Roy Thomas's CONAN THE BARBARIAN: A "QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST" Retrospective, Part Two of Three

Read Part One of this series here!

Now that ​Bêlit was established in her own right and her relationship with Conan had begun to develop as their love had the power to even destroy a magician's illusion in Conan the Barbarian #68, we could really get this sea-bourne road trip moving. The next fourteen issues, from #70 to #83, would send the crew of the Tigress behind enemy lines for a chance to get to know Stygia, complete with its snake worshippers and Black Ring wizards. What may look like fairly standard fantasy adventure fare from the outside actually offers some of the best of what the Bronze Age of Comics had. The comic thunders with life.

It's instantly apparent from the beginning that there's a stark uptick in art quality right at issue #70. "The City in the Storm!" which the first in a two-part free adaptation of Robert E. Howard's "Marchers of Valhalla," sees inker Ernie Chan return to the title to embellish penciller John Buscema's work. Ernie's inks synthesize perfectly with Buscema's art to really earn the title "Embellisher." The full-page illustration at the start of issue #71 as an example, their Conan is powerfully posed and always looks great in motion. This is undeniably the A-Team at play: a Gil Kane cover, Big John B and Ernie Chan on the art, with Roy Thomas scripting an adaptation of a Howard story... 70s comics don't get better than that. 

---

These issues play a lot with Conan and Bêlit that further endear the pair to us, and each other. A brief moment between them in #71 starts as a power struggle and ends with a moment of quiet reflection. In the medium of comics, where space equals time, it's incredibly brief, especially that slim last panel where Bêlit is framed alone against the night sky, caught off-guard in a long shot as Conan has disarmed her. 

​Looking back, Roy says that all of this storytelling looks effortless, and you can absolutely tell the team's having fun.

For most of the rest of this period, Bêlit and the Black Corsairs head into Stygia, where Roy Thomas became the first person to really flesh the country out. In REH's original canon, it's seen in Hour of the Dragon, and we see lots of Stygians like Thoth-Amon in "Red Nails," "Xuthal of the Dusk," and "The Phoenix on the Sword." But surprisingly, most of the cities of Stygia are named but unseen. The black walls of Khemi, the capital Luxur, and the magician city Keshatta are mostly out-of-frame. But first, they would return to Shem.

Issue #72's "Vengeance in Asgalun" includes one of Gil Kane's "Conan is mad at you, specifically" covers from this period (they're all fun) and pits our pair against Stygians in Bêlit's home city of Asgalun. Disguised as a humble blacksmith his wife, Conan and Bêlit get to trade comical blows while in character. For this brief episode, Conan the Barbarian becomes part sitcom. Though the reveal is cut short by Stygian sorcerer Ptor-Nubis (tied to Thoth-Amon through the Black Ring), Bêlit learns that her father may still be alive before she escapes with her "husband."

Storytelling surprises abound in issue #74, which feels incredibly modern compared to the rest of the series. Conan is asleep aboard the Tigress when an extended dream sequence begins in which Thoth-Amon reaches out to and threatens the Cimmerian, who remembers him from issue #7's adaptation of "The God in the Bowl." It makes some sense for Roy to remind us of who will eventually become Conan's big bad and it adds to the Stygian menace if you keep in mind that, up until and including this point, Conan and Thoth haven't actually met each other in person. Since they don't seem to really have a personal history in REH stories like "The Phoenix on the Sword" and Roy didn't want to upset the original canon, he came up with the excuse that maybe Thoth-Amon didn't realize he was reaching out to Conan in his dreams either. Eh, I guess I'll take it.

The rest of the issue feels paced like a Modern Age book, complete with thoughtful character moments and a quick battle at the end on the black walls of Khemi. The Black Corsairs also pick up the recurring character Neftha here. She and Bêlit will in the coming issues do... well, I guess you would call it "grayface," considering how the Stygians are colored in this book. You can't see it right now, but I'm shrugging my shoulders pretty hard and grimacing more out of confusion than distaste.

Issues #75 through 77 take us to the city of Harakht with its hawk riding sentries for a fun three-part adventure that separates Conan from the crew for a time and leaves him "Swordless in Stygia." Ultimately, our heroes end up being part of a crew that helps depose the evil twin ruler Hor-Neb, leaving his more benevolent brother Mer-Ath the sole ruler of the Hawk-City of Harakht. It's nice to see that not all Stygians are snake-worshippers and wizards!

As the creative team did from time to time, issue #78 reprints Savage Sword #1. Roy freely admits they were forced to print a rerun because he was being lax with his deadlines. This time, it wasn't just a ploy to catch up with the monthly comic schedule, though, but to print a story that had been used elsewhere out of necessity. SSOC #1 was originally intended to be Conan #43, but had been moved over to Savage Sword since the planned adaptation of "Black Colossus" was taking too long and would be pushed back to issue #2. Roy wasn't too broken up about it; he figured that readers eager to continue the story from issue #42 would hop on over to Savage Sword and maybe get hooked there, cross-pollinating the readership to the new book. But he'd still wanted to see the issue in color, so he finally brought it over about 35 issues later.

With Buscema busy on Savage Sword and a few other books, the regular Conan title was going to see an art switch-up for the foreseeable future. Howard Chaykin, who had worked with Roy on his Star Wars comic adaptation in 1977, was brought in to pencil the book. According to Roy, he really only did the layouts, with Ernie's pens finishing the artwork so that it didn't look too different from Buscema's stuff. And Roy's right- they look about 80% the same.

---

This set of issues, from #79 to 81, adapt one of Robert E. Howard's El Borak stories, "The Lost Valley of Iskander." The original story features only Francis Xavier Gordon, who Roy could reskin to Conan fairly easily, but a tougher issue to deal with was what Conan's companions should be up to during this adventure. Roy employed those very-cool hawk riders from Harakht and simply had Conan help them with a mission that would take them away from the city. That would get him away from the crew of the Tigress for a while and he could get lost, solo, in the Valley of Iskander. This enchanted valley is somehow out of time (and enchanted? Conan can't seem to remember Bêlit...), with Roy explaining in captions that this "Iskander" fellow for whom the valley takes its name is actually our Alexander the Great, who has somehow already been here long ago, despite not yet being born for thousands of years. I'm reminded of an interview of Jason Alexander pushing back against an inconsistent character moment for George Costanza on Seinfeld. Larry David told Jason, "Who cares, as long as it's funny?" Roy seems to be saying to readers, "Who gives a shit, as long as it's adventurous?" I'm with him. 

​Conan becomes embroiled in the power struggles of the city of Attalan in the Valley of Iskander and though he clashes with the gigantic Ptolemy, he chooses to defend the city from invading Stygians and he becomes a hero for it. He marches out of the city at the end, somehow back into the regularly-temporal Hyborian Age where he remembers Bêlit just fine.

While Roy admits that Marvel editorial wasn't super happy with him (since "The Valley of Iskander" wasn't a Conan story, they had to pay extra for the rights to adapt it), Roy makes special note of the fact that this issue had the first advertisement for Marvel toys- in this case, dolls- featuring Conan alongside other heroes like Spider-Man, Hulk, and Captain America. He took this as a sign that Conan was not only a sales juggernaut, but a comic cultural one, too. He figured he could get away with the adaptation: 

---

"So I had the best of all possible worlds: I got to adapt REH stories, and I got Marvel to pay for the privilege. It seemed only fair. And Stan Lee and Marvel weren't complaining."

From here, Conan trudges into the swamps of Stygia.

With a two-parter in issues #82 and 83, Roy dares the extremely tricky task of adapting one of Robert E. Howard's most racist stories: "Black Canaan." Roy usually tiptoed around Howard's racism and qualified it by saying things like only "overly-sensitive" readers found it racist, but we can have intelligent, honest discussions about what we like in 2026; it's horrifically racist. I suspect that Roy somewhat agreed, because he does quite a bit of work to eliminate the racist elements and re-cast them in a less-outmoded way.

He gives Conan a line about choosing his friends by something other than skin color, and Conan actively dismisses some robbers' skin colors to the reader. He removes the conflict from the Black Canaanites vs. White Canaanites conflict of the original story and sets Stygians (themselves people of color) and the Black residents of a village called Viper's Head. In Roy's hands, the story still thumps with tension, fear, and sexuality, but in a way that lets you focus on the black magic and sexy siren lady who you know is bad news. Issues #82 and 83 end up being a very cool exercise in what Roy Thomas means when he splashes the banner "Freely adapted from..." across his title page.

---

---

There's a very clear delineating point between here and the rest of the Conan and Bêlit saga, which had 17 more issues to go. Roy and his team were about to introduce one of the coolest characters of the whole saga. The death of the Queen of the Black Coast draws near!

Read Part Three of this series here!