Power Of Warlock-Resurrections!

It is in the pages of The Incredible Hulk where The Power of Warlock finds its ultimate resolution. It's been nearly year since the cancellation of the series and all that time fans wondered what became of Adam Warlock. In a story by Gerry Conway, Herb Trimpe and Jack Abel (who handle all three issues of the finale) The Hulk, who as it turns out had been to Counter-Earth before, finds his way there again aboard a spaceship designed by The Inhumans.

He lands and finds a United States ruled utterly by President Rex Carpenter, who is actuality is the Man-Beast. After a furious battle the Hulk is captured. Adam Warlock has been captured but is revived and  released by The Recorder, who was sent to Counter-Earth by the High Evolutionary.

The Hulk  in his form as Bruce Banner is taken to the Man-Beast who gloats over his total victory over Counter-Earth, but when he transforms the Hulk disagrees and escapes to found by some of Adam Warlock's followers, creatures the Hulk himself had met before. Hulk is taken to Adam Warlock who is assembling his followers for a final supper before they confront the enemy.

But the Man-Beast has maintained control of the Hulk and unleashes his might and he and Warlock battle with the result that Adam is captured and scheduled for public execution. That execution is held and Warlock seemingly dies as he returns to his cocoon form before the eyes of the whole world.

After the seeming demise of Adam Warlock the Hulk returns to his senses and attacks the minions of the Man-Beast and takes the cocoon away into the remote countryside. There the Hulk is joined by Adam's followers who stand watch over the body for several days.

Meanwhile  the Man-Beast casts off the body of Rex Carpenter, and prefers to rule openly in his true form hoping to bring the whole of Counter-Earth under his sway. The Hulk attacks and is fended off while the cocoon of Warlock opens and he is reborn with sufficient power to finally defeat the Man-Beast for once and for all. With the Man-Beast devolved to his animal form, Adam declares that his work on Counter-Earth is done and that now free of the enemy the people can follow their own destiny while he ascends to the heavens to help others. He leaves the Hulk and the Recorder behind as he rockets into space.

Many years later in 1979 this trilogy was collected in the over-sized Marvel Treasury format under a handsome cover by Bob Budiansky and Bob Wiacek, which it turns out the image was a swipe of a John Byrne image.

Byrne had drawn the scene for a Marvel calendar and that dramatic image made its way onto the cover of the Treasury comic.

The story of Adam Warlock, an innocent who becomes a savior for a world on which he was never born is a timely tale of course for the season. The parallels in the story to life and times of Jesus Christ are obvious but still potent. For a comic book to take on such material so directly was challenging. The notion had been broached in more purely symbolic terms with the Silver Surfer. But with Adam Warlock, Roy Thomas and later Mike Friedrich and Gerry Conway take the story of the Gospells and give them a modern superhero vibe. 

And that wraps up the saga of the "Power of Warlock". The character would be famously revived by Jim Starlin in the pages of Strange Tales and it is this Warlock that most folks fondly remember from those halcyon days. But for me as dandy as those tales were, I will always first and foremost think of Warlock as voiced by Roy Thomas and imaged by Gil "Sugar Lips" Kane, a superhero Jesus-freaky by-product of the hippy generation.

It's been fun. Merry Christmas everybody!

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Power Of Warlock - Endings!

The Power of Warlock undergoes a major change with its sixth issue when Bob Brown, a longtime veteran of comics over at the "Distinguished Competition" and recent Bullpen addition steps in to take over for departing Gil Kane. I've always liked Bob Brown's direct storytelling style, but there's little doubt that some of the majesty of the series left with Kane. Under a John Romita cover in a story by regular scribe Mike Friedrich and inks by regular Tom Sutton (this trio will handle all three remaining issues of the series), we meet The Brute, in reality Reed Richards the friend on Counter-Earth of Victor Von Doom.

Following the events of the previous issue Warlock is being hunted down by the United States military by order of President Rex Carpenter and while Von Doom tries to reason with the new leader Warlock must fend off the threat without doing further damage. The people he has saved rise to protect him but it's not enough. A member of Warlock's cadre named Astrella appears and leads Warlock to the Golden Gate Bridge where the Brute appears to battle him. It seems that this creature is the result of the propitious flight by four brave teammates which on another planet resulted in the Fantastic Four. Here on Counter-Earth only Reed Richards got powers, while Sue Storm went into a coma. Warlock battles the Brute and wins briefly.

Meanwhile Von Doom turns his attention to one of his inventions, a machine to bore into the Earth itself. The Brute directed by a mysterious figure goes to take control of this device but is confronted by Warlock.

Again Astrella appears and again seems not have Warlock's best interests at heart. Warlock gets a warning from his disciple Jason Grey who has been hurt seriously in trying to go to his mentor. The Brute is seeking energy to feed his mutated form, but in doing so threatens the planet. To save it Victor Von Doom destroys his project and in the process himself. Warlock erects a statue to remember this fallen hero.

And then in the final issue of the series  Warlock is confronted finally by his true enemy. President Rex Carpenter is revealed to be the man who is plotting to destroy Warlock and Astrella is revealed to be his sister who insinuated herself among Warlock's followers to hurtful effect.

Two demons appear over Washington, DC and while battling these two monstrosities both physically and psychically Warlock is forced to draw upon his will and his soul gem to fend off the attacks to his very essence. He withstands the attacks and for the moment saves the day, but is confounded when he is finally confronted by his true enemy, the deadly Man-Beast who has inhabited the body of Rex Carpenter since his defeat several issue earlier, using the politician to further his destructive agenda. Warlock is left to face off against his mortal foe as the story and the series closes.

I have to admit that reading these stories today, in the political climate of our times with a dominant candidate on the field who brags incessantly about his lack of ties to the established political class and who allows his charisma to dominate in place of clearly detailed policy proposals, I find the character of Rex Carpenter scarier than I might've done even a few months ago. That such a demagogue could ascend to the highest office on the planet (for all practical purposes -- sorry about that Pontiff) is downright creepy. But life does indeed imitate art and Friedrich taps into an anti-establishment vibe which does indeed inform our own times so many decades later. That the character turns out to be the defacto Satan of Counter-Earth is actually a bit too on the nose, but it does offer a cautionary moment for all of us. 

It was sad in the day that Warlock's story ended so abruptly, but in the Bronze Age we regular Marvelites became all too accustomed to such matters. To their credit, Marvel did almost always see to  it that the story was resolved somewhere eventually. They did here too, in the surprising pages of The Incredible Hulk. I won't leave you hanging boys and girls as tomorrow on Christmas Day we will find out what happens next.

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Power Of Warlock - Masks!

In the third issue of The Power of Warlock (yeah I know it's technically just "Warlock" but I prefer the fuller title) by Mike Friedrich, Gil Kane and Tom SuttonAdam Warlock and his disciples (four teenagers) are riding a high-speed  boat across the water off the coast of Malibu.

They encounter a submarine manned by the handsome Apollo and his minions who it seems work for the malevolent Man-Beast. A battle commences and Adam is able fend off the threat but Apollo is revealed to be the much more hideous genetically evolved warthog named "Triax the Terrible" and he holds the lives of the twins Eddie and Ellie Roberts in his deadly hands.

In the battle with Triax  (called inaccurately "Trax" on the cover) presented again by the team of Friedrich, Kane and Sutton, Colonel Roberts, the father of the twins held in the claws of Triax calls in an airstrike which has little result save to make the monster throw Eddie Roberts to his death. This death is quite the blow to everyone involved, including Warlock who will have to allow time to pass to heal his hurt.

Seeing that his lack of faith in Warlock has caused this result, the Colonel calls upon Adam to save his daughter. Warlock does and defeats and kills the deadly enemy but too late to save his fallen disciple. As the Roberts family grieves we meet Victor Von Doom who is quite  different on this Counter-Earth.

Master pulp writer Ron Goulart steps in to script the next story in the fifth issue titled "The Day of the Death Birds!" and it is also sadly the final story by the art team of Gil Kane and Tom Sutton. In this tale Victor Von Doom is a scientist working in good faith with the United States government on weapons development, but the test of a new weapon dubbed the "Death Birds" worries him since it will take place too near a dam which itself is near a cache of abandoned military weapons. He calls the President, a man named Rex Carpenter who has recently been elected to that post and whom we met last issue, ignores his warnings and proceeds with the tests. The dam breaks and a disaster looms.

But Adam Warlock, recovering from the death of Eddie Roberts has been healing inside his cocoon and emerges in time to help save the locals from the flood. But the President surprisingly names Warlock a threat to the nation on television making him an enemy of the state.

The failure of the responsible adults on Counter-Earth to offer up proper protection against the threats which Warlock battles is clearly a theme of these early stories. Warlock offers up a clarity of mission which lesser men fail to grasp or confront and in his willingness to give his all functions as a proper hero for a society which finds itself by threats it doesn't really recognize, because as we see in these stories masks hide all sorts of things. 

More to come tomorrow as a new art team takes the helm.

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Power Of Warlock - Prophecies!

In debut issue of The Power of Warlock we a get a story by Roy Thomas, Gil Kane and Tom Sutton titled "The Day of the Prophet" which offers a bit of reprise from the lips of the High Evolutionary and then reintroduces us to our cast of Warlock and his teenage comrades. He then confronts his emissary Adam Warlock and wants to pull the plug on Counter-Earth, but Warlock talks him out of it.

They are entering a city and encounter a street preacher called only "The Prophet" who announces that the end is near and further than Warlock is a person who can help. But they are attacked by two of the Man-Beast's creations named Hauk and Pih-junn and are driven underground where the Prophet is revealed to be the deceiving Man-Beast himself.

In the follow-up story in The Power of the Warlock #2 plotted by Roy Thomas but written by Mike Friedrich with art by John Buscema and Tom Sutton, we see Warlock captured by the Man-Beast and his minions in their underground lair. There Warlock is shown that his teenage acolytes betray him when they are confronted by the mobs above and this drives him to anger, an anger which results in destruction and the intervention of the military and the resultant destruction of the city itself by nuclear device. But it is all a delusion by Man-Beast in an attempt to corrupt the soul of Warlock who rejects the nightmare and battles the Man-Beast who decides to escape. Warlock returns to the surface and his friends.

Roy is clearly evoking the stories of Christ and his own mission on Earth to seek out evil and confront it in the culture of the day. Warlock has been transformed and empowered but by falling to Counter-Earth and by assuming the role of savior he has made himself vulnerable to the machinations of the Man-Beast who seeks to corrupt and destroy the work of the High Evolutionary. This caring, something new for the creature formerly known as "Him" is what at once gives Warlock his strength and causes him to become vulnerable.  It is something we all confront everyday of our own lives. 

More tomorrow.

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Power Of Warlock - Godlings!

In Marvel Premiere #1 the elements of what becomes "The Power of Warlock" are finally gathered together. The story by writer Roy Thomas and artists Gil Kane and Dan Adkins begins with the High Evolutionary, returned to his armor and to humanity somewhat after a sojourn on other higher planes as an ultimately evolved human.

And as he's back to being human (more or less) he's also back to playing God as his scheme this time, with the assistance of the resurrected Sir Raam, is to take a mote of the planet Earth and on the far side of the Sun  build an entirely new planet, a "Counter-Earth". The Evolutionary schemes that this time he will make a world devoid of the violence which wracks his own home planet, that he will in fact create a utopia.

Witness to this creation is Him, discovered by the Evolutionary and brought into his ship, Him is still in his cocoon, but is able to communicate through technology and his golden face converses with the Evolutionary as he concocts his world. Unknown to them both the Man-Beast and his minions plot to undermine this new Counter-Earth and to that end board the Evolutionary's ship and catch him unaware while he is resting after his monumental act of creation. The Man-Beast then usurps control and injects his own whims on the new planet bringing to it the violence and destruction it had heretofore not seen. This new world is now corrupted.

It is at this moment that Him bursts from his cocoon. Having witnessed the crimes of the Man-Beast he offers to go to Counter-Earth and try to salvage the world, a world the High Evolutionary now seeks to destroy.

In Marvel Premiere #2 by Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, and Tom Sutton, Warlock is greeted after his fall from the heavens by four youths who are typically estranged teenagers of the period named David, Jason and Eddie and Ellie who are twins.

Their dads (a military officer, a rich defense contractor, and an equally rich business man) don't "grok" them, so they have struck out on their own and find Warlock, a golden superman and they think they can believe in him as something of a messiah since he fell from the heavens. But they become witness to Warlock's first battle on Counter-Earth against Rhodan (an evolved rat-man) who is sent by the Man-Beast using a flying chariot pulled by weird genetically-altered hounds to dispatch the High Evolutionary's emissary during which the eyes of the fathers are opened to the true consequences of their behavior.

Roy Thomas makes no bones about the inspiration for Warlock, as he took his guidance from the then hit musical Jesus Christ Superstar. The tendency of the Age of Aquarius to want to reinterpret and modernize the stodgy essence of classic Christianity and make it relevant was all too evident. I doubt Roy wanted to proselytize, but no doubt the broad similarities of the story of a godlike being come to a planet Earth to redeem its population perverted by the intervention of an evil also the product of the godlike creature who fashioned the planet in the first place does resonate.

I'd also suggest that the movie Journey to the Far Side of the Sun influence the mix as the placement of Counter-Earth seems very familiar.

Whatever the case, the groundwork for some potent tales was laid firmly in these two try-out stories and with the next installment Warlock will get his own title.

More tomorrow.

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Power Of Warlock - Him!

The saga of "Him", the spawn of the Enclave's Cocoon continues in the pages of Thor almost two years after the end of the debut adventure in the pages of the Fantastic Four.

Thor and his allies Balder and Sif have just battled Pluto and his allies from a savage future, the Mutates. They stole an entire building, an atomic research center and Pluto reveals that a powerful and mysterious figure is inside the building. When the threat of the Mutates is ended, Thor and his friends investigate and find the creature called "Him", a golden man created in a laboratory on Earth and who when last seen was flying into space.

It seems Him accidentally fell into a snare set by The Watcher, and the Watcher wanting to interfere as little as possible returned him to Earth where he'd lain dormant until found by Thor. Him decides he wants a mate and smitten with Sif  imagines she will fit the bill nicely. Thor is enraged when the two escape his attempts at rescue.

Overcome by a battle madness Thor seeks out Him across the cosmos and the two wage a furious battle with Thor's relentless fury carrying the day.

Him finally relents and forms a new cocoon and is soon floating in space once again. Thor returns to Asgard to face punishment for allowing rage to overcome him.

Him here is very similar in many ways to the Silver Surfer, an alien creature apart from mankind who is at once fascinated by connections with others but has no real affinity or experience. The Surfer's humanity was stifled by uncounted years as the herald of Galactus, and Him is a virtual child who wants what he wants. Both have to understand that people outside them have needs and rights and are worthy. It will take a revelation.

More to come next week as Him and the High Evolutionary meet.

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Power Of Warlock - The Cocoon!

Toward the end of his properly famous stint at Marvel as the architect of most of the mythology Jack Kirby became disenchanted with the business model which was limiting his ability to gain profit from his creations. As just an employee, he felt it was not in his best interests to continually add new creations to the Marvel Universe which he mostly populated for nearly a decade. So he stopped.

One of his final creations was "Him" the golden being who emerges from a giant cocoon in the Citadel of Science, the "Beehive" of the title, a hidden retreat run by a cabal of four rogue scientists called "The Enclave" who have combined their talents to become masters of the world. Their creation, a glowing creature who they cannot even see scares them, and so they use their teleportation technology to get hold of blind sculpter Alicia Masters who they hope will be able to give them a sense of what their new being looks like. That she might well die in the attempt is meaningless to most of the four men. Meanwhile the Fantastic Four search for the missing Alicia.

When Alicia confronts the new being he emerges from a great cocoon and uses his vast power to destroy his makers, realizing their evil intentions. The power of "Him" is robust and soon the Beehive is roiling and the scientists seek to escape.

Some prove more courageous than others, but all of them seemingly die as Him emerges in the final page and reveals himself to be a beautiful golden man brimming with power. As the Fantastic Four escape, Him brings down the Citadel and flies into space to find peace.

But his peace will be short-lived. More tomorrow.

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Power Of Warlock - Higher Evolution!

The story of the High Evolutionary picks up a year later in the pages of Tales to Astonish when the Hulk is waylaid by two of the Evolutionary's human smugglers who get for him the needed animal subjects for his experiments. Despite being off Earth on "Wundagore II" the Evolutionary still orders these two to capture the Hulk who he hopes will help him stave off a revolt by the New Men.
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That story by Stan Lee with art by Marie Severin and Herb Trimpe begins in Tales to Astonish #94 (which sports a cover for the Sub-Mariner story that month).

In the next installment in issue #95 the Hulk is transported to Wundagore II aboard a space ship piloted by Sir Raam, one of the New Men who has remained loyal to the Evolutionary. But they encounter space radiation and Sir Raam is killed though the Hulk survives to land on the distant planet.

In the finale in Tales to Astonish #96 (again spotlight Namor on the cover) the New Men attack and the Hulk and the High Evolutionary stave off that attack long enough for the still human Evolutionary to subject himself to his own experiment, one which elevates his own genetic code to that of a human from the distant future, a human with nigh god-like powers. The New Men are transformed back into mere animals and the Hulk is whisked away back to Earth as if nothing had happened. The High Evolutionary himself heads to higher planes of understanding.

It really felt in this story as the High Evolutionary was written out of the Marvel Universe. It would have been quite the pity if this had been the case. He would return, but that's a tale for later.

More next week when we enter the Beehive.

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