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Conan the Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian (also known as Conan the Cimmerian) is a fictional sword and sorcery hero who originated in pulp magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, films (including Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer), television programs (animated and live-action), video games, and role-playing games. Robert E. Howard created the character in 1932 for a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales magazine.

The earliest appearance of a Robert E. Howard character named Conan was that of a black-haired barbarian with heroic attributes in the 1931 short story "People of the Dark". By 1932, Howard had fully conceptualized Conan. Before his death, Howard had written 21 stories starring the barbarian. Over the years many other writers have written works featuring Conan.

Many Conan the Barbarian stories feature Conan embarking on heroic adventures filled with common fantasy elements such as princesses and wizards. Howard's mythopoeia has the stories set in the legendary Hyborian Age in the times after the fall of Atlantis. Conan is a Cimmerian, who are descendants of the Atlanteans and ancestors of the modern Gaels. Conan is himself a descendant of Kull of Atlantis (an earlier adventurer of Howard's). He was born on a battlefield and is the son of a blacksmith. Conan is characterized as chivalric due to his penchant to save damsels in distress. He is honorable and has a sense of enduring loyalty. In contrast to his brooding ancestor, Kull, Conan has a sense of humour. He possesses great strength, combativeness, intelligence, agility, and endurance. The barbarian's appearance is iconic, with square-cut black hair, blue eyes, tanned skin, and giant stature, often wearing a barbarian's garb.

Licensed comics published in the 1970s by Marvel Comics drew further popularity to the character, introducing the now iconic image of Conan in his loincloth. The most popular cinematic adaptation is the 1982 film, Conan the Barbarian directed by John Milius and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan, in which the plot revolves around Conan facing the villainous Thulsa Doom.

Publication history
Robert E. Howard created Conan the Barbarian in a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales from 1932. Howard was searching for a new character to market to the burgeoning pulp outlets of the early 1930s. In October 1931, he submitted the short story "People of the Dark" to Clayton Publications' new magazine, Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror (June 1932). "People of the Dark" is a story about the remembrance of "past lives", and in its first-person narrative, the protagonist describes one of his previous incarnations: Conan is a black-haired barbarian hero who swears by a deity called Crom. Some Howard scholars believe this Conan to be a forerunner of the more famous character.

In February 1932, Howard vacationed at a border town on the lower Rio Grande. During this trip, he further conceived the character of Conan and also wrote the poem "Cimmeria", much of which echoes specific passages in Plutarch's Lives. According to some scholars, reading Thomas Bulfinch inspired Howard to "coalesce into a coherent whole his literary aspirations and the strong physical, autobiographical elements underlying the creation of Conan".

Having digested these influences upon returning from his trip, Howard rewrote a rejected story, "By This Axe I Rule!" (May 1929), replacing his existing character Kull of Atlantis with his new hero and re-titling it "The Phoenix on the Sword". Howard also wrote "The Scarlet Citadel" and "The Frost-Giant's Daughter", inspired by the Greek myth of Daphne, and submitted both stories to Weird Tales magazine. Although "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" was rejected, the magazine accepted "The Phoenix on the Sword" after it received the requested polishing, and published it in the December 1932 issue. "The Scarlet Citadel" was published the following month.

"The Phoenix on the Sword" appeared in Weird Tales cover-dated December 1932. Editor Farnsworth Wright subsequently prompted Howard to write an 8,000-word essay for personal use detailing "the Hyborian Age", the fictional setting for Conan. Using this essay as his guideline, Howard began plotting "The Tower of the Elephant", a new Conan story that was the first to integrate his new conception of the Hyborian world.

The publication and success of "The Tower of the Elephant" spurred Howard to write more Conan stories for Weird Tales. By the time of Howard's suicide in 1936, he had written 21 complete stories, 17 of which had been published, as well as multiple unfinished fragments.

Following Howard's death, the copyright of the Conan stories passed through several hands. Eventually L. Sprague de Camp was entrusted with management of the fiction line and, beginning with 1967's Conan released by Lancer Books, oversaw a paperback series collecting all of Howard's stories (Lancer folded in 1973 and Ace Books picked up the line, reprinting the older volumes with new trade dress and continuing to release new ones). Howard's original stories received additional edits by de Camp, and de Camp also decided to create additional Conan stories to publish alongside the originals, working with Björn Nyberg and especially Lin Carter. These new stories were created from a mixture of already-complete Howard stories with different settings and characters that were altered to feature Conan and the Hyborian setting instead, incomplete fragments and outlines for Conan stories that were never completed by Howard, and all-new pastiches. Lastly, de Camp created prefaces for each story, fitting them into a timeline of Conan's life that he created.

For roughly 40 years, the original versions of Howard's Conan stories remained out of print. In 1977, the publisher Berkley Books issued three volumes using the earliest published form of the texts from Weird Tales and thus no de Camp edits, with Karl Edward Wagner as series editor, but these were halted by action from de Camp before the remaining three intended volumes could be released. In the 1980s and 1990s, the copyright holders permitted Howard's stories to go out of print entirely as the public demand for sword & sorcery dwindled, but continued to release the occasional new Conan novel by other authors such as Leonard Carpenter, Roland Green, and Harry Turtledove.

In 2000, the British publisher Gollancz Science Fiction issued a two-volume, complete edition of Howard's Conan stories as part of its Fantasy Masterworks imprint, which included several stories that had never seen print in their original form. The Gollancz edition mostly used the versions of the stories as published in Weird Tales.

The two volumes were combined and the stories restored to chronological order as The Complete Chronicles of Conan: Centenary Edition (Gollancz Science Fiction, 2006; edited and with an Afterword by Steve Jones).

In 2003, another British publisher, Wandering Star Books, made an effort both to restore Howard's original manuscripts and to provide a more scholarly and historical view of the Conan stories. It published hardcover editions in England, which were republished in the United States by the Del Rey imprint of Ballantine Books. The first book, Conan of Cimmeria: Volume One (1932–1933) (2003; published in the US as The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian) includes Howard's notes on his fictional setting as well as letters and poems concerning the genesis of his ideas. This was followed by Conan of Cimmeria: Volume Two (1934) (2004; published in the US as The Bloody Crown of Conan) and Conan of Cimmeria: Volume Three (1935–1936) (2005; published in the US as The Conquering Sword of Conan). These three volumes include all the original Conan stories.

Setting
The stories occur in the fictional "Hyborian Age", set after the destruction of Atlantis and before the rise of any historical ancient civilization. This is a specific epoch in a fictional timeline created by Howard for many of the low fantasy tales of his artificial legendary.

Howard invented the Hyborian Age as a useful literary device. He had an intense love for history and historical dramas, but he also recognized the difficulties and the time-consuming research work needed in maintaining historical accuracy. Also, the poorly-stocked libraries in the rural part of Texas where Howard lived did not have the material needed for such research. By conceiving a fictional "vanished age" and choosing names that resembled historical ones, Howard avoided anachronisms and the need for lengthy exposition.

According to "The Phoenix on the Sword", the adventures of Conan take place "Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas."

Personality and character
Conan is a Cimmerian. The writings of Robert E. Howard (particularly his essay "The Hyborian Age") suggests that his Cimmerians are based on the Celts or perhaps the historic Cimmerians. Conan was born on a battlefield and is the son of a village blacksmith. Conan matured quickly as a youth and, by age fifteen, he was already a respected warrior who had participated in the destruction of the Aquilonian fortress of Venarium. After its demise, he was struck by wanderlust and began the adventures chronicled by Howard, encountering skulking monsters, evil wizards, tavern wenches, and beautiful princesses. He roamed throughout the Hyborian Age nations as a thief, outlaw, mercenary, and pirate. As he grew older, he began commanding vast units of warriors and escalating his ambitions. In his forties, he seized the crown from the tyrannical king of Aquilonia, the most powerful kingdom of the Hyborian Age, having strangled the previous ruler on the steps of his own throne. Conan's adventures often result in him performing heroic feats, though his motivation for doing so is largely to protect his own survival or for personal gain.

A conspicuous element of Conan's character is his chivalry. He is extremely reluctant to fight women (even when they fight him) and has a strong tendency to save a damsel in distress. In "Jewels of Gwahlur", he has to make a split-second decision whether to save the dancing girl Muriela or the chest of priceless gems which he spent months in search of. So, without hesitation, he rescues Muriela and allows for the treasure to be irrevocably lost. In "The Black Stranger", Conan saves the exile Zingaran Lady Belesa at considerable risk to himself, giving her as a parting gift his fortune in gems big enough to have a comfortable and wealthy life in Zingara, while asking for no favors in return. Reviewer Jennifer Bard also noted that when Conan is in a pirate crew or a robber gang led by another male, his tendency is to subvert and undermine the leader's authority, and eventually supplant (and often, kill) him (e.g. "Pool of the Black One", "A Witch Shall be Born", "Shadows in the Moonlight"). Conversely, in "Queen of the Black Coast", it is noted that Conan "generally agreed to Belit's plan. Hers was the mind that directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas. It was a good life." And at the end of "Red Nails", Conan and Valeria seem to be headed towards a reasonably amicable piratical partnership.

Appearance

Conan has "sullen", "smoldering", and "volcanic" blue eyes with a black "square-cut mane". Howard once describes him as having a hairy chest and, while comic book interpretations often portray Conan as wearing a loincloth or other minimalist clothing to give him a more barbaric image, Howard describes the character as wearing whatever garb is typical for the kingdom and culture in which Conan finds himself. Howard never gave a strict height or weight for Conan in a story, only describing him in loose terms like "giant" and "massive". In the tales, no human is ever described as being stronger than Conan, although a few are mentioned as taller (including the strangler, Baal-Pteor) or of larger bulk. In a letter to P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark in 1936, only three months before Howard's death, Conan is described as standing 6 ft/183 cm and weighing 180 lb when he takes part in an attack on Venarium at only 15 years old, though being far from fully grown. At one point, when he is meeting Juma in Kush, he describes Conan as tall as his friend, at nearly 7 ft. in height. Conan himself says in "Beyond the Black River" that he had "not yet seen 15 snows". at the Battle of Venarium. "At Vanarium he was already a formidable antagonist, though only fifteen, He stood six feet tall [1.83 m] and weighed 180 pounds [82 kg], though he lacked much of having his full growth." Although Conan is muscular, Howard frequently compares his agility and way of moving to that of a panther (see, for instance, "Jewels of Gwahlur", "Beyond the Black River", or "Rogues in the House"). His skin is frequently characterized as bronzed from constant exposure to the sun. In his younger years, he is often depicted wearing a light chain shirt and a horned helmet, though appearances vary with different stories.

During his reign as king of Aquilonia, Conan was
 * "[...] a tall man, mightily shouldered and deep of chest, with a massive corded neck and heavily muscled limbs. He was clad in silk and velvet, with the royal lions of Aquilonia worked in gold upon his rich jupon, and the crown of Aquilonia shone on his square-cut black mane; but the great sword at his side seemed more natural to him than the regal accoutrements. His brow was low and broad, his eyes a volcanic blue that smoldered as if with some inner fire. His dark, scarred, almost sinister face was that of a fighting-man, and his velvet garments could not conceal the hard, dangerous lines of his limbs."

Howard imagined the Cimmerians as a pre-Celtic people with mostly black hair and blue or grey eyes. Ethnically, the Cimmerians to which Conan belongs are descendants of the Atlanteans, though they do not remember their ancestry. In his fictional historical essay "The Hyborian Age", Howard describes how the people of Atlantis—the land where his character King Kull originated—had to move east after a great cataclysm changed the face of the world and sank their island, settling where Ireland and Scotland would eventually be located. Thus they are (in Howard's work) the ancestors of the Irish and Scottish (the Celtic Gaels) and not the Picts, the other ancestor of modern Scots who also appear in Howard's work. In the same work, Howard also described how the Cimmerians eventually moved south and east after the age of Conan (presumably in the vicinity of the Black Sea, where the historical Cimmerians dwelt).

Abilities
Despite his brutish appearance, Conan uses his brains as well as his brawn. The Cimmerian is a highly skilled warrior, possibly without peer with a sword, but his travels have given him vast experience in other trades, especially as a thief. He's also a talented commander, tactician, and strategist, as well as a born leader. In addition, Conan has advanced knowledge of languages and codes and is able to recognize, or even decipher, certain ancient or secret signs and writings. For example, in "Jewels of Gwahlur" Howard states: "In his roaming about the world the giant adventurer had picked up a wide smattering of knowledge, particularly including the speaking and reading of many alien tongues. Many a sheltered scholar would have been astonished at the Cimmerian's linguistic abilities." He also has incredible stamina, enabling him to go without sleep for a few days. In "A Witch Shall be Born", Conan fights armed men until he is overwhelmed, captured, and crucified, before going an entire night and day without water. However, Conan still possesses the strength to pull the nails from his feet, while hoisting himself into a horse's saddle and riding for ten miles.

Another noticeable trait is his sense of humor, largely absent in the comics and movies, but very much a part of Howard's original vision of the character (particularly apparent in "Xuthal of the Dusk", also known as "The Slithering Shadow".) His sense of humor can also be rather grimly ironic, as was demonstrated by how he unleashes his own version of justice on the treacherous—and ill-fated—innkeeper Aram Baksh in "Shadows in Zamboula".

He is a loyal friend to those true to him, with a barbaric code of conduct that often marks him as more honorable than the more sophisticated people he meets in his travels. Indeed, his straightforward nature and barbarism are constants in all the tales.

Conan is a formidable combatant both armed and unarmed. With his back to the wall, Conan is capable of engaging and killing opponents by the score. This is seen in several stories, such as "Queen of the Black Coast", "The Scarlet Citadel", and "A Witch Shall Be Born". Conan is not superhuman, though; he needed the providential help of Zelata's wolf to defeat four Nemedian soldiers in Howard's novel The Hour of the Dragon. Some of his hardest victories have come from fighting single opponents of inhuman strength: one such as Thak, an ape-like humanoid from "Rogues in the House", or the strangler Baal-Pteor in "Shadows in Zamboula". Conan is far from untouchable and has been captured or defeated several times (on one occasion, knocking himself out after drunkenly running into a wall).

Influences
Howard frequently corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft, and the two would sometimes insert references or elements of each other's settings in their works. Later editors reworked many of the original Conan stories by Howard, thus diluting this connection. Nevertheless, many of Howard's unedited Conan stories are arguably part of the Cthulhu Mythos. Additionally, many of the Conan stories by Howard, de Camp, and Carter used geographical place names from Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean Cycle.

Conan stories published in Weird Tales

 * 1) "The Phoenix on the Sword" (novelette; vol. 20, #6, December 1932)
 * 2) "The Scarlet Citadel" (novelette; vol. 21, #1, January 1, 1933)
 * 3) "The Tower of the Elephant" (novelette; vol. 21, #3, March 1933)
 * 4) "Black Colossus" (novelette; vol. 21, #6, June 1933)
 * 5) "The Slithering Shadow" (novelette; vol. 22, #3, September 1933, alternate title "Xuthal of the Dusk")
 * 6) "The Pool of the Black One" (novelette; vol. 22, #4, October 1933)
 * 7) "Rogues in the House" (novelette; vol. 23, #1, January 1934)
 * 8) "Iron Shadows in the Moon" (novelette; vol. 23, #4, April 1934, published as "Shadows in the Moonlight")
 * 9) "Queen of the Black Coast" (novelette; vol. 23, #5, May 1934)
 * 10) "The Devil in Iron" (novelette; vol. 24, #2, August 1934)
 * 11) "The People of the Black Circle" (novella; vol. 24, #3–5, September–November 1934)
 * 12) "A Witch Shall Be Born" (novelette; vol. 24, #6, December 1934)
 * 13) "Jewels of Gwahlur" (novelette; vol. 25, #3, March 1935, author's original title "The Servants of Bit-Yakin")
 * 14) "Beyond the Black River" (novella; vol.  25, #5–6, May–June 1935)
 * 15) "Shadows in Zamboula" (novelette; vol. 26, #5, November 1935, author's original title "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula")
 * 16) "The Hour of the Dragon" (novel; vol. 26, #6 & vol. 27, #1–4, December 1935, January–April 1936)
 * 17) "Red Nails" (novella; vol. 28, #1–3, July, September, October 1936)

Conan stories published in Fantasy Fan magazine

 * "Gods of the North" (March 1934) – published as The Frost-Giant's Daughter in The Coming of Conan, 1953.

Conan stories not published in Howard's lifetime

 * "The God in the Bowl" – Published in Space Science Fiction, Sep. 1952.
 * "The Black Stranger" – Published in Fantasy Magazine, Feb. 1953.
 * "The Vale of Lost Women" – Published in The Magazine of Horror, Spring 1967.

Unfinished Conan stories by Howard

 * "The Drums of Tombalku" – Fragment. Published in Conan the Adventurer, 1966.
 * "The Hall of the Dead" – Synopsis. Published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1967.
 * "The Hand of Nergal" – Fragment. Published in Conan, 1967.
 * "The Snout in the Dark" – Fragment. Published in Conan of Cimmeria, 1969.

A number of untitled synopses for Conan stories also exist.

Other Conan-related material by Howard

 * "Wolves Beyond the Border" – A non-Conan story set in Conan's world. Fragment. Published in 1967 in Conan the Usurper
 * "The Hyborian Age" – An essay written in 1932. Published in 1938 in The Hyborian Age.
 * "Cimmeria" – A poem written in 1932. Published in 1965 in The Howard Collector.

Book editions
The character of Conan has proven durably popular, resulting in Conan stories by later writers such as Poul Anderson, Leonard Carpenter, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Roland J. Green, John C. Hocking, Robert Jordan, Sean A. Moore, Björn Nyberg, Andrew J. Offutt, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, Harry Turtledove, and Karl Edward Wagner. Some of these writers have finished incomplete Conan manuscripts by Howard. Others were created by rewriting Howard stories which originally featured entirely different characters from entirely different milieus. Most, however, are completely original works. In total, more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories featuring the Conan character have been written by authors other than Howard.

The Gnome Press edition (1950–1957) was the first hardcover collection of Howard's Conan stories, including all the original Howard material known to exist at the time, some left unpublished in his lifetime. The later volumes contain some stories rewritten by L. Sprague de Camp (like "The Treasure of Tranicos"), including several non-Conan Howard stories, mostly historical exotica situated in the Levant at the time of the Crusades, which he turned into Conan yarns. The Gnome edition also issued the first Conan story written by an author other than Howard—the final volume published, which is by Björn Nyberg and revised by de Camp.

The Lancer/Ace editions (1966–1977), under the direction of de Camp and Lin Carter, were the first comprehensive paperbacks, compiling the material from the Gnome Press series together in a chronological order with all the remaining original Howard material, including that left unpublished in his lifetime and fragments and outlines. These were completed by de Camp and Carter. The series also included Howard stories originally featuring other protagonists that were rewritten by de Camp as Conan stories. New Conan stories written entirely by de Camp and Carter were added as well. Lancer Books went out of business before bringing out the entire series, the publication of which was completed by Ace Books. Eight of the eventual twelve volumes published featured dynamic cover paintings by Frank Frazetta that, for many fans, presented the definitive, iconic impression of Conan and his world. For decades to come, most other portrayals of the Cimmerian and his imitators were heavily influenced by the cover paintings of this series.

Most editions after the Lancer/Ace series have been of either the original Howard stories or Conan material by others, but not both. The exception are the Ace Maroto editions (1978–1981), which include both new material by other authors and older material by Howard, though the latter are some of the non-Conan tales by Howard rewritten as Conan stories by de Camp. Notable later editions of the original Howard Conan stories include the Donald M. Grant editions (1974–1989, incomplete); Berkley editions (1977); Gollancz editions (2000–2006), and Wandering Star/Del Rey editions (2003–2005). Later series of new Conan material include the Bantam editions (1978–1982) and Tor editions (1982–2004).

Conan chronologies
In an attempt to provide a coherent timeline which fit the numerous adventures of Conan penned by Robert E. Howard and later writers, various "Conan chronologies" have been prepared by many people from the 1930s onward. Note that no consistent timeline has yet accommodated every single Conan story. The following are the principal theories that have been advanced over the years.
 * Miller/Clark chronology – A Probable Outline of Conan's Career (1936) was the first effort to put the tales in chronological order. Completed by P. Schuyler Miller and John Drury Clark, the chronology was later revised by Clark and L. Sprague de Camp in An Informal Biography of Conan the Cimmerian (1952).
 * Robert Jordan chronology – A Conan Chronology by Robert Jordan (1987) was a new chronology written by Conan writer Robert Jordan that included all written Conan material up to that point. It was heavily influenced by the Miller/Clark/de Camp chronologies, though it departed from them in a number of idiosyncratic instances.
 * William Galen Gray chronology – Timeline of Conan's Journeys (1997, rev. 2004), was fan William Galen Gray's attempt to create "a chronology of all the stories, both Howard and pastiche." Drawing on the earlier Miller/Clark and Jordan chronologies, it represents the ultimate expression of their tradition to date.
 * Joe Marek chronology – Joe Marek's chronology is limited to stories written (or devised) by Howard, though within that context it is essentially a revision of the Miller/Clark tradition to better reflect the internal evidence of the stories and avoid forcing Conan into what he perceives as a "mad dash" around the Hyborian world within timeframes too rapid to be credible.
 * Dale Rippke chronology – The Darkstorm Conan Chronology (2003) was a completely revised and heavily researched chronology, radically repositioning a number of stories and including only those stories written or devised by Howard. The Dark Horse comic series follows this chronology.

Schwarzenegger as Conan (1980s)
The first Conan cinematic project was planned by Edward Summer. Summer envisioned a series of Conan films, much like the James Bond franchise. He outlined six stories for this film series, but none was ever made. An original screenplay by Summer and Roy Thomas was written, but their lore-authentic screen story was never filmed. However, the resulting film, Conan the Barbarian (1982), was a combination of director John Milius's ideas and plots from Conan stories (written also by Howard's successors, notably Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp). A Nietzschean motto and Conan's life philosophy were notably added in this adaptation.

The plot of Conan the Barbarian (1982) begins with Conan being enslaved by the Vanir raiders of Thulsa Doom, a malevolent warlord who is responsible for the slaying of Conan's parents and the genocide of his people. Later, Thulsa Doom becomes a cult leader of a religion that worships Set, a Snake God. The vengeful Conan, the archer Subotai and the thief Valeria set out on a quest to rescue a princess held captive by Thulsa Doom. The film was directed by John Milius and produced by Dino De Laurentiis. The character of Conan was played by Jorge Sanz as a child and Arnold Schwarzenegger as an adult. It was Schwarzenegger's break-through role as an actor.

This film was followed by a less popular sequel, Conan the Destroyer in 1984. This sequel was a more typical fantasy-genre film and was even less faithful to Howard's Conan stories, being just a picaresque story of an assorted bunch of adventurers.

The third film in the Conan trilogy was planned for 1987 to be titled Conan the Conqueror. The director was to be either Guy Hamilton or John Guillermin. Since Arnold Schwarzenegger was committed to the film Predator and De Laurentiis's contract with the star had expired after his obligation to Red Sonja and Raw Deal, he wasn't keen to negotiate a new one; thus the third Conan film sank into development hell. The script was eventually turned into Kull the Conqueror.

Momoa as Conan (2011)
There were rumors in the late 1990s of another Conan sequel, a story about an older Conan titled King Conan: Crown of Iron, but Schwarzenegger's election in 2003 as governor of California ended this project. Warner Bros. spent seven years trying to get the project off the ground. However, in June 2007 the rights reverted to Paradox Entertainment, though all drafts made under Warner remained with them. In August 2007, it was announced that Millennium Films had acquired the rights to the project. Production was aimed for a Spring 2006 start, with the intention of having stories more faithful to the Robert E. Howard creation. In June 2009, Millennium hired Marcus Nispel to direct. In January 2010, Jason Momoa was selected for the role of Conan. The film was released in August 2011, and met poor critical reviews and box office results.

Unproduced: Legend of Conan
In 2012, producers Chris Morgan and Frederick Malmberg announced plans for a sequel to the 1982 Conan the Barbarian titled The Legend of Conan, with Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his role as Conan. A year later, Deadline reported that Andrea Berloff would write the script. Years passed since the initial announcement as Schwarzenegger worked on other films, but as late as 2016, Schwarzenegger affirmed his enthusiasm for making the film, saying, "Interest is high ... but we are not rushing." The script was finished, and Schwarzenegger and Morgan were meeting with possible directors. In April 2017, producer Chris Morgan stated that Universal had dropped the project, although there was a possibility of a TV show. The story of the film was supposed to be set 30 years after the first, with some inspiration from Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven.

She Is Conann
In 2023, French film director Bertrand Mandico released She Is Conann, a gender-flipped version of Conan the Barbarian which stars five different actresses playing a female Conann at different stages in her life.

Television
There have been three television series related to Conan:
 * 'Conan the Adventurer' is an animated television series produced by Jetlag Productions and Sunbow Productions that debuted on September 13, 1992, ran for 65 episodes and concluded on November 23, 1993. The series involved Conan chasing Serpent Men across the world in an attempt to release his parents from eternal imprisonment as living statues.
 * Conan and the Young Warriors is an animated television series that premiered in 1994 and ran for 13 episodes. DiC Entertainment produced the show and CBS aired this series as a spin-off to the previous animated series. This cartoon took place after the finale of Conan the Adventurer with Wrath-Amon vanquished and Conan's family returned to life from living stone. Conan soon finds that the family of one of his friends are being turned into wolves by an evil sorceress and he must train three warriors in order to aid him in rescuing them.
 * 'Conan the Adventurer' is a live-action television series that premiered on September 22, 1997, and ran for 22 episodes. It starred German bodybuilder Ralf Möller as Conan, Danny Woodburn (Otli), Robert McRay (Zzeben), and TJ Storm (Bayu) as his sidekicks. The storyline was quite different from the Conan lore of Howard. In this adaptation, Conan is a pleasant and jovial person. Also in this version, Conan is not a loner but one member of a merry band of adventurers.
 * In September 2020, it was announced that Netflix will develop a new Conan TV series as a part of a larger deal involving Fredrik Malmberg and Mark Wheeler from Pathfinder Media between Netflix and Conan Properties International, owned by Cabinet Entertainment, for the exclusive rights to the Conan library for the rights for live-action and animated films and TV shows. Deadline had previously reported that a Conan show was in the works at Amazon Prime, but nothing came of it.

Comics
Comic adaptations of Conan are arguably, apart from the books, the vehicle that had the greatest influence on the longevity and popularity of the character. The earliest comic book adaptation of Conan was written in Spanish and first published in Mexico in the fifties. This version, which was done without authorization from the estate of Robert E. Howard, is loosely based on the short story Queen of the Black Coast. The first licensed comic adaptations were written in English and first published by Marvel Comics in the seventies, beginning with Conan the Barbarian (1970–1993) and the classic Savage Sword of Conan (1974–1995). Dark Horse Comics launched their Conan series in 2003. Dark Horse Comics published compilations of the 1970s Marvel Comics series in trade paperback format.

Barack Obama, former President of the United States, is a fan of the character and collects Conan the Barbarian comic books. Obama also appeared as a character in a comic book called Barack the Barbarian from Devil's Due.

Marvel Comics introduced a relatively lore-faithful version of Conan the Barbarian in 1970 with Conan the Barbarian, written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith. Smith was succeeded by penciller John Buscema, while Thomas continued to write for many years. Later writers included J. M. DeMatteis, Bruce Jones, Michael Fleisher, Doug Moench, Jim Owsley, Alan Zelenetz, Chuck Dixon and Don Kraar. In 1974, Conan the Barbarian series spawned the more adult-oriented, black-and-white comics magazine Savage Sword of Conan, written by Thomas with art mostly by Buscema or Alfredo Alcala. Marvel also published several graphic novels starring the character, and a handbook with detailed information about the Hyborian world. Conan the Barbarian is also officially considered to be part of the larger Marvel Universe and has interacted with heroes and villains alike.

The Marvel Conan stories were also adapted as a newspaper comic strip which appeared daily and Sunday from 4 September 1978 to 12 April 1981. Originally written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by John Buscema, the strip was continued by several different Marvel artists and writers.

Dark Horse Comics began their comic adaptation of the Conan saga in 2003. Entitled simply Conan, the series was first written by Kurt Busiek and pencilled by Cary Nord. Tim Truman replaced Busiek, when Busiek signed an exclusive contract with DC Comics. However, Busiek issues were sometimes used for filler. This series is an interpretation of the original Conan material by Robert E. Howard with no connection whatsoever to the earlier Marvel comics or any Conan story not written or envisioned by Howard supplemented by wholly original material.

A second series, Conan the Cimmerian was released in 2008 by Tim Truman (writer) and Tomás Giorello (artist). The series ran for twenty-six issues, including an introductory "zero" issue.

Dark Horse's third series, Conan: Road of Kings, began in December 2010 by Roy Thomas (writer) and Mike Hawthorne (artist) and ran for twelve issues.

A fourth series, Conan the Barbarian, began in February 2012 by Brian Wood (writer) and Becky Cloonan (artist). It ran for twenty-five issues, and expanded on Robert E. Howard's Queen of the Black Coast.

A fifth series, Conan the Avenger, began in April 2014 by Fred Van Lente (writer) and Brian Ching (artist). It ran for twenty-five issues, and expanded on Robert E. Howard's The Snout in the Dark and A Witch Shall Be Born.

Dark Horse's sixth series, Conan the Slayer, began in July 2016 by Cullen Bunn (writer) and Sergio Dávila (artist).

In 2018, Marvel reacquired the rights and started new runs of both Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword of Conan in January/February 2019. Conan is also a lead in the Savage Avengers title, which launched in 2019 and received a second volume in 2022.

In 2022, it was revealed that Titan Publishing Group had acquired the rights from Heroic Signatures to make Conan comics, with a new ongoing series set to release in May 2023.

Board games

 * Hyborian Risk is an unofficial variant for the Risk boardgame based on the Conan mythos, published in The Space Gamer magazine in issue 37 (March, 1981).
 * In 2009, Fantasy Flight Games released the Age of Conan strategy board game, depicting warfare between the Hyborian nations in the Conan's adventures.
 * In 2016, Monolith Board Games LLC released a new boardgame with miniatures directly based on Howard's short stories. Conan (previously known as Conan: Hyborian Quests) pits one player, controlling the evil forces, against 2-4 other players controlling Conan and his companions.

Collectible card games

 * In 2006, Comic Images released the Conan Collectible Card Game designed by Jason Robinette.

Play-by-mail games

 * Hyborian War, introduced by Reality Simulations, Inc. as of 1985, is a play-by-mail game set in the Hyborian Age.

Role-playing games
TSR, Inc. made a licensing agreement in 1984 to publish Conan-related gaming material:
 * Two modules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons:
 * CB1 Conan Unchained! (1984)
 * CB2 Conan Against Darkness! (1984)
 * The Conan Role-Playing Game (1985), with 3 official game adventures:
 * CN1 Conan the Buccaneer (1985)
 * CN2 Conan the Mercenary (1985)
 * CN3 Conan Triumphant (1985)
 * Three Endless Quest books by TSR allow the reader to play the role of Conan:
 * Conan the Undaunted (1984)
 * Conan and the Prophecy (1984)
 * Conan the Outlaw (1984)

In 1988 Steve Jackson Games acquired a Conan license and started publishing Conan solo adventures for its GURPS generic system of rules as of 1988 and a GURPS Conan core rulebook in 1989:
 * GURPS Conan: Beyond Thunder River (1988, solo adventure)
 * GURPS Conan (1989, core rulebook)
 * GURPS Conan and the Queen of the Black Coast (1989, solo adventure)
 * GURPS Conan: Moon of Blood (1989, solo adventure)
 * GURPS Conan the Wyrmslayer (1989, solo adventure)

In 2003 the British company Mongoose Publishing bought a license and acquired in turn the rights to make use of the Conan gaming franchise, publishing a Conan role-playing game from 2004 until 2010. The game ran the OGL System of rules that Mongoose established for its OGL series of games:
 * Conan: The Roleplaying Game (2004), with many supplements.

In 2010 Mongoose Publishing dropped the Conan license. In February 2015, another British company, Modiphius Entertainment, acquired the license, announcing plans to put out a new Conan role-playing game in August of that year. Actually, the core rulebook was not launched (via Kickstarter) until a whole year later, in February 2016, reaching by far all funds needed for publication. Long after the Kickstarter ended the core rulebook was launched in PDF format on January 31, 2017. The physical core rulebook finally started distribution in June 2017:
 * Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of (hardcover, 368 pages, 2017), with two hardcover supplements already published and at least 17 additional supplements in the works (as planned following the Kickstarter).

Several less well known choose your own adventure-style books and gamebooks based on Conan have been published.

Video games
Nine video games have been released based on the Conan mythos.
 * In 1984, Datasoft released Conan: Hall of Volta for Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, and Commodore 64.
 * In 1991, Mindscape released Conan: The Mysteries of Time for NES, a Commodore 64 port by System 3.
 * In 1991, Virgin Games and Synergistic released Conan: The Cimmerian for Amiga and IBM PC compatibles.
 * In 2004, TDK Mediactive released Conan, a third-person action game for Windows and consoles.
 * In 2007, THQ and Nihilistic released Conan, a third-person action game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
 * In 2008, Funcom released Age of Conan, a MMORPG, on May 20 in the US and May 23 in Europe.
 * A RPG game titled Conan: The Tower of the Elephant was released for the iOS around the time of the release of the movie Conan the Barbarian as a promotion. The game is based on the short story of the same name.
 * In 2013, the side-scrolling shooter game Broforce introduced a playable character known as Bronan the Brobarian. In the game, he is one of the few characters who doesn't fight with a firearm or an explosive. Instead, Bronan fights with a sword that can cause massive shockwaves depending on how long the player holds the attack button.
 * On January 31, 2017, Funcom released Conan Exiles for PS4, Xbox One and PC. The title is an open world survival game. The game was released in early access, and was released on May 8, 2018.
 * In 2019, Funcom released a real time strategy game named Conan Unconquered.

Prominent in prose fiction

 * Bêlit – Self-styled Shemite Queen of the Black Coast, captain of the pirate ship Tigress, and Conan's first serious lover ("Queen of the Black Coast").
 * Ctesphon - The king of Stygia is mentioned only once and in passing, in "The Phoenix on the Sword". He is a priest king, like Thugra-Khotan in the Stygian daughter-kingdom of Kutchemes.
 * Thoth-Amon – Stygian wizard of great power who appeared in the first Conan story written ("The Phoenix on the Sword" and was mentioned in "The God in the Bowl" and The Hour of the Dragon. L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter made Thoth-Amon the nemesis of Conan. In the Marvel comics, Thoth-Amon was also Conan's lifelong opponent and had a striking appearance designed by Barry Windsor-Smith; he wore a distinctive ram-horn ornamental headdress. In "The Phoenix on the Sword" though, where Thoth has been robbed of his magical ring, he doesn't at all seem very impressive, yet less admirable. He is portrayed by Pat Roach in Conan the Destroyer.
 * Valeria – Aquilonian female mercenary affiliated with the Red Brotherhood ("Red Nails").
 * Yara – Evil wizard and adversary of Conan ("The Tower of the Elephant") who enslaved Yag-Kosha, an extraterrestrial being resembling the Hindu god Ganesh.
 * Yasmina- Brave, proud, feisty, wise, and warmhearted queen over the ancient kingdom of Vendhya, homeland and stronghold of Asura-worship.
 * Zenobia – Seraglio concubine Conan promises to wed and make queen of Aquilonia (The Hour of the Dragon).

Prominent in comic-book fiction

 * Fafnir – A pastiche of Fafhrd from the sword-and-sorcery stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber. He is a  mighty red-bearded Vanir warrior and pirate captain. At first he and Conan are enemies, but they soon become allies after being shipwrecked.
 * Jenna – (Marvel comics character). A dancing girl from the city of Shadizar. She becomes Conan's girlfriend after he saves her from a monstrous bat, but later betrays him to the authorities. Conan gets his revenge by throwing her into a pool of sewage. Based on an unnamed character in the prose story "Rogues in the House".
 * Mikhal "the Vulture" Oglu – In Marvel comics' Conan the Barbarian #23, Mikhal Oglu is Yezdigerd's enforcer and the greatest swordsman in Turan. He challenges Conan but is defeated and his severed head is sent to Yezdigerd in an ornate casket intended for Conan's head. He was inspired by a character in a non-Conan story by Robert E. Howard ("The Shadow of the Vulture").
 * Kulan Gath - a prominent evil wizard appearing initially in the Marvel Conan comics and later fully integrated into the Marvel Universe. He has also appeared in Red Sonya comics by Dynamite Entertainment.
 * Red Sonja – An Hyrkanian warrior created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith for the Conan comics. She was based on the Howard character, Red Sonya of Rogatino, who appeared in "The Shadow of the Vulture", a novella set in the 16th century.
 * Yezdigerd – Ruler of Turan, a Turkish empire-based civilization. He employs Conan as a mercenary but betrays him after he outlived his usefulness
 * Zukala – A character from the Conan comics published by Marvel, inspired by a poem by Robert E. Howard. Zukala is an evil sorcerer who gains his powers from a mask. His daughter, Zephra, falls in love with Conan.
 * Elric - A powerful magician and ruler of the ancient empire of Melnibone who befriends Conan and unsuccessfully attempts to prevent Zephra's death. Based on the character created by Michael Moorcock.

Prominent in films

 * Akiro – A character from the two Schwarzenegger Conan films. He is a powerful wizard who befriends Conan and Subotai, and serves as the narrator and Conan's chronicler. He is played by Japanese actor Mako Iwamatsu.
 * Rexor – In the 1982 film, the chief priest of Thulsa Doom's snake cult, who stole the sword of Conan's father. Played by Ben Davidson.
 * Subotai – Hyrkanian thief and archer. He is Conan's companion in the 1982 film. Played by Gerry Lopez.
 * Malak – A thief. He is Conan's traveling companion in the 1984 sequel. Played by Tracey Walter.
 * Thorgrim – Hammer-wielding minion of Thulsa Doom in the 1982 film. Played by Sven-Ole Thorsen
 * Thulsa Doom – A skull-faced necromancer from a King Kull story, a recurring villain in the Kull comics, and the antagonist in the 1982 film, played by James Earl Jones.

Copyright and trademark dispute
The name Conan and the names of some of Robert E. Howard's other characters are claimed as trademarked by Conan Properties International and licensed to Cabinet Entertainment, both entities controlled by CEO Fredrik Malmberg.

Since Robert E. Howard's Conan stories were published at a time when the date of publication was the marker (1932–1963), however, and any new owners failed to renew them to maintain the copyrights, the exact copyright status of all of Howard's 'Conan' works is in question. The majority of Howard's Conan fiction exist in at least two versions, subject to different copyright standards, namely 1) the original Weird Tales publications before or shortly after Howard's death, which are generally understood to be public domain and 2) restored versions based upon manuscripts which were unpublished during Howard's lifetime.

The Australian site of Project Gutenberg hosts digital copies of many of Howard's stories, including several works about Conan.

In the United Kingdom, works are released into the public domain 70 years after the death of an author. With Howard having died in 1936, his works have been in the public domain there since 2006. The same standard applies for Malmberg's home country of Sweden.

In August 2018, Conan Properties International LLC won by default a suit against Spanish sculptor Ricardo Jove Sanchez after he failed to appear at court in the United States. Jove had started a crowdfunding campaign that raised around €3000 on Kickstarter, with the intent of selling barbarian figurines to online customers, including those in the United States. The Magistrate Judge originally recommended statutory damages for infringement on three Robert E. Howard characters not including Conan, but Jove was eventually fined $3,000 per character used in the campaign, including Conan, for a total of $21,000.

In September 2020, it was announced that Netflix had made a larger deal involving Malmberg and Mark Wheeler from Pathfinder Media between Netflix and Conan Properties International for the exclusive rights to the Conan library for the rights for live-action and animated films and TV shows.

In 2024, British author and Eisner Award winner John Allison started to publish a Conan serial online, with a tongue-in-cheek narrative heavily intermingled with characters from his own works. However, he took the unfinished comic down in late April, after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Conan Properties International. Allison notes that to his understanding Conan "is in the public domain in the UK (where I live and work)", but that he doesn't have "the time or energy to contest this".

title: Conan the Barbarian


text:
Chris Marker

Chris Marker (29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La Jetée (1962), A Grin Without a Cat (1977) and Sans Soleil (1983). Marker is usually associated with the Left Bank subset of the French New Wave that occurred in the late 1950s and 1960s, and included such other filmmakers as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy.

His friend and sometime collaborator Alain Resnais called him "the prototype of the twenty-first-century man." Film theorist Roy Armes has said of him: "Marker is unclassifiable because he is unique...The French Cinema has its dramatists and its poets, its technicians, and its autobiographers, but only has one true essayist: Chris Marker."

Early life
Marker was born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve. He was always elusive about his past and known to refuse interviews and not allow photographs to be taken of him; his place of birth is highly disputed. Some sources and Marker himself claim that he was born in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Other sources say he was born in Belleville, Paris, and others, in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The 1949 edition of Le Cœur Net gives his birthday as 22 July. Film critic David Thomson has said, "Marker told me himself that Mongolia is correct. I have since concluded that Belleville is correct—but that does not spoil the spiritual truth of Ulan Bator." When asked about his secretive nature, Marker said, "My films are enough for them [the audience]."

Marker was a philosophy student in France before World War II. During the German occupation of France, he joined the Maquis (FTP), a part of the French Resistance. At some point during the war he left France and joined the United States Air Force as a paratrooper, although some sources claim that this is not true. After the war, he began a career as a journalist, first writing for the journal Esprit, a neo-Catholic, Marxist magazine where he met fellow journalist André Bazin. For Esprit, Marker wrote political commentaries, poems, short stories, and film reviews.

During this period, Marker began to travel around the world as a journalist and photographer, a vocation he pursued for the rest of his life. The French publishing company Éditions du Seuil hired him as editor of the series Petite Planète ("Small World"). That collection devoted one edition to each country and included information and photographs, and would later be published in English translation by Studio Vista and The Viking Press. In 1949 Marker published his first novel, Le Coeur net (The Forthright Spirit), which was about aviation. In 1952 Marker published an illustrated essay on French writer Jean Giraudoux, Giraudoux Par Lui-Même.

Early career (1950–1961)
During his early journalism career, Marker became increasingly interested in filmmaking and in the early 1950s experimented with photography. Around this time Marker met and befriended many members of the Left Bank Film Movement, including Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Henri Colpi, Armand Gatti, and the novelists Marguerite Duras and Jean Cayrol. This group is often associated with the French New Wave directors who came to prominence during the same time period, and the groups were often friends and journalistic co-workers. The term Left Bank was first coined by film critic Richard Roud, who described them as having "fondness for a kind of Bohemian life and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank, a high degree of involvement in literature and the plastic arts, and a consequent interest in experimental filmmaking", as well as an identification with the political left. Anatole Dauman produced many of Marker's earliest films.

In 1952 Marker made his first film, Olympia 52, a 16mm feature documentary about the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games. In 1953 he collaborated with Resnais on the documentary Statues Also Die. The film examines traditional African art such as sculptures and masks, and its decline with the coming of Western colonialism. It won the 1954 Prix Jean Vigo, but was banned by French censors for its criticism of French colonialism.

After working as assistant director on Resnais's Night and Fog in 1955, Marker made Sunday in Peking, a short documentary "film essay" in the style that characterized Marker's output for most of his career. Marker shot the film in two weeks while traveling through China with Armand Gatti in September 1955. In the film, Marker's commentary overlaps scenes from China, such as tombs that, contrary to Westernized understandings of Chinese legends, do not contain the remains of Ming dynasty emperors.

After working on the commentary for Resnais's film Le mystère de l'atelier quinze in 1957, Marker continued to refine his style with the feature documentary Letter from Siberia. An essay film on the narrativization of Siberia, it contains Marker's signature commentary, which takes the form of a letter from the director, in the long tradition of epistolary treatments by French explorers of the "undeveloped" world. Letter looks at Siberia's movement into the 20th century and at some of the tribal cultural practices receding into the past. It combines footage Marker shot in Siberia with old newsreel footage, cartoon sequences, stills, and even an illustration of Alfred E. Neuman from Mad Magazine as well as a fake TV commercial as part of a humorous attack on Western mass culture. In producing a meta-commentary on narrativity and film, Marker uses the same brief filmic sequence three times but with different commentary—the first praising the Soviet Union, the second denouncing it, and the third taking an apparently neutral or "objective" stance.

In 1959 Marker made the animated film Les Astronautes with Walerian Borowczyk. The film was a combination of traditional drawings with still photography. In 1960 he made Description d'un combat, a documentary on the State of Israel that reflects on its past and future. The film won the Golden Bear for Best Documentary at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival.

In January 1961, Marker traveled to Cuba and shot the film ¡Cuba Sí! The film promotes and defends Fidel Castro and includes two interviews with him. It ends with an anti-American epilogue in which the United States is embarrassed by the Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco, and was subsequently banned. The banned essay was included in Marker's first volume of collected film commentaries, Commentaires I, published in 1961. The following year Marker published Coréennes, a collection of photographs and essays on conditions in Korea.

La Jetée and Le Joli Mai (1962–1966)
Marker became known internationally for the short film La Jetée (The Pier) in 1962. It tells of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel by using a series of filmed photographs developed as a photomontage of varying pace, with limited narration and sound effects. In the film, a survivor of a futuristic third World War is obsessed with distant and disconnected memories of a pier at the Orly Airport, the image of a mysterious woman, and a man's death. Scientists experimenting in time travel choose him for their studies, and the man travels back in time to contact the mysterious woman, and discovers that the man's death at the Orly Airport was his own. Except for one shot of the woman mentioned above sleeping and suddenly waking up, the film is composed entirely of photographs by Jean Chiabaud and stars Davos Hanich as the man, Hélène Châtelain as the woman and photographer-film director William Klein as a man from the future.

While making La Jetée, Marker was simultaneously making the 150-minute documentary essay-film Le joli mai, released in 1963. Beginning in the spring of 1962, Marker and his camera operator Pierre Lhomme shot 55 hours of footage interviewing random people on the streets of Paris. The questions, asked by the unseen Marker, range from their personal lives, as well as social and political issues of relevance at that time. As he had with montages of landscapes and indigenous art, Marker created a film essay that contrasted and juxtaposed a variety of lives with his signature commentary (spoken by Marker's friends, singer-actor Yves Montand in the French version and Simone Signoret in the English version). The film has been compared to the Cinéma vérité films of Jean Rouch, and criticized by its practitioners at the time. The term "Cinéma vérité" was itself anathema to Marker, who never used it. Instead, he preferred his own term “ciné, ma vérité,” meaning "cinéma, my truth." It was shown in competition at the 1963 Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for Best First Work. It also won the Golden Dove Award at the Leipzig DOK Festival.

After the documentary Le Mystère Koumiko in 1965, Marker made Si j'avais quatre dromadaires, an essay-film that, like La Jetée, is a photomontage of over 800 photographs Marker had taken over the previous 10 years in 26 countries. The commentary involves a conversation between a fictitious photographer and two friends, who discuss the photos. The film's title is an allusion to a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire. It was the last film in which Marker included "travel footage" for many years.

SLON and ISKRA (1967–1974)
In 1967 Marker published his second volume of collected film essays, Commentaires II. That same year, Marker organized the omnibus film Loin du Vietnam, a protest against the Vietnam War with segments contributed by Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Claude Lelouch, William Klein, Michele Ray and Joris Ivens. The film includes footage of the war, from both sides, as well as anti-war protests in New York and Paris and other anti-war activities.

From this initial collection of filmmakers with left-wing political agendas, Marker created the group S.L.O.N. (Société pour le lancement des oeuvres nouvelles, "Society for launching new works", but also the Russian word for "elephant"). SLON was a film collective whose objectives were to make films and to encourage industrial workers to create film collectives of their own. Its members included Valerie Mayoux, Jean-Claude Lerner, Alain Adair and John Tooker. Marker is usually credited as director or co-director of all of the films made by SLON.

After the events of May 1968, Marker felt a moral obligation to abandon his own personal film career and devote himself to SLON and its activities. SLON's first film was about a strike at a Rhodiacéta factory in France, À bientôt, j'espère (Rhodiacéta) in 1968. Later that year SLON made La Sixième face du pentagone, about an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C., and was a reaction to what SLON considered to be the unfair and censored reportage of such events on mainstream television. The film was shot by François Reichenbach, who received co-director credit. La Bataille des dix millions was made in 1970 with Mayoux as co-director and Santiago Álvarez as cameraman and is about the 1970 sugar crop in Cuba and its disastrous effects on the country. In 1971, SLON made Le Train en marche, a new prologue to Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin's 1935 film Schastye, which had recently been re-released in France.

In 1974, SLON became I.S.K.R.A. (Images, Sons, Kinescope, Réalisations, Audiovisuelles, but also the name of Vladimir Lenin's political newspaper Iskra, which also is a Russian word for "spark").

Return to personal work (1974–1986)
In 1974 Marker returned to his personal work and made a film outside of ISKRA. La Solitude du chanteur de fond is a one-hour documentary about Marker's friend Yves Montand's benefit concert for Chilean refugees. The concert was Montand's first public performance in four years, and the documentary includes film clips from his long career as a singer and actor.

Marker had been working on a film about Chile with ISKRA since 1973. Marker had collaborated with Belgian sociologist Armand Mattelart and ISKRA members Valérie Mayoux and Jacqueline Meppiel to shoot and collect the visual materials, which Marker then edited together and provided the commentary for. The resulting film was the two and a half-hour documentary La Spirale, released in 1975. The film chronicles events in Chile, beginning with the 1970 election of socialist President Salvador Allende until his murder and the resulting coup in 1973.

Marker then began work on one of his most ambitious films, A Grin Without a Cat, released in 1977. The film's title refers to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. The metaphor compares the promise of the global socialist movement before May 1968 (the grin) with its actual presence in the world after May 1968 (the cat). The film's original French title is Le fond de l'air est rouge, which means "the air is essentially red", or "revolution is in the air", implying that the socialist movement was everywhere around the world.

The film was intended to be an all-encompassing portrait of political movements since May 1968, a summation of the work which he had taken part in for ten years. The film is divided into two parts: the first half focuses on the hopes and idealism before May 1968, and the second half on the disillusion and disappointments since those events. Marker begins the film with the Odessa Steps sequence from Sergei Eisenstein's film The Battleship Potemkin, which Marker points out is a fictitious creation of Eisenstein which has still influenced the image of the historical event. Marker used very little commentary in this film, but the film's montage structure and preoccupation with memory make it a Marker film. Upon release, the film was criticized for not addressing many current issues of the New Left such as the woman's movement, sexual liberation and worker self-management. The film was re-released in the US in 2002.

In the late 1970s, Marker traveled extensively throughout the world, including an extended period in Japan. From this inspiration, he first published the photo-essay Le Dépays in 1982, and then used the experience for his next film Sans Soleil, released in 1982.

Sans Soleil stretches the limits of what could be called a documentary. It is an essay, a montage, mixing pieces of documentary with fiction and philosophical comments, creating an atmosphere of dream and science fiction. The main themes are Japan, Africa, memory and travel. A sequence in the middle of the film takes place in San Francisco, and heavily references Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Marker has said that Vertigo is the only film "capable of portraying impossible memory, insane memory." The film's commentary are credited to the fictitious cameraman Sandor Krasna, and read in the form of letters by an unnamed woman. Though centered around Japan, the film was also shot in such other countries as Guinea Bissau, Ireland and Iceland. Sans Soleil was shown at the 1983 Berlin Film Festival where it won the OCIC Award. It was also awarded the Sutherland Trophy at the 1983 British Film Institute Awards.

In 1984, Marker was invited by producer Serge Silberman to document the making of Akira Kurosawa's film Ran. From this Marker made A.K., released in 1985. The film focuses more on Kurosawa's remote but polite personality than on the making of the film. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, before Ran itself had been released.

In 1985, Marker's long-time friend and neighbor Simone Signoret died of cancer. Marker then made the one-hour TV documentary Mémoires pour Simone as a tribute to her in 1986.

Multimedia and later career (1987–2012)
Beginning with Sans Soleil, Marker developed a deep interest in digital technology. From 1985 to 1988, he worked on a conversational program (a prototypical chatbot) called "Dialector," which he wrote in Applesoft BASIC on an Apple II. He incorporated audiovisual elements in addition to the snippets of dialogue and poetry that "Computer" exchanged with the user. Version 6 of this program was revived from a floppy disk (with Marker's help and permission) and emulated online in 2015.

His interests in digital technology also led to his film Level Five (1996) and Immemory (1998, 2008), an interactive multimedia CD-ROM, produced for the Centre Pompidou (French language version) and from Exact Change (English version). Marker created a 19-minute multimedia piece in 2005 for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City titled Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men which was influenced by T. S. Eliot's poem.

Marker lived in Paris, and very rarely granted interviews. One exception was a lengthy interview with Libération in 2003 in which he explained his approach to filmmaking. When asked for a picture of himself, he usually offered a photograph of a cat instead. (Marker was represented in Agnes Varda's 2008 documentary The Beaches of Agnes by a cartoon drawing of a cat, speaking in a technologically altered voice.) Marker's own cat was named Guillaume-en-égypte. In 2009, Marker commissioned an to represent him in machinima works. The avatar was created by Exosius Woolley and first appeared in the short film / machinima, Ouvroir the Movie by Chris Marker.

In the 2007 Criterion Collection release of La Jetée and Sans Soleil, Marker included a short essay, "Working on a Shoestring Budget". He confessed to shooting all of Sans Soleil with a silent film camera, and recording all the audio on a primitive audio cassette recorder. Marker also reminds the reader that only one short scene in La Jetée is of a moving image, as Marker could only borrow a movie camera for one afternoon while working on the film.

From 2007 through 2011 Marker collaborated with the art dealer and publisher Peter Blum on a variety of projects that were exhibited at the Peter Blum galleries in New York City's Soho and Chelsea neighborhoods. Marker's works were also exhibited at the Peter Blum Gallery on 57th Street in 2014. These projects include several series of printed photographs titled PASSENGERS, Koreans, Crush Art, Quelle heure est-elle?, and Staring Back; a set of photogravures titled After Dürer; a book, PASSENGERS; and digital prints of movie posters, whose titles were often appropriated, including Breathless, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Owl People, and Rin Tin Tin. The video installations Silent Movie and Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men were exhibited at Peter Blum in 2009. These works were also exhibited at the 2014 & 2015 Venice Biennale, Whitechapel Gallery in London, the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, the Moscow Photobiennale, Les Recontres d'Arles de la Photographie in Arles, France, the Centre de la Photographie in Geneva, Switzerland, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California. Since 2014 the artworks of the Estate of Chris Marker are represented by Peter Blum Gallery, New York.

Marker died on 29 July 2012, his 91st birthday.

Legacy
La Jetée was the inspiration for Mamoru Oshii's 1987 debut live action feature The Red Spectacles (and later for parts of Oshii's 2001 film Avalon) and also inspired Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1995) and Jonás Cuarón's Year of the Nail (2007) as well as many of Mira Nair's shots in her 2006 film The Namesake.

Filmography

 * Olympia 52 (1952)
 * Statues Also Die (1953 with Alain Resnais)
 * Sunday in Peking (1956)
 * Lettre de Sibérie (1957)
 * Les Astronautes (1959 with Walerian Borowczyk)
 * Description d'un combat (1960)
 * ¡Cuba Sí! (1961)
 * La Jetée (1962)
 * Le Joli Mai (1963, 2006 re-cut)
 * Le Mystère Koumiko (1965)
 * Si j'avais quatre dromadaires (1966)
 * Loin du Vietnam (1967)
 * Rhodiacéta (1967)
 * La Sixième face du pentagone (1968 with Reichenbach)
 * Cinétracts (1968)
 * À bientôt, j'espère (1968 with Marret)
 * On vous parle du Brésil: Tortures (1969)
 * Jour de tournage (1969)
 * Classe de lutte (1969)
 * On vous parle de Paris: Maspero, les mots ont un sens (1970)
 * On vous parle du Brésil: Carlos Marighela (1970)
 * La Bataille des dix millions (1971)
 * Le Train en marche (1971)
 * On vous parle de Prague: le deuxième procès d'Artur London (1971)
 * Vive la baleine (1972)
 * L'Ambassade (1973)
 * On vous parle du Chili: ce que disait Allende (1973 with Miguel Littín)
 * Puisqu'on vous dit que c'est possible (1974)
 * La Solitude du chanteur de fond (1974)
 * La Spirale (1975)
 * A Grin Without a Cat (1977)
 * Quand le siècle a pris formes (1978)
 * Junkopia (1981)
 * Sans Soleil (1983)
 * 2084 (1984)
 * From Chris to Christo (1985)
 * Matta (1985)
 * A.K. (1985)
 * Eclats (1986)
 * Mémoires pour Simone (1986)
 * Tokyo Days (1988)
 * Spectre (1988)
 * The Owl's Legacy (L'héritage de la chouette) (1989)
 * Bestiaire (three short video haiku) (1990)
 * Bestiaire 1. Chat écoutant la musique
 * Bestiaire 2. An owl is An owl is an owl
 * Bestiaire 3. Zoo Piece
 * Getting away with it (1990)
 * Berlin 1990 (1990)
 * Détour Ceausescu (1991)
 * Théorie des ensembles (1991)
 * Coin fenêtre (1992)
 * Azulmoon (1992)
 * Le Tombeau d'Alexandre a.k.a. The Last Bolshevik (1992)
 * Le 20 heurs dans les camps (1993)
 * Prime Time in the Camps (1993)
 * SLON Tango (1993)
 * Bullfight in Okinawa (1994)
 * Eclipse (1994)
 * Haiku (1994)
 * Haiku 1. Petite Ceinture
 * Haiku 2. Chaika
 * Haiku 3. Owl Gets in Your Eyes
 * Casque bleu (1995)
 * Silent Movie (1995)
 * Level Five (1997)
 * One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (2000)
 * Un maire au Kosovo (2000)
 * Le Facteur sonne toujours cheval (2001)
 * Avril inquiet (2001)
 * Le Souvenir d'un avenir (with Bellon 2003)
 * Chats Perchés (2004) –  a documentary about M. Chat street art
 * Leila Attacks (2006)
 * Stopover in Dubai (2011)

Film collaborations

 * Nuit et Brouillard (Resnais 1955)
 * Note: In a 1995 interview Resnais states that the final version of the commentary was a collaboration between Marker and Jean Cayrol (source: Film Comment).
 * Toute la mémoire du monde (Resnais 1956)
 * Note: Credited as "Chris and Magic Marker."
 * Les hommes de la baleine (Ruspoli 1956)
 * Note: under the pseudonym "Jacopo Berenizi" Marker wrote the commentary for this short about whale hunters in the Azores. The two would return to this topic in 1972's Vive la Baleine (Film Comment).
 * Broadway by Light (Klein 1957)
 * Note: Marker wrote the introductory text to this film.
 * Le mystere de l'atelier quinze (Resnais et Heinrich 1957)
 * Note: Marker wrote the commentary for this fictional short (Film Comment).
 * Le Siècle a soif (Vogel 1958)
 * Note: Marker wrote and spoke all the commentary for this short film about fruit juice in Alexandrine verse (Film Comment).
 * La Mer et les jours (Vogel et Kaminker 1958)
 * Note: Marker present commentary for this "somber work about the daily lives of fishermen on Brittany's Île de Sein" (Film Comment).
 * L'Amérique insolite (Reichenbach 1958)
 * Note: Marker was eventually credited as a writer for this one, apparently, he wrote the dialogue (Film Comment).
 * Django Reinhardt (Paviot 1959)
 * Note: Marker narrated this one (Film Comment).
 * Jouer à Paris (Varlin 1962)
 * Note: This was edited by Marker – essentially, this film is a 27-minute postscript to Le Joli Mai assembled from leftover footage and organized around a new commentary (Film Comment).
 * A Valparaiso (Ivens 1963)
 * Note: This gem was written by Marker. It feels like a Marker film.
 * Les Chemins de la fortune (Kassovitz 1964)
 * Note: Marker apparently helped edit and organise this Venezuela travelogue (Film Comment).
 * La Douceur du village (Reichenbach 1964)
 * Note: Edited by Marker.
 * La Brûlure de mille soleils (Kast 1964)
 * Note: Marker edited this (mostly) animated science-fiction existentialist short and (possibly) collaborated on the script (Film Comment).
 * Le volcan interdit (Tazieff 1966)
 * Note: Marker narrates this volcano documentary.
 * Europort-Rotterdam (Ivens 1966)
 * Note: Marker did the textual adaptation (Film Comment.
 * On vous parle de Flins (Devart 1970)
 * Note: Marker helped film and edit this short (Film Comment).
 * L'Afrique express (Tessier et Lang 1970)
 * Note: Marker wrote the introductory text for this film under the name "Boris Villeneuve" (Film Comment).
 * Congo Oyé (We Have Come Back) (Stephens and Cleaver 1971)
 * Note: Marker edited this film

 * Kashima Paradise (Le Masson et Deswarte 1974)
 * Note: Marker collaborated on the commentary on this documentary about the destruction of Kashima and Narita (Film Comment).
 * La Batalla de Chile (Guzman, 1975–1976)
 * Note: Marker helped produce and contributed to the screenplay for this, perhaps the greatest of all documentary films (Film Comment).
 * One Sister and Many Brothers (Makavejev 1994)
 * Note: Marker tapes Makavejev circulating among the guests of a party in his honor as much jovial backslapping abounds (Film comment).

Photographic Series

 * Koreans (1957, printed in 2009)
 * Crush Art (2003–2008)
 * "Quelle heure est-elle?" (2004–2008)
 * PASSENGERS (2008–2010)
 * Staring Back (varying years)

Digital Prints

 * Breathless (1995, printed 2009)
 * Hiroshima Mon Amour (1995, printed 2009)
 * Owl People (1995, printed 2009)
 * Rin Tin Tin (1995, printed 2009)

Photogravures

 * After Dürer (2005–07, printed in 2009)

Video Installations

 * Silent Movie (1995)
 * Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men (2005)

Bibliography (self-contained works by Marker)

 * Le Cœur Net (1949, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
 * Giraudoux Par Lui-Même (1952, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
 * Commentaires I (1961, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
 * Coréennes (1962, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
 * Commentaires II (1967, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
 * Le Dépays (1982, Editions Herscher, Paris)
 * Silent Movie (1995, Ohio State University Press)
 * La Jetée ciné-roman (1996 / 2nd printing 2008, MIT Press, Cambridge; designed by Bruce Mau)
 * Staring Back (2007, MIT Press, Cambridge)
 * Immemory (CDROM) (1997 / 2nd printing 2008, Exact Change, Cambridge)
 * Inner Time of Television (2010, The Otolith Group, London)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Chris Marker


text:
Cardinal vowels

Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds of languages. They are classified depending on the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth, how far forward or back is the highest point of the tongue, and the position of the lips (rounded or unrounded).

A cardinal vowel is a vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high or low. The current system was systematised by Daniel Jones in the early 20th century, though the idea goes back to earlier phoneticians, notably Ellis and Bell.

Table of cardinal vowels

Three of the cardinal vowels—, and —have articulatory definitions. The vowel is produced with the tongue as far forward and as high in the mouth as is possible (without producing friction), with spread lips. The vowel is produced with the tongue as far back and as high in the mouth as is possible, with protruded lips. This sound can be approximated by adopting the posture to whistle a very low note, or to blow out a candle. And is produced with the tongue as low and as far back in the mouth as possible.

The other vowels are 'auditorily equidistant' between these three 'corner vowels', at four degrees of aperture or 'height': close (high tongue position), close-mid, open-mid, and open (low tongue position).

These degrees of aperture plus the front-back distinction define eight reference points on a mixture of articulatory and auditory criteria. These eight vowels are known as the eight 'primary cardinal vowels', and vowels like these are common in the world's languages.

The lip positions can be reversed with the lip position for the corresponding vowel on the opposite side of the front-back dimension, so that e.g. Cardinal 1 can be produced with rounding somewhat similar to that of Cardinal 8; these are known as 'secondary cardinal vowels'. Sounds such as these are claimed to be less common in the world's languages. Other vowel sounds are also recognised on the vowel chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Jones argued that to be able to use the cardinal vowel system effectively one must undergo training with an expert phonetician, working both on the recognition and the production of the vowels.

Cardinal vowels are not vowels of any particular language, but a measuring system. However, some languages contain vowel or vowels that are close to the cardinal vowel(s). An example of such language is Ngwe, which is spoken in Cameroon. It has been cited as a language with a vowel system that has eight vowels which are rather similar to the eight primary cardinal vowels (Ladefoged 1971:67).

Cardinal vowels 19–22 were added by David Abercrombie. In IPA Numbers, cardinal vowels 1–18 have the same numbers but added to 300.

Limits on the accuracy of the system
The usual explanation of the cardinal vowel system implies that the competent user can reliably distinguish between sixteen Primary and Secondary vowels plus a small number of central vowels. The provision of diacritics by the International Phonetic Association further implies that intermediate values may also be reliably recognized, so that a phonetician might be able to produce and recognize not only a close-mid front unrounded vowel and an open-mid front unrounded vowel  but also a mid front unrounded vowel, a centralized mid front unrounded vowel , and so on. This suggests a range of vowels nearer to forty or fifty than to twenty in number. Empirical evidence for this ability in trained phoneticians is hard to come by.

Ladefoged, in a series of pioneering experiments published in the 1950s and 60s, studied how trained phoneticians coped with the vowels of a dialect of Scottish Gaelic. He asked eighteen phoneticians to listen to a recording of ten words spoken by a native speaker of Gaelic and to place the vowels on a cardinal vowel quadrilateral. He then studied the degree of agreement or disagreement among the phoneticians. Ladefoged himself drew attention to the fact that the phoneticians who were trained in the British tradition established by Daniel Jones were closer to each other in their judgments than those who had not had this training. However, the most striking result is the great divergence of judgments among all the listeners regarding vowels that were distant from Cardinal values.

title: Cardinal vowels


text:
Talk:Christopher Marlowe

Edits to introduction
I have made three changes.
 * 1. A lengthy clumsy locomotive-and-carriages strung together with nuts and bolt has become two sentences; this is extremely poor English expression because it demonstrates a misunderstanding of the semi-colon and its appropriate use; furthermore it makes overly long sentences that are not easy to follow; this sentence demonstrates the problem.
 * 2. Statements like "Modern Scholars consider that Christopher Marlowe is one of the most famous etc etc"  are ridiculous pussy-footing around.
 * Christopher Marlowe is a famous Elizabethan playwright. There is no question that he is one of the most famous Elizabethan playwrights.   It does not take a modern scholar to say that. It falls into the same category as saying "Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most famous Renaissance painters" or "Abraham Lincoln is one of the most famous US presidents".  You can cite the claim, but to give it as the opinion of scholars is entirely superfluous, and if editors imagine that it is a requirement of Wikipedia, then it is a ridiculous one.
 * 3. The third sentence is a scholarly opinion.  Was Marlowe actually the most popular Elizabethan playwright prior to his death?  Modern scholars say he was, and this, based on their research, needs to be stated.
 * Understand the difference. It is not "Modern scholars" opinions that account for Marlowe's present fame, i.e. the fact that his work is still studied, read for pleasure, performed on stage, attended by theatre-goers, and that the person of Kit Marlowe has appeared in several popular movies. This is about fame; it has nothing to do with "scholarly opinion".
 * NOTE: the last sentence contains a semi-colon, indicating a balance between two ideas.
 * Amandajm (talk) 20:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Very poor expression
Can someone with an interest in this article, who knows how to express themselves coherently, rewrite some of this nonsense?
 * Reports of Marlowe's death in 1593 were particularly infamous in his day and are contested by scholars today due to a lack of good documentation. Traditionally, the playwright's death has been blamed on a long list of conjectures, including a vicious bar-room fight, blasphemous libel against the church, homosexual intrigue, betrayal by another playwright, and espionage from the highest level: the Privy Council of Elizabeth I.

 * "Reports of Marlowe's death in 1593 were particularly infamous in his day"
 * This is the wrong use of the word "infamous". A report is very rarely an "infamous" report..... unless it causes a huge amount of trouble.
 * A person is infamous, not a report.  You could say "Marlowe was killed by the infamous Ingram Frizer." You could say "Marlowe was infamous as a heretic"
 * But the reports of his death were not infamous of themselves, and they were certainly not "particularly infamous". "particularly is a "weasel word".

 * "Traditionally, the playwright's death has been blamed on a long list of conjectures".
 * This sentence is nonsense.
 * The poet's death is not blamed on conjectures. The conjectures are or are not "traditional".  Many of the conjectures about the death of Marlowe are modern and scholarly, and not traditional at all.
 * It needs to be stated clearly: The factors which led to the death of Marlowe are the subject of conjecture.

 * Amandajm (talk) 01:59, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Dating contradiction re Edward the Second
Currently the article suggests:
 * Written: c. 1592;
 * First official record: 1593 [presumably the 6 July 1593 Stationers' Register entry for William (or Richard?) Jones – mentioned in E.C. Pendry's notes in the Dent Everyman 1976 edition of Complete Plays and Poems];
 * First published: 1590;
 * Earliest extant edition: 1594 [presumably that published by Jones].

The 1592 writing and 1590 first publication dates are clearly incompatible, and I'd guess that 1590 is in error, but lacking expertise in this field I can't assume that there was no edition prior to Jones', so I can't just change 1590 to 1592 (or -3, or -4).

For what it's worth, Pendry says:
 * "Marlowe's main source was Holinshed. To this he added the shaving-scene——which, if it comes from Stow's [The] Annales [of England] (1592), gives a clue to the date of the play."

Can anyone resolve this? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.88.97 (talk) 21:45, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

 * 90, if you don't get a good reply here, you could try WP:Reference desk/Humanities. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:25, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Malthouse Theatre?
Under Christopher_Marlowe, is it WP:PROPORTIONate to include? Fwiw, no WP-article on this theatre Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:40, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

“Years active” in infobox
Currently, the infobox states that Marlowe was active from 1564–1593. Given that Marlowe was baptized in 1564, and only received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584, this date really ought to be pushed later. However, I will leave it to those more knowledgeable than myself to determine what this date ought to be. Johan Brahm (talk) 02:39, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

 * Per Template:Infobox person, "Date range in years during which the subject was active in their principal occupation(s) and/or other activity for which they are notable.", so yeah. I changed it to "c. mid-1580s–1593" per what the article said about Dido. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:36, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Christopher Marlowe