BHOC: CONAN #98

My brother was at this time still continuing to buy CONAN THE BARBARIAN, who had become one of his passing fancies. And so ultimately he picked up this issue when it was released. Eventually, the book would wind up in my eventual possession. CONAN was a huge series and a huge character for Marvel throughout the 1970s, but as I’ve spoken about in the past, I never really found my entry point into the world of the Hyborean Age, and so like war, western or supernatural comic books, I wasn’t really ever all that interested in it.

That said, I’ve always been able to appreciate the quality level of what was being produced. CONAN was one of the most consistent titles of the era. Inevitably, each issue was written by editor Roy Thomas and more often than not illustrated by John Buscema after Barry Windsor-Smith had vacated the strip. Buscema had a variety of inkers and finishers on it over the years. Here, Ernie Chan provides the finish, and I think it’s a good look for a Barbarian series. He maintains Buscema’s sense of mass and power and deftly applies texture that makes everything feel just a little bit antiquated.

Thomas took great pains to make sure that all of the stories he was doing fit the established chronology of Conan’s life that author Robert E. Howard had laid out across his many stories. Roy also took the liberty of adapting a lot of Howard’s other prose tales that didn’t feature the Barbarian into Conan stories as well. He was definitely having a good time working in and around the mythos that Howard had set up, and his enthusiasm for the character and Howard’s writing style always came across in the printed stories. And for Buscema, not having to draw modern day buildings and cars and fashions was a huge plus, as that was all work that he found tedious. CONAN was very much an assignment right up his alley as well.

This particular issue adapts a poem written by Robert E. Howard, turning it overtly into a Conan story in the process. It opens with Conan and the sailors of the pirate ship Tigress coming across a strange event: a green-hued woman adrift upon a tiny atoll not much wider than she is. They decide to rescue her, taking her aboard ship. And despite the fact that she seemingly cannot speak, she begins to bewitch the crew. Except, of course, for Conan, who realizes that if he makes any move of friendliness towards this woman, his lover Belit, the captain of the vessel, will get seriously irate and maybe kill the both of them.

Soon afterwards, members of the crew start to go missing, apparently vanished overboard. It’s pretty clearly the work of this Sea-Witch, and so it happens that Conan is awake one evening and gets to witness the Witch plying her trade. She dives again into the sea and summons an ensorcelled sailor with her silent voice, then drowns him when he follows her into the waves in response. As Roy begins to use the text of the poem as the narrative thrust of the sequence, Conan launches himself into the water, and we’re not quite certain whether he has been similarly ensnared by this Sea-Witch.

Regardles of the Cimmerian’s intent, once he reaches the Sea-Witch and she begins to kiss him, he begins to drown, his memories of those he’s known and loved fading away under the spell of the sorcerous denizen of the deep. Fortunately for Conan, the ruckus of the struggle brings Belit to deck, and she calls out to him as she sees him floundering in the surf. Belit’s sharp voice brings Conan back to his senses, and he’s able to put up a fight against his assailant,

Conan doesn’t stab the Sea-Witch or anything, but he overpowers her, and proceeds to drag her by her hair back towards the Tigress. However, when he finally climbs back aboard the deck, he finds that all he’s got in his hand is a mass of seaweed, the siren-woman having mysteriously vanished. Counting themselves lucky to have avoided death under the Sea-Witch’s spell, the crew of the Tigress head away from the area, and that’s where the issue wraps up.