This summer, amidst all the big entertainment announcements and comic-cons, one announcement seems to have remained under the radar for the past month or so: a Conan The Barbarian animated series from Warner Bros Animation is coming to Amazon Prime.
Not to be confused with the 1992 Conan The Adventurer, this one will be hardcore. Genndy Tartakovsky, the creator behind one of my favorite animated series, Samurai Jack, as well as Primal, is behind this one. He is planning to stay true to Conan creator Robert E. Howard’s vision by adapting his story Queen of the Black Coast.
Tartakovsky said in a message to the Conan panel at San Diego Comic Con after reading a very lusty passage of the story: “(how) can you not want to make this? As soon as I started to read the books I fell in love with that kind of imagery. I imaged everything as I read it. All fully animated, all done, and when that opportunity came, I of course had to do it.”
I’ve been more in tune the Conan news than the average classic adventure nerd, because my husband’s form or creative self care has been compiling a very thorough journal on Conan the Barbarian and his creator Robert E. Howard for well over a year.
I’ve learned quite a bit about the author and his characters, far too much to even begin to touch on in a simple post. I do know, however, Conan has never really left the spot light in the right circles. Personally, I’m partial to another Howard character, Solomon Kane, but that’s neither here nor there. Conan was the legacy the young author left behind and Conan is still amassing his fan base.
Conan, who first appeared in Weird Tales in 1932, is violent, unapologetically masculine, primal, and just plain fun. As we see more and more of the kinder more feminized versions of popular male characters, Conan remains solid.
New comics and action figures are still in the works, there’s a special crossover with the RPG video game Ungodly, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is still very interested in getting a King Conan movie off the ground. No news on the when or if that will finally see the light of day. Until then, we can look forward to 2027 when the original and very 80s Conan The Barbarian movie celebrate its 45th anniversary.
As of now, there are no updates as to when the new animated Conan series will finally hit Prime Video, but I will be watching and waiting. Because Conan is unstoppable.