Back in June, we took a look at Captain Marvel #34, which was the last issue drawn and plotted by Jim Starlin. As we discussed in that post, Starlin abruptly quit the series after delivering only one chapter of his first post-“Thanos War” storyline, unhappy with Marvel Comics’ seeming unwillingness, or inability, to give him a single consistent inker on the bi-monthly title.
Per remarks the creator has made in interviews over the years, his leaving Captain Marvel amounted to his leaving Marvel, period, at least for a little while. As he explained in 1998 for an interview published in Comic Book Artist #2:
I’d quit Marvel and I went out to California for a week or two to hang out with some friends. I came back and [editor-in-chief] Roy a[Thomas] sked me what I wanted to do. I’d thought about it the night before, and I said, “How about letting me do ‘Warlock’?” That night I went home and started drawing it. It was as simple as that.
Given that there was ultimately a five-month gap between the release of Captain Marvel #34 and Starlin’s initial “Warlock” story, that “simple” transition from one cosmic opus to another seems to have taken a while to draw (and write). Not that the creator was otherwise completely idle throughout this period, as he did lend his hand to several other projects at Marvel during these months; these included co-plotting and doing layouts for a 32-page story in Giant-Size Defenders #3, as well as drawing a few pages for series he’d been associated with in the past — more specifically, for Master of Kung Fu #24 and (somewhat ironically) Captain Marvel #36… all of which saw print prior to the publication of Strange Tales #178 in late November.
Perhaps it was Marvel’s decision to use Strange Tales for the relaunch of Adam Warlock, rather than revive the character in his own titular series (which had ended with issue #8 back in July, 1973), that accounted for the delay. As regular readers of this blog may recall, in June, 1973 the publisher had brought back Strange Tales — a venerable title that had ended its original run in 1968 when its two featured stars, Doctor Strange and Nick Fury, each graduated to their own solo series — as a vehicle for a new hero, Brother Voodoo; but this character had failed to catch on, and after five issues had been replaced by another new supernatural protagonist, the Golem. The Golem appears to have had even less success in the marketplace than Brother Voodoo, his feature being yanked after only three outings (an all-reprint issue released in the middle of that brief run probably didn’t help matters); whatever the reasons behind the quick cancellation, however, the Golem’s exit from Strange Tales with issue #177 meant that a berth was finally open for the returning Adam Warlock.
Panel from Fantastic Four #67 (Oct., 1967). Text by Stan Lee; art by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott.
Jim Starlin probably didn’t really need the extra time that the months-long delay inadvertently afforded him to develop and refine his vision for the character; especially if, as he told Comic Book Artist, he started work on the series the very same day he got the go-ahead from Roy Thomas. On the other hand, it couldn’t have hurt. According to a later account the creator gave for a retrospective on Warlock published in Back Issue #34 (May, 2009), he was primarily drawn to the character via his earliest appearances in Fantastic Four #66-67, where the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby creation was known only as “Him”. But he was also well aware of the more recent Warlock stories, in which Lee and Kirby’s “perfect man” had been reimagined by Thomas and artist Gil Kane as “Jesus Christ Superhero”; and though he’d enjoyed that take, he intended to take the character in a different direction:
I made a conscious effort to avoid going down that avenue, because I had basically taken Captain Marvel, a warrior, and turned him into sort of a messiah-type character. So when I got to Warlock, I said to myself, “I got a messiah right here to start off with, where do I go from there?” And I decided a paranoid schizophrenic was the route to take.
One last benefit to the long lead time Starlin had for turning in the first installment of the revived “Warlock” feature is that it allowed him to do virtually the whole job himself. Readers in November, 1974 who turned past Strange Tales #178’s cover — pencilled and inked by Starlin, naturally — to the opening splash page discovered that the only jobs he hadn’t handled were the lettering, which was by Annette Kawecki, and the editing, which was by the newly-installed overseer of all of Marvel’s color comics, Len Wein:
Of course, Starlin couldn’t assume that everyone picking up this comic was already familiar with Adam Warlock’s fairly complicated history; and thus…
In a 2014 interview for the old “Newsarama” web site (archived here), Starlin discussed the rather tongue-in-cheek approach he took for presenting the necessary recap of his protagonist’s prior life and exploits:
I had a lot of material about who Warlock was, so I used this narrator – he’s basically a sphincter (“Sphinxor”) from the star system Pegasus, which literally makes him a horse’s ass. And I decided I was just going to have fun with that throwaway character and use him to explain who Adam Warlock was.
In your humble blogger’s opinion, Starlin’s decision was a fortunate one, helping to set the tone for the entire series to follow: a tone that allowed for broad, often absurd humor as well as for dead-serious exploration of metaphysical, religious, and psychological concepts (sometimes on the very same page).
Having related Him’s debut in FF #55-67 and subsequent meeting with the God of Thunder in Thor #165-166, followed by the creation and fall of Counter-Earth as first chronicled in Marvel Premiere #1, Sphinxor spends a page describing how Him, now rechristened Adam Warlock, undertook to become the literal savior of that world over the course of his original solo series (if you need a refresher concerning those events, check out this post, as well as the Warlock #8 post linked to earlier), before moving on to the end of our hero’s story (up until now, that is), as originally presented in the spring of 1974 in Hulk #176-178…
Panel from Hulk #178 (Aug., 1974). Text by Tony Isabella (scripted from a plot by Gerry Conway and concept by Roy Thomas); art by Herb Trimpe and Jack Abel.
In its original presentation in Hulk #178, Adam Warlock’s departure for the stars was framed as a continuance of his messianic mission: “I must go to those other worlds,” he told his followers, “and do as I have done here.” But, based on the information we’ve just reviewed regarding Jim Starlin’s intentions for this feature, we can rest assured that Adam Warlock won’t be founding any religions in outer space on his watch. Right?
There actually is a Hercules Cluster; if you were wondering; assuming the real one is what Starlin’s referring to here, Warlock has been doing some serious traveling since April, as the cluster is located some 25,000 light-years from Earth… though I suppose that’s really just a hop, skip, and a jump in the Marvel Universe…
Panel from Marvel Premiere #1 (Apr., 1972). Text by Roy Thomas, art by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins.
The Soul Gem hadn’t been part of our hero’s original equipment, back in his Lee-Kirby “Him” days; rather, he’d acquired it from the High Evolutionary as part of the Thomas-Kane revamp of the character. In the first Warlock series, he’d used it to absorb and channel physical energy of the sort useful in, say, repairing broken dams, as well as to commune with H.E.; it had also enabled him to devolve the Man-Beast’s evil New Men back to their original animal forms. For Thomas, Kane, and their successors, the “soul-jewel” seemed to be primarily a way of upgrading Him’s initial power set (your standard-issue strength/resilience/flight package) as well as of hinting, if only vaguely, at the hero’s spirituality.
In Starlin’s hands, however, the Soul Gem would soon be taking on a decidedly more sinister aspect…
With the final three-panel tier of the page shown above, Starlin shifts to a non-naturalistic color scheme to heighten the dramatic impact; a device he’d previously used to good effect on Captain Marvel.
He then proceeds to use the same device again (though with different colors) in multiple panels on the next page:
Adam soon moves on from his self-absorbed analysis, realizing that he needs more information about “these fanatical Magus worshipers” before he encounters them again; and there’s only one way he can get it: “I must force the girl to tell me more!”
By his own account, Jim Starlin had several run-ins with the Comics Code Authority over the course of his run on “Warlock”, beginning with the original version of the last panel shown above. As he told Comic Book Artist in 1998:
There was a scene in the first issue where these guys are being tortured; one of them’s being dipped into burning oil. The Code made us change it…
Interestingly, the first time Marvel reprinted Starlin’s “Warlock” stories, in the 6-issue non-Code-approved Warlock Special Edition, the original panel was restored (see right); also interestingly, the version presently available in the digital version of Marvel Masterworks — Warlock, Vol. 2 (which happens to be the version from which I’ve drawn the Strange Tales #178 scans used in this post), and, I imagine, any other digital or printed edition currently available from Marvel — has been restored to the originally published iteration. If only for historical purposes, that’s probably for the best.
If the Magus’ big green floating head reminds you of something (or, if you prefer, someone), that’s by design. As recalled by Starlin for Back Issue #34:
This was one of the least-planned-out stories that I ever did. When I started off, my first thought was just to do The Wizard of Oz. The Magus and the big head, you know, I mean, it was definitely straight out of The Wizard of Oz. It just sort of developed into the religious story.
The Magus’ realm of “enlightenment” clearly owes a lot to the surreal dimension-scapes of Steve Ditko’s “Doctor Strange” stories; it’s an inspiration that Starlin had evidenced in his work before now, and would do so even more dramatically in future episodes of “Warlock”.
Um, what was that I was saying before about Jim Starlin’s Adam Warlock not being the kind of guy to go around founding new religions in outer space? It looks like I may have to amend that statement just a little…
If I recall correctly, when my seventeen-year-old self first read this issue back in November, 1974, I felt somewhat ambivalent about it. While I thoroughly enjoyed Starlin’s artwork and storytelling, and was eager to see what would happen next in the new storyline, I also felt some mild disappointment that the writer-artist had evidently decided to abandon the Warlock-as-Christ symbolism of the feature’s previous iteration. As I’ve shared on this blog previously, I was a devout Christian (of the Southern Baptist persuasion) in my teenage years, and I always appreciated seeing Christian themes in my comic books, even when the treatment of such themes could hardly be called orthodox.
It would take me years — perhaps even decades — before I figured out that Starlin had in fact continued the religious focus of “Warlock” — just in a very different, and considerably less sympathetic, form. But perhaps my younger self’s slowness to catch on was actually appropriate in a way, since, if we take the creator at his word, the religious aspect of his story kind of crept up on him, emerging only after he’d already decided to lean into a more psychological approach (and even after deciding to parody The Wizard of Oz).
Asked for Back Issue #43’s Warlock retrospective if the hero’s turning away from his messianic mission to become a would-be god-slayer was a response to Roy Thomas’ approach, Starlin responded:
No, that was in response to seven years of parochial school. The Universal Church is Catholic, of course, because that’s what Catholic means. Basically it was the first in a line of stories I’ve done in my career that have said, ‘Let’s think twice about this religion thing.’… My thought was, ‘[it’s] not a good thing,’ having read about the Inquisitions and many other horrible things done in the name of a belief system. I have been sort of steadily using that theme in different stories as I’ve gone along, and Warlock was just the first one.
At this point, I imagine some of you may be wondering how my younger self, regardless of his piety (or his naiveté) could have missed that a storyline centered on a “Universal Church” did, in fact, have a religious theme. All I can really tell you is that: 1) at the time, I understood Starlin’s creation to be a dark parody of the Catholic church, rather than of Christianity as a whole, so I didn’t internalize it at all; and 2) even if I had identified with the writer-artist’s critique of religion, I probably still would have seen his satirical approach as being a completely different animal from Roy Thomas and company’s earnest but somewhat clumsy allegorical treatment. Looking back, it certainly seems like the very direct parallel between Warlock as Christ the Savior, and Magus as Christ the Church-founder, should have been more obvious to me even then; but, for whatever reason, it just wasn’t.
Luckily for the younger me, I “got” enough of what else Jim Starlin was trying to say — or, at least, was so utterly entertained by the way in which he was saying it — that I made sure not to miss a single installment of “Warlock” through the rest of the series’ run. And that’s lucky for the older me, too, since it means I’ll be able to share those episodes with you in this space in the months to come.
Additional cover art credits, per the Grand Comics Database and Mike’s Amazing World of Comics:
- Captain Marvel #34 (Sep., 1974): Jim Starlin
- Strange Tales #169 (Sep., 1973): John Romita
- Strange Tales #177 (Dec., 1974): Frank Brunner
I’d read a little of the Counter-Earth stuff but wasn’t particularly into it. This one hooked me from the get-go. Starlin was in peak form — I’m guessing it didn’t hurt that he was well away from the main Marvel Universe so he could run wild.
Did anyone ever explain where the High Evolutionary found the soul-gem?
Re the Golem, the editors said when they canceled it that the main reason was they had no idea what the hell they were doing — i.e., whether the book should be Man-Thing style human interest, Dr. Strange-style mysticism, Tomb of Dracula horror or Hulk-style slam-bang action. Though I’m sure if sales had been stellar they’d have muddled through. I blogged about the series a few years ago (and later did an expanded article about Golems for a book on Jewish themes in speculative fiction): https://atomicjunkshop.com/go-lem-or-go-home-marvels-thing-that-walks-like-a-man/
As a certain Rick Jones would have put it — “faa-aaan-tas-tic!!!!” I got this mag new off the racks at the Naval Station Treasure Island Navy Exchange 50 years ago and by the time I’d gotten to the last page, I was totally smitten with this opening chapter of Starlin’s latest opus. One of my most favorite comics ever. I even created a poster, long since lost, based on Starlin’s artwork. Admittedly, the parallels with the Catholic Church pretty much went over my 12-year old head at the time, although not, entirely. I had at least a smidgen of knowledge about the history of Christianity over the previous 2,000 years, but far more now, which makes me appreciate Starlin’s story even more. And I find some of this ties in with the more philosophical leanings Starlin expressed in several issues of his Captain Marvel run, particularly in issue #29, “Metamorphosis”.
BTW, I’ve read some comments on other sites that Starlin had originally intended this epic for Captain Marvel, but based on those interview excerpts you included, and my own feelings, that couldn’t possibly be true. As with his transition of his first Thanos epic from Iron Man to Captain Marvel, while Starlin may have originated some basic ideas used in the one title, once he’d gone to the other he shaped his story around the particular character who was the star of the series. I just don’t see that Iron Man and Mar-Vell could have been easily swapped out in place of one another in C.M. 25-33. If Starlin had been able to continue it in Iron Man, it would have become a very different story, maybe just as compelling but maybe less so. Same thing in this next storyline — it would have been a very different story if Starlin had to shape it around Mar-Vell rather than Warlock, particularly given that Mar-Vell didn’t have any equivalent of the Soul Gem which would become a very important factor in this story. And although in 1974, I had no idea who Michael Moorcock was and it wouldn’t be until the 1980s that I’d ready any of his Elric novels, clearly Starlin took inspiration from those in how he re-imagined the power of the Soul Gem bestowed upon Warlock by the High Evolutionary, courtesy of Thomas & Kane. Unfortunately, I missed Strange Tales #179, although I got most of the rest of Starlin’s Warlock run — the only other issue I missed was Warlock #12, the follow-up to the conclusion of the Magus saga, focusing on Pip the Troll. I did get the first reprint of S.T. 179 that was included in the new Fantasy Masterpieces volume that ran a few years later, primarily with reprints of the Lee/Buscema Silver Surfer series, but including Starlin’s Warlock as a backing series after they’d completed reprinting th -e longer stories of the first several issues. But more discussion on that can wait for later.
Back to S.T. #178, while I eventually got the joke about the sphincter, the “horse’s ass” bit went over my head but is entirely obvious once spelled out! Amusingly, it also clearly went over the heads of the CCA reviewer(s)! But I did love the way Starlin handled his recap of Warlock’s prior escapades, with such sardonic humor along with the exposition. And then the nightmarish encounters with the Imperial Inquisitors and the Magus in Wizard of Oz guise, and the revelation that the Magus was Warlock’s own “once and future” self – a version of himself gone back five millennia in time to become the founder and focus of an intergalactic religious cult.
It did just occur to me on further reflection of this intro, that Starlin further cemented Warlock’s status as a sort of Jesus Christ stand-in here by having him resurrect, albeit only briefly, the unnamed dead woman whose execution he failed to prevent. A use of the Soul Gem I doubt Thomas (or Friedrich or Conway) likely would have come up with but then none of the previous scribes appeared to have much explored or explained the powers of the gem in much detail as Starlin would do during his run and in his two-part follow-up in the Avengers & MTIO Annuals. I’m not sure if Thomas and/or Kane had been inspired by any prior source when they added the gem to enhance Warlock’s powers when they remade him from the Lee/Kirby model. Maybe in part the Tilaka marking on the forehead of practitioners of Hinduism, representing a spiritual third eye.
Enjoyed reading your own reflections on this milestone in graphic fiction, Alan! I can understand your initial confusion and consternation upon first reading this. Particularly given that you had much more knowledge of and personal investment in that earlier series initiated by Thomas & Kane and their Jesus Christ Superstar inspired take. In my case, up to this point, I’d only read issue 6 of the earlier Warlock. A bit of online research shows that Kirby’s truncated introductory two-part introduction of Warlock’s prior incarnation, Him, had been reprinted in issues of Marvel’s Greatest Comics just a few months earlier in 1974, and which I read prior to this mag, so it was good to see here, in abbreviated form at least, how Him wound up re-made into Warlock, and a good thing He was. Him just doesn’t have the same ring or sense of wonder as Warlock. Looking much forward to discussions on later chapters of this series.
Cosmic awareness would probably have filled in for some of the soul gem’s powers. I agree it would still have been very different if Starlin wrote it for Marv.
I like Jim Starlin’s page layouts. His use of blackened gutters (panel borders) in the opening pages predates that of Vertigo by quite a few years. Aside from an Alex Toth story from House of Mystery in 1970…
https://pangolinbasement.blogspot.com/2014/09/toth-house-of-mystery-187-mask-of-red.html?m=1
…I don’t recall seeing this used much, if at all. In prior comics stories. Starlin also changed the width of his panel borders which is another rarity in comics. I believe he did this not only for added drawing space or for design aesthetics, but to show a faster progression of time between panels.
Regardless, he was thinking outside of standard convention in commercial comics. While he isn’t using the wild, angular panels like Gene Colan and Frank Brunner did in Doctor Strange, he is creating page designs far removed from the template set forth by Kirby and Ditko and carried on by Romita and the Buscemas.
I’m so glad you I’ve covered this issue, Alan. I vividly remember this comic – it was the first Marvel comic I ever bought, aged 10, and it changed everything for me.
I’d read a few of the Marvel UK reprint weeklies passed on to me by friends so I was vaguely familiar with the 1960s versions of characters like Spider-Man, the Avengers and a few others, and decided I wanted to try more. So one cold, grey February morning (due to shipping times, American comics’ on-sale dates in the UK matched their cover dates) I went into the newsagent’s shop just up the road from my school and flipped through the stack of “Marvel All-Colour Comics” as the imports were branded at the time.
I didn’t find any of the characters I was familiar with – I learned later that their titles weren’t being imported at the time to avoid competing with the aforementioned Marvel UK titles – and I’d never heard of either Starlin or Warlock, but the cover jumped out at me. I bought it and read it in the ten minutes before school started, and it blew my mind.
Looking back, most of the philosophical and religious content went straight over ten-year-old me’s head, but the sophistication of the writing, design and storytelling was unlike anything I had seen before. The introductory recap was also my first exposure to the concept of a coherent comics universe. Nearly fifty years later, it’s still the most important comic book I’ve ever read.
I loved Starlin’s run on Warlock. Easily one of my most favorite runs ever. While, like you Alan, I always enjoyed the “chocolate-in-my-peanut butter” combo of religion and pop culture, the original Warlock series by Thomas and Kane was way too on the nose for me to really feel comfortable with. Starlin, however, would ultimately deal with many of the same themes and ideas without using them to hit me over the head with a sledgehammer and I appreciate that.
Of course, Starlin’s basic idea for Warlock had it’s antecedents in the Avengers run we concluded this past Wednesday. You can easily imagine a similar situation as Rama-Tut or Immortus sit about wondering what they can do to reign their “younger self” as Kang in before he has a chance to do more damage to the universe as a whole. The whole idea of doing battle with yourself; be it the actual physical presence of your actual self from years in the past or years in the future or the metaphysical battle that takes place within our own hearts and minds as we fight our histories and genetics to become better and more enlightened beings than we were before, is one as old as time and will exist as long as we do. As to the “timey-wimeyness” of it all? That makes my head hurt.
Not that I noticed it in 74, but Starlin gave the whole thing away in the flashbacks. In his recounting of the Thomas/Kane Warlock-as-Christ run, he shows Adam crucified on a cross-looking structure; similar, if not the same as the one Kane drew. Later, in the girl’s flashback to the rise of the Church of Universal Truth, Starlin uses the exact same “cross” as a primary piece of the Church’s iconography. Certainly that was a big hint as to what was coming that I didn’t pick up on in 1974.
I will say that I also don’t remember Warlock finding out he and Magus were one and the same quite so quickly. Obviously, I’m wrong, but in my head canon, the reveal was a lot more slow-burn. Hmph. I guess we all have a story-editor in our heads moving things around and making them fit the way we want.
Lastly, I’ll say that you can always tell when Starlin’s having fun because it shows in the art. Every pen stroke here in loving and meticulously chosen and so totally “Starlin” in a way that’s never been successfully copied by anyone else. I never realized Starlin intended Magus’ first appearance to be reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, however, Alan, so…thanks for that? I loved this book so much! I can’t wait to get more into it as we go. Thanks, Alan!
I got that same feeling, Don, that Starlin was having a lot of fun with this series but also had a lot of passion for the story he wanted to tell, all coming through in his writing and art.
I picked up the Warlock by Jim Starlin: The Complete Collection trade paperback in July. I’d wanted to read these stories for quite some time, and this is one of those cases where the material truly did live up to the hype. Jim Starlin truly was on the cutting edge of mainstream comic books in the 1970s with his cosmic storytelling and dynamic artwork. I’m looking forward to your write-ups on the rest of Starlin’s epic.
I’ve read thousands of Marvel comics, but Starlin’s run on Warlock is still my all-time favorite. Thanks for covering the premiere issue. You included insights and references that I did not know about. I hope you will cover some of the future issues as well. It’s great that Mr. Starlin, now 75 years old, is continuing to put out new Dreadstar graphic novels, continuing his creator-own Metamorphosis Odyssey, which has also had religious themes, but more importantly, Starlin’s incredible artwork and stories.
By late ’74 I’d largely abandoned the comics. Too many paint by numbers plots and scripts. Too much wooden artwork, characters that just didn’t jump off the page at you. And backgrounds? Where had they disappeared to? Most artists were simply leaving the space behind the protagonists rendered in a solid color. The previous attention to detail of a Kirby or Barry Smith seemed to have vanished. Oh , I hadn’t stopped reading completely, I still always bought my beloved Legion of Super Heroes. Plus there was Starlin’s Captain Marvel and now Warlock. Englehart’s Dr. Strange. They seemed to exist merely to remind the other mortals what actually COULD be achieved.
This particular cosmic opus gets going on the right foot, to be sure. The artwork is so satisfying to behold. The way the girl runs across the asteroid, her footfalls practically echoing her desperation. The fluidity of Adam’s movement while dispatching the “Grand Inquisitors” must’ve made the Kung Fu Comic artists jealous. Then there’s another favorite of mine. Usually in the comics the narration points to the villain’s abilities, their intimidating nature, you know, sort of selling the sizzle, placing our hero in peril. Here though the tables are turned as Starlin narrates” Adam Warlock a being of vast power” and “suddenly the alien inquisitors realize they’ve been flirting with death.” against a backdrop of Adam, coiled, ready to pounce, his body enveloped in black.
The whole issue is full of great art, great story telling devices and I’m happy to say it’s all just a precursor to what’s to come!
Starlin’s graphics were impressively dense, almost any panel could stand alone by itself .
You might already know that over on YouTube, the “comic boom historians” have just posted 3 long interviews with Starlin about his life and work.
A couple of thoughts:
I see a Murphy Anderson influence on Starlin’s inks here. I don’t know if that comes from the Julie Schwarz Science Fiction comics Starlin has said he liked as a boy or talking to two of his better inkers who were both Anderson assistants (Milgrom and Cockrum).
This is among his best art jobs on Warlock (along with the inks Al Weiss did on covers & art assists later on).
I’m a Catholic. I am inspired by the Faith. The Church as an Institution, like all institutions, is a “work in progress.”
I think doing this story (and staying within CCA requirements in 1975) must have demanded a lot from Starlin. I give him a lot of credit (“Approved by the Cosmic Code Authority” and all, three issues later.)
As clever as Warlock was, I would commend Michael Moorcock for his forbearance.
I had a friend in law school, who years later asked me (on finding I had been a fan of Starlin’s CPT Marvel and Warlock as a boy) that I have never been into drugs. I told him, “I never had to be into drugs, I was a fan of Jim Starlin . . . .
This inspired me to be a big fan of Moorcock’s Elric around the same time (and his Runestaff stories slightly later).
This was a comic I really liked, that did not really develop as well as I hoped.
Rereading this comic, the blog post and the comments makes me shake my head in disbelief again that I was the only person talking to Jim Starlin at the Baltimore ComicCon last year when I went up to him while the line for Chris Claremont stretched across two walls of the hall. I was so flummoxed that I was kind of tongue-tied and didn’t really ask him nearly all of the questions I could have. Thanks to patr100 for alerting us to the Starlin interviews that just went up on YouTube. I will definitely watch them.
I did buy an autographed poster there that Starlin was selling with many of his characters. That remains a prized possession.
Unfortunately, I have to admit that I was not a fan of the Warlock series when it originally came out, despite the stunning artwork. The storytelling was too dense for me then. Needless to say, I appreciate it a lot more now although still not to the heights that many of the commenters have stated.
That is indeed disappointing. I was similarly tongue-tied talking to Neal Adams.
That’s a shame, Fraser. I saw Adams at three different Pensacons before he passed away and he was friendly and garrulous every time. Very nice man. Of course, he wanted you to buy his stuff, but he was content to answer questions if you had any. The picture I took with him the last time I met him is one I’ll treasure always. I took my stupid pill when speaking to actor John Glover about Smallville. Five minutes of my life I truly wish I could take back.
It is a shame. I did buy a Joker’s Five Way Revenge poster for my brother and got it autographed but I really wanted to tell Adams how wrong I was as a kid thinking his art was bad.