According to Dark Horse, "King Conan is based on five short stories by Robert E. Howard which first appeared in Weird Tales". They must have a different run of the comics to me, then. The first four issues were based on four novellas by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, which appeared as the book Conan of Aquilonia. # 5 is the first part of a four-part adaptation of the novel The Return of Conan (aka Conan the Avenger) by de Camp and Bjorn Nyberg.