Writers: John Buscema and Michael Fleisher
Artists: John Buscema and Ernie Chan
Conan is a thief in Arenjun and goes to his fence to sell a stolen golden statue. Only the fence betrays him to the guard. Conan manages to fight his way free and steal a horse with the guard in hot pursuit. He makes it to this isolated valley that has a race of Kushite dwarves living in the ruins of a city. Conan is captured and taken to their golden haired goddess and the shaman. The shaman finds that Conan has the golden statue which is of their god. He sentences him to be sacrificed along with the Zamoran guards who were also captured. Fortunately the young blonde woman falls in love with Conan and slips him a knife so he can free himself. As he fights the dwarves the statue of their god comes to live. The god starts to kill everyone including the young woman who help him. A giant stone eventually crushed the statue and this destroys the god.
“The Gift”
Writer: Larry Yakata
Artists: June Brigman and Armando Gil
Conan is riding to meet an old friend and saves an old man from brigands. The man in his gratitude gives Conan a gift and advice on going the long way. Conan ignores this and finds himself captive of a beautiful witch. She keeps Conan as her lover until one day his old friend comes in. He was also a captive and is now one of her demons. So Conan gets her drunk and slips out. He finds himself back where he started and the witch passes him without seeing him. Apparently the give from the old man was him starting over and not getting captured.
The big 100. This was a monumental event in this is the only black and white magazine series that ever made it to such a number. None of the others made it past twenty so this attests to the quality and popularity of the series. So was there anything special done? Not really. This was a good solid issue with Buscema getting another change to plot the story. It was a good story but not great although it had the excellent Buscema/Chan artwork. The backup story was also good but not great. It was a bit confusing as to the gift.
I will say that they did give us one of the best covers to this entire run. It is my personal favorite and very welcome after the shall we say substandard run of covers this series had. The series would continue on to another 100 plus before being cancelled in the nineties.
Comic book cave of awesome 