Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #451: Warlord

I’ve been reading and enjoying the Black Label DC mini-series Danger Street off DC Infinite, a story where the concept is various characters from DC’s 1st Issue Special appear in a combined storyline with more adult themes, one that somehow combines the likes of the Dingbats of Danger Street, Lady Cop, Atlas, the 70s Starman, various New Gods, the Creeper, Atlas, and the Green Team.  I’ve already covered a few of these, and more of them just seem like good choices for this column.

Case in point, Travis Morgan’s Warlord.

Travis Morgan first appeared in 1st Issue Special #8 in November of 1975, and the character impressed DC editorial enough that they gave the character his own series before the 1st Issue Special even hit the stands.  Written and drawn by Mike Grell, the idea was Air Force Pilot and Vietnam vet Travis Morgan, while out flying his jet over the North Pole found himself sucked into the mystical world of Skartaris.  Skartaris was basically a world like something out of some of Edgar Rice Burrough’s adventure novels.  The world ran on magic, and Morgan soon hooked up with Princess (later Queen) Tara of one of the underground kingdoms.  Armed with a sword and .45 pistol, Morgan would go on to gather allies like the wandering king Machiste, equally displaced Russian scientist Mariah, shapeshifting warrior Shakira, and because time worked differently, eventually Travis’s own daughter Jennifer who popped up as a powerful sorceress in her own right.

As for enemies, his primary one was the evil sorcerer Deimos.  Mike Grell would go on to write and draw the first volume of Warlord for six years, his then-wife taking over the writing as a ghost-writer from #53 to 71, and Grell passing off the art duties to someone else with #59.  The first volume would run for 133 issues and six annuals from 1976 to 1988.  Starting with issue 37, the series would host a number of back-up features from time to time with stories by talents like Jim Starlin on OMAC, Roy Thomas and Ernie Colon on Arak the Son of Thunder, Paul Levitz on something called Dragonsword, Paul Kupperberg on Arion the Immortal, and even Rob Liefeld’s first DC work in one of the final issues.

Man, that’s like another bunch of potential entries for this series.

That said, Travis Morgan didn’t just disappear after that.  He’s had three more series since then, one mini-series and two ongoings that didn’t last very long.  Grell was involved in the writing of all but the third volume (that one was by writer Bruce Jones and artist Bart Sears and ended on a cliffhanger and another issue set in the future that resolved nothing).  The final volume, first appearing in 2009 on the 35th anniversary of the character’s first appearance, appears to have ended with Travis’s death when he took on a man he didn’t know was his adult son Joshua.  Deimos had set a man named Tinder after the Warlord of Skartaris, and when Travis realized who Tinder was, he was distracted and given a fatal blow.  Tinder/Joshua then becomes the new Warlord, replacing the gun with a bow and a dagger.

Travis’s last words were apparently, “I thought I’d have more time.”

So, cool-sounding, old-fashioned fantasy barbarian hero displaced from the Earth.  Not a bad character from the looks of things.  Sure, he looks like Green Arrow (a character Grell would also later work on, redefining Oliver Queen for the 80s in the same way Denny O’Neil did in the 60s), but Grell, an Air Force veteran himself, based the character more on himself.  And hey, he does appear in Justice League Unlimited as voiced by actor Paul Guifoyle.

Essentially, Warlord is one of those characters DC creators love to toss in, but they need a good reason to, say, send Batman to Skartaris before they do it.  After all, he’s only really the Warlord down there.