Jim Starlin's "Warlock": Classic or Dud?

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In San Diego, I bought the deluxe-ish "Special Edition" reprints of Starlin's original WARLOCK run from the mid-'70s, and have been re-reading them this week. Holy crap, this stuff is DECADES ahead of its time--there's a certain '70s psychedelia to the early stuff, but I've always been a sucker for the "I have to fight my evil future self, but the only way to not turn into him is to kill myself" story. And there aren't many of those where the hero actually does off himself...

― Douglas (Douglas), Monday, 1 August 2005 20:35 (twenty years ago)

there is def a case to be made that the 70s Marvels of Gerber, McGregor, Englehart, Starlin etc. etc. are the comics equiv of prog+krautrock - text pages = mellotron solos and so on

Warlock is both cosmically profound and mechanically banal - ie it was the most FAR OUT thing i had ever experienced as a 10 year old, like discovering yr older brother's copy of Hot Rats or Space Ritual or something. Nowadays I find Starlin's art to be not v. attractive (even when he's inked by the great Steve Leialoha, as on the later Warlocks) and all his schticks - cosmic balance, ying-yang duality, anti-life equations etc - were either basically plundered wholesale from Kirby's New Gods and/or subsequently flogged to death by Starlin - all his comics are exactly the fucken same!

still i wld like to read that GN - i've been feasting on the just issued Killraven Essentials

― Ward Fowler (Ward Fowler), Monday, 1 August 2005 21:33 (twenty years ago)

I got one issue with a bunch of random late 70s and early 80s Marvels from a sale-of-work (garage sale) when I was about 10 and it blew me away then. So strange and dark and tortured to my 10 year old brain. I loved the art but I didn't get it . Rereading it when I was 13 I got it perfectly. Thanos, for a Darkseid ripoff, is a great character, and easily as interesting as Warlock.

I bought those special Editions when they came out and you're right, they were ahead of their time. Starlin had a unique voice back then.

Classic, by the way.

― David N (David N.), Monday, 1 August 2005 21:36 (twenty years ago)

Classic! But maybe the kind of classic that (like Sherlock Holmes, most Vertigo comics, Beat poets, and JD Salinger) might be better read between the ages of 10 and 15. I got it from a flea market (early high school) on the recommendation of the same guy who sold me Hellblazer, The Killing Joke, Warriors of Light and Darkness, V for Vendetta, and some awful fantays thing painted by John Bolton and written by Chris Claremont. Anyways, I think the best thing about Warlock is that it's really rich in this strange, goofy but metaphysical way. Like he fights giant lips and the inbetweener and tells stories about cavemen. It's hard to imagine the marvel universe even by jim starlin circa infinity crap being that wacky. The wackiness isn't as breezy and innocent as silver age comics or GMO--that prog rock description is totally right. It's sort of like Kirby by way of seventies space opera conan the barbarian. Anyways, I'm not sure if I read the whole thing: only the first two special editions (I think they were 2 issues each) and then a few issue after that, one of which was about Kip trying to rescue a blue-skinned alien prostitute and is out-wooed by Starfox.

Cosmic Odyssey's also good if you like this kind of thing, but less gangly and angst-ridden, and more bouncy and sleek--Mike Mignola!

― kenchen, Tuesday, 2 August 2005 00:16 (twenty years ago)

five years pass...

xthread

Recently picked up Greg Pak's Warlock mini/cancelled series/wtf from 2004 - it's actually a mighty fine piece of work. The Enclave creates a new Warlock and set him loose to fix the third world - in the end, it reads like a Seven Soldiers mini, replete with a final issue revelation/re-contextualization/straight-up cheat that leads to the hero's birth/rebirth. It's swell.

― R Baez, Sunday, 12 December 2010 17:13 (fourteen years ago)

I actually just picked up a set of Marvel Premiere and the original Warlock series. At least from the first two Warlock stories in Marvel Premiere, it was a pretty damn trippy comic book for something by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane.

― earlnash, Monday, 13 December 2010 23:41 (fourteen years ago)

Stone cold classic. At least the Starlin stuff. There's people who lurve INFINITY GAUNTLET and all that, but I'm not one of 'em.

A friend of mine showed 'em to me in the seventh or eighth grade to show me what AWESOME COMICS ARE LIKE, MAN. Luckily, Marvel reprinted all of 'em in the Baxter-paper SPECIAL EDITION not long after that. Some of it hasn't aged well and it's overwrought, but the ideas at play and the sheer cosmic power shimmer on the page.

How did I not comment on this before? And why isn't there a one-volume collection of all this?

― Matt M., Tuesday, 14 December 2010 16:00 (fourteen years ago)

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