Conan

Conan the Cimmerian is the foundation of sword and sorcery as a genre. Robert E. Howard created the wandering barbarian in 1930s pulp magazines, and the early collection here, The Coming of Conan, preserves that origin: lean, brutal, atmospheric tales of a thief and warrior carving through a mythic Hyborian age.

The character's afterlife has been enormous and uneven. John Milius's 1982 Conan the Barbarian, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, turned the pulp hero into an operatic screen icon, followed by the lighter Destroyer, a 1990s animated series, and a grittier 2011 reboot. Games have arguably served the world best lately: Age of Conan built a full MMO around Hyboria, while Conan Exiles turned it into a brutal survival sandbox. Comics keep the character in dialogue with his peers, as in the Conan Red Sonja crossover. The throughline is Howard's vision of civilization as a thin, corruptible veneer over savagery.

The Conan franchise spans 1 series, 2 books, 3 games, 3 films in the CrossBinge catalog.