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''Conan'' is the title of several Creator/MarvelComics comic books starring the titular ComicBook/ConanTheBarbarian.
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!!''Conan'' provides examples of:
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[[folder:In general]]
* TheAgeless: In "The Forever Phial", the immortal wizard Ranephi cannot die of old age, though he can still be killed like any man.
* AllThereInTheManual: Roy Thomas wrote three nonfiction books called "Barbarian Life" that discusses the production of every single issue of the series.
* ArtificialLimbs: There was a story featuring three outlaws who'd run afoul of Conan, and had one AnatomyArsenal each (well, two did. One just had a plate in his head).
** Then there was Boraq D' Sharaq, who managed to have a [[SwissArmyAppendage Swiss Army]] AnatomyArsenal [[MST3KMantra that he could easily swap between in fights]].
* AscendedFanboy: Most people ''assume'' Roy Thomas was this. Whilst he was instrumental in getting Conan his own comic, it was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Kane Gil Kane]] who was the big Creator/RobertEHoward fanboy. He did a lot of the artwork for Conan in TheSeventies, and he couldn't have been happier.
** Roy Thomas notably became a fan of Conan the Barbarian because he was looking into finding a character outside of Marvel's usual superhero wheelhouse to adapt. He devoured the Robert E. Howard stories and became the character's everlasting promoter.
* BallisticDiscount: In ''Savage Sword of Conan'' #75, Captain Bor'Aqh Sharaq has a smith construct him a SwissArmyAppendage that can be fitted with a sword, an axe or a spring-powered throwing iron. Naturally, he kills the smith after the job's done.
* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: In "Citadel at the Center of Time", the Babylonian king Shamash-shum-ukin was a sorcerer who avoided his recorded death via TimeTravel.
* BookBurning: Ranephi, knowing that he will soon be dead, burns his collection of scrolls and spell books to keep his arcane knowledge from falling into the wrong hands.
* BornAsAnAdult: In "At the Mountain of the Moon-God" (''Savage Sword of Conan'' #3), the giant egg which Conan discovers while climbing the titular mountain hatches into a fully-grown Pteranodon at the story's climax.
* TheCakeIsALie: [[spoiler: Conan meets the Living Tarim and discovers that he is a severely inbred man with a mental disability as well as deformities. He is far from the living god that everyone is willing to fight and die for.]]
* ChekhovsGun: In "Citadel at the Center of Time", Conan enters the city of Akbitana and immediately takes note of a ballista set up in the town square. At the story's climax, he uses that ballista to kill a rampaging tyrannosaurus.
* CollectorOfTheStrange: Shamash-shum-ukin keeps a collection of the various time-displaced things which have come out of the Well at the Center of Time. It includes such things as an Egyptian pharaoh, a Pteranodon, an entire tribe of Neanderthals, and a Tyrannosaurus rex.
* ComicBookFantasyCasting: In the early issues of ''King Conan'' the titular character bears a strong resemblance to Creator/CharlesBronson.
* ContinuitySnarl: Inevitable with Conan canon, but an interesting little hiccup occurred in ''Savage Sword''; Recurring villain [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Witch_Shall_be_Born Ogerd Vadislav]] was reintroduced in an issue, despite having been swallowed up by an EldritchAbomination. There was an Creator/LSpragueDeCamp story explaining how this happened, and in a later issue of Savage Sword explained this too... in a completely different way to the pastiche, as Marvel didn't have permission to run that story, so they just winged it. Later, they '''did''' get permission to adapt the short story, so they ran it, and attempted to explain how Ogerd survived ''another'' attack. It worked... kind of.
* CrossOver:
** Happened a few times with the Franchise/MarvelUniverse back when the Conan comic rights were owned by Marvel. In fact, [[TheVerse the Conanverse]] version of the god Set became a major part of the MU's BackStory. Of course, all these team-ups began in [[LetsYouAndHimFight the Mighty Marvel Manner]].
** There '''was''' a Conan/[[Literature/TheElricSaga Elric]] crossover in Marvel's Conan #14-15. [[http://www.comicvine.com/conan-the-barbarian-the-coming-of-elric-or-a-sword-calledstormbringer/37-12050/ No, really]]. Notably these comics were written ''by Creator/MichaelMoorcock himself.''
*** This story would receive a sequel in ''Savage Sword'' #189 -- licensing issues, however, would force the writers to write around Elric, referring to him instead as "The Albino", although weirdly his foe Prince Gaynor the Damned is not only referred to by name, but appears in the story's climax for a brief battle with Conan.
*** This inspired the artists the ShallowParody comic Thrud the Barbarian in ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' to do a story where Thrud encountered "Eric of Boneymaloney," a "Melancholy Crimson-Eyed Wimp".
** Conan managed to have a few team-ups with Literature/{{Kull}}, and a nice two-part team-up with Literature/SolomonKane ("The Savage Sword of Conan #219-#220").
** ''ComicBook/WhatIf Vol .1 No. 39'' features an alternate take on an event in ''ComicBook/TheMightyThor'' Annual Vol. 1 No. 8 where a young Thor's wandering in a cave containing portals through time and space, instead of leading him the Trojan War as happened in the original story, instead deposits him in the Hyborian Age, where he encounters Conan.
** ''ComicBook/WhatIf Vol. 2 No. 16'' features an alternate take on an event in ''ComicBook/UncannyXMen'' #137, showing ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} getting lost in the Watcher's realities and ending up in the Hyborian Age.
* DemBones: In "The Valley of the Howling Shadows" (The Savage Sword of Conan #118, November 1985), Conan and his followers meet a group of talking and walking skeletons. The skeletons are the nicest and friendliest characters in the entire story, but their dialogue creeps Conan out. They claim that Conan looks familiar to them, suspect that they have seen him before, and ask him whether he is related to them through their families. They also indicate that they would like to know him better. Conan retreats quickly. Notably, for most of the scene, the skeletons pay no attention to the other characters present.
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: In the second Marvel run, Conan, after being poisoned and killed by an evil witch, meets Crom himself in the afterlife. When Crom reveals that he doesn't care about the world of the living or has any intention to stop the witch, Conan, incensed after spending a lifetime of fighting in and swearing by Crom's name, attacks the god. It goes as well as you'd expect. Crom eventually sends Conan back to the world of the living, but swears that as punishment, Conan is now cursed to live forever and watch everything he holds dear, including his own strength and legend, fade away to nothing. Conan isn't worried.
* DigitalDestruction: The recolouring of the Barry Windsor-Smith issues, which removes Windsor-Smith's own expressive, balanced colouring [[note]]Emphasis on ''his own'' colouring, and thus as much a part of his artistic intent as his pencilling[[/note]] with muddy, realistic earth tones and secondary colours. [[http://comicsalliance.com/whatever-happened-to-barry-windsor-smith-in-the-comics-conversation/ Talked about by artist Tom Scioli here.]]
* DolledUpInstallment;
** ''The Curse of the Undead-Man'' is based on [[Creator/RobertEHoward Robert E. Howard's]] ''Dark Agnes'' story, ''Mistress Of Death'' with Conan added and Agnes replaced with ''ComicBook/RedSonja''.
** ''Conan The Barbarian #17'' was based on Howard's short story, ''The Gods of Bal-Sagoth'' with Conan replacing ''Black Turlogh''.
* DownerEnding: The War of the Tarim Arc ends with the sacking of the Kingdom of Makkalet by King Turan, the death of its king, and its queen forced into becoming TheExile. Conan DidNotGetTheGirl because she's pregnant with her late husband's child. Even worse, the living Tarim that everyone was fighting over is dead (and used as a prop post-mortem).
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Sonja is a lot more cunning and deceptive character in the beginning as well as willing to use her sexuality as a weapon. She dances on a tavern table to get Conan's attention and leads him on to use him to help her rob a wizard's tower.
* EasterEgg: During the eighth issue, there are piles of coins in one scene. One panel features a hidden message among the coins: "I must be mad to sit here drawing all these coins".
* EvilSorcerer: There was no end of these during Roy Thomas' run with one of the most formidable being Kharam Akkad during the War of the Tarim.
* TheFarmerAndTheViper: In "Sleeper Beneath the Sands", Ahmed Mullah's people rescue a dying Olgerd Vladislav and nurse him back to health. He repays their kindness by murdering their chieftain and taking their priestess hostage to force them to lay a trap for Conan.
* FeudingFamilies: In ''Savage Sword of Conan'', Conan visits Cimmeria to discover that his family's rivals, the Clan Diarmiad, has used foul magic to murder his parents and his relatives, as well as turning his sister Siobhan into their tortured slave. Conan vows revenge against them and in the end, manages to slaughter every single Diarmiad responsible, though his sister is mortally injured and dies a little after her brother fulfilled his vow. Conan is left the only immediate survivor of his family because of this feud.
* FightDracula: In a one issue of ''The Savage Sword of Conan'', Solomon Kane slays Dracula in a continuation to a story from ''ComicBook/DraculaLives''.
* TheFool: Rufio, in King Conan.
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Issue 24# "The Song of Red Sonja" is absolutely ''dripping'' with this and Roy Thomas has confirmed all of it was intentional via WordOfGod in his ''Barbarian Life'' books. Phallic imagery is repleat through the book to represent Conan's sexual frustration, Conan gets an erection that disturbs the water during a bath scene, and he makes multiple references to masturbation that Roy was certain the Comic Books Code Authority would catch (but didn't).
* GottaCatchEmAll: ''Conan the Adventurer'' became a Crucial Type A '''and''' Type B. A talisman of a long-sleeping god was scattered into 6 pieces, and 7 wandering adventurers were promised riches if they found all 6 pieces. [[spoiler: Turns out it was the god tricking them so he could initiate a [[ApocalypseHow Class 5]]. ]]
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: The antagonist of "Citadel at the Center of Time" is a temporally displaced Shamash-shum-ukin, the brother of Ashurbanipal and king of Babylon.
* HollywoodNatives: In ''Conan the Barbarian'' (2019), Picts are portrayed as like some pretty stereotypical Native Americans.[[note]]Howard based them partly on the Algonquian peoples, along with the real Picts (who were Celts).[[/note]] However, they're portrayed far more sympathetically than in the original stories, as while fierce it's emphasized the Picts are defending themselves and hostile to outsiders with very good reason, as the Hyborians to the south want their land.
* IdiotBall: Conan is depicted as blinded by his own greed and acts idiotic in the story "The Valley of the Howling Shadows" (The Savage Sword of Conan #118, November 1985). Early in the story, Conan learns of a location called the Valley of Howls, which is the source of great treasure and of a high-priced hallucinogenic drug called Zuk. But that only a single cloaked figure exits the Valley to trade items, and that the treasure hunters who entered the Valley never returned. Motivated by greed, Conan decides to seek the Valley, and leads his current love interest (who just saved his life) and a stranded military unit (who chose him as their leader) into the Valley. Right at the entry of the Valley is a Sphinx (the creature, not the statue) who warns him that the Valley is a location of nightmares and there is no hope for those who enter. Indeed Conan encounters increasingly surreal horrors and nightmares within the Valley, and every local human and creature seems to be insane. His followers keep getting killed on the way, but Conan keeps on going. By the time he gets to the treasure, everyone is either dead or has abandoned him. Conan suddenly realizes that he may be permanently trapped in "this evil place" and is desperate to escape. The cloaked figure (which is not human after all) appears to show him the only way out. Conan escapes with only the clothes on his back and his sword.
* ImmortalityInducer: In "The Forever Phial", the wizard Ranephi gained eternal life by drinking from the titular phial. He has since come to regret that decision.
* JokerImmunity: Ogerd, Wraarl, Boraq d'Sharaq
** It got pretty stupid with d'Sharaq; pretty much any encounter [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat that even Conan would've had trouble with]], Boraq [[NoOneShouldSurviveThat just sorta shrugged it off]] [[{{Determinator}} to plague Conan some more]], [[WhyWontYouDie to the point where even the writers seemed to be getting sick of him]]. [[ComicBookLimbo His last appearance to date]] had him as a HumanPopsicle, where a female character hinted to Conan [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim that he could totally just shatter Boraq into pieces]]. Conan didn't, but at least Boraq's only shown up in reprints... so far...
* JustFriends: Conan and ComicBook/RedSonja. During the times they've adventured together it's become clear that Conan is attracted to Red Sonja. Red Sonja, on the other hand, does not feel the same way about Conan.
* KnifeThrowingAct: In ''Savage Sword of Conan'' #119, Conan (in a scene that is undoubtedly a ShoutOut to the movie ''Film/TheVikings'') is forced to play a game where his sister's head is stuck through the middle of a hollow target and he must throw axes to sever her braids while blindfolded. Luckily, he manages not to slay his own sister; and since he ran out of sisterly braids while still having an axe left, he indulges in a manly jest and throws the weapon at Magloclun, cutting the clan leader's own braid.
* LighterAndSofter: The Comics Code-constrained series compared to the original stories. Averted with The Savage Sword of Conan.
* LukeIMightBeYourFather: "The Valley of the Howling Shadows" (The Savage Sword of Conan #118, November 1985) is a pretty surreal horror story. At some point Conan meets a mad man who keeps insisting that he is Conan's real father. Unfortunately for Conan, the man's main goal is OffingTheOffspring.
* MasterApprenticeChain: Implied in the story "Disciples" (''Savage Sword of Conan #184''); Conan's disciples Eiji, Ikuo and Jiro are implied to have been directed to Conan by Conan's own former teacher, the broadsword-master Sennan.
* MercyKill: Defied in "Sleeper Beneath the Sands". Conan briefly considers putting an arrow into Olgerd to spare him the agony of being crushed in the titular monster's claws, but ultimately decides to let Olgerd suffer.
* NotAfraidOfYouAnymore: An almost comical scene in "Homecoming" (The Savage Sword of Conan #119, December, 1985) involves this. Conan is facing an evil Cimmerian clan (the Diarmiads), has personal reasons to hate them all, and he has already managed to eliminate several of their most experienced fighters. The remaining leaders of the clan are terrified of Conan, and try to find ways to kill him from a distance. Dumoric, a rookie fighter and one of the youngest Diarmiads, instead decides to stand up to the invincible foe. He approaches Conan, challenges him to a sword duel, and tells Conan that he has no fear of him. Conan replies that Dumoric is a young fool and needs to be taught a lesson. Conan kills Dumoric with a single blow and then forgets about the boy.
* OutlawTown: The Abode of the Damned, in the story of the same name, in ''The Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian'' #11 (loosely adapted from the Creator/RobertEHoward story "The Country of the Knife").
* SealedEvilInACan: In "Sleeper Beneath the Sands", Ahmed Mullah's people have kept the titular monster dormant for eons by performing a ritual every fifty years. When Olgerd Vladislav disrupts the ritual out of his desire to get revenge on Conan, the Sleeper awakens immediately and begins killing everything in sight. Dhira manages to put the Sleeper back in its can at the cost of her life.
* SelfDisposingVillain: In "At the Mountain of the Moon-God", Conan is escaping from a fortress by climbing down a crevasse in the floor. Quzak, the fortress commander, tries to kill Conan by pouring a cauldron full of boiling oil down the crack after him. Quzak tips the cauldron over the wrong way, however, dousing himself in the boiling oil.
* SexyDiscretionShot: Happens whenever Conan gets lucky in the non-Savage Sword stories.
* SinkOrSwimMentor: Zigzagged in the story "Disciples" (''Savage Sword of Conan #184''); whilst Conan is a brutal instructor to the three not-Japanese warriors who come seeking his tutelage, he warns them beforehand that his training will be arduous, and he is not deliberately abusive towards them. As they impress him with his sincerity, master and apprentices legitimately bond.
* SlippingAMickey: In "Citadel at the Center of Time", the dancer Alhambra slips some powder into Conan's drink while flirting with him. The drug quickly renders Conan woozy, though he almost manages to fight it off before Alhambra knocks him out with a TapOnTheHead.
* SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome: Taurus and his sister Radegund undergo this in Conan the King, they go from being a toddler and the infant they were in King Conan to young teenagers.
* SurpassedTheTeacher: Played with in the story "Disciples" (''Savage Sword of Conan #184''); after Conan declares his training of his apprentices Eiji, Ikuo and Jiro complete, they later return for a formal, no-holds-barred fight to establish if they have succeeded at this -- or die trying. They lose, with each taking a crippling injury -- Ikuo is blinded, Jiro loses a leg, and Eiji loses his right arm. There is no malice or hatred on either side, however, and in fact Conan is shown to be rather dismayed about the whole affair, as he'd grown to genuinely like the trio. His own former teacher, Sennan, comforts Conan that neither he nor his students failed -- their respect for him made their devotion waver, whilst his for them is why he didn't slay them.
* SwissArmyAppendage: Captain Bor'Aqh Sharaq has a prosthetic arm that can be fitted with a sword, an axe or a spring-powered throwing iron.
* TapOnTheHead: Alhambra knocks Conan out by whacking him upside the head with a frying pan.
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: During his crossover with Elric, Conan constantly complains about Elric's presence, bickers with him, and generally spends his time complaining about [[DoesNotLikeMagic magic and sorcerers being evil and unmanly]]. At the story's climax, he parts ways only after avowing never to work with Elric again and damning him as an inhuman monster incapable of honest human emotion. Which, if you know anything about [[{{Wangst}} Elric]], is hilariously inaccurate.
* TerrifyingTyrannosaur: A tyrannosaur is the centerpiece of Shamash-shum-ukin's collection of time-displaced oddities in "Citadel at the Center of Time". Conan is alarmed by the beast when he first sees it, even though it sits at the bottom of a deep pit where it can do him no harm. When it gets loose at the climax and goes on a rampage through the surrounding town, everyone who sees the tyrannosaur is terrified of it, and even Conan is struck dumb by fear for a moment before he regains his wits and tries to put down the rampaging monster.
* TerrorDactyl: The monstrous pterosaur featured in "At the Mountain of the Moon-God" is is scaly, bipedal, and has teeth, and can fly while grasping a fully-grown human in each talon. The narrative acknowledges that last inaccuracy and brushes it off in the same panel:
-->''In a'' later ''age, learned men will say that what happens next is'' impossible -- ''that such monsters did all their gripping with their'' nether ''limbs. Yet across a chasm of'' millions of years -- ''who is there that can truly'' know? ''Suffice it to say -- Khossus and Vateesa are'' grasped, ''and that'' firmly!
* TimeTravel: In "Citadel at the Center of Time", the antagonist is a Babylonian sorcerer-king who traveled back in time to escape the armies of Assyria.
* TheUnfavorite: Taurus, mainly due to [[OvershadowedByAwesome his siblings being so much cooler/nicer]] although [[spoiler: it turns out he was a changeling SwitchedAtBirth for the ''real'' Taurus... who later made a HeroicSacrifice for his parents. At least, that's how it was until #50, when the aforementioned AbortedArc was brought back]]
* VengeanceFeelsEmpty: Though the main character frequently takes pleasure in brutal revenge, this trope pops up when [[MadeASlave Conan's ally Zula]] slays his former master. After Conan asks him how it felt, Zula responds that it simply felt hollow. Interestingly, ComicBook/RedSonja also mentions this trope during this conversation when she says she was unable to slay the man [[RapeAsBackstory who ravished her]] after he had been badly tortured.
* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: In ''Conan the Barbarian'' #3, the main focus of the story was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Clontarf The Battle of Clontarf]]... and how it heralded the death of a god. Given that this issue was based on "The Twilight of the Grey Gods", one of Howard's non-Conan stories that was about the Battle of Clontarf, this isn't surprising.
* WarForFunAndProfit: The War of the Tarim is supposed to be about rescuing the kidnapped holy man who is a PhysicalGod. Roy Thomas makes it clear the Prince of Turan is only interested in sacking the city for its wealth.
* WhatHaveIDone: Pubilus says this in ''Conan the King'' #46, after [[spoiler: Zenobia's fourth child dies in childbirth when he refused to let the Asurans protect both mother and child.]]
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: In "The Forever Phial", an immortal wizard has grown tired of his unending life and wants to die. His immortality does not prevent him from being killed, so when he learns that Conan is in town, the wizard does everything in his power to force the barbarian into a confrontation. As a result, Conan storms the wizard's tower and grants the wizard his wish.
* WholePlotReference: ''Conan the Barbarian''' #23 (i.e. Red Sonja's debut) is essentially a adaptation of Robert E. Howard's short story ''Literature/TheShadowOfTheVulture'', an historical work set during TheCavalierYears where a Christian knight called Gottfried is pursued by an Crimean Tatar (the titular Vulture) in service to the Ottoman caliph [[HistoricalDomainCharacter Suleyman the Magnificent]] for an perceived slight, and he is rescued by an red-haired swashbuckler known as Red Sonya of Rogatino. In this issue, Conan replaces Gottfried, Sonya becomes Sonja and Suleyman is turned into Yezdigerd. The setting is also updated from Vienna to Makkalet.
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[[folder:Conan the Barbarian Vol. 1]]
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[[folder:Savage Tales]]
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[[folder:Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 1]]
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[[folder:Giant-Size Conan]]
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[[folder:King Conan]]
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[[folder:Conan the King]]
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[[folder:Conan the Adventurer]]
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[[folder:Conan the Savage]]
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[[folder:Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 2]]
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[[folder:In general]]
* TheAgeless: In "The Forever Phial", the immortal wizard Ranephi cannot die of old age, though he can still be killed like any man.
* AllThereInTheManual: Roy Thomas wrote three nonfiction books called "Barbarian Life" that discusses the production of every single issue of the series.
* ArtificialLimbs: There was a story featuring three outlaws who'd run afoul of Conan, and had one AnatomyArsenal each (well, two did. One just had a plate in his head).
** Then there was Boraq D' Sharaq, who managed to have a [[SwissArmyAppendage Swiss Army]] AnatomyArsenal [[MST3KMantra that he could easily swap between in fights]].
* AscendedFanboy: Most people ''assume'' Roy Thomas was this. Whilst he was instrumental in getting Conan his own comic, it was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Kane Gil Kane]] who was the big Creator/RobertEHoward fanboy. He did a lot of the artwork for Conan in TheSeventies, and he couldn't have been happier.
** Roy Thomas notably became a fan of Conan the Barbarian because he was looking into finding a character outside of Marvel's usual superhero wheelhouse to adapt. He devoured the Robert E. Howard stories and became the character's everlasting promoter.
* BallisticDiscount: In ''Savage Sword of Conan'' #75, Captain Bor'Aqh Sharaq has a smith construct him a SwissArmyAppendage that can be fitted with a sword, an axe or a spring-powered throwing iron. Naturally, he kills the smith after the job's done.
* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: In "Citadel at the Center of Time", the Babylonian king Shamash-shum-ukin was a sorcerer who avoided his recorded death via TimeTravel.
* BookBurning: Ranephi, knowing that he will soon be dead, burns his collection of scrolls and spell books to keep his arcane knowledge from falling into the wrong hands.
* BornAsAnAdult: In "At the Mountain of the Moon-God" (''Savage Sword of Conan'' #3), the giant egg which Conan discovers while climbing the titular mountain hatches into a fully-grown Pteranodon at the story's climax.
* TheCakeIsALie: [[spoiler: Conan meets the Living Tarim and discovers that he is a severely inbred man with a mental disability as well as deformities. He is far from the living god that everyone is willing to fight and die for.]]
* ChekhovsGun: In "Citadel at the Center of Time", Conan enters the city of Akbitana and immediately takes note of a ballista set up in the town square. At the story's climax, he uses that ballista to kill a rampaging tyrannosaurus.
* CollectorOfTheStrange: Shamash-shum-ukin keeps a collection of the various time-displaced things which have come out of the Well at the Center of Time. It includes such things as an Egyptian pharaoh, a Pteranodon, an entire tribe of Neanderthals, and a Tyrannosaurus rex.
* ComicBookFantasyCasting: In the early issues of ''King Conan'' the titular character bears a strong resemblance to Creator/CharlesBronson.
* ContinuitySnarl: Inevitable with Conan canon, but an interesting little hiccup occurred in ''Savage Sword''; Recurring villain [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Witch_Shall_be_Born Ogerd Vadislav]] was reintroduced in an issue, despite having been swallowed up by an EldritchAbomination. There was an Creator/LSpragueDeCamp story explaining how this happened, and in a later issue of Savage Sword explained this too... in a completely different way to the pastiche, as Marvel didn't have permission to run that story, so they just winged it. Later, they '''did''' get permission to adapt the short story, so they ran it, and attempted to explain how Ogerd survived ''another'' attack. It worked... kind of.
* CrossOver:
** Happened a few times with the Franchise/MarvelUniverse back when the Conan comic rights were owned by Marvel. In fact, [[TheVerse the Conanverse]] version of the god Set became a major part of the MU's BackStory. Of course, all these team-ups began in [[LetsYouAndHimFight the Mighty Marvel Manner]].
** There '''was''' a Conan/[[Literature/TheElricSaga Elric]] crossover in Marvel's Conan #14-15. [[http://www.comicvine.com/conan-the-barbarian-the-coming-of-elric-or-a-sword-calledstormbringer/37-12050/ No, really]]. Notably these comics were written ''by Creator/MichaelMoorcock himself.''
*** This story would receive a sequel in ''Savage Sword'' #189 -- licensing issues, however, would force the writers to write around Elric, referring to him instead as "The Albino", although weirdly his foe Prince Gaynor the Damned is not only referred to by name, but appears in the story's climax for a brief battle with Conan.
*** This inspired the artists the ShallowParody comic Thrud the Barbarian in ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' to do a story where Thrud encountered "Eric of Boneymaloney," a "Melancholy Crimson-Eyed Wimp".
** Conan managed to have a few team-ups with Literature/{{Kull}}, and a nice two-part team-up with Literature/SolomonKane ("The Savage Sword of Conan #219-#220").
** ''ComicBook/WhatIf Vol .1 No. 39'' features an alternate take on an event in ''ComicBook/TheMightyThor'' Annual Vol. 1 No. 8 where a young Thor's wandering in a cave containing portals through time and space, instead of leading him the Trojan War as happened in the original story, instead deposits him in the Hyborian Age, where he encounters Conan.
** ''ComicBook/WhatIf Vol. 2 No. 16'' features an alternate take on an event in ''ComicBook/UncannyXMen'' #137, showing ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} getting lost in the Watcher's realities and ending up in the Hyborian Age.
* DemBones: In "The Valley of the Howling Shadows" (The Savage Sword of Conan #118, November 1985), Conan and his followers meet a group of talking and walking skeletons. The skeletons are the nicest and friendliest characters in the entire story, but their dialogue creeps Conan out. They claim that Conan looks familiar to them, suspect that they have seen him before, and ask him whether he is related to them through their families. They also indicate that they would like to know him better. Conan retreats quickly. Notably, for most of the scene, the skeletons pay no attention to the other characters present.
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: In the second Marvel run, Conan, after being poisoned and killed by an evil witch, meets Crom himself in the afterlife. When Crom reveals that he doesn't care about the world of the living or has any intention to stop the witch, Conan, incensed after spending a lifetime of fighting in and swearing by Crom's name, attacks the god. It goes as well as you'd expect. Crom eventually sends Conan back to the world of the living, but swears that as punishment, Conan is now cursed to live forever and watch everything he holds dear, including his own strength and legend, fade away to nothing. Conan isn't worried.
* DigitalDestruction: The recolouring of the Barry Windsor-Smith issues, which removes Windsor-Smith's own expressive, balanced colouring [[note]]Emphasis on ''his own'' colouring, and thus as much a part of his artistic intent as his pencilling[[/note]] with muddy, realistic earth tones and secondary colours. [[http://comicsalliance.com/whatever-happened-to-barry-windsor-smith-in-the-comics-conversation/ Talked about by artist Tom Scioli here.]]
* DolledUpInstallment;
** ''The Curse of the Undead-Man'' is based on [[Creator/RobertEHoward Robert E. Howard's]] ''Dark Agnes'' story, ''Mistress Of Death'' with Conan added and Agnes replaced with ''ComicBook/RedSonja''.
** ''Conan The Barbarian #17'' was based on Howard's short story, ''The Gods of Bal-Sagoth'' with Conan replacing ''Black Turlogh''.
* DownerEnding: The War of the Tarim Arc ends with the sacking of the Kingdom of Makkalet by King Turan, the death of its king, and its queen forced into becoming TheExile. Conan DidNotGetTheGirl because she's pregnant with her late husband's child. Even worse, the living Tarim that everyone was fighting over is dead (and used as a prop post-mortem).
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Sonja is a lot more cunning and deceptive character in the beginning as well as willing to use her sexuality as a weapon. She dances on a tavern table to get Conan's attention and leads him on to use him to help her rob a wizard's tower.
* EasterEgg: During the eighth issue, there are piles of coins in one scene. One panel features a hidden message among the coins: "I must be mad to sit here drawing all these coins".
* EvilSorcerer: There was no end of these during Roy Thomas' run with one of the most formidable being Kharam Akkad during the War of the Tarim.
* TheFarmerAndTheViper: In "Sleeper Beneath the Sands", Ahmed Mullah's people rescue a dying Olgerd Vladislav and nurse him back to health. He repays their kindness by murdering their chieftain and taking their priestess hostage to force them to lay a trap for Conan.
* FeudingFamilies: In ''Savage Sword of Conan'', Conan visits Cimmeria to discover that his family's rivals, the Clan Diarmiad, has used foul magic to murder his parents and his relatives, as well as turning his sister Siobhan into their tortured slave. Conan vows revenge against them and in the end, manages to slaughter every single Diarmiad responsible, though his sister is mortally injured and dies a little after her brother fulfilled his vow. Conan is left the only immediate survivor of his family because of this feud.
* FightDracula: In a one issue of ''The Savage Sword of Conan'', Solomon Kane slays Dracula in a continuation to a story from ''ComicBook/DraculaLives''.
* TheFool: Rufio, in King Conan.
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Issue 24# "The Song of Red Sonja" is absolutely ''dripping'' with this and Roy Thomas has confirmed all of it was intentional via WordOfGod in his ''Barbarian Life'' books. Phallic imagery is repleat through the book to represent Conan's sexual frustration, Conan gets an erection that disturbs the water during a bath scene, and he makes multiple references to masturbation that Roy was certain the Comic Books Code Authority would catch (but didn't).
* GottaCatchEmAll: ''Conan the Adventurer'' became a Crucial Type A '''and''' Type B. A talisman of a long-sleeping god was scattered into 6 pieces, and 7 wandering adventurers were promised riches if they found all 6 pieces. [[spoiler: Turns out it was the god tricking them so he could initiate a [[ApocalypseHow Class 5]]. ]]
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: The antagonist of "Citadel at the Center of Time" is a temporally displaced Shamash-shum-ukin, the brother of Ashurbanipal and king of Babylon.
* HollywoodNatives: In ''Conan the Barbarian'' (2019), Picts are portrayed as like some pretty stereotypical Native Americans.[[note]]Howard based them partly on the Algonquian peoples, along with the real Picts (who were Celts).[[/note]] However, they're portrayed far more sympathetically than in the original stories, as while fierce it's emphasized the Picts are defending themselves and hostile to outsiders with very good reason, as the Hyborians to the south want their land.
* IdiotBall: Conan is depicted as blinded by his own greed and acts idiotic in the story "The Valley of the Howling Shadows" (The Savage Sword of Conan #118, November 1985). Early in the story, Conan learns of a location called the Valley of Howls, which is the source of great treasure and of a high-priced hallucinogenic drug called Zuk. But that only a single cloaked figure exits the Valley to trade items, and that the treasure hunters who entered the Valley never returned. Motivated by greed, Conan decides to seek the Valley, and leads his current love interest (who just saved his life) and a stranded military unit (who chose him as their leader) into the Valley. Right at the entry of the Valley is a Sphinx (the creature, not the statue) who warns him that the Valley is a location of nightmares and there is no hope for those who enter. Indeed Conan encounters increasingly surreal horrors and nightmares within the Valley, and every local human and creature seems to be insane. His followers keep getting killed on the way, but Conan keeps on going. By the time he gets to the treasure, everyone is either dead or has abandoned him. Conan suddenly realizes that he may be permanently trapped in "this evil place" and is desperate to escape. The cloaked figure (which is not human after all) appears to show him the only way out. Conan escapes with only the clothes on his back and his sword.
* ImmortalityInducer: In "The Forever Phial", the wizard Ranephi gained eternal life by drinking from the titular phial. He has since come to regret that decision.
* JokerImmunity: Ogerd, Wraarl, Boraq d'Sharaq
** It got pretty stupid with d'Sharaq; pretty much any encounter [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat that even Conan would've had trouble with]], Boraq [[NoOneShouldSurviveThat just sorta shrugged it off]] [[{{Determinator}} to plague Conan some more]], [[WhyWontYouDie to the point where even the writers seemed to be getting sick of him]]. [[ComicBookLimbo His last appearance to date]] had him as a HumanPopsicle, where a female character hinted to Conan [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim that he could totally just shatter Boraq into pieces]]. Conan didn't, but at least Boraq's only shown up in reprints... so far...
* JustFriends: Conan and ComicBook/RedSonja. During the times they've adventured together it's become clear that Conan is attracted to Red Sonja. Red Sonja, on the other hand, does not feel the same way about Conan.
* KnifeThrowingAct: In ''Savage Sword of Conan'' #119, Conan (in a scene that is undoubtedly a ShoutOut to the movie ''Film/TheVikings'') is forced to play a game where his sister's head is stuck through the middle of a hollow target and he must throw axes to sever her braids while blindfolded. Luckily, he manages not to slay his own sister; and since he ran out of sisterly braids while still having an axe left, he indulges in a manly jest and throws the weapon at Magloclun, cutting the clan leader's own braid.
* LighterAndSofter: The Comics Code-constrained series compared to the original stories. Averted with The Savage Sword of Conan.
* LukeIMightBeYourFather: "The Valley of the Howling Shadows" (The Savage Sword of Conan #118, November 1985) is a pretty surreal horror story. At some point Conan meets a mad man who keeps insisting that he is Conan's real father. Unfortunately for Conan, the man's main goal is OffingTheOffspring.
* MasterApprenticeChain: Implied in the story "Disciples" (''Savage Sword of Conan #184''); Conan's disciples Eiji, Ikuo and Jiro are implied to have been directed to Conan by Conan's own former teacher, the broadsword-master Sennan.
* MercyKill: Defied in "Sleeper Beneath the Sands". Conan briefly considers putting an arrow into Olgerd to spare him the agony of being crushed in the titular monster's claws, but ultimately decides to let Olgerd suffer.
* NotAfraidOfYouAnymore: An almost comical scene in "Homecoming" (The Savage Sword of Conan #119, December, 1985) involves this. Conan is facing an evil Cimmerian clan (the Diarmiads), has personal reasons to hate them all, and he has already managed to eliminate several of their most experienced fighters. The remaining leaders of the clan are terrified of Conan, and try to find ways to kill him from a distance. Dumoric, a rookie fighter and one of the youngest Diarmiads, instead decides to stand up to the invincible foe. He approaches Conan, challenges him to a sword duel, and tells Conan that he has no fear of him. Conan replies that Dumoric is a young fool and needs to be taught a lesson. Conan kills Dumoric with a single blow and then forgets about the boy.
* OutlawTown: The Abode of the Damned, in the story of the same name, in ''The Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian'' #11 (loosely adapted from the Creator/RobertEHoward story "The Country of the Knife").
* SealedEvilInACan: In "Sleeper Beneath the Sands", Ahmed Mullah's people have kept the titular monster dormant for eons by performing a ritual every fifty years. When Olgerd Vladislav disrupts the ritual out of his desire to get revenge on Conan, the Sleeper awakens immediately and begins killing everything in sight. Dhira manages to put the Sleeper back in its can at the cost of her life.
* SelfDisposingVillain: In "At the Mountain of the Moon-God", Conan is escaping from a fortress by climbing down a crevasse in the floor. Quzak, the fortress commander, tries to kill Conan by pouring a cauldron full of boiling oil down the crack after him. Quzak tips the cauldron over the wrong way, however, dousing himself in the boiling oil.
* SexyDiscretionShot: Happens whenever Conan gets lucky in the non-Savage Sword stories.
* SinkOrSwimMentor: Zigzagged in the story "Disciples" (''Savage Sword of Conan #184''); whilst Conan is a brutal instructor to the three not-Japanese warriors who come seeking his tutelage, he warns them beforehand that his training will be arduous, and he is not deliberately abusive towards them. As they impress him with his sincerity, master and apprentices legitimately bond.
* SlippingAMickey: In "Citadel at the Center of Time", the dancer Alhambra slips some powder into Conan's drink while flirting with him. The drug quickly renders Conan woozy, though he almost manages to fight it off before Alhambra knocks him out with a TapOnTheHead.
* SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome: Taurus and his sister Radegund undergo this in Conan the King, they go from being a toddler and the infant they were in King Conan to young teenagers.
* SurpassedTheTeacher: Played with in the story "Disciples" (''Savage Sword of Conan #184''); after Conan declares his training of his apprentices Eiji, Ikuo and Jiro complete, they later return for a formal, no-holds-barred fight to establish if they have succeeded at this -- or die trying. They lose, with each taking a crippling injury -- Ikuo is blinded, Jiro loses a leg, and Eiji loses his right arm. There is no malice or hatred on either side, however, and in fact Conan is shown to be rather dismayed about the whole affair, as he'd grown to genuinely like the trio. His own former teacher, Sennan, comforts Conan that neither he nor his students failed -- their respect for him made their devotion waver, whilst his for them is why he didn't slay them.
* SwissArmyAppendage: Captain Bor'Aqh Sharaq has a prosthetic arm that can be fitted with a sword, an axe or a spring-powered throwing iron.
* TapOnTheHead: Alhambra knocks Conan out by whacking him upside the head with a frying pan.
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: During his crossover with Elric, Conan constantly complains about Elric's presence, bickers with him, and generally spends his time complaining about [[DoesNotLikeMagic magic and sorcerers being evil and unmanly]]. At the story's climax, he parts ways only after avowing never to work with Elric again and damning him as an inhuman monster incapable of honest human emotion. Which, if you know anything about [[{{Wangst}} Elric]], is hilariously inaccurate.
* TerrifyingTyrannosaur: A tyrannosaur is the centerpiece of Shamash-shum-ukin's collection of time-displaced oddities in "Citadel at the Center of Time". Conan is alarmed by the beast when he first sees it, even though it sits at the bottom of a deep pit where it can do him no harm. When it gets loose at the climax and goes on a rampage through the surrounding town, everyone who sees the tyrannosaur is terrified of it, and even Conan is struck dumb by fear for a moment before he regains his wits and tries to put down the rampaging monster.
* TerrorDactyl: The monstrous pterosaur featured in "At the Mountain of the Moon-God" is is scaly, bipedal, and has teeth, and can fly while grasping a fully-grown human in each talon. The narrative acknowledges that last inaccuracy and brushes it off in the same panel:
-->''In a'' later ''age, learned men will say that what happens next is'' impossible -- ''that such monsters did all their gripping with their'' nether ''limbs. Yet across a chasm of'' millions of years -- ''who is there that can truly'' know? ''Suffice it to say -- Khossus and Vateesa are'' grasped, ''and that'' firmly!
* TimeTravel: In "Citadel at the Center of Time", the antagonist is a Babylonian sorcerer-king who traveled back in time to escape the armies of Assyria.
* TheUnfavorite: Taurus, mainly due to [[OvershadowedByAwesome his siblings being so much cooler/nicer]] although [[spoiler: it turns out he was a changeling SwitchedAtBirth for the ''real'' Taurus... who later made a HeroicSacrifice for his parents. At least, that's how it was until #50, when the aforementioned AbortedArc was brought back]]
* VengeanceFeelsEmpty: Though the main character frequently takes pleasure in brutal revenge, this trope pops up when [[MadeASlave Conan's ally Zula]] slays his former master. After Conan asks him how it felt, Zula responds that it simply felt hollow. Interestingly, ComicBook/RedSonja also mentions this trope during this conversation when she says she was unable to slay the man [[RapeAsBackstory who ravished her]] after he had been badly tortured.
* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: In ''Conan the Barbarian'' #3, the main focus of the story was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Clontarf The Battle of Clontarf]]... and how it heralded the death of a god. Given that this issue was based on "The Twilight of the Grey Gods", one of Howard's non-Conan stories that was about the Battle of Clontarf, this isn't surprising.
* WarForFunAndProfit: The War of the Tarim is supposed to be about rescuing the kidnapped holy man who is a PhysicalGod. Roy Thomas makes it clear the Prince of Turan is only interested in sacking the city for its wealth.
* WhatHaveIDone: Pubilus says this in ''Conan the King'' #46, after [[spoiler: Zenobia's fourth child dies in childbirth when he refused to let the Asurans protect both mother and child.]]
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: In "The Forever Phial", an immortal wizard has grown tired of his unending life and wants to die. His immortality does not prevent him from being killed, so when he learns that Conan is in town, the wizard does everything in his power to force the barbarian into a confrontation. As a result, Conan storms the wizard's tower and grants the wizard his wish.
* WholePlotReference: ''Conan the Barbarian''' #23 (i.e. Red Sonja's debut) is essentially a adaptation of Robert E. Howard's short story ''Literature/TheShadowOfTheVulture'', an historical work set during TheCavalierYears where a Christian knight called Gottfried is pursued by an Crimean Tatar (the titular Vulture) in service to the Ottoman caliph [[HistoricalDomainCharacter Suleyman the Magnificent]] for an perceived slight, and he is rescued by an red-haired swashbuckler known as Red Sonya of Rogatino. In this issue, Conan replaces Gottfried, Sonya becomes Sonja and Suleyman is turned into Yezdigerd. The setting is also updated from Vienna to Makkalet.
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