Daily Comic Book Mission #010: The Warlord #1

Dear listeners, are you prepared to accept your next Daily Comic Book Mission? I hope so because it’s a great one. And once you start The Warlord, you can’t stop, and it’s a long-running series. So get ready for this one. But I’m going to recommend that we begin at the beginning, that you begin at the beginning. Well, sort of. It’s actually not quite the beginning, but I’ll explain that in a moment.

This is The Warlord issue number one. That’s your Daily Comic Book Mission, taking it way back to February 1976. The eternal sun of Skartaris stares down upon two combatants, a warrior and a traveler, as they whirl and dance a ballet of death. That’s very… that’s very Warlordy. If you’ve read this series, this one’s titled Savage World.

And the surprise here is that The Warlord actually begins in DC’s First Issue Special number eight, I think that’s what it’s called. And I have that one, I should talk about that in a separate mission… I’ll give that one to you in a different mission, but that one’s pretty expensive. I think that set me back like 20 bucks for a banged-up copy a ways back. These aren’t terribly high in demand, but I believe that DC just released an omnibus collection of like the first 30 or 50 Warlords. I’m not entirely sure how many issues are in the collection, I don’t have it. But I don’t have it because I have all of the actual floppies for The Warlord. I picked up a whole bunch of them all at once, and it’s just a terrific series. And there’s like nothing else quite like The Warlord. It’s fantasy but also science fiction at the same time. It’s got some Conan-style inspiration, but it’s also completely different.

And this first issue here in the series gives a quick recap of the Daily First Issue Special as Travis Morgan, the hero of The Warlord, written and illustrated by Mike Grell, crash-lands his SR-71 into this hole in the North Pole, where he then goes inside the Earth, and there’s an entire world inside the Earth. So it’s kind of like what they just did recently with Godzilla X Kong.

The same concept, more or less. For all I know, they ripped it off from The Warlord, because this is so awesomem and Travis Morgan starts the issue. Like usual, he’s fighting a dinosaur with a knife and saving a beautiful woman, who is the first character other than Travis Morgan that we meet, Tara, who actually kicks his ass in battle, because Tara's pretty awesome, and then they embark on this journey across the land, only to discover that Skartaris is just as crappy as Earth and there’s like human trafficking in addition to dinosaurs and oh, there’s a sweet ad.

You know I love my Hostess fruit pies ads. But this time, we get Batman trying to hawk Hostess fruit pies. Man, everybody likes Hostess fruit pies. You know why? Because they’re awesome, and so is The Warlord. Tara falls under the spell of a satyr. And what’s the Warlord do? He just punches the satyr out. Because that’s how the warlord rolls. And at the end, they get captured, which leads us to issue number two, which is also a really good issue…

The first 20 or 30 issues of The Warlord are just fantastic, though it does take a couple issues to really get going. I’m not sure what issue number one will cost these days. You might want to check out that omnibus collection. I know the issues that are in there, and they’re all really good. At some point, they start to discover computers. And there’s like laser beams, and it’s a fun series because it’s that familiar sword and sorcery genre, but mixed with something just completely different, science fiction. The early issues in the series are illustrated by Mike Grell, who’s inconsistent, but his work is really good when he’s on point. And he clearly liked to draw beautiful women, but his characters are actually a lot of fun, and the whole series is nuts. And there’s just nothing else quite like it. So I do recommend you start at the beginning.

Or at least issue number one. Eventually, they do a good recap of what really happened. I think the DC First Issue Special goes into more detail. But basically, his plane gets shot down, and he crashes. And there’s dinosaurs. It’s like Land of the Lost with more guns and girls in bikinis. So there you go. Your daily comic book mission is one of my favorite series, kicking it off with The Warlord, issue number one from 1976.

You’re welcome.