Daily Comic Book Mission #042: The Warlord #3

Welcome back to your daily comic book mission. The studios hop in these days because there's some people listening to me talk about comic books instead of wasting their time on social media. I'm doing my part to save the future. What are you doing?

Hopefully relaxing after a hard day, or relaxing after maybe not a hard day, or just relaxing, and really what else are you gonna do? I've heard that you can relax with a cold beer in one hand and a comic book in the other, so I've heard, I've been told. Who would do such a thing? Look at that, got an ice cold Iron City beer right here.

I do need to put some more time into comic book and beer pairings. I haven't. I've really just scratched the surface of that. But what kind of beer would actually pair best with The Warlord? Just off the top of my head, I'm not sure. I know Iron City beers like my G.I. Joe beer because of Steeler, and big IPAs are my Conan beers, because I feel like that's what Conan would drink and then black out and kill people. But The Warlord? He's a little more subtle than Conan.

So I don't know. I think about this one. We'll figure it out later. But right now I'm talking about a great comic book. This is actually one of the first issues of The Warlord that I ever got.

And I stumbled across this series by picking up a whole bunch of them because it looked cool. I was browsing through the dollar bins at Ides Comics in Pittsburgh. The dollar bins are great because sometimes you just stumble on things you'd never think about buying or that you didn't buy before because it was expensive or whatever.

Whatever, and then now it's a dollar and you can buy a whole bunch of them. You walk out of there with like 20 bucks worth of comics, you get 20 comics. That's how math works. It's kind of fun. But I found a couple of Warlord issues, including this one, issue number three for a buck each. It was really banged up, and you can look at it on the website. It's completely trashed, but it's such a great comic book. This is everything that comic books should be. It's ridiculous and so much fun to read.

And this beer is everything a beer should be. Cold and delicious, and tastes like victory. Hmm. All right. So taking it back, taking it back to November of 1976 for this issue titled War Gods of Scartaris, written and illustrated by Mike Grell, the very talented Mike Grell.

And for those who may not be familiar with this series, it was a pretty long-running series from the 70s into the 80s from DC Comics. It's like Conan the Barbarian meets science fiction, and Land of the Lost. That's probably the best explanation I can give. It's a ridiculous series and it's just so much fun. The early issues are great.

This one picks up after issue two, after Morgan and Machiste free themselves and 200 other slaves from this gladiator arena, and they're gonna kill his nemesis, King Deimos, from the first issue, which was the DC First Issue Special number 8. It's kind of confusing. Look that one up on the website.

So Morgan and these mercenaries basically save this village, and then he's having a heart-to-heart with Machiste, who's like, the man expects gold, and Morgan's like, I fight for freedom. I fight for malted hops and barley.

Hmm.

And then Morgan gets distracted by a unicorn because of course he does. It's The Warlord. That's just the kind of stuff that happens. And he rides off after this unicorn. He's not paying attention, and he gets captured by lizard men in this lost world of Skartaris inside the Earth. It's just sheer madness. It's kind of like a newer Godzilla and Kong movie where there's a whole world inside the world. It's basically that. So they ripped off The Warlord.

Anyway, after being captured, Morgan wakes up and he finds himself strung up on his own SR-71 Blackbird, because obviously Travis Morgan flew the coolest jet ever, except he crashed it inside the Earth. Dumbass.

And then he kicks the lizard man in the face, but then this giant snake monster just rises up from the ground. It starts to eat the lizard man, and it's going to kill him, but Meshiste shows up and basically rides his horse into this thing's mouth, which is hilarious, and kicks it in the nose.

Morgan jumps into the cockpit and grabs his .44 Magnum, so he's going Dirty Harry style. He shoots this thing in the eyeball and then launches his ejector seat through its head. I mean, come on. You gotta read this.

And there's some other stuff too. So if you're getting into this series, I do recommend starting at the beginning. They don't cost all that much. In fact, I think DC released a collection of these just recently. I do not have it, though, so I can't vouch for that.

Each issue is pretty short. They're really cheap. And the ads are great. We've got one with Aquaman in here who's hawking Twinkies. There's a little one-page comic in here called Twinkies and Kelp. You get a big delight in every bite of Hostess Twinkies, but only if you're Aquaman and riding seahorses.

So that's your daily comic book mission. Get into The Warlord. I recommend starting with issue one, but issue two is pretty good because it introduces Machiste. Issue three has a big two-page summary that gets you up to speed if for some reason this is the only one you can find.

I think you'll like it. If you're listening to this, you'll probably enjoy this. The Warlord is a really underrated series, and I'm not sure why they haven't put more time into bringing it back. Perhaps because it just required Mike Grell and the 1970s. It's so 70s. I just love it.

And that means that you're gonna love it. So hopefully you've been enjoying the new ComicBook.Beer videos on the website. That's right, videos are back. Can you believe it? New videos. And I made them with my own human brain, as dysfunctional as it is. I used it to make a video instead of just AI generating it and copying Wikipedia or whatever people do.

So yes, you can have me stumbling about, incoherently speaking about nonsense, but at least it was made by a carbon-based life form. You know, it's a low bar these days over at ComicBook.Beer.

Speaking of beer, mmm. That's right, it's gonna bring up something. I am working on ComicBook.Beer glassware eventually. Sometime this year, probably much later in the year, but it's gonna happen.

So until then, if you want some cool glasses, check out the Classic Game Room barware. Insert beer, output fun works great with comic books.

And I guess that's my PSA for today. Thanks for listening. Don't ride your bikes over power lines, and I'll see you tomorrow in the next daily comic book mission from comicbook dot beer.

I think this stuff is gonna catch on. Wait till people hear about this beer.