Conan the Barbarian #141 – “The Web Tightens” – Bruce Jones/John Buscema/Brett Breeding
Last issue, Conan was shanghaied aboard a pirate vessel by Lupos Davalte, a man he’d pissed off in a tavern brawl. Conan was forced to help row the ship until they stopped for provisions and ended up being attacked by giant spiders in the forest. The first mate Fhrank (who seems somewhat sympathetic to Conan’s plight but obeys Davalte because of some connection to Davalte’s wife, Theta)
frees Conan from his shackles and gives him a sword, enabling the barbarian to help kill the spiders (although Fhrank is bitten by one of the arachnids). The rest of the crew are killed except Davalte, who seems to be driven mad by the spider attack and runs off into the woods shrieking about being cursed by someone named Reimos. Fhrank explains that Reimos was Theta’s father and tried to fight back when Davalte abducted his daughter. Davalte had Reimos tortured and killed before “marrying” Theta aboard the ship. But Fhrank ended up falling for Theta and was looking for away to overcome his fear of Davalte 
so they both could be free. Conan has inspired him to be a better person, but they all know they can’t get far in the ship without a crew. Fhrank reveals that Davalte carries a fortune in gems with him, so they track him through the forest to a castle strewn with spider webs. Inside the castle they find Davalte dead and wrapped in webs, but they also find Reimos still alive. He tells them how he made a sorcerous pact with some elder gods and now wants Theta to join him in ruling over humanity. When she refuses Reimos has his spiders attack and Conan tells Fhrank to get back to the ship while he fights the eight-legged horrors. Conan grabs the loot from Davalte’s corpse and overturns a torch that starts the silk-strewn castle on fire. Conan, Fhrank, and Theta head back to the ship, but
are shocked when Davalte and the rest of the crew emerge from the forest to attack them. Conan starts wasting them and soon realizes the corpses are animated by some of Reimos’s spiders inside them. He retreats below to warn the others but finds Fhrank trying to strangle Theta. Conan assumes Fhrank’s spider bite has driven him mad, but he soon figures out it’s much worse than that when a giant spider rips free of Fhrank’s body and attacks. Conan is blinded by webbing but with Theta acting as his eyes, he manages to slay the spider. Unfortunately, there’s a whole swarm of spiders trying to burst into the cabin, so Conan douses some 
blankets with lamp oil and lights them on fire, making himself and Theta into living torches so they can run the spider gauntlet and dive into the river. As they watch the ship burn, Theta mentions that she wants to rescue her sisters, who Davalte sold into slavery. This is a pretty good issue with a classic sword and sorcery feel to it. Reimos was an interesting villain and mentioned the names of R’lyeh and C’thulhu when telling his story, giving this tale a Lovecraftian connection.
Conan the Barbarian #142 – “The Maze, the Man, the Monster” – Bruce Jones/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts with a ragged-looking man running for his life through an outdoor labyrinth, until he runs into something deadly … Coincidentally, this happens not too far from the port that Conan and Theta arrive at (Port Belthem) looking for her sisters. They find the slave market but of course Theta’s sisters were sold months ago. They see a man (Forbos) bidding a lot of money for some slave girls and hear that he buys every young woman they offer at the market, They figure he might’ve bought Theta’s sisters, so Conan puts her up for sale but Forbos is outbid by some
pirates. Conan pounds the pirates and offers Theta to Forbos at the original price, which he accepts. That night inside the hedge maze, we see one of Theta’s sisters apparently looking for a lover but finding something much worse. (It’s obviously a minotaur … even if the whole “labyrinth” thing wasn’t enough of a hint, we can see it on the cover.) Meanwhile, Conan follows Forbos as he takes Theta and his other purchases to his castle. Theta is wondering why Forbos buys so many women, but she’s distracted when she reaches the harem and runs into one of her sisters (Rhula). Theta figures Rhula will be eager to get out,but Rhula is 
actually looking forward to being Forbos’s next favourite wife (an honour she says the other two sisters have already had). Theta signals with a candle to let Conan know where she’s being held and he scales the castle walls to get inside. Rhula is taken to see Forbos and Conan climbs in to see Theta, but the other women freak out and call for the guards. Conan fights them off and they go to find Rhula, but she’s not in the bridal chamber (which looks like a real shithole). Through a window, they see Rhula in the garden maze being chased by something, but before they can learn more the guards bust in and take them captive. They’re staked out in the maze and Forbos tells them how he used to be quite the ladies’ man until he fell in love with a woman who turned out to be a witch. When he screwed around on her, she used her magic to link him with a bull in a
nearby pen, turning the bull into a minotaur. Forbos shut it up in the hedge maze, but has to keep buying women to satisfy its prodigious appetites. The minotaur shows up to kill them and Conan pulls free of his stake and uses it to kill the monster. That kills Forbos too because of their connection and Theta notices with horror that Forbos has the legs of a bull. This is a pretty cool story with a twist on the usual minotaur tale. Some parts of it remind me of the Xena episode Who’s Gurkhan?, where Gabi and Xena both let themselves get bought so they can get inside Gurkhan’s harem. It was cool to see Conan kill the minotaur with a stake and it seemed like Forbos was almost grateful not to be linked to the beast any longer.