Shoot the piano player drummer.

Also, I had to look up what a "catamite" was for this one, and I'm sorry I did. From 1989, Conan the Barbarian #221, "Drumsong" Written by Larry Hama, art by Gary Kwapisz.

No word balloons this issue, it was more like an illustrated poem. Which I feel like had been done more than a couple times in Savage Sword, but I associate it more with Groo the Wanderer. As was sometimes the case, don't ask where this fits into Conan continuity, but he was a pirate today, again under the nickname Amra, or "lion." I'm not sure he used that alias as much after the death of his beloved Bêlit, and he's also wearing a very un-piratey looking helmet, for reasons that will probably be apparent shortly. Conan's ship is hot on the heels of a fat prize, a boatload of priests with a golden bull and other booty. The pirates' drummer, a Stygian with a cobra tattoo, pounds out a beat for the crew to row after them; while the priests' guards whip their slaves to row faster.

Traditionally the Mitra worshippers were portrayed as benevolent, or relatively so; but today this batch is a lot creepier: they sacrifice a "catamite" and two pigs, with their "fey unholy knives, desanctified and dire." (A catamite being a little kid more than likely kept for sex stuff, which again, I don't think we saw happen often in prior Conan.) As the pirate ship gets alongside, one of the priests' men takes a potshot at Conan with a crossbow: the arrow ricochets off of Conan's helmet, into the drummer's neck. But even mortally wounded, the drummer keeps the beat! The pirates board their prey, loot at least part of the golden bull, then beat a hasty retreat when the head fat priest lights the "sacred oils" to try and take them with him. And the drummer still kicks out a beat for them to row to safety.

The pirates mourn the drummer's death, in their way: by having his corpse skinned and made into their new drum. I have to wonder how thick-skinned that guy was; could you even make that kind of drum with human skin, or would it be stove-in the first time someone really hit it? They may also have kept some of his bones for drumsticks, but I'm not sure why they kept the skull...that's not their cymbal, is it? Actually, now I want to hear them play a rimshot off that...