“In the savage world of Skartaris, life is a constant struggle for survival. Here, beneath an unblinking orb of eternal sunlight, one simple law prevails: if you let your guard down for an instant you will soon be very dead.”
By sheer coincidence, the second DC comic series I decided to check out had the same artist as the first. I wasn’t at all disappointed to discover that Mike Grell pencilled The Warlord, since I really enjoyed his work on Green Lantern. The biggest surprise for me was that Grell also wrote The Warlord, making this series a one man show, at least initially (other colorists are involved from issue 3). Normally I’d be concerned by an artist trying his hand at writing too, since they are two completely different skills, but I’d heard such good things about this comic that I remained optimistic nonetheless. Before I go any further, I really should point out that I’m a sucker for sword and sorcery style stories. I absolutely adored Conan the Barbarian comics as a teenager, and a lot of my favourite video games are fantasy-based role playing games such as Baldur’s Gate and The Elder Scrolls. If anyone’s going to like The Warlord, it’s me!
The Warlord Issues #1 to #9: The covers alone should give you an idea of how much entertainment is held within.
As I did with Green Lantern, I want to try and jump onto each series at an appropriate time, rather than just going with whatever comic came out with January 1977 printed on the front. If that means going back a few issues into 1976, then so be it. In the case of The Warlord, the first 1977 issue was #4, so I made the call to start from the very beginning. I was shocked to find that issue #1 was dated February 1976, so the first thing I did was look into why there was such a big gap. As usual, I found there was a story behind the series’ creation that was almost as interesting as the series itself. Grell had already been working on Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes for DC at the time, but had been tinkering with an idea for his own comic strip in his spare time. It would be called Savage Empire, and when another company made an offer for it (Seaboard, which published under Atlas), Grell thought it would be polite to run it past DC first. It turned out they wanted it too, and made a better offer, guaranteeing The Warlord at least a year’s run.
Mike Grell: Green Arrow = Warlord = Mike Grell!
Image Credit: Self Portrait via Odysstudios (original source unknown)
So far so good, but the first issue of The Warlord didn’t appear as part of its own series. DC were blooding new characters through a monthly series called 1st Issue Special in the mid-seventies. The Warlord origin story was revealed in 1st Issue Special #8, dated November 1975. It must have sold reasonably well and received solid feedback, as Grell was then given the full green light to start the series proper. He did so, and things were going great guns until he picked up a copy of issue #2. To his dismay, he found the words “The End” on the last page. The Warlord was over before it had really got started, and Grell has stated that he was never officially told of the decision or given a reason for it. Even at this early stage the series had gained some fans, and they wrote to DC to ask for an explanation. I’ve been able to read a few of these letters in the Chain Mail letter section at the back of comics #3 and #4, and believe me when I say that they were not filled with words of cheer. Joe Orlando was the editor at the time and he responded to these concerns after the revival, telling the readers that DC had merely needed some time to gather statistics to make sure the book was successful enough to continue. He categorically states that it was never cancelled. Grell however, tells a different story…
1st Issue Special #8: The Warlord origin story.
If you ask Grell, he’ll tell you that The Warlord had indeed been cancelled, despite what DC wanted fans to believe. So the real question is: How was the series revived late in 1976? It all came down to a new publisher at the company. The one that had cancelled the series so abruptly, Carmine Infantino, was replaced by Jenette Kahn, with the latter sitting down to read all the titles that DC had recently released to get her head around things. Grell’s The Warlord was her favourite of the bunch, so when she found out it had been cancelled, immediately moved to add it back onto the schedule. The rest, as they say, is history, and The Warlord would soon become one of the top selling comics at DC. The series would last for over 11 years, with 133 issues in its first volume.
Jenette Kahn: Saved The Warlord in his hour of need. A true comic book hero!
Image Credit: Portrait of Jenette by Michael Netzer via Wikipedia
It’s obvious when reading The Warlord that Mike Grell was pulling from numeorus influences. Conan the Barbarian is the obvious one, but the premise owes a lot more to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar than anything else. In that story, a miner and his inventor friend dig 500 miles into the Earth’s crust, discovering that the planet is really just a hollow shell. They find a whole other world called Pellucidar on the inner surface of the shell. It’s curved like a bowl (as opposed to the outer surface we live on which is obviously curved like a sphere), and it’s populated by prehistoric animals (including dinosaurs!) and humans. In The Warlord, air force pilot Travis Morgan is forced to fly over the North Pole after his plane is hit by the Russians. He unknowingly passes through a hole in the Earth, landing in, you guessed it, a bowl curved world populated by prehistoric animals (including dinosaurs!) and humans. It’s called Scartaris rather than Pellucidar, and within moments of being there Morgan saves a beautiful redheaded woman named Tara, just as she’s about to be eaten by a dinosaur. They become friends and lovers, but are soon captured by soldiers and taken to the city of Thera. King Baldur believes that Morgan has supernatural powers and treats him well, but the high priest Deimos thinks otherwise and tries to have him killed, forcing Morgan and Tara to flee. This is where things were left for the start of issue #1.
Their sun is in the center of the Earth?! My science teacher owes me an explanation!
If you cringed while reading the above, well you’re not alone. It’s a premise filled with fantasy adventure tropes and embarrassing scientific explanations. It’s as though Grell didn’t understand the basics of gravity. If he did, he chose to ignore them. I was therefore pretty shocked when I reached the end of my nine comic run desperate to read more! What makes it so good? Well for starters, Mike Grell’s artwork is really fantastic (in every sense of the word). The characters are great looking, with muscular, athletic bodies. The action scenes are convincing and manage to portray that edge of your seat quality that Frank Frazetta made a career out of. The double-page spreads that can be found in each issue are almost reason enough to buy the comic. But many dull comics have looked great, so thankfully Grell showed himself to be a real talent on the writing front too. It does have that olde worlde style to it, with difficult names and overly romantic prose, but as with the artwork, it’s filled with creative imagination, and pushes things forward at a speed that will have you gasping at every page turn.
It was just as well that The Warlord came out every two months to begin with. Grell would have needed all of it to produce this stuff consistently.
I can’t help thinking of Frank Frazetta while looking through The Warlord.
It’s hard not to when you see this painting.
Image Credit: Frazetta’s Dark Kingdom via Nerdist
More than anything else though, it’s the serious tone that Grell instils in the otherwise fantasy happenings that I really appreciate. There are no silly inserted sound effects or smartass quips being made during action sequences. Grell lets the artwork speak for itself, and doesn’t negate the gravitas of events by feeling the need to humour the reader. Villains get dealt with properly too. I don’t think a villain has survived for more than an issue so far, removing the whole “mwahahaha, I’ll get you next time” thing that happens so often in comics. The flip side of this realism is that our hero gets knocked unconscious no less than seven times in nine issues! Sure, it’s good that Morgan doesn’t get through every dangerous situation unscathed, but I really hope we don’t see him captured and tied up only to escape every couple of issues from here on in. In the end though, any series that can throw combat with dinosaurs, advanced Atlantean technology, Sasquatches transforming into hot fairies, giant snakes being defeated by jet fighter plane seat ejections, Russian professor babes trying to be inconspicuous by wearing stupidly skimpy costumes, and heroes flying to floating cities to fight robot hordes on the back of pterodactyls, will get my attention. I’m in for the long haul with The Warlord!
Seven Knockouts in Nine Issues: Seriously, Travis, wear your frickin’ helmet!
Grell movingly reversed the Beauty and the Beast story for issue 9.
I bet this never happened in Conan!
Trust me. Now the men won’t look at you.
The Warlord (1977) RetroCard has now been added to the RetroCard Shop. It’s a rare card, so therefore costs 60 smacks and has a limited release of 20.
The post 1977 – Smack 19 of 77 – The Warlord #1 to #9 appeared first on RetroSmack.