Out of Pod Experience

An old Marvel Conan the Barbarian comic had a Thanatos character in it. Some wizard made Conan find and loot his tomb. "Now go and find the Tomb of Thanatos and bring back what lies within, or I will invoke the death curse I have already put on you!" To which Conan answered something like, "Set-accursed wizard! I'll go, but your head will leap from your shoulders when this is done!" Anyway, for some reason this time Conan took some henchmen along. He didn't usually do that, so you knew they were just along for monster fodder. Kind of like Ensign Somebody-or-Other in the '60s Star Trek episodes. If they took Ensign _______ down to the planet, you knew he was going to get vaporized or transmogrified or something. Same with Conan and henchmen. One of them here was kind of mouthy, he was obviously the one who was in for something special. He was either going to: a) be torn asunder by a monster; or b) betray the group at a crucial moment, and thereby eventually getting himself cloven in twain by Conan.

So anyway, they got to the Tomb of Thanatos and opened it up. It's empty. No wraith, no giant guardian serpent, no altar for performing unspeakable accursed ceremonies. Completely empty, except... back in the shadows, deep in the cobwebs, there's a single ring lying on the floor. It has a pitch black stone with a death's head skull carved in it. Mouthy henchman leaps for it, and before Conan can say, "Back cur! Get back before I make a yard of steel and gouts of black blood sprout from between your shoulder blades!", henchman has the ringer on his finger. First the henchman's face shows the shock of disbelief, as his hand turns pitch black. Then it freezes in a mask of horror, as the blackness spreads up his arm. Then a blood-curdling scream emits from his lips, as the blackness covers his whole body (saving the head for last, or course). He's gone,and now there's just a shadow there. Just an inky black humanoid-shaped shadow, 7 feet tall. White lozenges for eyes. No features. Just a two-dimensional black shadow absorbing all light by the nature of its evil. A very easy job for a comic book illustrator to handle. It is Thanatos.

Well, now everybody's highly freaked out. All the henchmen are scrambling over each other trying to get out of the tomb. Even Conan is sweating. The hacklesat the back of his neck rise in superstitious fear. "Crom's eyes! What sorcery is this?!", his word balloon says. Thanatos grabs a henchman, lifts him up, and absorbs him into the hideousness of his devil-spawned shadow body. Now the thing grows to 9 feet tall. Some idiot disposable henchman tries to take a swing with a sword. When he makes contact, he gets sucked in too. That makes Thanatos even bigger. We're seeing a pattern here now. Spawn of Set and all his minions Thanatos comes out of the tomb and sucks up a horse (whose hackles were also rising and whose face was for sure a mask of horror). Now Thanatos is14 feet tall and coming for Conan himself. We know that cold steel won't kill it. If it can eat humans and horses and grow, probably sheep, cows and chickens will do the same. Just a trip to a barnyard could make this thing as big as the Tower of the Elephant. How can Conan possibly stop this demon-begotten thing?

Well, we don't know. The comic book ends with a picture of Conan in a corner, on the ground looking up, his barbarian sensibilities fully spooked. His sword lies on the flagsstones out of his reach. Looks bad for our boy. "Next Issue: The Track of Thanatos!" Unfortunately I don't have that issue. Logically though, Conan found some gimmicky way to defeat Thanatos. Either that or Thanatos proceeded to absorb the entire Hyborian Age. Sadly bringing a lot of leaping heads, cloven skulls, yards of steel extending between shoulder blades and great gouts of black blood to an end.

P.S. Couldn't make the linky thing work.