Conan vol. 16: The Song of Belit

Brian Wood’s run on “Conan” comes to a close with this volume, as does the title character’s romance with the pirate queen.  These last four volumes have been interesting in comparison to the rest of the ongoing series published by Dark Horse in the sense that they’ve been bound together by Conan and Belit’s tempestuous adventures and relationship.  It hasn’t been the most consistently entertaining run of “Conan” comics I’ve read from the publisher, but I’ve still been entertained and appreciated the writer’s efforts to do something different with the character.  This final volume serves to underline these feelings as opposed to changing them for better or worse.

As with the previous volumes, Wood keeps to the three-issue-arc structure and gives us two extended stories and an epilogue.  The first arc features art from Paul Azaceta, the artist of “Outcast,” and once again shows that he has a knack for illustrating stories with a creepy, supernatural bent.  His style works well in Conan’s world with Dave Stewart’s colors perfectly accentuating the unnatural aspects of this story, which involves the barbarian and the pirate queen getting their hands on a scroll that is desired by a cult known as the Black Stones.  After an attempt to fence it in a local village goes wrong, the two head into the woods where they encounter the cult head on in the morning.

It’s a tale has just about everything you’d expect from a good “Conan” story — violent combat, sorcery, the treachery of civilization, Conan’s triumph over such — and it winds up being one of the better ones in Wood’s run.  What seems to be a simple matter of Conan and Belit getting in over their heads takes an unexpected turn when the woman opens the scroll and… Well, that would be telling.  The story does wind up reinforcing the feelings the two characters share for each other in an interesting way, and features some fun extra details such as seeing how Belit deals with the man who wants to buy her from Conan, and the latter’s example of a Cimmerian bedtime story.  It’s about as grim as you’d expect.  Overall, this adventure gives us one last good time with these two before their luck finally runs out.

That Conan and Belit’s love was not meant to last a lifetime should’ve been clear from the start of Wood’s run.  (Or, you know, if you remember my review of “The Phantoms of the Black Coast.”  Just sayin’…)  My problem with how their relationship is finally sundered is that it works more on a basic level of storytelling logic than any kind of emotionally resonant one.  It kicks off with Belit, Conan, and their crew sailing up the River Zarkheba in search of an ancient city filled with treasure.  As is the case with any city lost to the ages in Conan’s world, there are a number of threats involved in finding it.  Sea serpents, hyenas, the hallucinogenic Black Lotus, and the last survivor of an ancient race of bat-people are all things that stand in the way of plundering this ancient city of its riches.

Now, I can get behind the idea that Conan and Belit were finally separated because after their years of adventuring they decided to push their luck just a little bit too far.  There were plenty of signs telling them that they should’ve turned back and cut their losses, but these two have always been predisposed to doing things the hard way.  What bothers me is that Belit’s fate comes off as particularly anticlimactic since it occurs off-panel and we find out what has happened to her after the fact along with Conan.  The barbarian’s response is as brutal as you’d expect, culminating in the man causing the oldest race in the world to go extinct beneath his heel.  I’m just disappointed that there wasn’t more to this.  I get that Wood is trying to make this event come off as particularly devastating, with Conan being unable to intervene here, but the passion that drove the character’s relationship with Belit is lacking at its end.

Wood’s partner on “DMZ,” Riccardo Burchielli, illustrates this arc and he does an acceptable job.  More than once, the characters don’t appear to be drawn consistently on-model, but the artist has a good eye for the detail of the jungle ruins and the extended battle at the end is satisfyingly brutal.  I actually preferred the clean linework of Leandro Fernandez in the final issue as he does a good job capturing Conan’s self-destructive angst as he deals with the events of the previous story.  There’s a lot going on in that final story and it probably would’ve come off as horribly rushed if Wood hadn’t started processing the title character’s grief with that battle in the jungle.  Instead, he just shows the character learning to get on with his life after being nearly beaten to death by a woman.  Which helps bring his run full-circle now that I think about it.

Even if it didn’t consistently deliver the goods, I still enjoyed Wood’s run and his tackling of the romance between Conan and Belit.  Previous writers of the character’s ongoing Dark Horse adventures have shown that there is more to him than senseless violence, and Wood continues that trend here.  If for some reason you’re a fan of Dark Horse’s “Conan” comics who hasn’t been reading this run, then you are missing out.  Even if there’s room for improvement going forward, Wood’s run is a worthy addition to the comic stories that have come before.