Conan the Barbarian #4

"The Argos Deception," Part One
written by Brian Wood
art by James Harren
colors by Dave Stewart

"Do you trust me?" (Conan the Barbarian #4: 6)

It's easy to imagine Bêlit's soft, seductive voice teasing as she rests her head on Conan's thick, hard shoulder, her watery doe eyes hiding somewhat her wildness.  She has Conan, like she commands the loyalty of her crew.  Though he delights in his new life, his lover and her pirate world, Conan already suspects he is more alone that it seems.

The title of Wood's second Conan arc—"The Argos Deception"—is suggestively ambiguous.  Not only is it a grim echo of the lost merchant ship Argus, an unpleasant reminder of Conan's unrepentant abuse of their trust and faith, but it confuses the deception.  It is, above all, a ploy, plotted perhaps by Conan but just as likely by Bêlit who directs her ship and his sword, to pillage the rich city of Argos, a gambit to be invited into port by offering them the fugitive Conan as a distraction.

But the question of Bêlit's fidelity remains a shadow over the mission.  As soon as he leaves Bêlit's side Conan begins to wonder:  "But this mission, this deception at Argos...  ...he keenly feels her absence" (9).  He may be mesmerized in her company, but in the custody of the petty city guards and confined in his formidable prison cell, Conan begins to recognize his vulnerability for what it is, his one-sided trust as naïve and perhaps foolish.  Even when Bêlit bribes her way into his jail, like a Roman lady lusting after a gladiator, to reassure her lover, and even though Conan himself accepts her succor as offered without guile, her sincerity is difficult to rely on.  Bêlit is compelling precisely because she is so slippery and entirely unreadable.

James Harren's Conan debut is impressive.  His Conan is more weathered, his brow heavily lined and textured like a rocky crag, less handsome and impish.  His Bêlit more sinewy and delicate, less lush and full.  It's no more realistic, but it is somewhat aged and beaten, a shift in visual tone from Becky Cloonan's crisp universe of magic and winsome (if violent) adventure.  But Harren's greatest successes are his full-page splashes:  the Tigress and her entourage of sea birds slicing across the grey Western Sea; the final haunting silhouette of a night guard gazing at a vivid, glittering heavens as though to another world, a world whose reflection in the calm sea isn't quite the same; and the two-page opening of the Port of Messantia as the dark shadow of the Tigress enters the bright, bustling harbor as though in mourning black.  Dave Stewart's colors provide continuity, but Harren's vision of the city boasts far more detail than Cloonan's, a portrait of Argos that imagines the archaeological layers of the ancient cities built on top of one another and into one another.  If Cloonan's world is the one of Conan's imagination, Harren's just might be the world he inhabits.