Don't get high on your own supply. Or eat the guy that's high on his own supply...

I'm positive I had a subscription by this point, but aside from the cover looking familiar I had no recollection of this one. That's not to say it was bad, though! From 1989, Conan the Barbarian #224, "He Who Hungers!" Written by Larry Hama, pencils by Geoff Senior, inks by Steve Buccellato.

I had to check the year, since I thought this might be a Predator riff: after a mercenary legion is routed in Kipchak, only five survived to try and escape, and things weren't looking good. It's the dead of winter, no game to be had, and the band is still deep in enemy territory: bowman Thorg, Stygian lotus-eater Faheed, warrior woman Gudrun, Captain Gavrilo, and Conan. You could probably make a pretty good guess who's going to make it out of this one...

Gavrilo is wounded in a skirmish with a Kipchak foraging party, but before they can claim their booty, a horde of wolves overruns them, killing Thorg. The rest are cornered and ready to fight to the end, when a howl, not from the wolves, seemingly scares them off. That night in the forest, Gavrilo, poisoned by his wounds, raves about how they were just "meat" to whatever stalked the forest. Gudrun asks Faheed to share his black lotus with the dying man, and Faheed claims to be out. Sure enough, there is a creature in the woods, a huge wolf-man style beast. Who is cannier than he would seem, since he doesn't attack outright, he knocks half of their woodpile into the forest, so they won't have enough to keep the fire going until dawn to keep it back.

Conan takes Gudrun--whom he can trust--to re-gather the wood, but the creature circles around the cleaning, and kills Gavrilo as Faheed flees. Conan chokes Faheed, and might be about to finish him when the monster throws Gavrilo's corpse back: with the gangrene or blood poisoning, he wasn't good eating. Gudrun considers them all dead, but refuses to "go to the hall of fallen warriors with a sword-debt unpaid on my soul!" Running towards the monster, she throws herself on her sword, intent on sacrificing herself to give Conan time to flee. The monster won't take her either, apparently wanting a fresh kill. Panicked, Faheed cracks open his black lotus stash; furious, Conan crams most of it down Faheed's throat...and it's fast-acting stuff. Faheed's mind is long-gone by the time the monster gets him, and Conan takes off running. Finally exhausted, Conan collapses on the ice...

...only to awaken to the monster! Whose mind is just as gone as Faheed's, and Conan decapitates it in short order. He's set for the winter's journey home then, with a nice new fur, and a pile of meat with the black lotus cooked out of it. I don't know if this was completely a Predator-type story then; but that movie would've been a lot different if Arnold had eaten that thing...