In April, 1975, the following full-page house ad gave most DC Comics fans of the time — your humble blogger included — their first look at a new character called the Warlord:
Presented as being part of DC’s “all-new adventure line”, this new hero seemed likely at first glance to be cut from the same sword-and-sorcery cloth as three of the other characters featured in that roster (i.e., Claw, Stalker, and Beowulf) — if only by virtue of the fact that he was shown holding a sword in his right hand. But hang on just a sec… was that a gun in his left hand? What was that about, we fans of fifty years ago could only wonder.
And DC would keep us wondering… all the way up until the release of 1st Issue Special #8, four months later. Why did it take so long to get “Warlord” into print? Hey, your guess is as good as mine. (For the record, the 6th issue of DC’s in-house fanzine The Amazing World of DC Comics, dated May-Jun., 1975, apologized for the delay in a “Direct Currents” promotion of 1IS #8, acknowledging that “we accidentally featured [Warlord] in a house ad before telling you about it!” — though it didn’t give a reason for the snafu. Stuff happens, I guess.)
For those curious about how “Warlord” — whatever genre it might turn out to be upon one’s reading — had come to exist in the first place, 1st Issue Special #8’s edition of the title’s regular “Story Behind the Story” text page feature offered an account of the property’s genesis by none other than its creator/writer/artist/letterer, Mike Grell, himself:
I’ve written “an account” above, rather than “the account”, because, naturally, the whole story is both longer than would have easily fit into DC’s allotted space (even if Grell had skipped the admittedly amusing self-caricature) and also includes details about the publisher’s competition not exactly appropriate to the venue. But space is at less of a premium here at Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books (as is decorum), so we’re going to dig a little deeper in this post — although, if you really want as complete a telling as we’re likely to get, you should check out Grell’s full article “Off My Chest: From Savage Empire to The Warlord“, which was originally published in Back Issue #46 (Jan., 2011), and from which all quotes from the auteur used in this blog post have been taken.
To begin with, in its original form, Savage Empire — two sample pages of which are presented here — was conceptually quite different from the feature which DC eventually published as Warlord. In Grell’s own words:
…Savage Empire was born of my admiration for Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan, combined with my fascination with archaeology and lost civilizations.
Savage Empire is the story of archaeologist Jason Cord, who, while exploring the ruins of the ancient city of Akrotiri buried for thousands of years under volcanic ash, stumbles on a portal to the past and is cast back in time to the lost continent of Atlantis. It has all the elements of high adventure: lost cities, dangerous jungles, strange beasts of myth and legend, beautiful warrior women, evil wizards, and a modern-day protagonist trying to survive in a savage, primitive world.
As Grell noted in his 1IS #8 text piece, he’d hoped to sell Savage Empire to a newspaper features syndicate, but got no offers. By late 1974, he’d firmly established himself as a freelancer at DC Comics, having become the regular artist both for Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and for the “Green Arrow” back-up feature in Action Comics, with occasional other assignments. Nevertheless, he wasn’t averse to exploring other options in the comic-book industry — especially when he heard that a new company, Atlas/Seaboard Comics, was looking for new features and was offering artists $100 per page — more than twice Grell’s page rate at DC…
I went to speak to their editor, Jeff Rovin, and pitched him Savage Empire. Jeff was excited about the project and said Atlas would love to publish it. I explained to him that I had a commitment to DC and didn’t want to jeopardize that relationship until I had at least a couple of issues of Savage Empire in the can. He said, “No problem.”
It was about a 20-minute walk across town to DC’s offices, and when I walked in [publisher] Carmine Infantino was waiting for me in the hallway. He said Jeff Rovin had just phoned and told him that he had me tied up for two books a month. Carmine, of course, wanted to know why I hadn’t brought the concept to DC, and I explained to him that I honestly didn’t think DC would be that interested because they hadn’t had any success with fantasy/adventure, non-superhero kind of stuff. And he said, “Well, why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”
Every now and then you get lucky, and my lucky moment came as we walked into Carmine’s office. The phone rang and he excused himself to take the call, and in that same moment it dawned on me that there was no way he was going to buy it, not in the form that it was. So while Carmine was on the phone for about two or three minutes, I completely revised the concept from The Savage Empire into The Warlord.
We’ll be returning to Mike Grell’s recollections of his on-the-fly reworking of Savage Empire at opportune moments as we go through the first “Warlord” story — but for now, we’ll jump ahead to the part where Carmine Infantino was impressed enough with the pitch that (after first making Grell sell DC editor Joe Orlando on the idea as well), he guaranteed the young creator a minimum one-year run for the feature…
I thought that was a lot better than a crapshoot with Atlas and it turned out to be so, because Atlas wasn’t around for very long.
Indeed, Atlas/Seaboard would ship its final issues in June, 1975, two whole months before Mike Grell’s new feature made its debut… though not as Warlord #1, as it turned out, but rather as the eighth issue of DC’s ongoing monthly “tryout” title, 1st Issue Special. Why slot the first Warlord story into 1IS, when the decision to give the character his own book had already been made? In later years, no one would seem to know the answer to that question… though, if I had to guess, I’d assume DC simply had an empty slot to fill in 1st Issue Special that month, and Mike Grell’s finished Warlord origin story was an expedient way to fill it.*
The comic’s cover — pencilled and inked by Mike Grell, naturally — gives us a good look at the hero in costume, sporting the goatee that would become as defining an aspect of the Warlord’s visual as it was for another character that Grell was drawing at the time (and would in fact continue to draw, and eventually write, for many years to come) — Green Arrow. The opening splash page, on the other hand, gives us a tableau that’s obviously a little earlier in our protagonist’s chronology — though it still represents a flash-forward from the actual beginning of his story…
This splash also informs us of the hero’s new name, as Savage Empire‘s “Jason Cord” becomes “Travis Morgan”. Per Mike Grell, the new name wasn’t exactly a slam dunk when he first floated it with his prospective editor, Joe Orlando, in the midst of his pitch:
Joe turned out to be a harder sell than Carmine, but I stayed with him and eventually he realized I could hold my own. Every question he asked, I had a ready answer for — except one: “What’s the character’s name?” “Henry Morgan.” I pulled the name out of thin air. “I’ll call him Morgan the Raider, after the pirate.” Joe didn’t like it. There was a comedian named Henry Morgan on TV’s What’s My Line? and an actor who had started as Henry and later became Harry Morgan of M.A.S.H. fame. So I named him after my brother’s son, Travis.
Along with a new name, the hero of what had been Savage Empire gained a new occupation; rather than an archaeologist, he was now a USAF pilot, a change which drew on Grell’s own Air Force background.
Speaking of the author’s military background… “Maggie’s drawers“? Yeah, my eighteen-year-old self had no idea what that phrase meant in 1975… and not a lot of convenient options for finding out. Thankfully, in 2025, the answer is just a simple Google search away.
Morgan hopes that by flying at “Mach 3”, he can make it to the base in Alaska before his fuel runs out…
A second opening full-page splash? One that provides the story title and credits that the first one didn’t? Sure, why not?
Being the highly-trained military officer that he is, Lt. Col. Travis Morgan double-checks the contents of his “survival vest“; once he’s confirmed that he’s properly equipped with “knife, compass, .38 Special and 12 rounds of ammo”, he sets forth confidently into the jungle in search of civilization…
A reprise of the comic’s first opening splash page, presented this time in the image’s proper story context? Again, why not?
The warriors may indeed be wary of Morgan’s gun, but that doesn’t stop them from making another charge. Again, our hero fires with deadly effect, this time taking down the man he believes to be their leader. But that still isn’t enough to drive them off, and Morgan realizes that their superior numbers will eventually carry the day…
Given his ultimate importance not just to this opening storyline, but to the Warlord series overall, Deimos’ introduction here is handled by Grell in a notably restrained manner. Interestingly, the high priest of Thera is one of the few major characters from Savage Empire (perhaps the only one, actually) who makes the transition with his original name — which Grell had taken from one of the two moons of Mars — intact:
Deimos and Phobos: Terror and Fear. I was going to change it to “Phobos,” but it was just such a cool name and I had discovered the Comics Code Authority forbade the use of the word “terror,” so I decided to keep it as it was.
Perhaps in an attempt to emulate the great adventure strip cartoonists like Hal Foster, Mike Grell largely eschews sound effects in this first adventure of the Warlord. In the sequence, that approach unfortunately combines with some poor compositional choices by the artist to result in some less than clear storytelling; in my recent re-reading of this story, I didn’t immediately understand that Travis Morgan had shot the globe out of Deimos’ hand, and wondered if he’d used some sort of previously unknown mental power to save himself… that is, until I turned to the next page, where the hero’s thought balloon clarified the matter…
Um, “garb more suited to the occasion”? I guess, maybe, if Thera has an active leather bar scene…
Here we finally learn the name of Travis Morgan’s companion: Tara. This represents a change from Grell’s Savage Empire sample art, where the prototype of the character is called Tahnee.
As for the two other names first mentioned on the page above, Grell explained their provenance in his 2011 Back Issue article:
The Warlord’s lost world of Skartaris is named for the mountain peak Scartaris in A Journey to the Center of the Earth, whose shadow points the way down into the volcano and shows the expedition the proper pathway to the center of the Earth. The city of Shamballah [was inspired] from Three Dog Night’s song “The Road to Shambhala,” which, in turn came from the fabled Golden City of Chambhalla that lies buried somewhere in a hollow mountain in Tibet and formed the basis for James Hilton’s novel The Lost Horizon, the story of Shangri-La.
While he’s dropped some broad hints in earlier scenes, this is the first time Grell has made crystal clear the most significant change to his original Savage Empire concept (which, you’ll remember, involved the hero being “cast back in time to the lost continent of Atlantis”) that he’d wrought during his fateful pitch to Carmine Infantino:
Choosing the new setting was easy—as a kid, one of my favorite books (and movies) was Jules Verne’s 1864 classic A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Before the turn of the 20th Century, there were over 50 different titles written on the “Hollow Earth” theory and I drew on several of those that I had at my disposal, including The Smokey God and The Hollow Earth and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar series.
I’d like to think that I realized that Grell was riffing on the “Hollow Earth” concept prior to his spelling it out on the page above, given that I was already familiar with several significant elements of the premise (e.g., the rising horizon, the eternal noonday sun, and the fluidity of time) due to my familiarity with Burroughs’ Pellucidar stories — a familiarity I owed as much to DC’s comics adaptations of same (which had appeared in Korak, Son of Tarzan and Weird Worlds) as to my having read Burroughs’ novel Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (1929-30). But I don’t actually remember, so I very well may not have.
One thing I’m pretty sure I was irked by back then, however — and this was true regarding the Pellucidar material, as well as Grell’s new take on the “Hollow Earth” — was the idea that not having a standard day/night cycle wouldn’t just mess with a person’s sense of time’s passing, but would actually somehow warp time — a notion we see illustrated in this story when Travis Morgan lies down for what one presumes would be just eight hours or so of sleep, and wakes up with long hair and a full beard. Half a century later, I still don’t see the logic in such a notion But, hey, maybe it’s just me; if it makes sense to you, please feel free to enlighten your humble blogger via the comments section below.
While the dire fate Deimos deals out to his informant serves well to dramatically demonstrate to the reader just what a ruthless bastard the guy is, it’s also the kind of behavior which, upon a few moments’ reflection, is likely to seem rather short-sighted. After all, if you routinely kill off or otherwise dispose of the people who bring you valuable intel (by turning ’em into snakes, say), sooner or later word will get around, and people will stop bringing you intel. Or so at least it seems to me.
Some time later, as Morgan and Tara sleep, three armed mercenaries — hired by Deimos, naturally — enter their darkened chamber for the express purpose of doing them in…
Art by Mike Grell.
Aaanndd they’re off! Just two months later, Travis and Tara’s flight from Thera would carry them right into the opening pages of Warlord #1 (Jan.-Feb., 1976). The next bi-monthly issue of the fledgling title would follow in December; but after that, things took an unexpected turn. Here’s Mike Grell’s account of what went down:
Despite his guarantee of a one-year run, Carmine canceled The Warlord after issue #3 [sic — it was actually Warlord #2 — YHB] and the first I heard about it was when I read through the proofs and saw the words “THE END” on the last page.
During his tenure as DC Comics’ publisher, Carmine Infantino had consistently demonstrated a willingness to greenlight innovative new features — but, it must be said, he also often seemed ready to pull the plug on such projects as quickly as he’d originally approved them. This tendency seems to have become particularly acute towards the end of Infantino’s time in the head office, as the latter half of1975 saw multiple titles axed prior to having shipped more than six issues to stands. Among them were most of Warlord‘s peers in the very same “adventure” line that the company had been promoting so heavily as recently as April, including: Justice, Inc. (cancelled in August, with issue #4); Stalker (the same in September, also with #4); Kong the Untamed (November, with #5); Beowulf (also November, with #6), and finally, Tor (which joined Warlord in getting the heave-ho in December, with #6). Of the seven new titles who’d been featured in that impressive full-page April house ad, only Claw the Unconquered would survive the turning of the calendar over to the new year 1976.
Of course, that abrupt December ’75 cancellation turned out not to be the end for Travis Morgan, after all… not by a long-shot. As Mike Grell recounted in Back Issue #46:
Fortunately, Jenette Kahn replaced Carmine very shortly after that and it turned out that Jenette had been a big fan of The Warlord, and immediately had it put back on the schedule. When the DC Implosion struck [mid-1978], The Warlord not only survived the cut, but was made a monthly title.
Art by Mike Grell.
Arriving in spinner racks in July, 1976 — seven months after the title’s supposed final issue — Warlord #3 kicked off a new bi-monthly run that lasted until issue #16, published in September, 1978, at which time the book did indeed go monthly. It would maintain that schedule almost to the very end, which came one full decade later, with issue #133 (cover-dated Winter, 1988, but actually published in September). That made for a thirteen-year publishing history overall; I’d call that a legitimate commercial success for DC Comics, even if it wasn’t an everlasting one.
Art by Jan Duursema.
Mike Grell himself had mostly left Warlord behind long before the title reached the end of its original run, having chosen to focus his efforts instead on his new, independently-published creations, Starslayer and Jon Sable: Freelance. After both writing and drawing Warlord through issue #51 (Nov., 1981), Grell handed over the series’ scripting to his then-wife Sharon Wright, who proceeded to ghost-write most issues up through #71 (though all were published under Grell’s byline); meanwhile, the interior art chores were taken up by various hands, including Mark Texiera, Jan Duursema, and Dan Jurgens. Grell continued to provide regular covers through #70 (Jun., 1983), but after that, he was pretty much gone, even as a credit line. Cary Burkett became the series’ writer with #72; he was succeeded in turn by Michael Fleisher, who held that role from the 100th through the 133rd (and final) issue.
Your humble blogger had bailed on Warlord about a year before Mike Grell did, my last consecutively-bought issue being #39 (for the record, I did check in a few times after that, such as when the title tied into DC’s 1986-87 Legends crossover event for a couple of issues). As I recall, it was always something of a marginal purchase for me; although I generally enjoyed Grell’s art, I wasn’t so enamored of it that it would play a large factor in my purchasing decisions, and as for the stories, well… While I was definitely a stone sword-and-sorcery fan back in the day, I was never quite convinced that Warlord fit snugly into that genre, regardless of how many times DC used the S&S label in its marketing over the years. I suppose you could say it all went back to that first image in DC’s April, 1975 house ad, the one that showed Travis Morgan holding his .38 Special revolver along with his sword; beyond that, the whole “Hollow Earth”, lost-world business seemed to place the series as much in the Edgar Rice Burroughs-style science-fantasy camp as in the heroic fantasy fold exemplified by Robert E. Howard’s “Conan” stories. Yes, I know I was being somewhat arbitrary, and that someone else might have seen Grell’s genre-blending as a strength, rather than as a weakness; in the end, however, one likes what one likes, and I wasn’t getting enough of what I liked from Warlord to stick with the book.
Cover to Flash (2023 series) #17 (Mar., 2025). Art by Mike del Mundo.
Of course, as it turned out, Warlord didn’t really need my personal patronage to make a go of it, at least not up to 1988; and even after his original title’s demise, Travis Morgan refused to die. The Warlord title has been revived on three separate occasions, with Mike Grell himself involved in the first and third ventures: a 6-issue miniseries published in 1992; an ongoing series that ran for 10 issues in 2006-07; and another ongoing series that saw 16 issues released in 2009-10. Outside of those headlining gigs, the Warlord has popped up elsewhere in the greater DC Multiverse numerous times in the last several decades — the latest (at this writing) being in a Flash storyline published just this year, involving a vacation trip taken by series star Wally West and his family to Skartaris (which, incidentally, was somewhere along the line reimagined as an alternate dimension, rather than being literally inside “our” Earth). All in all, it seems entirely reasonable to assume that, one way or another, whether as a solo act or as a guest star, Travis Morgan will continue fight on, sword in hand… or gun in hand… or, probably, both.
*Of course, DC’s decision to publish what would have been Warlord #1 as 1st Issue Special #8 made the 
“1st DC Issue” seal on the cover especially redundant. This seal, by the way, was used in a very arbitrary fashion by DC in this era, being applied to the covers of some actual first issues (Kong the Untamed #1, for one example) but not to others (e.g., Hercules Unbound #1). In addition to that, the wording of the blurb might make you scratch your head if you thought about it for more than a couple of seconds. I mean, first DC issue? As opposed to, what, the first Marvel issue? Honestly, guys, you’ve already got a nice big DC logo in the cover’s upper left-hand corner. Are you really that worried that we’ll get confused about what publisher we’re giving our custom to?
Cover art by Joe Kubert.
To the best of my knowledge, DC’s first use of this particular seal had been back in 1972, when its application to the cover of Tarzan #207 was eminently logical; after all, DC had just acquired the comic-book rights to the Edgar Rice Burroughs jungle hero, and since they’d decided to maintain the issue numbering of the title’s prior publisher, Gold Key Comics, this was an easy way of calling attention to a major change in Tarzan’s fortunes. But with very few exceptions, such as Tor #1 (where DC was reviving a feature originally released in the 1950s by St. John Publications) the continued use of the “DC” qualifier on random first issues didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I suppose that someone in the production office just liked the graphic… but fifty years on down the road, one can’t help but wonder if anyone ever thought about its actual appropriateness for more than a few seconds.
I never had a problem with the idea that “time is all in our heads” as a kid — and having reread Pellucidar a couple of years back, I can say I still don’t. Obviously YMMV.
I reread Warlord a while back. My collection runs through the Burkett years which I remember liking for putting some fresh spin on the series. That era doesn’t hold up. I’m annoyed to learn Grell let his wife write his stuff uncredited — an annoying number of male writers turn out to have done that.
Even before that it definitely lost some of the original energy as it went along.
There’s a great crossover with Grell’s Green Arrow where Warlord shows up in Seattle and GA’s foes assume he’s Ollie — hey, he doesn’t have his bow and arrow with him, this’ll be a piece of cake! Plus his first question to GA: “Did Gilligan ever get off that damn island?”
Didn’t know about all that back history, so thanks.
For anyone curious about the history of the hollow Earth belief (which I touch on slightly blogging about Pellucidar: https://atomicjunkshop.com/for-the-world-is-hollow-and-i-have-touched-a-dinosaur-pellucidar/) Walter Kafton-Minkel’s Hollow Earth is an excellent guide.
I don’t really have an issue with “time is all in our heads” as a phenomenon of consciousness — I just don’t understand how that would work when someone was *unconscious*, so that their hair and beard could grow out long while they were asleep. But, like you said, mileage varies. 🙂
I was born in 1968, so the Attack of the 50 Year Old Comics has finally reached the point where I first began buying and reading in real time the comics Alan is writing about here. While I did *not* buy First Issue Special #8 or Warlord #1 off the spinner rack, the first two comics I bought, or, to be more accurate, that my mom bought for me, were Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #210, cover dated August 1975, and Batman Family #1, cover dated October 1975, both of which were drawn by Mike Grell, so Grell will always have a special place in my heart as the first comic book artist I knew, and his art, derivative of Neal Adams as it was, set the template for my idea of what comic art should look like. And I would say that, after a shaky start with his first work for DC in 1974, Grell peaked fairly early on in 1975 and 1976, when he was still pencilling and inking his own work on Warlord and the Legion. I did start picking up Warlord not long after this, pretty early in its run, and stayed with the title at least until Omac was the backup feature, as I do recall vaguely reading those backup stories when DC was bragging about “more pages from the new DC” on the cover. There is a Warlord Omnibus coming out this fall that I am looking forward to – for better or for worse, it will be a trip down memory lane for me.
I was a precocious reader as a kid, and I’m pretty sure that before I read my first issue of Warlord, I had read at least one of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar books. Not long after it came out in 1976, I did read John Eric Holmes’s Mahars of Pellucidar, which like Grell’s Warlord, did appeal to me, even though I was just a little kid, in part because of Boris Vallejo’s sexy cover art – looking at Alan’s recap of this book, I’m struck by Deimos’s scantily-clad servant girls, with Grelll’s trademark ‘70s eye makeup/face paint on their cheeks. But because I had some familiarity with the various Pellucidar books, I just accepted the whole “hollow earth” premise at face value, it made sense to me then, even if it doesn’t make any sense now. Maybe the whole premise of the Warlord was ludicrous – one could say the same of the premise of most DC and Marvel books, though, and I did really enjoy the Warlord into the mid-‘80s, mostly for Grell’s art, but also for the stories, as crazy as they were.
I was also born in 1968 and feel the same thrill now that this site has reached issues I was buying as a kid. Yay!
I have enjoyed this site for many years and think Alan has done an amazing job writing about the comics he read when he was a boy, but I am glad that we have finally hit the point where I can play along, or at least remember what it was like to read in real time some of the books that Alan writes about.
Walt Simonson does a great job on Pellucidar in “Tarzan vs. Predator at the Earth’s Core” — anything with a title like that shouldn’t work, but it does.
“Tarzan vs. Predator at the Earth’s Core” also benefits from gorgeous artwork by Lee Weeks. I reread this series every couple of years. It’s so much fun!
“While the dire fate Deimos deals out to his informant serves well to dramatically demonstrate to the reader just what a ruthless bastard the guy is, it’s also the kind of behavior which, upon a few moments’ reflection, is likely to seem rather short-sighted. After all, if you routinely kill off or otherwise dispose of the people who bring you valuable intel (by turning ’em into snakes, say), sooner or later word will get around, and people will stop bringing you intel.”
I wonder if Deimos fired the person who released a bad job report.
I presume transforming the serving wench is meant to be some version of “if you spy on them, you’ll spy on me.” but without some statement to that effect it does look counter-productive.
Given it was an accurate report and the agent was not compromised, that was probably unwise . . . .
I have no idea why I bought this and read it to the end. I was a completist back then but I did drop books once in a blue moon but not this one. What’s weird is that I have never liked Grell’s art (love of the Legion saved that book for me despite his weird anatomy and clothing shrinking) and Long Bow Hunters turned me off on his writing. I wasn’t even a fan of non super-powered characters back then either. One thing I’ve always thought and don’t think I’ve ever brought up anywhere is how funny I found that ‘costume’ he was ultimately given with the very small loin coth. To this day I can’t look at it without thinking how underwhelmingly endowed Travis must be down there for that loin cloth to keep him covered. Poor Tara!
Grell’s anatomy could be wonky, I agree – one gets the sense that Neal Adams learned to draw by studying from life, or at least from taking some sort of traditional art classes, while Grell learned to draw by studying Neal Adams, and, at times, Grell’s figures could display weird, distorted anatomy, I agree, but, at its best, Grell’s art was gorgeous, I think, and, as I touched on above, he was particularly good at drawing gorgeous women. Of all the big Marvel and Dc artists of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, Grell remains my favorite, ahead of the likes of Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, and George Perez.
Vinnie did straighten out Grell’s anatomical anomalies.
I was never a fan of Grell due to the aforementioned wonky anatomy, besides his swipes of Neal Adams figures in Legion of Super-Heroes, but he was tenacious and productive for many, many years and I certainly give him respect for that. I also remember him on the Tarzan Sunday newspaper strips, but I don’t know how long he lasted on that feature.
I never really cottoned to his work on GA either. Though as I have the DC app I may try it again sometime.
This comic would have been out around the time (I think) that I started reading, but for whatever reason I never picked up any Warlord stories. I was dedicated to reading only superheroes at first, until at some point I started to read Conan comics. So I very much appreciate this post.
Was a big Mike Grell fan from my first Legion of Super-Heroes comic. I pretty much dropped out of comics reading in maybe 1977 or 1978 and a big stack of used Warlord comics is what got me back in to comics a few years later.
I loved this series, at least up until the post-Grell years which are pretty silly. It’s a pity that so many issues of the series are inked by my least favorite inker and a guy whose style was in no way sympathetic to Grell’s.
There’s an Omnibus of the first 30+ issues coming out later this year and I am anxious to get my hands on it.
As I said above, to me, Grell’s artwork always looked better when he had time to ink his own pencils. As Grell became more popular and in-demand, and the Legion and the Warlord both went monthly, his art did suffer a little bit when inked by Vince Colletta or even Bob Wiacek or other inkers, but I still liked the Warlord issues inked by Colletta, as enough of Grell’s style still came through Colletta’s filter.
I have pre-ordered the Warlord omnibus and am very much looking forward to reading it.
The last pre-Colleta issue was inked by Joe Rubentein and that was great and I liked GL/GA # 93 and 94 which were inked by Giordano & Austin. Austin also inked Grell’s last GL story in The Flash and the work Grell did on the Calculator stories in the back of Detective Comics. (I also liked Wiacek’s inks on Batman, so milage will differ.)
Too bad someone like Schwartz or Orlando had not kept Colleta off Grell’s GL/GA & Batman work.
Hi, Alan,
Looking back, I think that Grell’s mash-up of science fiction and fantasy tropes should count as a positive, an attempt to try something different, even if it’s only shuffling the cards rather than introducing a brand-new concept.
This book, honestly, never meant anything to me. I re-read the 1st ISSUE SPECIAL not than long ago, and other than that, the only issues of the regular WARLORD title I bought were the LEGENDS tie-ins and the issues that had Jim Starlin’s OMAC as a back-up. It’s OK for what it is, I guess. Sword and sorcery was never really my thing, and Grell’s writing was serviceable but uninspiring. I thought he did a better job with the ground-level heroes like Green Arrow and Jon Sable. He did a pretty good job with hot women, though!
As for his art, as I’ve said before, his strength was more in design rather than story-telling. His anatomy could be weird; I remember more than one issue of LEGION, JON SABLE or others thinking, “Why is the head so out of proportion to the rest of the body?” But his inking was able to cover some of those sins. (I think in that respect, he was similar to his predecessor on the Legion, Dave Cockrum.)
But though the book didn’t mean much to me, yoru commentary did. Thanks, Alan!
By the way, the music fan in me feels compelled to point out that the song “Shambala” [note spelling] was written by Daniel Moore, a songwriter perhaps best-known for “My Maria,” which he co-wrote with singer B. W. Stevenson, who also recorded the song. In fact, Stevenson’s version of “Shambala” preceded the hit version by Three Dog Night by less than a month. Though I love the Three Dog Night version (and really enjoyed its use in the series LOST), I’m very fond of the Stevenson version, too, which has an arrangement clearly modelled after “My Maria.”
https://youtu.be/hv9DwzU3KP0?si=IRiLwcyipfjq3ayX
(I apologize if you know all this. It’s not just you. I’m annoying and pedantic with EVERYONE. With me, it’s not “mansplaining.” It’s “Nuttsplaining.”)
I started buying Warlord somewhere around #35, and liked it well enough to track down most of the issues I had missed, though my budget at the time didn’t stretch to anything earlier than #3, so I’ve never seen this story before.
The feature wore its influences on its sleeve – a lot of Burroughs from the start, with later flavours of Tolkien and Moorcock – and was often rather silly, but the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach, combined with a refusal to take itself too seriously and the endless variety of seriously skimpy outfits worn by both male and female characters gave it a frantic, campy energy that somehow worked. It wasn’t like anything else around at the time and I liked that.
I’m something of a fan of Mike Grell, having read several of the Jon Sable Freelance trade paperback collections published by IDW, as well as some of his 1990s Green Arrow issues, his James Bond miniseries for Eclipse and his Image Comics series Shaman’s Tears, plus enjoying his work (via back issues) on Legion of Super-Heroes. But for whatever reason I’ve never actually read a single issue of Warlord.
I enjoyed your blog post about 1st Issue Special #8. If you decide to do any additional posts about the Warlord series proper I’m sure I’ll enjoy them, too. And maybe I’ll finally get around to searching out some issues of Warlord to read. It looks like Grell did gorgeous artwork for the series.
Once Grell stopped drawing it — well, rereading I was conscious of the drop off in quality. I’m not sure I was at the time.
I missed this one at the time, but picked it up about 20 years ago when I bought a complete set of First Issue Special, mostly for the Kirby, Ditko, Grandenetti and Simonson issues, but also for the oddball stuff. I didn’t particularly enjoy the Warlord issue as I’ve never understood the appeal of Mike Grell’s art. It always looked awkward and clumsy to me, with its strange anatomy and poor storytelling design (an example of which you pointed out, Alan). The slick inking made it just about acceptable, but couldn’t make up for the flaws. Credit to him for creating a comic that enjoyed such a respectably long run, though.
The only 1/S feature to get a book (except for the New Gods (which was published about a year later)..
A few of the other features were used again: the Pasko/Simonson version of Dr, Fate got a book in the 1980s; Kirby’s last version of Manhunter figured in Englehart’s JLA; Atlas figured in a run of Superman: Metamorpho had a mini series in the 1990s and figured in the Outsiders; The Creeper had a series in World’s Finest by Ditko and an (unpublished) Showcase; did Codename: Assassin get used in Superman?
Only the two Joe Simon efforts, Kanigher’s Lady Cop and Kirby’s Dingbats didn’t get used again (and they were recently reprinted).
Jenette Kahn was instrumental both in getting Warlord resumed and getting Conway’s update on the New Gods back in print.
I have no idea if Codename: Assassin ever showed up in Supeman, but all of the 1st Issue Special characters (including Lady Cop and the Dingbats) recently appeared in Tom King and Jorge Fornés’ 2023-24 miniseries “Danger Street”.
Assassin showed up in James Robinson’s run on Superman along with Atlas.
I like Grell’;’s art. However, he is more an inker than a penciller (somewhat like Cockrum).
He has great moments in his writing. The delayed Warlord #3 had a notable rumination on “You’ve never lived until you’ve almost died. For those who have fought for it, life has a flavor the protected shall never know” – Guy de Maupassant. Travis Morgan states he saw it as a graffito in a Saigon Bunker, but I suspect Grell saw it during his time there with the USAF.
Grell, Cockrum and Starlin were all Vietnam veterans. Englehart and MacGregor were state-side Vietnam Era veterans: Englehart as a Conscientious Objector; MacGregor as an Army National Guard Supply Sergeant.
I suspect you see signs of that (in different ways) in Grell’s Longbow Hunters and Warlord and in Englehart & Cockrum’s KangWar story in the Avengers and in MacGregor’s Panther;s Rage.
Finally, who decided to let Colletta ink Grell on Warlord, Batman and GL/GA. Adams seemed like the one guy who avoided that. (to reference the B&B story where that almost happened, “But Colletta Could Hurt You.”)
Despite the wonky anatomy and the skimpy costumes, I was always a big fan of Mike Grell, reading almost everything he created throughout the entirety of it’s run. I don’t remember how long I stuck with Warlord, but I certainly remember buying this one and several others besides and have the feeling that I stuck with the book for awhile. I always found the character of Travis Morgan interesting, in that it combined both fantasy and SF elements and reminded me of the Pellucidar series, which I had enjoyed. Nowadays, I look back and can’t get past the incredibly long legs and the extended torsos and the soft core porn costumes. I think the resemblance of Grell’s work to Adams made folks more forgiving than they might have been otherwise.
I wondered if you were going to mentioned Travis Morgan’s appearance in Tom King’s Danger Street, Alan. While it was certainly a stretch to include such a diverse list of characters–who were never meant to appear together in the first place–into one story, I enjoyed it all the same. Thanks!
Oh, Grell’s mix of a hollow Earth with an internal sun, polar openings and dinosaurs all scream “I like Pellucidar” (though the polar opening idea goes back well before ERB). And having time go wonky. I do not have a problem with him using ERB as a template.
The scanty clothes were a thing in Burroughs but of course being print it wasn’t so obvious. I remember a decade back, Burroughs’ estate sued Dynamite on the grounds it drew Dejah Thoris so scantily-clad in their Martian books that it would hurt Burroughs’ reputation. The estate threatened to sue (on technical reasons, as the characters were out of copyright)/
As I recall it, in the 1970s, the paperback editions of Burroughs’ books featured covers by artists such as Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo depicting very scantily-clad women, and, to be frank, that was at least part of their appeal to me, although I did actually read the books. I even read (what I vaguely remember to be) trash like Tarnsman of Gor, again in part because of the Vallejo? cover art. A couple of years ago, I saw a few episodes of Charlie’s Angels for the first time since the 1970s, and was reminded of the era of “jiggle TV,” which I’d kind of forgotten about, but was a real thing. My point being, in response to Don’s post above, that Grell’s “soft porn” art in the Warlord and in the Legion was par for the course for the era, and was actually milder than what you could see on the covers of paperback fantasy novels, on TV, and, of course, at movie theatres. I was and am mildly surprised that Grell got away with some of his more risqué costumes such as that of Princess Projectra or Charma – was the Comics Code censor asleep when the Legion books came in? – and of course the women in the Warlord wore as little as possible, but, again, Grell’s art reflected the mood and mores of the times.
Neal Adams apparently believed in the Hollow Earth idea and appeared on Art Bell’s Show to talk about it. https://www.dinox.org/nealadams_obituary.html
Just a few comments as I’ve been away for the last several days: I bought this comic off the stands and was quite confused how the 1st Issue Special of the Warlord could be # 8 in the series until my big brother pointed out the official title and numbering in the indicia.
I really loved Mike Grell’s artwork on the Legion, especially as he made some of the team look very mature for supposedly still being teenagers. It seems like he really liked Travis Morgan’s exposed legs so much that just a few months later in Superboy/LSH # 215 he did the same for Cosmic Boy and Colossal Boy. Then again it really didn’t matter much to me what the male Legionnaires looked like. Storywise, I enjoyed the hybrid nature of ancient and modern weapons in the series. Retrospectively, I felt that Travis Morgan was really just a variation of Adam Strange, in regard to being a modern man who became a hero in a past/future world, with Torin Mac Quillon the Starslayer, published at Pacific Comics and then First Comics, yet just a further iteration as a Celtic warrior from the Middle Ages cast into the future.
The physical depiction of Tara reminded me a lot of Leela from Doctor Who, Louise Jameson, portraying the second companion of the Fourth Doctor, who was played by the great Tom Baker.
While I never bought any further issues of the Warlord, I did become a regular reader of my best friend’s collection through the early 80’s.
Warlord art reached its heights when Vince Colletta was brought in to do the inking. The illustrations were more classic than cartooney and the women were sooo much prettier.
Grell’s art here was a step above what he was doing at the time on the Legion and GL/GA. Agree with Bill about Grell’s women. This is not a bad issue, a mixture of Oliver Queen in Pellicular, Ka-Zar and Conan, but I wonder why DC did not launch a Pellicular series instead, given that they then had the rights?
There was in fact still one more “Pellucidar” story still to come from DC at the time of “Warlord”‘s launch — it would appear in the final issue of Tarzan Family (#66), which came out in August, 1976, a whole year after 1st Issue Special #8.
Evidently, DC thought that Grell’s creation was different enough from Burroughs’ to have a better chance of success in the marketplace; I’ve always had a hard time seeing it myself, but history seems to have proved them right.
There was also the fact of the licensing fee DC had to pay to the Burroughs estate, which I’ve read they took out of the creators’ page rate, more or less. (It seems to have been the main reason Mike Kaluta moved on from “Carson of Venus”, for example.) All else being equal, it may have been more economical for DC to do their own “Hollow Earth” book — or so at least they may have thought.