Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero who originated in pulp magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, films, television programs, 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.
Fan art of Conan the Barbarian in his iconic loincloth.
Cover of Weird Tales (May 1934) depicting Conan and Bêlit in "Queen of the Black Coast", one of Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century.
Cover of the pulp magazine Spicy Detective Stories vol. 2, #6 (April 1935) featuring "Bullet from Nowhere" by Robert Leslie Bellem
November 1927 issue of Black Mask, featuring The Continental Op
Cover of the pulp magazine Dime Mystery Book Magazine, January 1933
Image: Detective Book Magazine 002