Conan the Barbarian #181 – “Maddoc’s Reign” – Jim Owsley/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts at the gates of El Shah Maddoc, a city whose conqueror disappeared five years ago and where corruption has since taken hold under his successor. Conan wants in and pounds the gate guards to convince them. Before it can turn into outright slaughter, a woman (Swan) lounging by the gates grants Conan asylum and leave to enter the city. Since Swan is a favourite of the king, the guards can’t argue, although they
are a bit bothered when Conan calls to Keiv (still a shambling green monster) to enter the city with him. Before he enters, Swan gives him some weird double-talk about the king, claiming to be some kind of prophetess. Conan and Keiv find the king’s tower and Conan thinks he sees Tetra standing near the top but assumes he must been mistaken. They find King Maddoc II in the arena, wasting some poor bastard in front of the crowd to prove his manhood … or godhood, as Maddoc claims to be descended from the gods himself. Conan is 
unimpressed by the king’s show of force and refuses to bow, which gets him attacked by some soldiers. Swan advises the king to hear Conan out and Conan warns him about Imhotep and his demonic hordes coming to wipe the city off the map. But Maddoc is too proud (or arrogant) to listen to the warning, so he tells Conan to piss off. Swan tells Maddoc that Conan’s words are true, so he sends his warlord (Shapur) to stop Conan before he leaves town. Conan mistakes Shapur’s haughty manner for a challenge and starts a fight, which he and Keiv win quite easily. Before Conan can kill Shapur, Swan stops him and
mentions the king wants him to go up into the tower and find the signet ring belonging to the missing king. Conan isn’t inclined to cooperate until Keiv points out how rewarding it could be … and Conan admits to himself that he’s wanted to check out the tower ever since he saw Tetra there. Conan makes his way up the inner stairs and gets jumped by a shaggy monster that almost kills him. He stabs it with a discarded dagger and decides to finish his climb by scaling the outside of the tower. At the top, he finds the missing king (Maddoc I), now a gibbering mess. Maddoc Senior is wearing the signet ring (which he says he took from the old king when he overthrew him), so Conan just brings 
Maddoc himself back to his son. Maddoc II is so impressed he immediately proclaims Conan his new warlord, which naturally pisses off Shapur. As the court celebrates, we see Tetra at the top of the tower gloating that her plan is succeeding. Apparently she wanted Conan to be made warlord so she can get her revenge on him, and she still has the witch-queen’s daughters to help her. This is a pretty good issue, although I’m not sure why Tetra has become so evil. It can’t just be because Conan spurned her love (at least I hope not), so maybe acquiring her sorcerous power by beheading the witch-queen has corrupted her.
Conan the Barbarian #182 – “Testament” – Jim Owsley/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts a few weeks after the above issue, with Conan still settling in as Maddoc’s warlord. After giving his page (Jahli) a lesson on responsibility and courage, Conan delights the lad by allowing him to come along on his next expedition. Jahli’s mother (Anneka) isn’t quite so thrilled, but she is sent along on the mission so she figures she can keep an eye on Jahli herself. Jahli’s grandfather just happens to be Shapur, the man Conan displaced as warlord and who still holds a grudge over it. Conan humiliates Shapur when he’s disrespectful, which
makes the rest of Conan’s men realize they’d better not piss him off. In the palace, Tetra appears before Maddoc II and says she wants to help him get rid of Conan, whom Maddoc despises for publicly placing him in his debt by rescuing his father. Maddoc is his usual arrogant self, but soon wises up when Tetra conjures some snakes in his bath. Meanwhile, Maddoc has sent Conan to root out some M’gai bandits. Conan is supposed to have a thousand trained men, but he his army turns out to be drunks and criminals pulled from the dungeons, and the M’gai have several thousand men scattered throughout 
the area. After killing a couple of scouts, Conan sends Jahli back to the castle and calls together his “army”. He ends up disarming most of Shapur’s men (not trusting them too far) and dismissing most of the rabble from his own army, except for those who were in the dungeons for murder. He tells them Maddoc wants to sacrifice all of them to get rid of him and proposes they take care of the M’gai, then head back and take Maddoc down as well. An M’gai ambassador arrives to offer Conan safe passage away (since they revere him as Amra Lion of the Black Coast), but Conan refuses, saying he won’t leave his men behind. That impresses all the killers in his cohort (including Shapur) and they all pledge their loyalty to him. Turns out the M’gai “ambassador” was actually their leader and was trying to separate Conan from his men to kill
him more easily, but he saw through the ruse. The M’gai attack in force but Conan and the Kothians ambush them and light the grass on fire to confuse them. The M’gai start to win by sheer force of numbers, but their leader suddenly calls a retreat and the surviving M’gai take off. Conan has some suspicions about Anneka and her son, but before he can question her too closely, Imhotep and his demons arrive. This is a pretty good story, with some good battle action. The stuff with Anneka and her son is a bit confusing, but it seems like Jahli might be Maddoc’s child and he sent Shapur, Anneka, and Jahli to die with Conan because he doesn’t want Jahli to have a claim to the throne … at least that’s my interpretation. We’ll have to wait and see if I’m right.