he two covers of "Savage Sword of Conan," both illustrating the famous scene from the REH classic "A Witch Shall be Born." The left one is by Boris Vallejo from back in the seventies, and the right one is by Joe Jusko for the current issue of Savage Sword. The seventies issue contains the actual adaptation of Howard's story by Roy Thomas and John Buscema. The new issue only contains a bunch of Conan short stories by current writers and artists. Good stuff, but I'd rather they'd just done a new adaptation of Howard's "Witch". For those of view unfamiliar with the story itself, it's about a good queen named Tamaris who is replaced by her evil twin sister Salome, the witch of the title. Every few generation a girl child is born with a witch's mark, and is left to die in the desert. An cruel act it would seem, only she truly is a witch, and very evil one. She is saved a wizard, and returns to get her revenge on Taramis, locking the real queen in the dungeon. Conan fingers her as an imposter, and she has the guard captain Constantius nail Conan to an X-cross out in the Turanian desert. Conan survives of course, the witch is defeated, and Taramis restored--but not before Conan slays a demonic creature Salome keeps and feeds her enemies to. And then our Cimmerian hero takes ferocious revenge on Costantius. The scene of the crucified Conan was incorporated into the 80s Conan movie, as was the Lin Cater pastiche "The Thing in the Crypt." The movie story though, is entirely different. The same thing was done with the red-cloaked ape from "Rogues in the House", for Conan the Destroyer.
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