Warlock

Avengers #118 (December, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

It’s September, and we’ve finally arrived at the climax of Marvel Comics’ pioneering crossover event of the summer of 1973, the Avengers/Defenders War.  Having realized at last that they share a common enemy, the superheroes of the two feuding teams have united to save the world.

So it’s fitting that, for the first time since the storyline began, the cover of this chapter gives us a group shot of multiple members from both teams — although artists Ron Wilson and John Romita have probably chosen wisely in not trying to cram all fourteen heroes, plus supervillains Dormammu and Loki, into a single shot.  Rather, they’ve opted to go with just nine, and it’s interesting to take note of who’s been included.  Unsurprisingly, every character starring in their own series — that’s Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Panther (in Jungle Action) from the Avengers, plus Sub-Mariner, Hulk, and Doctor Strange (in Marvel Premiere) from the Defenders — makes the cut.  But that still leaves two slots, and they’ve both gone to female characters — the Avengers’ Scarlet Witch and the Defenders’ Valkyrie — which serves to make the cover at least slightly less of a sausage fest.  Better luck next time, Silver Surfer, Vision, Hawkeye, Swordsman, and Mantis (the only shero who didn’t make the cover).

Still, if you’re hankering for a big group shot featuring all the heroes from both teams, no exceptions, then have no worries; Marvel’s got you covered on the book’s opening splash page:  Read More

Warlock #8 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When last we left Adam Warlock at the end of our Warlock #5 post back in January, the superheroic would-be savior of Counter-Earth had just saved thousands of Northern Californians from dying, either as a result of bomb test-caused earthquakes and flooding, or from the fire of armed missiles — the “Deathbirds” — which the same test had inadvertently triggered… only to have the very man responsible for ordering the bomb test in the first place, President Rex Carpenter, subsequently declare him a menace on national television.

The next issue of the series, sporting a cover by John Romita, picks up very soon after those events, as Adam finds himself under assault by the United States military.  Warlock #6 also sees the partial return of Mike Friedrich as the book’s writer, providing the finished script over a plot by Ron Goulart (who’d written issue #5), who in his turn worked from an “idea” contributed by Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas.

Additionally, issue #6 also features a major changing of the guard on the series’ artistic side, as Bob Brown replaces Gil Kane as penciller.  Kane, who’d co-created the feature with Thomas back in Marvel Premiere #1 (Apr., 1972) and had drawn every installment but one since then, would go on to provide one more cover for the book before its cancellation, but was otherwise done with Warlock as of #5.  Read More

Warlock #5 (April, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in November, 2021, we took a look at Marvel Premiere #1, in which Marvel’s new “Warlock” feature made its debut.  As we discussed at the time, that first installment found writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane dusting off a few old Stan Lee-Jack Kirby concepts from 1960s issues of Fantastic Four and Thor and combining them to create the most overt religious allegory that had yet appeared in superhero comics.  In doing so, they were clearly seeking to tap into the cultural zeitgeist exemplified by the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar both topping both the pop album charts and selling out shows on Broadway, and by the youth-driven “Jesus Movement” being featured on the cover of Time magazine, all of which happened in 1971.  Read More

Marvel Premiere #1 (April, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Regular readers of this blog may recall my mentioning my religious upbringing on a few earlier occasions.  But for those who don’t know, or have forgotten, I was raised Southern Baptist.  My parents were very devout — they’d actually first met at the church we all later attended as a family — and I was inculcated in church doctrine pretty much from birth.  The very earliest stories that I consumed were Bible stories.

So you’d expect that the not-especially-subtle Christian allegory at the core of Roy Thomas and Gil Kane’s “Warlock” must have been glaringly obvious to me back in November, 1971, when at age fourteen I first read the comic that’s the subject of today’s blog post.  Maybe I was offended, and maybe not, but surely I at least got it, right?  Read More

Thor #166 (July, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

There’s a case to be made that the God of Thunder’s adversary in the issue of his comic we’re discussing today — the being known at this point only as “Him”, though he’d later pick up the less confusing appellation “Adam Warlock” — was the last major character creation of artist/storyteller Jack Kirby during his most important and productive tenure at Marvel Comics.  As recalled by comics writer and historian — and longtime Kirby associate — Mark Evanier (and reported by numerous writers, including Mike Gartland in The Jack Kirby Collector #24), the story that Kirby plotted and drew for Fantastic Four #66 – 67 was a tale of well-intentioned scientists who create an ultimate human being, an entity who’s not only physically perfect but also possesses godlike powers, only to have this being, once it’s emerged from gestation within its cocoon, turn on them and destroy them, simply because they don’t meet his standards of perfection.  However, when it came time to script the story, Kirby’s collaborator (and editor), Stan Lee, jettisoned this theme — intended as Kirby’s ironic commentary on Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy — possibly because it didn’t present a clear-cut “bad guy”.  In Lee’s version of the story — which was the one that saw print, of course — the scientists wanted to use their creation to dominate the world; “Him” realized this, and destroyed the would-be despots before taking his leave of humanity.  Already disgruntled with Lee (and with Marvel Comics, generally) over a number of matters — including the way that Lee had appropriated and reinterpreted an earlier Kirby creation for FF, the Silver Surfer —  Kirby may have seen this latest alteration of his creative vision to be, in Gartland’s words, “the last straw”.  From this time on, the theory goes, the “King” would refrain from bringing his full creative powers to bear on the work he did for Marvel, with the result that he would introduce few, if any, truly significant new characters in his last couple of years before jumping ship for DC Comics.  Read More

Flash #173 (September, 1967)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fans of the Flash who’ve only been reading about him in comics for say, the last quarter century or so — not to mention fans who primarily know him from the current CW network TV series — may find this a difficult notion to grasp; but, back in his Silver Age heyday, Barry Allen did not regularly share his adventures with other costumed speedsters.  While it’s true that my own first issue of The Flash, bought and read in the September of 1965, featured an appearance by Barry’s teenage protégé Wally West — aka Kid Flash — as of summer, 1967, I hadn’t seen the two together again since.  And while I was familiar with Barry’s Golden Age predecessor as the Flash, Jay Garrick, I’d only actually seen him in action in a vintage 1947 adventure that had been reprinted in Flash #160. — I’d yet to see him team up with “my” Flash, or even with his fellow Justice Society of America members in one of the annual Justice League – Justice Society team-up extravaganzas..

All of which is intended to convey to you, dear reader, that when this comic book came out in July, 1967 — with its terrific cover (penciled by Carmine Infantino, inked by Murphy Anderson, and strikingly lettered by the great Ira Schnapp) promising not one, not two, but three Flashes in one story together — it was a big honking deal for my ten-year-old self.  Read More