Conan the Barbarian #13 – “Web of the Spider God” – Roy Thomas/Barry Windsor Smith/Sal Buscema
This one starts with Conan getting jumped by some raiders in a desert oasis. For once they’re not after him, they just want his horse. After a short fight, Conan is outnumbered and left for dead. When he awakens, he swears vengeance on the raiders, especially their leader, Sarkon. Conan stumbles through the desert and after succumbing to a mirage (and almost being taken as carrion by a vulture in a scene that reminds me of Tarzan the Untamed, except Conan doesn’t eat the vulture like Tarzan did),
he finds a real oasis. An old man (Thanix) helps him and recounts how priests of Omm, the Spider God from the nearby city of Yezud, attacked his home and stole his only daughter (Lea) as a sacrifice to Omm. Conan offers to help rescue the girl and they ride to Yezud, where Conan quickly gets them thrown into the dungeons. Lea is there awaiting death, along with numerous other captives, including Tork, a spy from Shadizar who was caught in the caverns beneath the city. Tork mentions that Yezud sits on a huge fault line and could possibly be undermined with the right engineering in the caverns. When the 
guards come for Conan and Thanix, Conan starts a fight and Tork gets away. Conan, Thanix, and Lea are all taken to the sacrificial pit where Omm waits to devour them. Conan tosses the high priest into the pit and Omm eats him, but Conan is thrown in next. He manages to grab a sword and fights the giant spider, sending it tumbling down a chasm. Omm’s worshippers freak out and kill Thanix, throwing Lea into the pit with Conan. The whole place starts shaking apart and Conan realizes Tork must’ve done something under the city to collapse the foundations. He grabs Lea and heads through the chaos, only pausing to contemplate saving one of his tormentors … a decision that’s quickly taken out of his hands. Conan and Lea get out of
Yezud just before the entire city collapses. Tork meets them outside and offers to take Lea back to Shadizar with him. She accepts, but Conan figures she’ll end up regretting that since Shadizar is such a craphole. This story was based on a plot by not-yet-famous author John Jakes, who had already written several stories about a Conan wannabe called Brak the Barbarian. Jakes used Yezud as the setting, a city that was mentioned once by Robert E. Howard, but never described. It’s interesting that Conan doesn’t get the girl at the end, and doesn’t seem all that bothered about it. Maybe he’s still recovering from Jenna’s betrayal.
Conan the Barbarian #16 – “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” – Roy Thomas/Barry Windsor Smith
You might be wondering what happened to issues 14 and 15; I’m using the Chronicles of Conan collections for these reviews, so I’m following the contents of those compilations. Issues 14 and 15 (which feature the Elric crossover) will be in the next volume, which I’ll start reviewing next week. Anyway, this story is a reprint of a black and white tale from Savage Tales. It starts with Conan finishing off the last opponent in a fight between the Aesir and Vanir. (Conan is fighting alongside the Aesir as a mercenary.) Conan is the only survivor of the battle and is sorely wounded, but gets a second wind when a beautiful woman appears in front
of him. She taunts him and he chases her, but she leads him into a narrow defile where her brothers lie in wait. Conan kills them and takes up the chase again, briefly catching the elusive girl. But she appeals to her father, Ymir the Frost Giant king, and she’s spirited away. Conan almost gets buried by an avalanche and passes out, being woken hours later by Niord and the Aesir reinforcements. One of the men (Gorm) tells Conan that the woman he pursued was Atali, the daughter of the Frost Giant, who has tried for ages to lure men to their deaths under her brothers’ axes. Most of the Aesir think Gorm is full of shit, but Conan says the whole thing felt real … and he still has a piece of Atali’s veil 
clutched in his hand. Since this story was originally published in a black and white magazine, Barry had to redraw some panels to put more clothes on Atali (who’s basically naked in the original REH story). Roy also had to reword some panels to make Conan’s intentions less brutal; in the original, it’s pretty clear he wants to rape Atali when he catches her. Technically, this story should take place earlier in Conan’s career, around the same time as issue #1, although some REH chroniclers place it later for some reason.