The Conan stories were not presented as legends, I must disagree with you on that point. They were indeed, as you say, meant to be yarns told around a campfire by someone who lived countless adventures “...and then THIS happened to me!” but they are not supposed to be a collection of ill-remembered fanciful stories where anything goes. Howard was amazingly consistent in his world building, and as far as what he wrote went, there was one “true” story to be told. The good pastiche writers follow that path.

Howard never bothered to publish a timeline for his tales, but he did confirm that the first known such attempt (by Miller, back in the thirties) was very close to what he had envisioned himself. So he did have some form of outline that he used himself. Roy Thomas did his best to adhere to such a timeline that would reflect Howard’s vision.

The attention to such details goes beyond mere fannish obsession; it iies at the core of any well crafted fantasy in which a make-believe world is created. The believability of the Hyborian world is almost half the fun of these tales! Whenever Conan was written by someone else than the people listed above, we’d get flying horses and cloud cities and Conan having trained as a ninja. It robs the Hyborian age of its carefully built quasi-historical feel, which is a darn shame considering how much work went into creating it in the first place.

Now if you’re willing to overlook the ill-fitting nature of such themes in the overall Conan storyline, then more power to you! I’m certainly not going to begrudge another fan’s enjoyment of a book. Personally, though, I don’t enjoy things like DeMatteis, Jones, Fleisher or Hama’s Conan, and will not encourage Marvel by purchasing its books if they feature less than a Conan I can recognize.

As I said above, though, I’m ambivalent, not squarely against to the idea of new Conan books. I just want them done a certain way, the way of Thomas, Busiek and Truman. Howard first!