Random Happenstance

I often say, if there's a full run of a mini-series in the cheap boxes, I'm obligated by law to buy it: well, I think I skipped Batman: Cacophany the other day. But I did get this run, that I don't think I had seen before: from 2006, Conan and the Midnight God #1, written by Joshua Dysart, pencils by Will Conrad, colors by Juan Ferreyra.

This was set early in the reign of King Conan, with a very pregnant Queen Zenobia: in an early scene, he's sitting in front of a mirror late at night, which doubtless felt odd to the barbarian. But his brooding is interrupted the next day, by the arrival of a delegation from Stygia: the "snake worshippers" are not given a warm welcome in Aquilonia, but Conan decides he needs to hear what was going on there. If you aren't Conan fans, well, Aquilonia was probably the mightiest and most prosperous nation of the time; while the sorcerous Stygia had been on a bit of a backslide: the ambassador, Ra-sidh, admits the Stygian economy had been wrecked by Thoth-Amon and they had been forced to seek peace. Conan is neither trusting nor especially sympathetic to the Stygians' plight...which might be worse than he could imagine. 

In a late-night drinking and strategy session with Pallantides, Conan grumbles that he'll probably have to start a war with somebody, just so everyone remembers Aquilonia was not to be stepped to. Pallantides wonders, if he was so disdainful of "civilization," why did he take over the country? Because he could. Later, Zenobia has a nightmare about Ra-sidh, and Conan tells the Stygian "to flee as if your life depended on it." Ra-sidh congratulates Conan on his coming heir, and when Zenobia goes into labor, Conan is about to go kill Ra-Sidh himself, but she begs him to stay, so he sends Pallantides, who tells his men it's not an act of war if there's no survivors to speak of it!

Ra-sidh proves more formidable than expected, using magic to kill Pallantides' men. (A more intense magic than Stygia's usual smoke and mystique; it looks like Ra-sidh is going full Human Torch there.) Zenobia survives the delivery, but the child is stillborn and not Conn, as longtime readers like me would've expected! Conan decides, it's time to unsheathe the sword of Aquilonia--its full armed might--and march on Stygia. No spoiler to say it doesn't go as expected, either. Oddly, in Dark Horse's main Conan title at the time, they were also doing a King Conan story: despite years of reading Conan comics, I don't have anywhere near as full a run of Dark Horse's books, so this one was new to me.