Product Description: Conan and Belit, Queen of the Black Coast, reunite with their pirate crew aboard the Tigress only to be drawn into the vermin-infested swamps of Stygia. In the dark depths of this haunted land, they battle for their lives amidst stately pleasure gardens transformed into treacherous dens of deceit. There, a twisted beast-king reigns supreme, his hordes of abominations descending mercilessly upon the Cimmerian and his lover. Together, the two shall face monstrous man-crabs and a sultry sea-witch, but when an ancient secret is unleashed it means only one thing for a member of their heroic party - death!
BELIT'S FINAL ADVENTURE Dark Horse continues its re-printing of Marvel's Conan the Barbarian series with Chronicles of Conan Volume 12. This trade paperback collects issues #91, and 93 to 100 of the original Conan series as Conan concludes his travels along the Black Coast kingdoms of the south and has to cope with the death of his beloved mate, Belit, Queen of the Black Coast. The Belit saga was certainly the longest of Conan's career, at least as far as comics go, beginning a few years earlier in Conan #57.
You have to give Roy Thomas a lot of credit. With this stretch of some forty issues over three years, Thomas managed to keep the stories fresh and exciting. Outside of only R.E. Howard himself, he is the best Conan writer ever. One of the things that Thomas did so well was to take many of Howard's non-Conan Stories and turn them into Conan stories. An example of this is found in Conan #99, "Devil Crab of the Dark Cliffs". This is adapted from the Howard tale "The People of the Black Coast" although the black coast of that story is not the same of the Conan tales. Howard was nothing if not pragmatic and he often re-used plots and character names freely. Thomas is pretty hard on this story in the commentary section at the end of the book and didn't think it worked very well.
It certainly doesn't have the feeling of complete helplessness that the original story had. In that story a lone man battles off wave after wave of giant crabs before finally, and inevitably succumbing to their vast numbers. Here, Conan, Belit, and several of their warriors find an abandoned Argossean ship along the black cliffs far to the south. They go ashore to explore the mysterious site and find a race of giant, intelligent crabs who have the crew of the Argossean ship held prisoner. Conan, Belit, and their crew have to free them from their prison and battle their way through a horde of devil crabs back to their ship. Thomas has a point with his criticism of the story...upright walking crabs looked just a little too ridiculous and one can make the easy assumption that artist John Buscema just wanted to get this issue done as fast as possible.
The final story from Conan #100 features the death of Belit. She is killed by a winged ape, a descendant of a once powerful race of winged men, which degenerated into bestial forms when their civilization collapsed. This is one of the very few times we see Conan mourn. Thomas would employ elements from this story into the first Conan movie. When he is helpless before the winged ape, the spirit of Belit appears to aid him, just as the spirit of Valeria did in the film.
The real bonus to the Chronicles of Conan is the commentary by Roy Thomas at the end of the book as he shares his thoughts on each of the stories. He has such a special bond for the character that I could listen to him all day discuss plots and whys and hows...
REVIEWED BY TIM JANSON
Finally the conclusion of the story of Belit Finally the conclusion of the story of Belit, the pirate queen, which began in Volume 8. As usual a nice job of coloring and printing these. It is frustrating that they didn't reproduce the covers. In his Afterword Roy Thomas refers to one of the covers which was sort of a spoof of a Frazetta Conan painting, but you have to go look it up if you want to see it for yourself. There is also a typo in the Afterword where Thomas explains that he continued to script 15 more issues of Conan "after 115"... apparently he meant to say "after 100" or "up to 115"... and the next volume of this series continues with those stories.
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