5As CONAN THE BARBARIAN closed out the 1980s, it was a time of transition for the title - with storytelling innovations coming from veteran creators and new talent alike! In Val Semeiks' climactic run on the title, Conan weighs pleasure and pain in a magical desert city, wrests the Blade of Zed from a mad cleric and runs a gantlet of fantastic beasts in a city of shadows. Larry Hama delivers the elegiac verse of "Drumsong," while Don Perlin writes and draws the Western-styled "The Mask of Vengeance." Gerry Conway makes Conan a cat's paw to a cult of cat people, and Michael Higgins turns back the clock for an eight-issue storyline exploring Conan's formative years in Cimmeria! Collecting CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1970) #214-240 and WHAT IF? (1989) #16.