ROBERT E. HOWARD'S MOST SAVAGE HERO -- MEETS THE HIGH SEAS' MOST TENACIOUS PIRATE QUEEN.
PIC INFO: Resolution at 1000x1507 -- Spotlight on ECCC [Emerald City Comic Con] Virgin Variant cover art to "The Cimmerian: Queen of the Black Coast" Vol. 1 #1, published by ABLAZE in 2020. Artwork by Kael Ngu.
"You are no soft Hyborian!" she exclaimed, "You are fierce and hard as a gray wolf. Those eyes were never dimmed by city lights; those thews were never softened by life amid city walls."
"I am Conan, a Cimmerian," he answered.
To the people of the exotic climes, the north was a mazy half-mythical realm, peopled with ferocious blue-eyed giants who occasionally descended from their icy fastnesses with torch and sword. Their raids had never taken them as far south as Shem, and this daughter of Shem made no distinction between Æsir, Vanir or Cimmerian. With the unerring instinct of the elemental feminine, she knew she had found her lover, and his race meany naught, save as it invested him with the glamor of far lands.
"And I am Belît," she cried, as one might say, "I am queen!"
"Look at me, Conan!" She threw wide her arms. "I am Belît, queen of the black coast. Oh, tiger of the North, you are cold as the snowy mountains which bred you. Take me and crush me with your fierce love! Go with me to the ends of the earth and the ends of the sea! I am queen by fire and steel and slaughter -- be thou my king!"
-- "QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST," written by Robert E. Howard, and first published in the May 1934 issue of "Weird Tales"
Sources: www.artstation.com/artwork/oOEPl4,