Conan the Barbarian #9 – “The Garden of Fear” – Roy Thomas/Barry Windsor Smith/Sal Buscema
This one starts with Conan and Jenna still fleeing after last issue’s troubles. They run into some primitive hill people who (after a brief fight) turn out to be friendly. Conan and Jenna notice a couple of nearby valleys separated by a pass, but the tribesmen are too afraid to even look in that direction. As Conan and Jenna are leaving, she’s grabbed by a winged creature and the hill tribe seems to think she’s as good as dead. Conan follows, crossing the first valley and encountering a huge herd of woolly mammoths. He walks through the herd without alarming them and
swims a river to reach the far valley, where he finds a green tower surrounded by strange white plants. A winged man with ebon-dark skin appears on the tower, tossing a hill tribesman off into the plants below. Conan tries to reach the helpless victim, but soon realizes the plants are alive … and carnivorous. When the winged man brings Jenna to the balcony and threatens to drop her, Conan knows he can’t do anything with the deadly plants surrounding the tower. So he goes back to the first valley and stampedes the mammoths towards the tower. They crush the plants and shake the tower to its 
foundations, giving Conan the chance to climb up and rescue Jenna. The winged man jumps him and they fight. Conan wins and gets Jenna down to safety, although she’s quite curious about the tower and its strange master. Conan has no such curiosity and they head out to look for food, since Conan dropped theirs during the stampede. This story was based on a non-Conan tale by Robert E. Howard about a modern man named James Allison who has “race memories” of previous lives where he was a hero of some kind. In this particular tale, Allison claims to have been a Viking-type named Hunwolf who saved his
woman from a dark-winged creature by stampeding some mammoths. Apparently, the readers were really getting into the Conan comic by this time and sales were up after previously dipping so low the title was almost cancelled.
Conan the Barbarian #10 – “Beware the Wrath of Anu” – Roy Thomas/Barry Windsor Smith/Sal Buscema
This one starts with Conan and Jenna arriving at a nameless city somewhere near the border between Corinthia and Zamora. They pretend to be fur trappers to get into the city, but the guards don’t really believe them. The guards are distracted by their captain asking for help catching two notorious thieves. Conan stops the guards from shooting the thieves and the robbers repay him by saving him when he’s outnumbered. They flee to take refuge in the Temple of Anu, which is sacred to the Red Priest who runs the city … and thus a haven from the guards. One of the thieves (Igon) was
wounded by the guards and dropped the loot, while the other turns out to be Burgun, the Gunderman Conan left for dead in the empty city a couple issues ago. Burgun introduces Conan to a priest (who acts as their fence for stolen goods) and when Conan makes a remark about looting the Temple, the priest summons a bull-headed servant of Anu. The bull-god almost escapes the spell and the priest looks pretty nervous after he banishes it. Conan introduces Jenna and she and Igon seem rather taken with each other. Conan and Burgun pull off a series of daring robberies and decide to target the palace of the Red 
Priest (Nabonidus), who’s the real power behind the city’s puppet-king. Conan is freaked out by the taint of sorcery in the place and only takes a sword-belt, but Nabonidus is pissed off when he finds out he’s been robbed. He tells Captain Aron to find the thieves or take their place on the gallows, so Aron bribes the temple priest into setting Conan and Burgun up. Burgun is captured but Conan gets away, vowing to rescue Burgun before he’s executed. Unfortunately, Burgun’s execution is expedited and Conan is too late to save him. Conan realizes the priest set them up and goes to the Temple to confront him. The priest summons the bull-god again, but can’t control it because Conan has
stolen his enchanted amulet. After a brief struggle, the bull-god savages the priest and disappears into the ether. Conan finishes the priest off before retrieving Burgun’s body from the gallows and burying it outside the city (after starting a fire in the soldiers’ barracks). This story is based on a paragraph at the beginning of Robert E. Howard’s “Rogues in the House” (which is adapted next issue) about Conan being betrayed by a prostitute and thrown in prison (where he is at the start of next issue). Roy took a bit of license by introducing Burgun and Jenna in earlier stories in anticipation of their 
appearances here (and he does the same with Nabonidus, giving him a cameo here before his main appearance next issue). Roy was forced to add a few lines at the end of this story foreshadowing Conan’s time in the dungeons, since the Comics Code at the time mandated that killers (even justified ones like Conan) had to be punished.