Conan the Barbarian #98 – “Sea-Woman” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts with a lookout on Bêlit’s ship spotting something amazing in the sea … a beautiful blue-skinned woman standing on a lily pad. Naturally, all the men (including Conan) want to bring her on board, but Bêlit is suspicious of her (either from legitimate caution or jealousy). When the shaman N’yaga assures Bêlit the woman is not dangerous, she agrees to bring the castaway on board, but Bêlit’s suspicions are raised
again when the woman (who seems to be mute) scares away a shark by opening her mouth and making a sound that none of the sailors can hear. Bêlit gets more wary of their visitor when N’yaga suddenly feels weak and has to retire to his cabin. But life on the pirate ship goes on as they sack a merchant ship and divide the loot. Most of the corsairs try to buy the mysterious woman’s favour by offering her some of their loot, but she offends them by turning around and immediately offering it to Conan. He refuses (more to save the woman from Bêlit’s wrath than anything) and she goes back to enticing the crew. That night, she’s on deck and tries to seduce Conan with her unheard siren call, but he sublimates his desire for her into 
what he feels for Bêlit, going below and fucking her brains out. The witch entices another crew member, who turns up missing the next morning. Bêlit is still suspicious, but she’s too worried about N’yaga’s mysterious illness to give much thought to the newcomer. The next night, another crew member is enticed by the witch and Conan watches as she lures him out into the open sea and kills him with a kiss. Conan realizes she’s some kind of vampire (or succubus), but she uses her silent siren song to make him jump into the ocean and swim to her. When she kisses him, Conan tries to fight off her influence but is having trouble until Bêlit appears on deck and urges him to remember her and the feelings they have for each other. That works and Conan tries to haul her back to the ship so Bêlit can waste her, but when he climbs aboard he only
has a bunch of seaweed in his hand. This is basically a filler story, loosely based on a poem by Robert E. Howard. It’s interesting that Conan’s love for Bêlit is what breaks the sea-witch’s spell, when many fans believe that Conan and Bêlit’s relationship was one of mutual convenience, not love. I tend to agree, but after spending three years together, I think their relationship must have evolved past just sex. Even if it’s not what we would call love nowadays, there’s no denying they have a connection that goes beyond the physical.
Conan the Barbarian #99 – “Devil-Crabs of the Dark Cliffs” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts with the Tigress sailing south, looting and pillaging as she goes. But the crew are restless since the constant fighting has whittled down their numbers and the constant labour exhausted those who remain. They want to either take a break or hire on additional hands, but Bêlit is too obsessed with gathering treasure to are what the crew thinks. They sail farther south than they ever have and near the basalt cliffs that give the Black Coast its name, they find an Argossean ship. The ship isn’t much damaged and contains the torn bodies of several crew members, as well as some baubles that Conan thinks come from Khitai. Bêlit wonders if the
Argosseans found the fabled southern passage that’s said to lead to far-off lands, but she’s more interested in the bulk of the treasure, which is missing. She leads the others into a rocky inlet, where Conan sends the crew back so he and Bêlit can check things out. They get a shock when they find a bunch of crab-men among a small settlement hewn from the surrounding rock. Bêlit still has her eye on the treasure that the crab-men stole, but Conan notices some Argosseans in a cell and wants to rescue them. He sneaks close enough to talk to them and learns from their spokesman (Florannus) that the crab-men attacked their ship as it was returning from the east and killed most of the 
crew. Florannus thinks the crab-men are highly intelligent, since they built the cell and its surroundings out of solid rock in a few hours after studying some schematics from the Argossean ship. The crab-men have been experimenting on the remaining Argosseans, so Conan uses their shirts to make a rope which he attaches to a boulder to rip the bars from the cell wall. Bêlit won’t leave without the treasure, so they slip inside the cave and grab it, but a crab-man sees them. Conan pretends he’s at Red Lobster and breaks the crab-man’s shell with his hands, but the rest of the monsters come after them. Conan crushes a few more with a boulder before luring the rest to their doom by opening up a steam geyser and boiling the crab-men to death (speaking of Red Lobster). The Argosseans reclaim their ship and Bêlit agrees to split the treasure, reasoning that news of the lucrative southern passage will bring
many more merchant ships for her to loot. Conan has a weird fainting spell but soon shakes it off and agrees to accompany Bêlit back to the now-empty crab-lair to look for more loot. This is another filler story, based on a non-Conan Robert E. Howard tale called “The People of the Black Coast”, which has no relation to the Hyborian Black Coast but certainly fits well with the current storyline. Roy took a few liberties with the story, which was an unedited mess that REH never got around to polishing. Nobody seems too happy with the weird-looking crab-men here, but this is pretty much just a filler story to take us to the big one next issue. As for Conan’s weird fainting spell, Roy says he can’t recall what he was setting up with it, and it naturally got forgotten after the momentous events in issue 100, which I’ll be talking about next week.