Fifty-one years after the fact, it seems at least possible that the DC Comics title Weird Worlds might never have come into existence at all, had that publisher kept up its “Bigger and Better” experiment — i.e., a standard comic-book format of 48 pages, which sold for 25 cents — for a while longer than it did.  After all, the earliest DC issues of Tarzan and Korak had seemed to have ample space not only for the adventures of author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famous jungle hero and his somewhat less well-known son, but also for backup features based on what were arguably even less familiar ERB properties, such as “John Carter of Mars”, “Carson of Venus”, and “Pellucidar”.

But with the shift back to 32-page comics as DC’ standard size (“Now Only 20¢”), Tarzan and Korak could no longer accommodate all of those backups — let alone add any of the other properties that DC had access to via their Burroughs license.  And so, while “Carson of Venus” continued to appear in Korak (and a new feature, “Beyond the Farthest Star”, took up residence in the back pages of Tarzan), John Carter and David Innes (the protagonist of “Pellucidar”) each found a new home in a brand new title: Weird Worlds, the first issue of which arrived on stands in June, 1972. 

Under the editorship of Denny O’Neill, Weird Worlds was consistently a well-crafted and highly attractive package, featuring work by a number of generally enthusiastic creators who, with the notable exception of veteran artist Murphy Anderson (who drew the first few episodes of “John Carter”), were, by and large, young talents with only a few years of professional experience behind them at most (and often, much less than that) — a line-up that included Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Alan Weiss, Sal Amendola, Michael Kaluta, Dan Green… and Howard Chaykin.

Evidently, however, the high quality of art and story didn’t translate to high sales — or, at least, not high enough to defray the extra costs associated with the Burroughs license that DC incurred with each and every issue published.  And so, in June, 1973, Weird Worlds #7 (which sported a Chaykin cover) presented the final installments of both “John Carter” and “Pellucidar”, at least for the time being.  (Both strips would later return in Tarzan Family, the anthology title Korak was ultimately converted into.)  But the end of the Burroughs adaptations didn’t mean the end of Weird Worlds — because, as an editorial by O’Neil located halfway through the book explained, an “exotic, imaginative, action-filled, and unique” replacement — one whose publishing rights must surely have come a good bit less dearly than had those of the ERB stuff (not that O’Neil would have ever put it so crassly) — was already on deck.  It was “Ironwolf”*, a brand new series conceived, plotted, and illustrated by Howard Chaykin — and, if I’m not mistaken, the first solo creation by any artist or writer of Chaykin’s generation to be published either by DC or by their main rival, Marvel Comics.

After introducing the forthcoming feature with the superlatives quoted above, O’Neil’s “Weird Words” column offered more details — most of which allegedly came straight from “Howie” Chaykin himself:

A while ago, I phoned the artist.

 

“Speak, Chaykin,” I commanded. “Discuss your saga.”

 

“Sure,” he said. “I want to do a strip about piracy, war and rebellion.  I intend to combine elements of those magnificent swashbuckling films — Seahawk [sic], Captain Blood, Robin Hood — in a cosmic setting.  My hero is a man rebelling against a queen determined to sell the human race to a herd of nasty aliens from a distant star. His quest for a way to defeat the villains takes him to hundreds of bizarre planets — weird worlds.  He’s brave, educated, determined and desperate.  His ship’s crew are loyal to him and he’s loyal to them and everyone else interested in the welfare of his solar system…  O’Neil, I can’t describe all the stuff I’m putting in. Battles, beautiful women, eerie creatures-everything!  Tell the fans that anyone with a taste for high adventure has got to like Iron Wolf.”

 

Okay, Howie, consider ’em told.

And then, just in case any Weird Worlds reader of June, 1973 still needed more convincing, printed on the page opposite O’Neil’s text piece was the following full-page splash:

Honestly, your humble blogger didn’t need the hard-sell.  I was already a fan of Howard Chaykin, based mostly on his work on DC’s Sword of Sorcery — the assignment he was giving up to devote himself to “Ironwolf” (and for which his last work appeared the same month as Weird Worlds #7), but also for the “Tales of Atlantis” backup feature he’d all-too-briefly pencilled and plotted for Marvel’s Sub-Mariner title.  So, when August rolled around, it was a given that my sixteen-year-old self would pick WW #8 up, take it home, and after taking the appropriate amount of time to admire Chaykin’s fine cover, turn to the first page:

“Ironwolf” may have been Howard Chaykin’s sole creation, but while he was clearly in the driver’s seat, producing the strip was hardly a one-man affair.  Besides the uncredited (and, to this day, still unknown) colorist, there were also the hardly inconsequential contributions of Denny O’Neil, who in addition to being the feature’s editor was also its scripter — i.e., the person who provided the verbiage that filled the word balloons and caption boxes.

And then, there was the talent who actually inscribed O’Neil’s words onto the pages of Chaykin’s artwork — aka as the letterer — who, quite rarely for this era of DC Comics, gets a printed credit, if only for his last name: Simonson.  Yep, that’s Walt Simonson, the illustrator who was succeeding Chaykin on Sword of Sorcery, albeit very briefly (that title’s fifth and last issue reached spinner racks just a few weeks after Weird Worlds #8), stepping in to help out his friend and fellow artist.

In his 1992 introduction to Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution (a sequel to the original series), Simonson recalled the experience:

One of my earliest professional jobs in comics was lettering the first issue of Ironwolf. (!) And the logo design was a modification of lettering I’d done for a promotional piece for an ad. I still remember kidding Chaykin pretty hard about the 10-heads high figures he was drawing then (which is probably about what mine are now!). But I also remember being dazzled by the level of conceptualization within the strip…

Young Walter had a point — those figures of Lord Ironwolf and his Empress are pretty elongated, aren’t they?  Though, to be fair, the effect diminishes considerably after the first couple of pages (at least to my eye).

Chaykin’s interest in — and flair for — costume design, which utilizes distinctive, colorful elements from historical fashion but relies most heavily on his own visual imagination — is clearly on view in these opening pages.

Soon, the Empress’ men’s pursuit of Ironwolf and the “little miss” (who’s never given an actual name) leads them out over the Arizona desert — the text’s first indication that we are on Earth (at least for the time being).  Ironwolf tells his new companion that while they’re not out of trouble yet, but that the captain of the battle cruiser on their tail “is in for a nasty shock — the moment we get over the Grand Canyon!”

While I can’t claim to be either a physicist or a dendrologist, I suspect that the concept of “anti-gravity wood” possesses not the slightest iota of scientific plausibility; but in a romantic, swashbuckling science fantasy like this one, I’m not sure that it matters much (if at all)… especially when it gives us such wonderfully evocative, if entirely improbable, images like our first view of the Limerick Rake (whose name, incidentally, has been lifted from that of a traditional Irish song).

I don’t believe that we’re ever offered an explanation for why Ironwolf affects the garb of a Scottish Highlander — or, for that matter, why anyone fights hand-to-hand with swords when rayguns and other long-distance weapons are obviously available — but, again, I’m not sure it matters.

Empress Erika dispatches Lord Omikel to Ironwolf’s home planet of Illium, ostensibly as a diplomatic mission — but in actuality to seek information, using any means necessary.  Meanwhile, following an unsuccessful attempt on his life by a bounty hunter, Ironwolf — concerned more for the safety of the young woman “Missy” than for his own (it’s implied, but not explicitly stated, that the two have become lovers) — decides to seek refuge on that very same planet, where still dwells his brother, Tyrone.  Leaving the Limerick Rake and the rest of its crew in orbit, Ironwolf and Missy descend towards our hero’s home in a smaller craft called a lifeboat… unaware that Tyrone is already entertaining another guest…

Returning to the Rake, Ironwolf orders the crew to set a course for the planet’s forests — and for the ship’s plasma torpedoes to be made ready…

Did Ironwolf have some reason for choosing the one hulk stranded in the “Sargasso Sea of Space” that turns out to be currently inhabited — and in the nick of time, at that — or did he just get lucky?  Beats me!

Ironwolf takes out one of the two newly arrived aliens by using the sword of the one he just killed as a throwing spear, then dazes the other with a two-footed kick in the chops…

Okay, so the Garden of Eden bit with the apple doesn’t really land — but otherwise, this is a satisfying conclusion to an entertaining first episode of what one might have hoped back in August, 1973 would be a long-running saga… although, alas, that’s not what happened.

The next bi-monthly issue of Weird Worlds arrived, as scheduled, in October, 1973.  The lead story, produced again by the team of Chaykin and O’Neil (Simonson appears to have moved on by then) advanced the overall storyline incrementally, as Ironwolf and his allies attempted to assassinate the Empress in a scheme that involved them masquerading as actors presenting a command performance of Hamlet — a conceit which allowed O’Neil to add the cheeky line “with additional dialogue by William Shakespeare” to the opening-page credits.  The plot brought our hero into direct physical conflict with the vampiric Lord Omikel for the first time; it also delivered a tragic end for Missy, poisoned on stage while portraying Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude.  In the end, Ironwolf and Shebaba O’Neal managed to escape, having accomplished little — but with new scores to settle.

Despite the downbeat conclusion, “Though This Be Madness…” was an enjoyable yarn — though, coming in at 14 pages compared to the previous episode’s book-filling 20, it suggested that even a bi-monthly schedule might be more than Howard Chaykin would be able to handle, at least at the level of creative involvement he’d brought to Weird Worlds #8.  Other such indicators included issue #9’s cover having been drawn by DC veteran Nick Cardy, rather than by Chaykin or one of his contemporaries, and the introduction of a new 6-page backup feature, “Tales of the House of Ironwolf”, set in the same fictional universe, but 2000 years earlier.  The strip was illustrated by Vicente Alcazar, and carried a “story” credit for “Chaykin and Warner”; however, O’Neil’s editorial for the issue mentioned only the name of John Warner in association with the writing, and in a 2015 “Ironwolf” retrospective published in Back Issue #78, Chaykin professed to have “no memory” of assisting with the plot or script.  Whoever was responsible, it was a decently diverting read, and the artwork by Alcazar admirably held its own in comparison with Chaykin’s on the lead feature.

Around this time, something mysterious seems to have happened in regards to DC’s publishing schedule.  The month of December arrived, but no new bi-monthly issue of Weird Worlds came with it.  Readers would in fact have to wait another seven months before the 10th issue of Weird Worlds finally showed up in spinner racks — still brazenly claiming to be a bi-monthly publication in its indicia, and carrying an editorial by O’Neil that, while not offering any reason for the long delay between issues, nevertheless brought the sad news that #10 would be the last issue of the periodical.  The primary cause for the cancellation wasn’t poor sales, according to O’Neil; rather, it was a matter of “ecology”…. more specifically, the scarcity of one particularly vital resource: “We can’t get enough paper to print it.”

That editorial — along with the rest of Weird Worlds #10’s content — had probably been sitting on the shelf, ready to go, for at least as long as the issue was overdue.  According to this 2018 “Comic Book Legends Revealed” column by Brian Cronin, Weird Worlds, along with three others among DC’s lower-selling titles of the time (sorry, Mr. O’Neil) — Lois Lane, Secret Origins, and Supergirl — had actually been cancelled back in late 1973, the victims of a, yes, paper shortage occasioned by a number of strikes at paper mills in Canada.  The thing is, all of those books already had issues for which work had been completed, or almost so; and thus, once the strikes were over and paper prices had come down, DC went ahead and released those final issues to market, months after most of their regular readers had likely given them up for dead.  Which, basically, they were, as DC had no intentions of returning them to regular publication anytime soon.

It’s rather strange to re-read Weird Worlds #10 today, knowing that the title’s doom had been sealed by as many as nine months before any comics fan had a chance to buy this issue.  There’s certainly nothing in either of the two stories behind the cover (by Michael Kaluta, this time) that suggests that any of the talents involved expected that they wouldn’t be continuing their respective narratives in the future.  Indeed, Chaykin and O’Neil actually brought the saga of Ironwolf to a major turning point, as our hero learned that the revolutionary faction to which he’d allied himself and his crew was deeply corrupt — as bad in their own way as the Empire they were supposed to be fighting — leaving him, as the story’s final panel says. “a man caught in the middle”.  Meanwhile, the second and final “Tale of the House of Ironwolf” was obviously intended to serve as nothing more or less than the next chapter in a lengthy narrative, as a standalone, it’s virtually meaningless, though once again Alcazar’s pictures for the story by Warner and (maybe) Chaykin are very nice.

In any event, both storylines had reached their abrupt and unnatural end; but while the backup “Tales” feature would be immediately and thoroughly abandoned (as best as I can determine, neither installment has ever even been reprinted in the U.S.), “Ironwolf” itself would have an afterlife — and an unexpectedly twisty one, to boot.

Ironically, Ironwolf’s post-Weird Worlds career began before his final appearance in that magazine had even arrived on stands.  WW #10 was released in July, 1974; but a whole three months prior to that, the first issue of a new black-and-white comic book called Star*Reach had been published.  For those few of you out there who might not be familiar with it, Star*Reach was what was called at the time a “ground-level” comic — one that bypassed the traditional American comic-book distribution system in much the same way that underground comix did, but featured content by talents more associated with the mainstream, or “overground” comics industry; besides the different mode of distribution, these comics were distinguished by the fact that the creators involved kept the rights to their work.

While Star*Reach wasn’t the first ground-level comic book, it would prove to be one of the most important and influential.  Published by Mike Friedrich (who continued to write for Marvel Comics as his day job), its first issue included work by Jim Starlin, Steve Skeates, Walt Simonson… and Howard Chaykin. Along with one of the book’s two alternate front covers (the other was by Starlin), Chaykin contributed a 16-page story that he’d scripted as well as plotted and drawn.  Like the cover, it featured a swashbuckling space pirate who, armed with both sword and blaster, plied his trade among the stars in a ship called the Limerick Rake.  (Hey, it’s not like DC could copyright the name of an Irish folk song, right?)

Despite first appearances, Cody Starbuck couldn’t quite be said to be nothing more than Ironwolf under another name (and minus the Highlander drag); nevertheless, there was a direct through-line from one character to the other.  As the artist-writer later explained to Jon B. Cooke in an interview for Comic Book Artist (vol. 2) #5 (Dec., 2004):

Cody Starbuck… is, to a certain extent, an evolved version of Ironwolf. It takes a similar world. If you accept Ironwolf as the nobleman of that universe, Cody Starbuck is a bastard king. He comes in as more of a blue-collar guy in that position.

Chaykin offered another Cody Starbuck tale (and cover) for Star*Reach #4, published in early 1976.  Somewhere along the line, the material came to the attention of movie publicist Charles Lippincott, as well as Lippincott’s colleague George Lucas, who soon concluded that the artist behind Cody Starbuck would be an ideal choice to draw the comic-book adaptation of a new movie they were working on, called Star Wars.  (Perhaps you’ve heard of it.)  That project would come out from Marvel Comics in April through September, 1977; but before that, Chaykin wrote and drew a one-off for that publisher’s Marvel Premiere #32 (Oct., 1976) featuring yet another outer-space adventurer of his own creation, Monark Starstalker.  A bounty hunter who’s accompanied by a golden robotic falcon who serves as his artificial nervous system, this hero arguably shares less creative DNA with Ironwolf than Cody Starbuck.  Still, given the colorful interstellar milieu in which he operates, I think it’s safe to say that he’s cut from the same broad swathe of imaginative cloth as his two predecessors.

After Star Wars, Chaykin returned to do a few more Starbuck stories — in color, this time — which appeared in a Cody Starbuck special from Star*Reach Productions (1978) and in five consecutive issues of the comics magazine Heavy Metal (1981).  Meanwhile, his OG space-opera hero, Ironwolf, remained in limbo (with the exception of a single blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in DC Challenge #12 [Oct., 1986]).**  As early as 1975, Chaykin was telling interviewer Dave Sim (the future creator of Cerebus) that he thought his Ironwolf stories “stunk”; and they evidently hadn’t risen much in his estimation by 1985, when DC Comics approached him to let him know they were considering reprinting them.  By this time, Chaykin had achieved his greatest critical and commercial success to date with his creator-owned series American Flagg, which debuted from First Comics in 1983; he’d also returned to DC to produce a four-issue miniseries, The Shadow, that had controversially revamped that pulp hero, but had also unquestionably been a sales success.  He understood that there was now a new market for what he referred to, in a text piece that ran in the inevitable Ironwolf reprint collection (published in late 1986), “the early, embryonic (some might say stillborn) efforts of an ill-spent youth”, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it.  But DC editor Mike Gold, with whom Chaykin had worked with on American Flagg at First, assured him that although the “Ironwolf” stories were inarguably early work, they were still “good stuff”, and nothing to be ashamed of; they had integrity.  He asked Chaykin to take another look.

So I did.

 

And I’ll be damned.  If not integrity, then something a lot like it.  Certainly, the work is rough in places (LOTS of places) and I cringe at what passed for graphic design under my then-unskilled hands.  But hot damn, it’s honest work — and as enthusiastic as only youth untethered can be.

Some five years after the release of the Ironwolf collection (for which Chaykin contributed a new cover, as well as the text piece quoted above), DC released the three-issue miniseries Twilight — a deconstructionist take on DC’s classic science-fiction heroes, written by Chaykin and drawn by José Luis García-López.  The main focus here was on such previously bright-and-shiny characters as Tommy Tomorrow, the Star Rovers, and the Knights of the Galaxy, but Chaykin also threw in a nod to Ironwolf, suggesting that, having reacquainted himself with the hero and his world, he might be ready to have another go at him.  And, sure enough, the following year saw the arrival of Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution, a 96-page graphic novel written by Chaykin and John Francis Moore, with art by Mike Mignola and P. Craig Russell.

Earlier in the post I referred to this work as a sequel to the original Weird World stories by Chaykin and O’Neil, and in one sense it is that.  But it’s also a re-imagining of sorts, as it incorporates ideas (and even a couple of key supporting characters) from Twilight, and reprises a key scene from Weird Worlds #8 (the immolation of Illium’s forests) in a significantly different context.  That said, it does at least, and at last, bring closure to the saga of Lord Brian Ironwolf (yes, we finally learn his first name) with what’s about as close to a happy ending as you’re going to get in a modern Howard Chaykin story.

But could that truly be the end of Ironwolf?  Not quite — at least, not if we’re speaking of the character as a bit of intellectual property owned by DC Comics.  Almost twenty-three years following the release of Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution, the company released The Multiversity Guidebook — which, as indicated by the title, provided the lowdown on the varied multiple Earth’s of DC’s cosmology (which, in 2015, numbered 52), according to writer Grant Morrison.  Here’s what we readers learned at that time about Earth-37 (art by Jed Dougherty):

Yep, that’s our old pal Ironwolf on the right, standing alongside the Twilight versions of Tommy Tomorrow and Star Hawkins, as well as iterations of Joker, Batgirl, and Robin first seen in Thrillkiller, a 1997 three-issue “Elseworlds” miniseries written by (who else?) Howard Chaykin, with painted art by Dan Brereton.  (To the best of my knowledge, it’s a pure conceit of Morrison’s to lump the Thrillkiller characters in with the others to form a sort of “Earth-Chaykin”; but I’ve never actually read Thrillkiller, so I could be wrong.)   And while the DC Multiverse had been rebooted and/or refreshed any number of times since then (honestly, I can’t keep track anymore), and the number of Earths has been restored to Infinite, Earth-37 is still part of the mix — or, at least, that’s what Barry Allen’s notes say, per the back pages of Dark Crisis: Big Bang (Feb., 2023), and who am I to doubt Barry Allen?

So does that mean that we might once again see an in-canon return of Lord Brian Ironwolf one of these days?  Perhaps, though if that happens, it seems unlikely that Howard Chaykin will be involved.  After all, when asked by Back Issue in 2015 if he’d ever consider revisiting the character, the creator responded that he’d “rather snort paint”.  On the other hand, he has been known to change his mind…

 

*Depending on where you look, the name of the feature, and its titular hero, may be spelled Iron Wolf, Iron-Wolf, or Ironwolf (sometimes styled IronWolf).  For consistency’s sake, unless I’m quoting someone else I’m going to go with the latter formulation (minus the capital “W”) — in part because it’s the one used in the most recent appearances of the character, but also (and mostly) because I just think it looks better.

**Per an interview with DC editor Joe Orlando published in the “pro-zine” Amazing World of DC Comics #6 (May-Jun., 1975), it appears that a revival of Ironwolf, and of Weird Worlds as well, was at least briefly considered sometime in 1974-75.  Towards the end of the interview (which was conducted by Paul Levitz), a brief discussion of writer Michael Fleisher’s work for Orlando on Sandman leads into the following exchange:

[LEVITZ:] Which brings us to the curious case of CLAW, which started out as WEIRD WORLDS starring a revived version of the Ironwolf character, and went through a brief reincarnation as Iron Jaw.

 

[ORLANDO:] Coming off his success on SANDMAN, I decided to try Michael on a sword & sorcery series, so I had him read the Ironwolf books and come up with a sequel: He came in with Iron Jaw, which we worked on for a while, and he went home and wrote the fist script.  He wanted a Jonah Hex type attitude on the part of the hero, and I wanted strange worlds and a feeling of fantasy.  The end product was unlike what either of us expected, and although I bought it, I told Michael that I wouldn’t use it.

 

I gave him the choice of trying it on another market, and he did — taking it to Seaboard where they published it as IRON JAW #1.  It was quite successful for them, I believe, but it just wasn’t the type of series I was interested in doing.

 

I went on to try sword & sorcery with David Michelinie instead and we developed CLAW.

Setting aside the obvious fact that all three of these characters are long-haired guys with swords, it’s hard to see much similarity between Ironwolf and Ironjaw beyond their names, and even less between Irownolf and Claw the Unconquered.  Nevertheless, these later creations do appear to represent a legitimate part of the history of Howard Chaykin’s original space swashbuckler, however tenuous and obscure the connections between them all.