Daily Comic Book Mission #027: Conan the Barbarian #45

Greetings listeners, today I bring you a tale of woe for your daily comic book mission. You're gonna want a box of tissues when you read this.

Conan the Barbarian issue number 45 from December of 1974. The Last Ballad of Laza-Lanti. Which starts as any great Conan the Barbarian issue should start with Conan drinking himself into a stupor in a tavern surrounded by a bunch of drunken idiots. The dialogue is fabulous here.

"This night, Cimmerian's had rather more ale than is good for either him or for others. And still, he's not washed the taste of Red Sonja out of his mind from the previous issue."

They didn't go that far. Did I say that?

This is Conan at his best. This is the creative team at their peak, Roy Thomas, John Buscema. Crusty Bunkers is the embellishers. Buscema just nails this shot right in the middle of page two here. When you read this issue, I love the shot of Conan just drunk. He's got his hand on his fist. Just looks morose and like he's in a mood and he's enjoying this song that the minstrel is playing. There's a minstrel playing a lute in the corner of the room and what happens is a bunch of the other drunkards in the bar start to mess with them and Conan's like, no, no, stop doing that, I'm listening to the music.

And of course, they pick a fight with Conan because they're idiots. Conan basically kills all of them or at least severely injures every one of them except for the minstrel who stabs one of the bad guys in the back, and before they can escape the bar they're arrested by the guards and thrown in prison, where the minstrel named Lazzalante tells Conan this sad tale of the Dark Valley.

And we learn about this valley that this minstrel came from, where there's this crazy old woman or whatever and there's this monster and he escapes and after they break out of prison he wants to go back there for some, I don't know why. But he does. Probably says it in here, but I'm not sure. It doesn't make sense. That seems like a pretty crappy valley. It's like going back to New Jersey if you don't have a reason to. Just avoid it at all costs.

Anyway Conan tags along. And they go to this valley and they encounter a bunch of the locals who sacrifice their cattle to this monster because it's the dark valley. Obviously it's haunted or whatever. And when they're hiding in the woods and they watch this beautiful half-naked woman lead these cattle into a cave, and inside the cave is this horrific monster, and I love the way that John Buscema draws this monster. It's just awesome.

And this issue's got a great cover too. I can't, offhand, I can't tell if John Buscema did that or Gil Kane, but they're both awesome. But the monster on the inside is just terrific. It just looks like a puddle of mush with glowing eyeballs and antennae. And there's this awesome shot of the woman kneeling in front of it while it's eating an entire cow. It's just a gluttonous orange mass.

There's some really great words in here to describe this thing.

"Before some netherworld monster, some obscene travesty of life spawned only to feed upon life. It devours the cattle even as she meekly genuflects before it like some royal handmaiden."

Genuflects, man, I really need to figure out how to use that word in more conversations. Is everyone genuflecting up in here? Probably should figure out what it means before I say that.

Okay, check it out. Using the power of my Sega Dreamcast web browser, I have gone onto the world wide web and searched for genuflect, which means to lower one's body briefly by bending one knee to the ground, typically in worship or as a sign of respect. So now you know. Knowing is half the battle. The other half of the battle is figuring out how to use genuflect in basic conversation with other people.

That should be your "daily figure out how to use one of Roy Thomas's awesome word missions" to go along with your daily comic book mission.

And Conan and Laza-Lanti battle this monster. And like, I don't want to give away the ending because it's really kind of, it's really, this one really ends on a downer. I'm just going to say that, but to make this, I did a video on this one too, so you can actually see what it looks like on the website. But the woman is really sad after they kill the monster and they're like, wait, why are you sad?

And it turns out that she was in love with it.

And there's a reason why she was in love with it. And maybe there's a connection. What secrets, what dark secrets does she hold? And did the monster hold? And what's their relation to Laza-Lanti?

And in the end, Conan just rides away and kind of, you know, sullen, just wants to go out and get drunk again. So that sets the stage for issue 46.

I've just been hanging out with my Conan books. As the world falls apart, I've been organizing them and writing stuff on the website. That's why we get some back-to-back Conans here on your daily, well mostly daily, mostly daily comic book missions. Still got some other stuff I have to do. Now you have something to do.

Your mandatory required reading is Conan the Barbarian issue number 45.

These 70s Conans are pretty cheap, easy to collect, they're a lot of fun and the artwork is just gorgeous. Everything about it is great. But I love this era of Conan and I think everybody else does too so it's really good. So check it out, Conan the Barbarian issue number 45, your daily comic book mission from ComicBook.beer.

You may now genuflect.