The Savage Sword of Conan #127

This August 1986 black-and-white Marvel magazine puts Conan front and center atop a stone altar, muscles straining as he shatters his chains — a woman in white looks on nearby while a helmeted figure cowers and a massive, skull-adorned serpent coils at the base of the steps in the churning mist below. Peter Manko's painted cover work gives the whole scene a brooding, atmospheric weight that suits the barbarian's world perfectly. "Reunion in Scarlet," with interiors by writer Charles Dixon and artist Pablo Marcos, promises exactly the kind of sword-and-sorcery tension this cover so vividly sets up.