An Overview of the early Adam Warlock stories

The Roy Thomas Era

The early years of Adam Warlock, in Marvel Premiere #1 and #2 and Warlock #1 - #8, were mostly written by Roy Thomas.

This run covers Warlock’s adventures on Counter-Earth, attempting to introduce enough good to parry the evil introduced by Man-Beast and his Beast-Men. Warlock makes friends with a group of children who use all kinds of groovy, far-out 70’s slang, meets Counter-Dr. Doom and Reed Richards, and fights Rex Carpenter, the president of the United States who is actually the Man-Beast in disguise. He gets in philosophical arguments about good and evil with Man-Beast, Triax the Warthog, and the High Evolutionary, the creator of Counter-Earth who wants to just wipe it out and start over.
About four issues into Warlock, after one of these arguments with the High Evolutionary, I slapped myself on the forehead and went, “Oh, he’s Jesus.” The High Evolutionary represents God the father; Beast-Man is Satan, who rebelled against his creator and took a bunch of his fellows along to try to wreak evil on his creator’s later works; and Warlock is Jesus, who walks among the flawed humans trying to convince them to be good. It’s painfully obvious by the time we get to the conclusion of this arc, in issues #176 - 178 of Incredible Hulk, where Warlock takes on disciples, gets crucified, and then rises from the dead after three days.

After this, Warlock leaves Counter-Earth behind and flies off into space to get into new adventures, which is where Starlin picks him up in Strange Tales #181.

Roy Thomas’s material is grandiose pulp space opera nonsense: often ridiculous, a little bit pretentious, rather self-serious, yet oddly moving. I especially liked the mini-arc in the middle where we meet the Counter-Earth Dr. Doom, who sacrifices his life to save Warlock and the groovy kids, and Reed Richards, who turns into a Hulk-like monster called the Brute. The more down-to-earth beginning of the arc, when Warlock saves Los Angeles from a bunch of automated killer drones that try to blow up innocent people due to screwy programming, was surprisingly satisfying. I actually didn’t mind the Jesus metaphor until we got to the end in Incredible Hulk and it really started to beat us over the head with it; before that, it was just a little spice to give some weight to the story.

The early material reminds me a lot of the original Star Trek series in its look and themes. It’s very brightly colored, very concerned with good and evil and morality, and at times comical in its lack of subtlety. I enjoyed it for the same reason I enjoyed G Gundam and Kill la Kill: it was so over the top, so ridiculous, yet it took itself so seriously that I both laughed and became genuinely invested in the story. From a storytelling standpoint, its main weakness is Warlock himself. He’s not that well defined of a character. I didn’t really get an idea of what kind of person he is from the early stories, other than “good” and “moral” in some vague sense. It’s also very unclear what his powers actually are. He can fly and has some measure of super strength; beyond that, the Soul Gem seems to just do whatever the plot requires. The groovy kids also don’t add anything to the story. I had trouble remembering what their names were, and when one of them died in a battle with Triax the Warthog-Man, it didn’t really affect me at all. Plus they seemed to turn on Adam Warlock on a dime; one minute they thought he was great, the next he was the worst.

The 1970’s Jim Starlin Warlock

 

Warlock was cancelled after issue 8 and carelessly concluded in the pages of Incredible Hulk, but about a year later, a four-issue arc in issues #178 - #181 of the anthology Strange Tales, written by Jim Starlin, led into the next phase of Adam Warlock.

The Starlin material is still grandiose pulp space opera nonsense, but it goes so weird that you just have to appreciate how much its twisting itself in knots to do something original, and it fills in a lot of the simplistic Silver Age blank spaces that the older material left open. Warlock leaves Counter-Earth and goes off into the universe to search for new adventures, quickly declaring war on a tyrannical godlike being called the Magus, whom he soon discovers is a version of himself from a future where he was pulled into some kind of dimension of crazy, lost his mind, and fell out 5,000 years in the past, where he promptly started building a church around himself as a god. On one of the Magus’s slave ships he meets Pip the Troll, a troll who loves smoking, drinking, and whores, and who becomes one of Warlock’s most constant companions. He also meets Gamora, in her first appearance as a mysterious assassin who we later discover works for Thanos. The Strange Tales issues go straight into Warlock #9 - #15, which show Warlock’s battle against the Magus and the Matriarch, the corporeal leader of his church, alongside Thanos, who considers the Magus a threat and teams up with Warlock to end it. After the Magus threat is dealt with, there is a short arc on Warlock fighting the Starkiller, a human on Earth who’s in a coma but has somehow gained incredible powers in his vegetative state. The 1970’s Starlin era concludes with a fight against Thanos alongside the Avengers, Captain Marvel (Mar-vell, not Carol Danvers), the Thing, and Spider-Man in Avengers Annual #7 and Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2.

This run of stories is probably my favorite of the Adam Warlock stuff I’ve read. It’s deeper, more exciting, and more creative than the earlier stuff, and the characters are easier to connect with and care about. The Magus is such a weird villain, yet perfect for Warlock, given his constant concern with his own morality, and Thanos makes for a great confounding factor in the early parts of the story and a suitably threatening villain later on. The supporting cast becomes a lot more memorable, with Pip and Gamora instead of a bunch of interchangeable groovy kids. Warlock himself starts to take on a more definite personality, his ponderous, grandiloquent style mirroring that of the comic itself. I think the best way to describe him, starting from here and even more so during Infinity Gauntlet, is “Romantic hero”. He exists outside of any society or structure, wandering the universe on his own and trying to do good, falling into fits of melancholy over his perceived failures, wondering what his purpose actually is, never finding anywhere to belong. The Magus is again a fascinating contrast, because instead of isolating himself and living outside society, he created his own society with himself at the center, and expanded it ruthlessly.

The Infinity Gauntlet and the very beginning of Warlock and the Infinity Watch

 

Infinity Gauntlet, like most modern comics events, has prelude stories spread across like three different books and a ton of tie-in issues from other series. I read the prelude stories in Silver Surfer #34 - #38, the two issues of Thanos Quest that show how Thanos actually got his hands on the Infinity Gems, the six issues of the main Infinity Gauntlet story, and the Dr. Strange: Sorcerer Supreme tie-ins in issues #31 - #36.

While Infinity Gauntlet itself was amazing, some of the tie-in material was really hard to get through. Silver Surfer had some great Thanos material, but it took way too long for it to do what it needed to. I wasn’t that invested in the Silver Surfer as a character, and he doesn’t seem to really have any kind of supporting cast to speak of. I also read Incredible Hulk #383 - #384, which tie in somehow to Infinity Gauntlet, though I couldn’t really figure out how since they seem to just be Hulk stories. Between these issues and the ones that concluded the Roy Thomas era, I might never pick up an Incredible Hulk comic again. Not utterly awful, but just boring and hard to read.

Thanos Quest is pretty great, though. Unlike the Infinity War movie (which is pretty tenuously based on the comics, but insofar as it’s based on any comics, it’s based Infinity Gauntlet, not the later Infinity War), the Infinity Gems in the comics aren’t in the hands of sympathetic characters, but of a bunch of asshole cosmic beings who don’t know what they’ve got. It’s fun to see Thanos outwit each of them and take their gem. The only one who’s a little bit sympathetic is the Gardener, who’s a space gardener who uses the Time Gem to keep his garden looking its nicest eternally. The rest of them suck. The Reality Gem, like in the movie, is in the hands of the Collector, who’s possibly even more of a jerk than he was in the movie. He’s willing to trade Thanos the gem in return for a guy that Thanos shrank down into a baby with the Time Gem. The Mind Gem, instead of being in Vision’s head like in the movie, is in possession of the comics version of the Grandmaster, who loves games and only loosely resembles Jeff Goldblum.

A lot of people who commentate on movies and comics made it sound like Thanos was just stalking Mistress Death, the female personification of Death in the Marvel Universe, and doing stupid stuff to try and get her attention, but in actuality she brought him back to life to be her slave because she wanted half the universe wiped out and he seemed like the man to do it. Thanos does have a crush on her, so he goes out and steals the Infinity Gems, hoping that she’ll accept his love once he’s powerful enough to sit beside her. Death starts giving him the cold shoulder after this, saying that he’s now her superior and they’re still not on the same level. Even though she says that, she keeps on acting like she’s better than him, and since he’s evil and not very in touch with his emotions, he does start doing stupid stuff to impress her, eventually (in Infinity Gauntlet) wiping out half the universe’s people with a finger snap. Personally, though, I think Death was just pouting that Thanos became more powerful than her and wasn’t her slave anymore. She thought she was too good for him. When he got all the gems, she had to admit he was more powerful than her, but she still turned her nose up at him and acted all snooty. She just wouldn’t give him a straight rejection because she was afraid he would zap her with his infinite power. He even gave her what she wanted before when he wiped out half the universe, but she still wouldn’t talk to him even though she got exactly what she brought him back to life for. Thanos definitely does a bunch of evil stuff in Infinity Gauntlet, his torture of Nebula and Eros being simultaneously the most petty and the most horrifying, but Lady Death is at least partially responsible for this situation by bringing him back to life and putting the idea in his head that she wanted to wipe out half the universe, which is why I felt like the ending of Infinity Gauntlet was still fair even though Thanos mostly escapes punishment.

I was also surprised by how much I enjoyed the tie-in issues of Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme. I’ve always liked the DC magic stuff—Constantine, Zatanna, Dr. Fate—and in these issues I saw that the Marvel magic stuff can be pretty interesting too. I actually liked #36 the most: Pip and Gamora summon Dr. Strange to convince Adam Warlock to rein it in a little now that he’s the holder of the Infinity Gauntlet. It’s mostly conversation, but it’s classic tortured ponderous Adam Warlock like we saw in the 1970’s Starlin material. We didn’t get much of that in Infinity Gauntlet, because Adam Warlock himself is barely a factor in that story. He’s the catalyst who sets it in motion, but he spends most of it sitting back and waiting for events to play out the way he knows they will, watching the Avengers and other heroes throw themselves futilely at the invincible Thanos. Infinity Gauntlet is ultimately not a Warlock story; it’s a followup to Thanos Quest, where Thanos is the main driving force behind the story and the end comes about more due to his flaws and his mistakes than anything the heroes actually do.

Warlock and the Infinity Watch, on the other hand, is definitely a Warlock story, and I’ve enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting to. I took a short break to check out some other comics before I came back to it, but I’m glad I’m back in it. After five issues, the callbacks to older Warlock stories don’t always make sense, and the art is a definite step down from the George Perez art of Infinity Gauntlet (the same guy behind the art of the post-Crisis Wonder Woman that I praised so much before), but the character interplay is better than it’s ever been. After wielding infinite power for a while, Warlock is more alienated and conflicted than he’s ever been. He spends the first few issues trying to find his way back into the habit of being around other people, and I think this is possibly the most character-driven Warlock material yet. There’s a scene in issue #2 that really struck a chord with me: Warlock forms the Infinity Watch, hands each member one of the gems for safekeeping, and then they all pose together and a big word balloon has Warlock declaring them the Infinity Watch. Smash cut to the next panel, and he’s walking away, saying he must be going, because he’s “in dire need of solitude” in order to regenerate his spirit and strength. At this moment, I understood what I’ve always found compelling about his character: he’s a mopey, emo, self-serious introvert who’s obsessed with doing the right thing, but due to his isolation from society, he’s never quite sure what conventional morality would dictate and he’s always going it alone. At the same time, he can’t or won’t integrate himself into society; on some level he prefers to stay isolated. I relate to that. Like most emo, self-serious introverts, his greatest enemy is himself, and he has a small group of friends who may not quite understand him, but do care about him, that he never properly appreciates. I relate to that too.

 

Conclusion

I still can’t say I recommend trying to read the Adam Warlock saga to everyone, especially if you can’t stand older comics, and I definitely had trouble getting through some of the material around Infinity Gauntlet, like the Hulk and Silver Surfer issues. Overall I enjoyed it a lot, though. This was my first serious attempt to follow a long-running story that hops across several books and a bunch of tie-ins, and in this case it was worth it, even if I don’t like having to constantly check Comic Book Herald’s Adam Warlock reading order (which is awesome and thank all goodness that it exists) to know which book to read next. I’m looking forward to seeing Adam Warlock in the MCU with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. With how serious he is, I think he’ll make a great foil for the Guardians, just like Thor did in the Infinity War movie.