Fifty years ago this month, the third installment of Marvel Comics’ revived “Warlock” feature arrived sporting yet another cover pencilled and inked by Jim Starlin, as well as a 19-page story pencilled, inked, colored, and written by… Jim Starlin.
Characteristically, the auteur didn’t let his multifaceted role in the comic’s production stop him from having a little fun with the credits on its opening splash page, even at the risk of confusing any newcomers:
And, if we’re going to be completely accurate, Starlin hadn’t done quite all the inking on his own. As the “special thanks” blurb at the bottom of the page indicates, the artist’s friend and colleague Alan Weiss had stepped in to help out by embellishing the pencilled art for pages “19, 22, 27, and 31”. And no, those numbers don’t make a lot of sense in regards to a story which, as we’ve already said, tops out at 19 pages… unless you’re already familiar with Marvel’s irritating practice during this era of numbering every interior page of their color comics in a single sequence — story, ads, letters column, et al. (Adding to the potential confusion, the digital scans we’re using in this post don’t include page numbers at all; but don’t worry, we’ll let you know when Mr. Weiss shows up with his brush.)
The story’s first page also gives us our first look (well, other than the cover) of an updated look for our hero — one that’s never given an in-story explanation, as far as I know. But however it’s happened, at some point between the end of the last issue and the beginning of this one, Adam Warlock has lost the lightning-bolt symbol that used to adorn his chest, and has also begun wearing a high-collared cape. (UPDATE, 3/29/25, 12:50 p.m.: As pointed out by Blake Stone over at the Marvel Masterworks Forum’s marathon thread for this month, I missed a brief line in a caption on page 2 that states that “slight changes were made on Adam’s costume for the sake of anonymity”. That’s not a terribly convincing reason, in my opinion, but you can’t say Jim Starlin didn’t at least try.) What prompted Starlin to make the changes? Decades later, the artist-writer provided at least a partial answer to that question for a Warlock retrospective published in Back Issue #34 (May, 2009): “That lightning bolt was a bitch to draw!”
The next page is mostly given over to a recap of the last two issues, which we’ll skip over (please check out our posts for Strange Tales #178 and #179 if you need a refresher), picking up the narrative as Adam concludes his reverie…
Adam realizes that his Soul Gem has grown powerful enough to overcome “the subconscious control I’ve had over it the last three years!” (i.e., ever since Marvel Premiere #1), which he feels leaves him with little choice: “I wear a fiend upon my forehead… a monster I now realize… I must destroy!”
In our Strange Tales #179 post, we covered how Adam Warlock’s relationship with his soul-devouring gem mirrors that of Michael Moorcock’s fantasy hero Elric with his soul-devouring sword, Stormbringer. This new development, involving Adam’s discovery that his own life has become dependent on the Soul Gem’s power, extends the parallel; like Warlock, Moorcock’s doomed albino prince tries to rid himself of his demonic weapon, but finds himself physically and psychologically unable to do so. In both cases, the hero’s dependency serves as a clear metaphor for addiction.
Nothing really “happens” on the page above; nevertheless, our hero’s interior monologue provides valuable insight into how he views his present predicament, as well as how he hopes to resolve it. Meanwhile, Starlin keeps it all visually interesting via his formidable gifts for layout and design.
Eventually, Adam reaches the Matriarch’s digs, which he surreptitiously enters without drawing the attention of her guards or other servants… though that doesn’t mean that his arrival catches her by surprise, at all:
With the next page, Alan Weiss takes over the inking for a time…
A superhero facing an obviously over-the-top parody of a fair trial in a science-fiction setting? It had been done before, no question. That said, Starlin offers us an especially absurdist take which, despite its overall lack of originality, is still very entertaining.
As the proceedings get under way, the prosecution calls its first witness — a shackled and bandaged prisoner identified as “Yon-Lok, rebel and infidel”. Yon-Lok causes a brief stir when he accuses, not Adam, but the judge and the rest of the court, declaring, “You’re guilty of twisting everything that was good until it now serves nothing but your own evil ends!” But the brave prisoner is quickly (and, it appears, permanently) silenced by an energy-blast from one of the faceless bailiffs… and after that, one witness after another takes the stand to unfailingly finger Warlock “as the perpetrator of a dozen false crimes”…
Adam’s court-ordered gagging is almost certainly inspired by the treatment afforded Black Panther Bobby Seale at the trial of the Chicago Eight/Seven in 1969; an iconic moment previously referenced by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams in the 1970 “Green Lantern/Green Arrow” story we linked to earlier, as well as by Gary Friedrich, Dick Ayers, and Herb Trimpe in Hulk #153 (Jul., 1972)… and very probably by other creators in other comics of which your humble blogger is unaware.
Beginning with the next page, Jim Starlin once again picks up the ink brush — just in time for the introduction of one of his best known creations…
Yep, it’s the very first appearance of Gamora, “the deadliest woman in the galaxy” — although we won’t actually learn her name, or anything else about her beyond what one can gather from the five panels shown above, until next issue. Still, this is the character’s debut, so we’re going to take a few moments to discuss her real-world origins here — especially in regards to a certain controversy concerning them.
For over a decade now (Bleeding Cool seems to have started the trend, as best as I can tell), folks have been going online to share images from a story originally published in the 38th (Feb., 1972) issue of the Warren Publishing black-and-white comics magazine Eerie. Written by T. Casey Brennan and illustrated by Esteban Maroto, the seven-page “A Stranger in Hell” (pages 2 and 3 of which you can see at left and right) tells of a man who attempts to commit suicide and fails — but finds himself in Hell regardless, where he meets a beautiful dark-haired woman who (eventually) identifies herself as the messenger of Death. And, yes, as has been pointed out by the aforementioned online sharers, this woman does look a lot like Gamora, especially in regards to the latter character’s earliest appearances. That fact has made it reasonable for a lot of people to assume that Jim Starlin “borrowed” Maroto’s character design for his own later creation; indeed, that conclusion seemed reasonable to me, when someone pointed out the resemblance between the two women in a comment on this very blog about a year ago.
But just because an assumption seems reasonable, that doesn’t mean it’s correct. And as it turns out, Jim Starlin has offered a different explanation for the alleged “swipe” in several recent interviews — including one conducted at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, where the creator responded to a question about the inspiration for Gamora with the following:
She was brought in because the Warlock series was kind of a sausage-fest… and I figured I needed something else other than testosterone. So I brought her in. It’s kind of embarrassing how the visualization happened, not the most feminist-friendly source.
I had a friend, Al Weiss, who did very photo-realistic artwork. He had a lot of European skin magazines in his studio. One day I was leafing through it while I was talking to him and I came across this image of a woman in a fishnet outfit with long dark hair, and I thought, “That’s kind of cool!” That was the basis of where Gamora came about. The funny thing was, there was a Spanish artist, Esteban Maroto, and he obviously saw the same photo essay, and then a few months later — they almost came out simultaneously — he had a character in Eerie or Creepy, a horror comic, based on the same pictures. So, a character who became a feminist icon is based on the least reputable source I can think of.
Starlin is obviously wrong about his and Maroto’s characters having first come out anything like “simultaneously”, given the three year span between the respective publications of Eerie #38 and Strange Tales #180. (For the record, “A Stranger in Hell” had also been reprinted once since its original appearance, in Eerie #51 [Sep., 1973] — but even that presentation had beat Gamora’s debut to the stands by over a year.) Otherwise, however, Starlin’s account passes muster; Maroto is well known for having frequently used reference, both from photographic material and from the work of his fellow artists (we covered one of his “borrowings” from Frank Frazetta in our Vampirella #18 post a couple of years back), so his having picked up some images from the same “European skin mag” that Starlin would eventually come across in Alan Weiss’ stash seems quite plausible, at least to me.
And, in any event, it’s not like Gamora’s “fishnet outfit” — or her jewelry, or her eye make-up — became a permanent part of her visual, anyway. What mattered a good bit more, in the long run, was that she was green — and that, if nothing else, Starlin clearly couldn’t have picked up from Maroto’s black-and-white artwork. Nor was there anything in the personality of the Death-messenger depicted in T. Casey Brennan’s script for “A Stranger in Hell” to suggest the badass assassin readers would soon discover Starlin’s Gamora to be. Ultimately, then, the correspondences between the characters, while interesting, aren’t really anything to worry about, in my opinion.
And now that we’ve dealt with that, let’s return to our story, as this issue’s “A” plot approaches its climax…
Alan Weiss steps back in here to ink another page…
Then Weiss once again yields the brush to Starlin…
Finally, Alan Weiss returns to ink the concluding page, below:
I’m pretty certain that when I first read this story fifty years ago, I thought that Adam Warlock’s horrified reaction upon realizing that Kray-Tor “truly believed what he did… was just” was overblown; if anything, I feel that way even more strongly today. After all, here and now in 2025 we have a ginormous number of people who firmly believe that God is on their side, and that they’re justified in doing whatever they deem necessary to advance their cause, regardless of how it tramples over the rights of the rest of us. Simple sincerity doesn’t exonerate one for the consequences of their actions, in my view.
That said, this was probably a minor enough quibble for my younger self back in 1975 that I’d forgotten all about it by the time Strange Tales #181 arrived in the spinner rack a couple of months later. Will my aging memory give Jim Starlin the same pass this time around? Probably… but you’ll have to come back to this space around the end of May to find out for sure.
Another excellent review of a classic, Alan! I missed 179 but got this one, being my introduction to Pip the Troll and unaware of the role the gem played in the proceedings of the previous issue, but as usual, Starlin provided enough information so I could figure things out well enough and enjoy another wild ride with this mag. Gamora’s introduction was certainly intriguing. Even if at age 12 I couldn’t have expressed it as well, I shared your quibbles about Warlock’s shock at realizing Kray-Tor was “sincere” in his mad beliefs. Having read much more history (and news reports) in the half century since, I’m perfectly aware of many instances in which committed atrocious crimes against humanity in the sincere belief that were doing “God’s will” or justified in the name of one insane ideology or another.
I’ll give Starlin the benefit of the doubt in Warlock’s shock being an intended example of Warlock’s naivety as well as being overwhelmed by the flood of foreign thoughts running in his head upon absorbing Kray-Tor’s soul and not having yet fully adjusted to this particular power of the soul gem. I’m unaware of Starlin ever discussing this particular aspect of his story.
In early 1975, I hadn’t yet even heard of the Chicago Eight and their trial, as well as those other comics that took inspiration from the treatment of Bobby Seale, but I had at least heard of Kangaroo trials and was highly amused by Starlin’s absurdist take on such legal travesties.
Overall, although in 1975 I was still pretty enamored of standard Marvel superhero fare as exemplified by comics featuring Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Avengers, etc., I also loved Warlock, not just for the art but for the story, humor, weirdness and even expressions of points of view I hadn’t yet given much thought about. Fifty years on, while much of the fare I once loved now seems ridiculous, there are others I find worth revisiting, such as those by Starlin, Gerber, Englehart and at least a few others that weren’t simply doing variations of old plots but who seemed passionate about the stories they were telling in their best works, coming up with unique story ideas and expressing interesting points of view through their work. Not all of it came out well, but often it was far more compelling to my more mature self than formulaic variations of hero meets baddie, gets endangered, breaks free and beats the baddie! Of course, Marvel made its name through Lee, Kirby & Ditko, et al, seriously tweaking that formula in the previous decade and in the ’70s a new generation of writers were expanding on those breakthroughs. Something I couldn’t fully appreciate in 1975 but became clearer as I read many of the older classics and filled in many of the gaps in what I missed when I was collecting.
For now, cheers everyone, and don’t accept any gems from High Evolutionaries! You just never know where those things have been or what troubles they might bring.
Not sure why Starlin put such thick outlines around Kray-Tor on the cover, and finer line work on Warlock who is in *front* of him. Artists usually reduce the width of outlines to convey the illusion of depth. I guess Starlin thought it would embolden the graphic impact of this cover, especially since there is almost no background.
God, Starlin was amazing even this early on. Looking back, it’s amazing this saw print at all but I’m glad it did. It’s lead to so many good stories by other creators as well. Have we seen Heater Delight yet? I know she’s appeared elsewhere since but she was one of my favorite characters that popped up in an issue here.
Possible influence on the Warlock/Magus story: The Mirror (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mirror_(The_Twilight_Zone)) a 1961 Twilight Zone story.
Another influence might be Robert E. Howard’s poem. The Road of kings.: “When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat, The people scattered gold-dust before my horse’s feet; But now I am a great king, the people hound my track With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back,” used in a 1971 or ’72 Kull Story by Roy Thomas.
It also appears that The Matriarch is based visually on the actress Marlene Dietrich (who was a Catholic Convert, given that The Matriarch is something of a female Pope).
Is it just me, or do those faceless silver “jurors” recall the Mad Thinker’s android from *Fantastic Four* #70-71?
I’m not sure about the history of kangaroo court trials in comics, but I can recall several trials without gags:
In 1947, Injustice Society put the Justice Society on trial in *All-Star Comics* #37, and the judge turned out to be Green Lantern disguised as the Thinker, whom Earth-One never called “Mad,” as Earth-616 did its Thinker.
In 1967, Factor Three put the X-Men on trial in *X-Men* #37, and the blurb for “We, the Jury…” suggested that even Perry Mason would have difficulties arguing before this tribunal.
They look like a couple of Kirby’s drone-type aneroids; the Adultoid’s base form; Them’s Chemical Androids; and Dr, Bedum’s Animates.
It is a fairly cool design.
As a very young reader, I had a lot more comics from DC than from Marvel, and the ones from Marvel were primarily Avengers, Defenders and Spider-Man. So my only awareness of Warlock was from Warlock # 1 back in 1972. I most likely became aware of Warlock’s new feature in Strange Tales from the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins pages, but I don’t remember being interested in reading this new iteration at all. My comment has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot or the artwork, but upon reading your review, Alan, something jumped out at me from the first panel of Chapter II.
It seems to me that Jim Starlin made a funny by naming the Grand Inquisitor “Kray-Tor” to “sit in judgment of” our protagonist. One of the most famous missing persons cases from almost a century ago was that of “Judge Crater”, who stepped into a cab back in 1930 and disappeared from history.
Samuel Crater (1889-1930?) was a New York State judge whose vanishing act occurred at the outset of a corruption investigation in New York City. His disappearance became the topic of a huge media sensation over the course of the following decade, and he was never found, eventually being declared to be legally dead in 1939. Judge Crater was dubbed “the Missingest Man in America”, and his name entered the lexicon as the eponymous object of the phrase “to pull a Crater”, used colloquially when other people disappeared.
Well done, Jay! I felt that Kray-Tor’s name was probably a play on something, but I had no idea what.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/nyregion/05crater.html. I had some idea of who it referred to but . . . what a weird story . . . .
It’s not easy to pull off this kind of dreamlike, hallucinatory non-logic in a story, but Starlin makes it work.
I can see Adam being shocked about Kray-tor — given how bizarre the court was, it’s easier to believe it’s some elaborate mumming than sincerity. But no, Kray-Tor believing himself good does not mean he was sympathetic in any way, as several of y’all have pointed out.
Daredevil #71, “IF An Eye Offend Thee” has the Tribunal — pre-Limbaugh right-wing radio rabble-rouser —take over a courtroom to ensure the conviction and death of the Chicago Eight — er, the New York Three.
Then there was the three-faced Living Tribunal in a previous issue of Strange Tales itself, back when it featured Dr. Strange, in the post-Ditko era.
I have always thought that Starlin’s run on Warlock was one of the best series of comics in the past 50+ years! Thanks for covering these and celebrating how great they were!
Another Starlin masterpiece. I love his artwork, it’s surreal and yet grounded at the same time. The way he injects humor all through his stories is tops also. I love the cookie cutter jurors. The eyeball court appointed defender. The way Adam’s words “but he has no mouth” are in smaller print to convey his tone. I will say though that Starlin missed a good line. When Kray-tor says “the defense throws itself on the mercy of the court” and the panel shows the Eyeball/ public defender sleeping perhaps a juicier line might’ve been “and the defense rests.”
Just checked out Mike’s Amazing World for the comics published in April ‘75. Really looking forward to the coming week’s posts! 😀😃😄
Not disgregarding Starlin’s own comments on Gamora. But, nevertheless….’Stormbringer’ (Moorcock’s original Elric finale) influenced the previous Warlock issue Alan featured ( & clearly this one too.) So, does ‘Stormbringer’ feature any green women at all, too? Well, yes – tangentially. In Elric’s astral dream, amongst many past Melnibonean emperors, he sees “Terhali, the Green Empress…Her longevity and green-tinged skin and hair had marked her out.” ( ‘Stormbringer’ p.205, Grafton edition.) Coincidence? Maybe – but Stormbringer’s influence when Warlock brought the dead girl back to life’s undeniable; so it’s not totally beyond the realm of probability. A green woman character’s inspiration in Captain Kirk’s encounters with green women is also possible (wasn’t one the actress who played Batgirl, alongside Adam West?) Regarding the court case, Kung Fu (David Carradine) featured a story with an honest judge, in total sincerity, reaching a wrongful verdict ( possibly contemporaneous with Warlock – I’d have to check?) Sorry if I’m a bit incoherent tonight…
Phillip
IIRC Terhali put in an appearance in the Conan two-parter with Elric guest-starring.
Fraser, That’s very interesting – thanks for the tip!
Phillip
Here’s a link to our blog post covering the issue of Conan featuring Terhali: https://50yearoldcomics.com/2022/02/23/conan-the-barbarian-15-may-1972/
Thanks very much, Alan.
Phillip
I was lucky enough to have my mum buy me ST#180 on her way home from work back in 1975. It became just about my favourite comic and although it took ten year old me a while to find 178, 179 and 181, it’s still the absolute pinnacle of Starlin’s story-telling for me. Great blog-post and enjoyable analysis, all these years later. Keep up the great work, love your blog!
This was my first issue of Warlock/ Strange Tales and, other than being confused by the credits, was entranced by everything else. Starlin was in total control here, masterful with art, script, pacing, colours and characters. Even though this was my first encounter with Warlock ( at least I think it was….I did get the italian reprint of Marvel Premiere’s #1 and 2, published in ’72, but this was probably at a later date, as editoriale corno tended to re-package unsold issues and return them to the news stand years afterwards) and I immediately fell in love with the character. And with Pip and Gamora too! Coming in at this point didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the issue at all, and of course, Stalin’s way of summarising previous issues was always fun and expertly handled. Cover though is slightly odd ( as pointed out by Man of Bronze), and this my have had some extraneous editorial input to it.
With the haphazard distribution of US titles in Europe, I didn’t find #181 until November ’75 ( and in Rome too!)….so it will be a long wait from now until Nov 2025 when I will be able to read the next installment. Will I manage to hold out…….?
Re change in costume: Starlin’s art is super detailed and meticulous, so his finding it hard to do the costume seems an odd reason. Could it be that there was a suggestion of a lawsuit from the Diminishing Competition, given it was publishing a title know as Shazam at the same time that caused said change? Whatever the reason, I thought the new costume, cloak and all, really cool.