Conan and the Cthulhu Mythos

Conan, the black-haired, red-skinned Cimmerian, has become over the last fifty years a different fellow than the legendary swordsman who walked off the pages of Weird Tales magazine and out of the imagination of Robert E. Howard. First collections with pastiches by other writers, comic books, then films have changed Conan’s “public image” greatly, making him a veritable household word as it increased his size, reduced his intelligence and obscured the fantastic back-drop that was a part of all Robert E. Howard’s best works. The Hyborian Age, that time between the Fall of Atlantis and the rise of the world as we know it, is a vivid setting for the adventures of the Cimmerian who came down from the North to carve out an empire. But behind the Hyborian Age, as behind the worlds of Howard’s other characters, like Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn and King Kull rests a macabre shadow, a world vision that is largely inspired by Howard’s correspondent, fellow contributor to the famous Weird Tales magazine, and friend, H. P. Lovecraft. The influence that Lovecraft had on the younger Howard was much greater than many recognize. If you’d like to read the rest, please check out Monster 2: From the Pages of Dark Worlds Quarterly.