The Savage Sword of Conan #82

Bob Larkin's painted cover for this November 1982 issue sets an immediately gripping mood: a muscular Conan brandishes his sword against a caped, helmeted adversary across a stone altar, while a woman lies sprawled upon it and an enormous spectral hand reaches down from the moonlit sky above them all. The looming supernatural presence overhead gives the confrontation a genuinely eerie weight, perfectly teasing the issue's story, "The Demon in the Dark!" Inside, Michael Fleisher scripts and Alfredo Alcala both draws and inks — a combination that promises the kind of moody, detailed linework that suits Conan's grim Hyborian world beautifully.