In July, 1976, the comics fans who’d been following artist/writer Jim Starlin’s Warlock series could pick up some strong clues about the latest issue’s contents from the cover — specifically, from the the various figures (and heads) that Starlin had drawn symbolically surrounding his central image of the series’ titular hero.  Because while three out of the total six characters thus portrayed were new and unfamiliar, the other three — i.e., Thanos, Gamora, and Pip — were folks we hadn’t seen since issue #11 (in the first two cases) and #12 (in the last).  That strongly suggested that, after the past two issues’ standalone tale of Adam Warlock’s conflict with the Star Thief, Starlin was going to be giving his faithful readers what many of us had been waiting for — namely, the next chapter in the saga of Thanos’ quest to bring about universal stellar genocide.  Or at least some movement in that area, if only in the form of a subplot.

As it turned out, that assessment was essentially correct.  But what we fans didn’t know then — and still wouldn’t know, even after we finished reading the comic (up to and including the letters page, which ended with an editorial note encouraging us to come back next time “for one of the greatest surprise thrillers of all!  See you in sixty!”) — was that this issue was also the last one of the series.  So, whatever progress was going to made here in regards to Starlin’s overarching storyline was, in the end, going to amount to nothing more than a tantalizing tease… at least for the next twelve months. 

Why did Marvel Comics cancel Warlock with its fifteenth issue?  Probably for the same reason it had previously cancelled the title with its eighth issue, three years prior: the management did not believe that Warlock‘s ongoing sales provided the company with sufficient profit to justify its continued publication — even as a bimonthly.  Or, in other words, for the same basic reason why virtually every other cancelled comic book has gotten the ax over the last nine or so decades.

That said, there is in fact a little bit more to the behind-the-scenes story of Warlock‘s demise, beginning with Jim Starlin’s reportedly having decided to quit the series even before the ax fell.  But before we get into all of that background stuff, let’s go ahead and look at the actual story told within its pages.

As indicated by the opening splash page, we’re picking things up in the immediate aftermath of issue #14:

While the credits box states that Starlin has done “everything else” in this story besides the editing, lettering, and coloring — all the writing, pencilling, and inking, in other words — an interview that Steve Leialoha gave to Jon B. Cooke for Comic Book Artist #18 (Apr., 2002) indicates that wasn’t quite the case.  Rather, Leialoha  — who’d been involved with the series since issue #9, having started out by inking Starlin’s full pencils before moving on to providing finished art over the auteur’s layouts — contributed substantially to this issue’s artwork, despite going uncredited.  As Leialoha explains in the interview:

The credits just say “Art by Jim Starlin” because, ahh, I figured why change it?  But he [i.e., Starlin] did all of the first page and as you go through it, it gets less and less his artwork and more mine.

Adam Warlock’s brief, but very eventful, career as the “savior” of Counter-Earth was, of course, what his first go at a solo series had been all about; while Jim Starlin can’t be said to have completely ignored that phase of his hero’s journey, he hadn’t shown much inclination to revisit it, either.  So this sequence is interesting on that level, suggesting that maybe Adam could be returning to Counter-Earth sometime in the not-so-distant future, even if his current “nebulous giant” status would seem to make that impossible — a notion that will receive further support later on in the issue.

On my most recent re-reading of this story in preparation for writing this post, I guessed that Marr Gar was a representative of the same race of “asparagus people” that had first been introduced in 1963 in Avengers #4, but would later become best-known for having had their planet wiped out by Dark Phoenix in X-Men #135, published some four years after our present yarn.  But, no; according to Fandom’s Marvel Database wiki, the asparagus folks are called the D’bari, while Marr Gar’s people (whom I suppose do resemble another of your humble blogger’s least favorite vegetables, broccoli, more than they do asparagus) are known as the R’malk’i.  You learn something new every day…

While he’s never named in this story, or even seen all that clearly, that’s definitely our old friend Drax the Destroyer — who was last seen making a beeline for Thanos’ alleged location in Captain Marvel #44, just a few months prior to this, — that just blew up Gamora’s spaceship real good.  If, however, you figure that the Most Dangerous Woman in the Universe can’t be killed quite that easily, you’re correct.  That said, neither in Gamora’s next appearance nor in Drax’s will we get any sort of explanation of what happened here following that big TA-BOOM! — and as far as I know, no later story has cleared the matter up, either.  So, if you really need to know how Gamora gets from this tight spot to the even worse place in which we’ll find her about a year from now, in Avengers Annual #7, you’ll have to make up your own version of those events.

“I’ve had everything a person could wish for,” muses Adam Warlock, “power, freedom, followers, excitement, even truth.  Everything except purpose.”  He goes on to reflect that when he acted as a protector for Earth and Counter-Earth, he had a reason for existing; lately, however, the only thing he’s needed to protect anyone from is his own self.  “Perhaps I should find some cause to champion, except I’ve become too cynical of late to believe in anything.  It’s difficult to stand up for apathy!”

Jim Starlin has done his usual fine job in his design of the blue alien Traveler/Thinker/Hermit/What-Have-You, but what really makes this sequence special for me is the added element of the blue guy’s little pink companion — who never speaks, and who thus might be his pet, or best friend, or even his spouse, for all we know.  It’s an entirely gratuitous — but, for my money, still very welcome — extra bit of business.

“In little over a year…”  Most of the blue alien’s prophecies will indeed come true within that span of time (though not, of course, in the pages of Warlock).  One notable exception is the statement that Warlock will cause the death of the creator of Counter-Earth, aka the High Evolutionary; whatever Starlin might have had planned in that regard, he didn’t manage to work it in to the conclusion of the Adam Warlock saga he presented in the following summer’s Avengers and Marvel Two-in-One annuals.*

Yeah, that scene with Pip doesn’t advance any of Starlin’s plotlines one iota.  Still, it’s always nice to check in with our favorite Troll.

In any case, we have just one event left in this issue’s series of same.  And so we rejoin Adam Warlock one last time, as he descends to the surface of yet another alien planet — one he’s chosen because of its Earth-like atmosphere, which he hopes will provide him with the strength to do what he needs to do…

“I am one of the Six.”  This is the first indication we’ve had in a story written by Jim Starlin that Warlock’s Soul Gem isn’t unique in the universe — though not the first such indication overall.  As we’ve covered in a previous post, that information had already been shared with Marvel Comics readers by two of Starlin’s friends and sometime collaborators, Steve Englehart and Al Milgrom, in Captain Marvel #45 — which, for the record, had come out four months earlier than our present story, in April of ’76.  So, who first had the idea of there being six “Soul Gems” — an idea which would of course have tremendous ramifications for Starlin’s future work at Marvel (not to mention providing a backbone for the first decade or so of the Marvel Cinematic Universe)?  My own best guess is that Starlin came up with the notion, then shared it with his pals, who ran with it ahead of him (presumably with his permission).  But that’s just speculation on my part.

And so we come to the end of Jim Starlin’s Warlock — the title, that is.  As it turned out, Starlin wasn’t anywhere near done telling stories about Warlock, the character — even if he had no intention of ever returning when he completed his work on this issue.

I mentioned near the beginning of this post that whoever put together the final edition of the series’ letters column evidently didn’t know that there wouldn’t be a Warlock #16.  But I’d wager that whoever saw this last completed story page through production did, given the lack of any “Next Issue” blurb, and that rather definite “FIN”.  Also worth noting is a message written in the stars above that word — “Bye, Jim” — which, according to the Comic Book Artist interview I quoted earlier, was one of Steve Leialoha’s uncredited artistic contributions to this issue.

Of course, “Bye, Jim” doesn’t necessarily mean the book has been cancelled; it could just mean that Leialoha was exiting the book… or, that Starlin himself was.  And, according to accounts Starlin has given in multiple venues over the years, the latter was indeed the case.

Here’s the version that’s presented in Starlin’s autobiography/art book, The Art of Jim Starlin: A Life in Words and Pictures (IDW Publishing, 2018):

After some problems with editorial changes on the Warlock series early on, I’d come to an arrangement with both editors [Len] Wein and [Marv] Wolfman that any post-production alterations they might feel needed would be discussed before implementation.  This worked out well until suddenly Gerry Conway became editor and all previous agreements were then apparently null and void.

 

Warlock #14 had a number of art changes done at the editorial office without consultation.

 

When Steve [Leialoha] and I received the coloring stats and saw what had been done, I called the office to complain and was informed all editorial changes were now final and no longer open to debate.  It didn’t matter what had been agreed upon before.  This was the way it was going to be now that Gerry Conway was in charge.  If I didn’t like it, I could always quit.

 

So I did.

 

Then Gerry quit as editor two weeks later, and Archie Goodwin’s name was put on the issues that Conway had gotten me to leave the series over.  By then I was already committed to other work.

 

As it turned out, there was a serious paper shortage around this time and several Marvel books had to be cancelled (whether they were selling well enough or not) because there just wasn’t anything to print them on.  Warlock was among this group that also included Killraven and Luke Cage, Powerman, if I recall right. So no one followed me on Adam Warlock.

As it happens, Starlin recalled incorrectly in regards to Power Man, which kept going for a while yet (all the way up until 1986, in fact, if you count the issues published after Danny Rand joined Luke Cage as a co-star, and the book’s title became Power Man and Iron Fist).  But he was right about the “Killraven” feature, whose home base, Amazing Adventures, shipped its last issue in August, 1976, just a month after Warlock had done the same.  And, germane to his overall point, a couple of other titles bit the dust in August as well: Jungle Action (featuring the Black Panther) and Skull the Sayer.  However, it’s not as though Marvel didn’t almost immediately replace these cancelled titles on their publishing schedule, launching both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Spectacular Spider-Man in September, and Black Panther, Logan’s Run, and Ms. Marvel just one month after that.  So while it’s entirely possible that paper shortages (and, presumably, the higher printing costs incurred as a consequence) did constrain just how many books Marvel was willing to send to the presses in mid-to-late 1976, it’s also almost certainly an overstatement — if, perhaps, an unintentional one — to claim that “there just wasn’t anything to print” Warlock and the other discontinued titles on.

What might a post-Starlin Warlock have read and looked like, had Marvel had indeed opted to keep the title going following its writer/artist’s departure?  We’ll likely never know — but there had been another issue of Warlock in the works prior to the fall of the ax, although it’s not entirely clear whether it would have appeared as #16 or been slotted in later; in any event, it had been initiated before Starlin’s decision to quit the book.

According to a joint interview with Starlin, Allen Milgrom, and Alan Weiss that was published in the same 2002 issue of Comic Book Artist as Steve Leialoha’s, the plan was to produce an inventory story that could have been dropped into the publishing schedule as needed; Starlin was to have written the story, while Alan Weiss (who’d inked Starlin’s pencils on several of Warlock’s covers) would have provided the art:

Alan: Well, Jim and I always wanted to do more work together, and since during those years I’d do inventory issues, we decided to set up this Warlock filler.  I don’t know if we knew what issue it would be at the time.  We sat down one afternoon, and — in the ideal way to work — I asked, “What do you want to write?” and he asked, “What do you want to draw?”  Exactly like Englehart and I had done on Captain America. I said, “I’d like to get a crack at doing some Hobbit-like creatures.”  So that turned into these Hobbit-like miners on a planet who worked for these cosmic entrepreneurs who looked like stalks of asparagus.
Jim: Oh, asparagus?  I thought they were supposed to look like broccoli!  Excuse me! [laughter]  Don’t you know broccoli when you see it?
Alan: Well, not when it’s wearing a cape! [laughs] …
CBA: What happened to Warlock #16?
Alan: Well, I had the pencils with me when I came back to New York from my hegira in California,…  I flew into New York from Detroit, and I had a bunch of stuff in a portfolio that didn’t get taken out of the cab. So I lost those original pencils.

Thankfully, someone (probably letterer Tom Orzechowski) had already made photocopies of the pencilled art, so the work wasn’t completely lost.  Several pages were reproduced in CBA #18 as a complement to the interview quoted above; more recently, in 2009, all sixteen extant pages (some featuring little more than rough breakdowns), accompanied by explanatory notes from Alan Weiss, were presented as supplementary material in Marvel Masterworks — Warlock, Vol. 2.

But, of course, back in 1976, most comics fans had no inkling of any of this; indeed, unless they were really plugged in to organized fandom via conventions, zines, and the like, they didn’t even know that Warlock had been cancelled — although when September came and went without the next bimonthly issue turning up in the spinner racks, most of us could figure it out.

That, of course, left us with the questions — whither now Adam Warlock?  And what about Thanos?  Surely neither of those characters would be left in limbo forever.

And, of course, those who guessed that were absolutely right — though I doubt that few predicted that Adam would next resurface, not in a comic written and/or drawn by Jim Starlin, but in an issue of Marvel Team-Up written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by John Byrne… though that’s a story we’ll need to save for this December.  I hope to see you then.

 

*Unlike the Gamora/Drax episode, this loose end would eventually be cleaned up, courtesy of writer Mark Gruenwald, who revealed in Marvel Two-in-One #62 [Apr., 1980] that, sometime prior to the events of Starlin’s annuals, Adam was tricked into believing that the High Evolutionary had destroyed Counter-Earth; he then attacked his former mentor/ father figure and, afterwards, believed he’d killed him, not realizing that H.E. had survived in a disembodied state.  Which doesn’t quite square with Mr. Blue’s prophecy that Adam would cause the High Evolutionary’s actual, for-reals death — but, close enough, I guess.