice.

Last week, the defendants moved to dismiss the lawsuit on a variety of points, but especially because the complaint was served on an “untimely” basis.

The motion to dismiss says that SLMI had an opportunity to challenge the order during the bankruptcy process and failed to do so. The defendants argue that the Bankruptcy Code doesn’t require notices to shareholders, and that the bankruptcy judge had found a notice of a hearing to be sufficient.

In order for SLMI to win, the defendants say that their adversary needs to show that a fraud on the court was perpetrated, and nothing in SLMI’s “vague” allegations meet that standard, they say.

Instead, the defendants believe that the lawsuit to reclaim Conan upon the film’s release was an “ambush” that was “intended to, and did, embarrass” defendants at a “very important time.”

A dismissal of the complaint is requested because no substantive allegations are alleged and because relief would cause the defendants, who have spent nearly a decade trying to revitalize the Conan character, “substantial undue prejudice.”

Conan the Barbarian 3D wasn’t exactly a hit, grossing less than $50 million worldwide on a reported budget of $90 million. But a good deal of ancillary revenue and future derivative works could be at stake, and of course, SLMI probably hopes to demonstrate it has regained its feet in the midst of legal battles over other characters.

Mother of Crom…

Editorial

This “news” is so irrelevant I feel redundant actually posting it on the blog, but for some unfathomable reason, sites all over the internet have been passing this non-story along. Why do I consider this a non-story? Because Stan Lee Media Inc have been making a small saga out of their legal issues, none of which have really amounted to anything productive for them. Stan Lee Media have sued companies an individuals from Marvel to Stan Lee himself. The fact that they announced their plans to sue Paradox on the very same day of the film’s release suggests to me that this is nothing to do with an actual legal dispute (since they have zero legal ground to stand on) and everything to do with SLMI trying to get attention for itself. After all, if they were really interested in getting Conan back, why didn’t they do so back when Dark Horse was publishing the successful Truman-Nord Conan series, or when Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures was released, or even when the 2011 film was officially announced back in 2007? Because, good reader, Stan Lee Media Inc. is nothing short of a haemorrhoid on the fundament of the cultural landscape.

Some might think that SLMI getting control of Conan would be a good thing, that Paradox have been mishandling the license (despite actively facilitating the publication of pure Howard texts, as well as spearheading new products and merchandise that has proven much more successful than the film thus far) and that new owners are the only way forward. They might also think that the company is affiliated with Marvel, and seeing the success of the Marvel Studio movies, consider it a great idea. However, one must remember that SLMI has nothing to do with either Stan Lee or Marvel, and that SLMI’s past projects aren’t exactly the talk of the town. Be careful what you wish for.

To recap:

• Stan Lee Media Inc. bought Conan Properties Inc. in November 2000
• Stan Lee Media Inc. filed for bankruptcy in December 2000
• Any assignment of rights to Stan Lee Media Inc. is terminated in 2001, on account of bankruptcy
• Said rights were transferred to various other hands
• Stan Lee Media Inc. thus had the Conan rights for a matter of weeks, producing no new merchandise or material before going bankrupt
• Paradox Entertainment bought Conan Properties Inc, in 2002
• Paradox Entertainment acquires 85% of the Robert E. Howard estate in 2006
• Stan Lee Media Inc. decides to sue Stan Lee in 2011
• Stan Lee and Marvel have nothing to do with Stan Lee Media Inc.
• Stan Lee Media Inc. is a sleazy, contemptible parasite of a company which has nothing better to do than to sue companies for properties it has lost the rights to and never actually did anything with in the first place

OK? I invite anyone more versed in legalese to correct any mistakes, but from what I can see, Stan Lee Media Inc. have no legal leg to stand on, and the only thing they’re entitled to is to be an annoyance.

Well, a little over a month since the film’s US premiere and Conan, and the film’s first few weeks in the open world are in the books. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have gone particularly well, critically or financially: Box Office Mojo’s current numbers crunch to only $21,180,241 million domestic takings and $27,500,000 foreign, amounting to $48,680,241 worldwide. While Box Office Mojo isn’t infallible – it still cites the production budget as $90 million despite Avi Lerner and Fredrik Malmberg confirming the budget as $70 million on multiple occasions – it’s a fairly reliable site for the most part. This is a pretty big disappointment for all involved, and although the first Conan trailer got a lot of buzz on the ‘net in the first week of its release, Conan the Barbarian 2011 has officially underperformed.

I’m not an industry analyst, so I can’t say with any degree of authority why this happened, though blame has been levelled at everything from the marketing to the film’s quality to the Conan brand equity. All we can really do is look at reviews, and see what they see. To that end, I’ve gathered some of what I consider to be the most perceptive and insightful reviews of Conan 2011 in this post, be they positive or negative, hoping that this might tell us something. I may disagree with, say, Phipps’ idea that the 1982 film was the best adaptation of Howard we could get, and Harry Knowles’ wish for Oliver Stone to get his hands on Conan fills me with terror, but they’re pretty good nonetheless.

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Sean Hood has a very frank discussion on his Quora page in regards to the underwhelming weekend takings for Conan:

You make light of it, of course. You joke and shrug. But the blow to your ego and reputation can’t be brushed off. Reviewers, even when they were positive, mocked Conan The Barbarian for its lack of story, lack of characterization, and lack of wit. This doesn’t speak well of the screenwriting – and any filmmaker who tells you s/he “doesn’t read reviews” just doesn’t want to admit how much they sting.

Unfortunately, the work I do as a script doctor is hard to defend if the movie flops. I know that those who have read my Conan shooting script agree that much of the work I did on story and character never made it to screen. I myself know that given the difficulties of rewriting a script in the middle of production, I made vast improvements on the draft that came before me. But its still much like doing great work on a losing campaign. All anyone in the general public knows, all anyone in the industry remembers, is the flop. A loss is a loss.

This ended up on Deadline Hollywood, and led to some interpreting his mention of “making vast improvementsas throwing Donnelly & Oppenheimer under the bus, so to speak. Still others felt he was trying to blame everyone but himself, much like I’d been of Avi Lerner and Joe Drake. However, Sean himself commented at the site, and wanted to assure readers that this was not his intention:

Actually my words “I made vast improvements on the draft that came before me” weren’t very classy because it does sound like I’m throwing the previous writers under the bus, and I need to publicly apologize to Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Andrew Lobel. All I can say is that I didn’t mean it that way and I should have chosen my words more carefully.

What I meant to say that I was proud of the work I did solving problems that that had emerged in the development process, over many years and dozens of drafts. To suggest that I did better work than the writers before me would be both un-classy and flat out incorrect.

Many people have read Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer’s early drafts of Conan when it showed up on the internet, and a great, great number of them think theirs was the best draft of any, including the shooting script. Andrew Lobel’s draft was filled with great humor, which some critics thought the movie lacked.

I didn’t write this to point fingers. As the last writer on the project, the criticism of the story, dialogue, and characterization should fall primarily on me… not my peers, not producers, not studio executives, not the director.

The offending line has been taken from the Quora page, but I’m going to address it all the same.

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Gearing up for the big day!

The Conan 3D Facebook page has a new picture of Leo Howard’s young Conan running amid fire and chaos in his home village:

For more, you will know it by the click of the link.

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There is still quite a bit of confusion about the upcoming Conan the Barbarian film. Some think it’s a remake of the 1982 film; others think it’s a sequel or re-imagining of it; still others have wildly different expectations and myriad misunderstandings of the character, his creation, and the film itself.

Well, I figured it’s time to put everything of importance into a short as possible, easy-to-read, plain English document for those who don’t know Conan. Think of this as a primer for anyone not closely versed in Conan, the Hyborian Age, or Robert E. Howard, whose only experience of Conan may be a late night talk-show host or a plucky little detective anime.

But they can’t remake Conan the Barbarian! Arnold was Conan! Milius was a Genius! This is an outrage!

A great man once said “Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it’s nothing.”

With that in mind, let me be perfectly blunt: if your only experience of Conan is previous adaptations, then you are not entitled to an opinion on the 2011 film’s fidelity to the Conan character. You can judge it on its own cinematic merits, as a moviegoing experience, or whatever. But without research, without background, without understanding, your opinion is nothing. If something in the 2011 film is different from something in the 1982 film, that does not make it unfaithful to the Conan character. Full stop. End of. Fin.

I’m not saying you have to read all of Robert E. Howard’s stories before going to see the film (though that would be awesome), I’m just saying you really should know that Conan existed for 50 years before 1982. I have spent too much time trying to explain to people that Conan existed for 20 years before Arnold Schwarzenegger was even born to have much patience left, and in this age of the internet, there is no excuse for ignorance. And this particular sort of ignorance is annoying, because it is so easily remedied with a simple, 5-second Google or Wikipedia search.

With that out of the way, onward.

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I’m awfully late to the party on this one, but there’s still just under a week left, so all you artists out there get your pencils, pens, paints, and graphic tablets ready for Empire’s big competition!

Hi mash-up peeps,

We’re partnered with Lionsgate to give you the chance to design an official, studio-endorsed poster for Conan. The winning entry will be picked by a member of the movie’s cast and crew – possibly even Jason Momoa himself – and displayed pride of place at next month’s Big Screen.

All you have to do is head over here for Conan assets/logo/pics, design something awesome in one-sheet format and post it here by Friday, August 5.

Feel free to make it as much (or as little) Robert Howard/Frank Frazetta inspired as you like, just make sure it’s high-res as the poster will be printed 27×40. Probably best to avoid puns this time, as much as we’d like to see ‘Conan For All Seasons’ or ‘Barbarian Of Green Gables’.

Go forth and bring it!

Oh boy. I really hope there’s some speedy artist out there who wants to give Conan the Esteban Marato, Drew Strewzan or John Alvin treatment. Maybe go with some old-school stuff in the style of Bill Gold, Frank McCarthy or Howard Terpning, or try something unusual like Saul Bass. And, of course, lest we forget Frank Frazetta did movie posters too?

There have already been some impressive pictures, which I’ve put after the break, but my money’s on this one:

Masterpiece.

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Thanks to sweetre15, Sean Hood has graciously answered questions from the users at the Robert E. Howard Forums regarding the upcoming film at his personal website. For expediency, I’ll copy it here.

The fans on the Conan.com forum asked me a number of questions about the upcoming movie Conan The Barbarian 3D. Here are my answers:

1. I know that you know the original stories and the Conan character as good as any. Which part of the script would you have loved to change but weren’t allowed/able to because whatever reason? And what would you have changed it to?

When I started the bulk of my work on the film, there were only two weeks until shooting was scheduled to begin. Sets were already built, characters were cast, stunts were choreographed, and special effects were pre-visualized. Although a lot of scene, story and character elements ultimately changed, I had to work within some very tight parameters under intense pressure to deliver pages quickly. Production rewrites are sometimes described as “changing the wheels on a moving car.”

To get an idea of what kind of Conan film I’d make if it were just me writing for myself, check out this answer/link:

What are the best Conan the Barbarian stories written by Robert E Howard and which story would be the best to adapt as a motion picture?

It’s a very lengthy piece, around 3,000 words and with 26 questions overall. The click shall set you free.

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