It is arguable, as with Modesty Blaise, that the best incarnation of Conan the Barbarian is in the written story rather than in the comic strip. Back in the 1920s and 1930s an odd eccentric with a mother fixation, named Robert E Howard, started to send his stories off to the pulp magazines of the day. He created a number of characters but Conan is his most enduring, an amalgam of Aryan superman and Tarzan, deeply indebted to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs a generation earlier.

But Conan was more than just a poor copy. Howard may not have been original but he was a good storyteller and over the years he obsessively recorded the life of his hero from his adventures as a young man right up to his ascendancy to the throne in later life.

The stories were printed in Weird Tales, a legendary pulp with covers to match. Unfortunately though the stories were popular Howard did not become rich and famous. The pulps didn't pay much was one reason. The main reason was that Howard's mother died and a distraught Howard killed himself in his early thirties.

So a cult began. The stories were collected and reprinted. His none Conan stories were collected and reprinted. His half finished stories were collected and reprinted. At one point his unfinished stories were finished off by L Sprague de Camp, though these are now rightly frowned on. Half a Conan is better than well half a Conan and a half assed ending.

The stories gained in popularity over the years. There were even Conan illustrators, notably Frank Frazetta, who did a number of book covers. Then in the early 1970s Marvel comics decided to do a Conan comic book. The choice of collaborators was inspired. Roy Thomas was never better than when adapting or creating Conan stories. And in Barry Windsor-Smith they had a true original.

Not that Windsor-Smith began that way. He started, as many had at Marvel, by emulating Jack Kirby. The early issues of Conan reflect his, often clumsy, Kirby style. Gradually however he developed a more decorative approach, one that was similar to both the fantasy illustrators of the pulps and the art of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Windsor-Smith only stayed with series until issue 24. He didn't do all of these either, but by the end of his run Conan the Barbarian was one of Marvel's most popular titles. Smith also illustrated some stories for Marvel's adult orientated black and white Savage Sword of Conan. One of the best stories, if you can get hold of it, is "Red Nails". This was also originally in Black and white but was reprinted as a large format colour book (Marvel Treasury Edition). There is also a Treasury edition of Smith's final colour issue 24, which featured Red Sonja, another Howard character, though until the comics not part of the Conan stories.

Thomas stayed with the series and John Buscema took over the illustration. His styles was more square jawed but was, in its own way, as effective as Smith's. The readers thought so because the comic gained in popularity.

Inevitably a film was made. Surprisingly it was good. Being one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's early efforts, he wasn't exactly great in the acting stakes. So the scriptwriters concentrated on limiting the dialogue and boosting the visuals, filling any void with a suitably lush score. And it worked. The movie is one of the best of the fantasy genre. The sequel, with Grace Jones is poor in comparison.

Since then there have been other film adaptations of Howard's work, notably Red Sonja, starring Brigitte Nielsen. There have also been several television adaptations, which for the most part have failed to capture the verve of the original pulps, the comics or the Conan movie.

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