The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2117: The Warlord #5, February-march 1977

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 And the secret is revealed!

A couple of months ago, I read a book called Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific, published by the Rosicrucians in the mid-20th Century. Part of the author's contention was that Atlantis was actually an offshoot of Lemuria's much earlier civilization, though removed from it for generations. The same, it seems, is true of Skataris, it being an offshoot of Atlantean civilization, post-sinking but devastated by nuclear war. Which seems to me to be a bad thing to be doing when you've got a roiling nuclear furnace burning not all that far above your head.

But, yeah, Skataris is what becomes of Atlantean society when transplanted to the middle of the planet. A cool set-up, and I'm curious how much the Atlantis connection will come into play as the story advances. Of course, the clever twist at the end of today's comic, one that sees Morgan return to the surface of the Earth just having reunited with his beloved Tara, derails everything for the moment. He will, of course, get back to the savage inner world, but how might be a much more difficult question than his previous accidental flyby.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2116: The Warlord #4, December-January, 1976-77

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 As I noted yesterday, the speed with which this initial storyline concludes surprised me. The way it is talked about in the later issues of the series that I've read, I expected at least a 12-issue long epic of the rise of a gladiator to the title of Warlord. But it actually happens here, in issue #4. And it's the revelation at the end of this issue, something hinted at previously, that makes me think that there's something much more complex going on here.

I'm more and more consumed with the idea of finding some of the old Warlord toys. I'm sure they're ridiculously expensive now, but I've had decent luck happening upon such things in out of the way places. Though COVID has kept me from wandering much in the last while. *sigh*

We are promised next issue "The Secret of Skataris," another thing I imagined would be shrouded in mystery somewhat longer. I guess we'll see.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2115: The Warlord #3, October-November 1976

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And apparently there was a six month hiatus after the end of the previous issue, explained by DC as a matter of waiting to see what the sales figures were before plowing ahead. An interesting tack, but definitely a frustrating one for fans.

There is a lovely recap section in the comic, comprised of extended text pieces accompanied by lavish illustrations of previous events. It reminds me of P. Craig Russell's layouts in some parts of Killraven, a comic that I have now determined I must track down in floppy format. I like to set challenges for myself.

Today's issue culminates in Morgan being reunited with his abandoned jet, now crashed and being worshipped as a deity. Travis...dissuades...the lizard people worshippers from their belief, and loots the plane before returning to his army. The weapons he salvages definitely help him to achieve the title of Warlord, something that I thought would be a more significant portion of the story. By that, I mean that the raising of an army and the leading of a rebellion happened very quickly in the story. I feel like his ascent to leader of a gladiator army would be dragged out over multiple story arcs nowadays, but Grell whips through it because he's got a totally different story in mind from what we might imagine. For Travis Morgan's story, the ascension to leadership isn't the end of his story, as it might be with others, but the beginning.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2114: The Warlord #2, March-April 1976

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I figured it was time to start reading The Warlord. At least for a little while until I hit up some holiday issues.

I re-read what I'd written about this series before getting back into them, and one amusing thing struck me. When I read #1, I decided I was going to get the reprint volume, rather than try to track down all 133 issues and 6 annuals.

Except then I did track them down, and that's what I'm going to read now.

It's just so good, y'know. While Travis Morgan looks a bit clunky up there on the cover (wait til we get to some of the later ones - Grell draws a sexy, sexy Warlord), the story just clips along, giving just the right amounts of exposition, mystery, drama, action, and magic. One thing I brought up in my earlier reads was the amount of creative control Mike Grell has over the page in this series. He handles everything except colouring, and the result is a comic that simply flows better than the vast majority. There's something of the feeling of the auteur in Grell's work, which perhaps also speaks to the editing talents of Joe Orlando. A good editor will know just how much rope, so to speak, to give an artist. Mr. Grell, it seems, is a brilliant climber.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 338: The Warlord #30, February 1980

Short post this evening. I'm still making my way through The Warlord, and I'm still loving it, though I have to say that this issue's art was a bit....well, it seemed a bit amateur, actually. There were some moments that looked like they were drawn by someone with only a little facility in human anatomy, rather than Grell's usual practiced hand. I should check to see if it's a different inker, as that might explain things.

War appears to be coming to Skataris, and I'm excited to see Morgan as leader in war. I haven't read the early issues of the series, in which he leads a slave rebellion and earns the title of Warlord, so this'll be my first exposure to Morgan the general. I'm sure it'll be excellent.

More tomorrow. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 329: The Warlord #28, December 1979

Have I mentioned how much I'm enjoying this series? Yes? Well, I'll reiterate:

This is a really, really good comic.

Mike Grell is channeling his Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs with some definite panache, and crafting a great, pulpy series of stories that deserves to stand right alongside Conan, Kull, and any of the other great, manly fantasy heroes. The art is gorgeous (Mr. Grell does enjoy illustrating the human form, male and female, methinks), the stories are interesting and well told, and the world he's crafted(ing) is just lovely. Well, deadly and brutal, but lovely nonetheless.

Of all of the comics I've read over the course of the last year, this series is definitely the prize, so much so that I'm even now planning on keeping my eyes peeled for the Masters of the Universe-esque action figure series that spun out of it. And I'll definitely be checking out Grell's run on Green Arrow. I have The Longbow Hunters in trade, so maybe that'll be my next graphic novel contribution to the 40 Years project. You'll probably see that in 2020.

In this issue Travis Morgan is seduced by a giant cobra masquerading as a woman, and Mariah and Machiste are transported "eons" into the past of Skataris. Do you need me to say any more to get you interested?

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 322: The Warlord #23, July 1979

A couple of weeks ago I was going back through the early posts of my project. My methodologies have evolved over the last (almost) year, so I wanted to update my database with the info from the project's early days. I came across a post from about 2 weeks in on the first appearance of Mike Grell's Travis Morgan from 1st Issue Special in which I raved about how much I enjoyed the comic. A few days later I happened to stumble across a huge lot of them in a couple of quarter bins, and here we are. I'm still missing the first 20 or so issues, but the stuff I've got is really cool.

This particular comic comes in a small run of issues that are stand alone adventures as Travis Morgan seeks to escape the tragedy that follows his last encounter with the demon priest Deimos. Grell is quite obviously channeling Well's The Time Machine here, but the spin he puts on the Morlocks/Eloi relationship is pretty cool. There's an argument to be made that the story is simply derivative of the Wells book, but I choose the think instead that Grell did this as an homage to a master of the genre. Science Fiction and Fantasy are closely related, not simply by their fandoms but by convention of their respective genres. Sometimes I think superhero fictions are the offspring of these two. Skataris, Grell's setting, has elements of both, so to pay a bit of tribute to one of the originary texts of the genre seems to me, at least, to make sense. We need to know where we've been to know where we're going.

I've read a few issues of the title so far, and one thing has struck me: no one wears much clothing. Now, the sun is always up in Skataris, making it a warm place, so the scant clothing makes sense. Occasionally you'll see a picture of someone where obviously the person is meant to be nude, but the comics censors said "No no no." What I really appreciate about Grell's depictions of the people in this world is that it's not just the women who are skimpily dressed. Here's Travis from the next issue:

That, right there, is one sexy Travis Morgan. Kudos, Mr. Grell.

Okay, more quarter bin treasures tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 15: The Warlord #1, Jan.-Feb. 1976

A shorter post today. I decided that I wasn't going to wait 30 years before reading the next bit of Travis Morgan's story, so I dug this out of the end of the collection (buried under 3 other boxes. I've really gotta get some more of those drawer boxes). This issue is not quite the tour de force of the previous story in 1st Issue Special. I suppose that could be because, having been given his own title, Grell can start the slow burn of whatever story he's got in mind for Morgan and Tara. If nothing else, this issue convinced me to track down the Showcase reprint of the first 30 or so issues. The series itself ran 133 issues, so I don't think I'll be tracking the whole thing down any time soon.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this particular issue is a text piece in place of the letters page that gives a history of books written about the Hollow Earth. Grell's obviously done some research into the idea, as is obvious from the maps he provides that include distances and rationales for how such a thing as Skartaris could even remotely exist. Hollow Earth theories are kind of fascinating, in that there's people who still buy into them even when it would seem that they've been completely disproven. A little bit of research into the story of The Warlord reveals that Skartaris is eventually retconned into an alternate dimension, a move that actually aligns Grell's work fairly closely with one of the earliest speculative fictions, Margaret Cavendish's The Description of a New World Called the Blazing World. Cavendish's tale sees a lady lost in a polar accident and transported to a fantastical realm of half-human, half-animal hybrids. That this trope has been a part of speculative fiction since its beginnings gives The Warlord a certain cachet, and if we add that to Grell's facility as a graphic storyteller, which I gushed about yesterday, this series provides an important link between the literary history of the speculative tale and the considered and expert construction of a graphic narrative.

Back to regular reading order tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 14: 1st Issue Special #8, November 1975

Something occurred today that I hadn't considered. It makes sense, honestly, looking at the breadth of the project, but I had some skewed notion about the portion of my collection that I call the "Storage Collection," that everything in there was somehow substandard, that if it wasn't in my active collection, then it couldn't possibly be good. Surely I would have read it by now if it were good? It's an odd point of view to take, and the more I consider it, the less sense it makes. So today, two full weeks into my project, I'm excited to have discovered a piece that I really, really, like: Mike Grell's "The Warlord."

I'll say, upfront, that I've never really been one for the Edgar Rice Burroughs-y pulp jungle adventure hero. And even with this issue, I was wary at the beginning. But there's something about this comic. Y'know what it is? Mike Grell. Each issue of 1st Issue Special features a text page explaining the sometimes esoteric origins of the characters they feature. This one is a brief bio of "writer, artist and letterer" Mike Grell. That's a remarkable amount of the page that Grell has full control over. And it's really noticeable. The pages flow together beautifully. As an artist who is also the letterer, Grell has designed each  panel to best accommodate the text. But in turn, the text boxes are beautifully designed, and add an interesting Saturday morning movie serial sort of vibe.

I kind of love this comic. Can you tell?

The dialogue suits the tenor of the story perfectly. Morgan, and his barbarian friend, whose name is Tara (which is my wife's name, so that's pretty awesome), occasionally verge on cliche, but it's the kind of melodrama that suits the tale. Well, so far, anyway. Having read only one issue, perhaps I can't yet say what suits the tale. Perhaps this dialogue, this tenor, suits the introduction to this tale. I look forward to seeing what it becomes.

Speaking of which, I see in my magical database that I actually have the next issue, that is, issue #1 of The Warlord series itself, which carries on from this one. Maybe I'll read that, and have another taste. Otherwise, with it starting with "w," I'll have forgotten reading this one by the time I get to that one. That's an odd thought.