| Age of conan gold-Long-dormant Conan revived at Comic-Con |
Ready to embrace your inner geek? Then take thyself to San Diego this weekend. There you can grab a broadsword, sit on Conan the Cimmerian's throne and pose for a portrait with four Nemedian slave girls.
Anything is possible once you enter the fantasy world that is Comic-Con International, the biggest comic book convention on Earth. Already under way at the San Diego Convention Center, Comic-Con boasts the largest convocation of geeks you'll ever see. Some of them will take part in the annual costume contest, proudly donning their "Star Wars," "Spider-Man," "Lara Croft" and Trekkie gear. But Comic-Con is no longer just for comic, horror, anime and sci-fi/fantasy fans. It's also about high-stakes commerce: the selling of video games, books, toys, memorabilia, posters, DVDs -- and Hollywood event movies.
The major studios are hitting Comic-Con in force, displaying footage and live talent from "The Corpse Bride," "The Chronicles of Narnia," "Superman Returns," "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and "King Kong," among the hottest-ticket events.
On the main floor, Swedish emigre Fredrik Malmberg, head of Licensing and Creative Affairs for L.A.-based Conan Properties International, will be manning the Conan booth. It is featuring MacFarlane Toys' line of 12 collectible Conan action figures ($9.95-$24.95); Marto's Conan daggers and swords (a replica of the Conan sword, on display at the Smithsonian Institute, costs $3,500); Funcom's preview of its "Age of Conan -- Hyborian Adventures" online action role-playing game, due in March; Ace Books' first volume in its "The Age of Conan" novel series; and Dark Horse's "Conan" comic books ("Brutal! Barbaric! Bone-crushing!"), which after 17 issues remains the No. 1 independent, non-DC, non-Marvel comic book in North America, selling some 50,000 copies a month. Malmberg, who closely supervises every Conan creation, recently added a second Conan comic.
Conan Properties is a far cry from, say, the publicly traded Marvel Entertainment, reveling in its post-"Spider-man" and "Fantastic Four" glow, which Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad pulled from the brink of bankruptcy some years back. But it's also a fair distance from where Conan was just three years ago.
One of the world's best-known fantasy characters, Conan King of Aquilonia came roaring to life from the perfervid imagination of young Texan Robert E. Howard, who delivered 17 tough, passionate Conan short stories to the pulp magazine "Weird Tales" from 1932-36. (Vincent D'Onofrio played the writer, who has been described as the Kurt Cobain of pulp fiction, in 1996's "The Whole Wide World.") While Howard shot himself in the head at age 30, his creation, whose "slightest movement spoke of steel-string muscles knit to a keen brain with the coordination of a born fighting man," endured in the culture. Stories were published all over the globe, and new writers added their own mutations of the sword-and-sorcery hero.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was perfect casting as the star of John Milius's 1982 movie, "Conan the Barbarian." When producer Edward R. Pressman sold the rights to Dino De Laurentiis, the Italian movie mogul fired Milius and Oliver Stone from the sequel and hired Richard Fleischer, who botched the 1984 "Conan the Destroyer." After that, the character sank into obscurity and tangled rights issues, while Milius and the Wachowski brothers, among others, tried to get another "Conan" under way. When "Conan the Barbarian" Age of conan gold was released on DVD in 2000, though, the 18-year-old movie sold more than 1 million units.
This was not lost on Sweden's Malmberg and Paradox Entertainment CEO Theodore Bergquist, who in 2002 purchased the rights to some 400 of Howard's characters and stories from Stanley Media. And when Warner Bros. let their expensiv
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