Conan the Barbarian #121 – “The Price of Perfection” – J.M. DeMatteis/John Buscema/Bob McLeod
This one starts with Conan in Khorshemish, hanging out with a couple of doxies. He sees a huge man getting attacked by thieves in an alley and runs to help after noticing a beautiful woman is also under attack. Conan routs the thieves, but the giant (Atreah) saves him from a knife in the back. The lady (Prem) tells him she came to Khorshemish to find Atreah. who’s her brother (and mute) and invites Conan to accompany her back to her home. He’s eager to go until she uses sorcery to summon a couple of guards
and four Pegasi. Conan’s mistrust of magic is overcome by Prem’s beauty and he rides with her to a settlement in the clouds called Mreead-Zza. The city is magnificent (although one building gives Conan the creeps) and Prem’s father King Pragma is glad to see his son and daughter returned safely. But Conan quickly realizes he’s in trouble when Prem tells her father she wants Conan as a possession and before he can escape, the court wizard (Siddhia) knocks him out. When he wakes, he has no memory of being Conan but thinks he’s Prem’s betrothed, Kalna-Fakir. She takes him around the city and fills him in on her people’s history. (Basically, they were a primitive tribe who prayed to a dark goddess and were raised up in exchange.) Since Conan’s memory has 
been suppressed, he accepts what Prem tells him and settles into life at the palace, although his barbaric instincts sometimes shine through. One night, Prem takes him to the dark temple that freaked him out when he first saw it, telling him it’s time to repay the goddess for her benevolence. Turns out Atreah is to be sacrificed to the goddess and apparently he was trying to run away when Conan met him nd Prem in Khorshemish. Conan is upset to find out he helped bring Atreah home just to be sacrificed and when the giant disappears during the ritual, Conan demands to know where he’s gone. He follows the trail to a volcano and finds the goddess about to claim Atreah’s soul. Conan refuses to allow it and she attacks, forcing him to kill her. When he and Atreah
return to the city, they find everyone has regressed to a primitive state and are killing each other. As the city crumbles, Conan and Atreah flee and land just before their Pegasus disappears too. This is a pretty good story, although I wish DeMatteis would tone down the sorcery for an issue or two. Despite the stupid name, Mreead-Zza is a pretty cool-looking city with a very Middle Eastern aesthetic, like something out of the Arabian Nights. Conan refusing to sacrifice an innocent even when he has amnesia fits his character, since his inherent sense of honour is something that can’t easily be suppressed.
Conan the Barbarian #122 – “The City Where Time Stood Still” – J.M. DeMatteis/John Buscema/Bob McLeod
This one starts with Conan and Atreah wandering the mountains and trying to figure out where they are, since they had little choice of landing spots last issue. A chance encounter with a frightened horseman lets Conan know they’re in Ophir (where Conan has been before), but the man tells him not to go near the city of Pergona because it’s cursed. Conan doesn’t listen and heads straight for Pergona, where he finds something quite strange … all the citizens are alive but unmoving, as if they’ve been
frozen in time. Conan ponders things while helping himself to some ale at the local tavern and is startled to find he and Atreah aren’t the only ones moving in the city. A couple of young punks (Jonnwalli and Dukenrik) are taking advantage of the weird circumstances to help themselves to some loot and take a few liberties with some frozen maidens. Conan realizes they’re petty thieves (or would-be adventurers) and decides to give them a few pointers on the fine art of theft. They don’t notice that a baleful presence is watching from the shadows, but they do notice when a bunch of the frozen villagers animate and attack them. Conan and the others pound their silent attackers, 
but end up being herded towards the royal palace, where the townsfolk mysteriously return to their frozen state. They find a small girl who seems to be immune to the stasis and bring her along as they go inside the palace to look for loot. They find a secret passage to some chambers beneath the palace, where they meet Nareobbo, a former priest who obligingly tells them his backstory. He was a minor priest in the city, subservient to a priest called Shuin-Shann, who was exiled thanks to rumours Nareobbo started. Shuin-Shann used magic and half of an amulet to attempt revenge, but Nareobbo has the other half of the amulet to protect himself from Shuin-Shann’s spells. But he points out that Shuin-Shann can change his appearance and cloud minds, so he’s definitely one of Conan’s party in disguise. When Conan tries to leave (as sick of these sorcery stories as I am), he’s blocked by a wall of fire and ends up attacking
Nareobbo, who turns out to be pretty handy with a sword. Nareobbo uses a fake amulet to figure out who Shuin-Shann really is, but the old wizard is way ahead of him and uses his own powers to control Jonnwalli and the little girl, who ends up stabbing Nareobbo in the back. Shuin-Shann (who was disguised as the girl’s dog) claims both halves of the amulet and repares to destroy the whole city. But Atreah knocks one half of the amulet from his hand and it gets buried under the rubble. Shuin-Shann uses his powers to take Jonnwalli’s form again and since Conan is trapped under some rocks, he urges Dukenrik to kill the priest. Dukenrik can’t kill someone who looks like his brother, so Conan breaks free and slams the disguised priest into the wall, breaking the spell. With Shuin-Shann dead, the villagers are freed from their paralysis and some guards arrive to take Conan and his friends into custody. This is another issue that relies on sorcery to drive the plot and I’m pretty tired of that. It was nice to see Atreah contribute, but everyone else was pretty much just there to confuse things.