Him!

I first ran across Him in Thor. He'd already debuted in Fantastic Four #67 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee so to speak.


Him was the creation of the Enclave, a gang of mad scientists who were trying to coax up their own perfect man to satisfy their own desires for power.


But when Him emerged from his cocoon, this perfect golden man met Alicia Masters and not unlike the Silver Surfer before him was changed by that encounter. He turned against his creators.


Later he turns up in Thor #165 and #166. He takes a shine to Sif and takes on the Thunder God because of it. They have a monstrous Kirby battle, an epic but it causes Him to withdraw back inside his cocoon.


When next he turns up it's Marvel Premiere #1 and Roy Thomas takes the raw stuff that is "Him" adds in the rich back story of the High Evolutionary from Thor #134 and gives the world Warlock, the literal savior of Counter-Earth, a newly created world on the opposite side of the sun.


After a few vivid and memorable issues by Thomas and Kane and Bob Brown too (with some great inking by Dan Adkins and especially Tom Sutton) the Warlock saga closed out, like so many initiatives of the early Bronze Age.


Later Jim Starlin would get his mitts on the character and transform him again into a tragic hero brimming with cosmic consequences. Warlock as been a mainstay of the Marvel Universe since, not always headlining a book, but always around ready for duty.



Him was almost certainly one of those concepts we can attribute to Jack Kirby. He's pure Kirby, in fact the idea of creating life and nurturing it inside a cocoon is one Kirby has gone to time and again.


The Bugs and especially Mantis of the Fourth World invoke the concept. As does the Lightning Lady and her minions in Captain Victory.

We have Warlock always with us, but I'll always remember Him.

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