Robert Ervin Howard was quite successful pulp writer. He wrote a lot of short stories during the late 1920s and early 1930s. His first notable character, Solomon Kane, met the readership in 1928. The next year arrived the Atlantean barbarian named Kull. In the 1932 Howard introduced a character who pushed into the background all his other heroes: Conan the Cimmerian. In 1936, at the age of 30, the writer commited suicide after been told that his mother would never emerge from coma.

Robert E. Howard's Kull stories: By This Axe I Rule! -- Delcardes' Cat -- Exile of Atlantis -- Kings of the Night -- Swords of the Purple Kingdom -- (Screaming) Skull of Silence -- The Altar and the Scorpion -- The Curse of the Golden Skull -- The King and the Oak -- The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune -- The Shadow Kingdom -- The Striking of the Gong
Story fragments written by Howard and developed by Lin Carter: The Black City (Black Abyss) -- Riders Beyond the Sunrise -- Wizard and Warrior

Kull was born a barbarian of the Tiger Valley tribe of the ancient continent of Atlantis. After his tribe was destroyed in a terrible flood infant Kull gone wild, running with tigers and wolves. Some later he was adopted by another tribe. As teenager Kull fled Atlantis into exile, was captured by pirates and made a slave chained to the oars of a galley. Not in a long time he won his freedom and became the captain of his own pirate galley. After his galley is sunk off the coast of Valusia, the ex-Lemurian pirate flees inland and becomes an outlaw in the hills. Captured once again, this time by the law, Kull was given no real choice but to agree to fight as a gladiator in the arena. Gaining his freedom Kull joined the Great Army of Valusia, quickly rising up in the ranks to Commander. Eventually the Atlantean warrior slayed the despotic King Borna and seized the throne of that ancient kingdom for his own - which seems to be in his early thirties. Later Kull has many adventures as king, facing both the prejudice of his civilized subjects as a barbarian and customary wars with outside enemies. King Kull constantly questioned the traditions and allowed himself to become interested by philosophical contemplation. An assassination attempt empowered Kull to raise the King's Will above the Rule of Custom, declaring, "I am king, state, and law!"

"Kull the Conqueror" began in 1990 as a Charles Edward Pogue screenplay, based <mostly> on the Howard Conan tale '"The Hour of the Dragon."
"It was originally the script for Conan III," explains producer Raffaella de Laurentiis. "Arnold Schwarzenegger loved the script, but he just sort of hung onto it for a year-and-a-half before finally turning it down. Universal always had a back door if Arnold turned it down, and that was to make the film anyhow with a different actor playing a character other than Conan. Early on, while waiting for a decision by Amold, we had already started working on the screenplay so that, if needed, it could be adapted to the character of Kull." (12.97 Starlog Special)

Character switching actually begins with Howard himself. Many of the Kull stories failed to find a market during his lifetime and not surprisingly his first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword," was actually a rewrite of a rejected Kull story, "By This Axe I Rule!" In the Howard's pseudo-history Kull (and his homeland Atlantis as well) was gone many centuries before Conan.

John Nicolella (director): "Pogue's script was very nicely done, but it was very dark and very much in the Conan the Barbarian vein. If you remember, that film had to struggle to get an R (rating)." Nicolella, with the support of the producer, hired another writer, Don Mancini, to bring the violence and sexual moments down to a more manageable level. (09.97 Starlog #242)