Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Warlord Wednesday: Full Circle

Let's re-enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"Full Circle"
Warlord Annual #3 (1984)
Written by Cary Burkett; Penciled by Dan Jurgens; Inked by Mike DeCarlo.

Synopsis: When last we left our heroes, they had stopped a nuclear war and averted an apocalyptic future, only to get shunted outside of time. Hurtling out of control in the null-time limbo, two of their ships collide. Bouncing off each other, the two ships ricochet back into the timestream—at a point far from where they left it.

Morgan, Krystovar, Shakira, Reno, and the soldier Cole emerge relatively unscathed from their respective crashes only to be set upon by flying feathered reptiles. As our heroes do battle, they’re being watched by someone who looks familiar:


The Deimos lookalike sends his minions to get our heroes. They arrive on orange triceratops and call off the bird-things with whistles. The dinosaur riders tell our heroes: “Lord Daamon and the Red-Moon Gods invite you to the safety of the City of Challa-Bel-Nalla, jewel of Atlantis.”

Morgan and the gang go along. The Atlanteans use some sort levitation device given to them by the Red-Moon gods to bring the ships along, too. Reno figures these "gods" and their technology might be just what they need to free the rest of the ships from null-time.

When they reach the Atlantean city, Morgan sees the Deimos lookalike standing on a balcony and goes beserk. Sword-drawn, he leaps onto the balcony and is about to kill the man:


Shakira’s nose knows. The guy doesn’t smell like Deimos. It turns out he’s the aforementioned Lord Daamon, but he is descended from the Deimosian Dynasty. Morgan (somewhat hastily) assumes he must be an ancestor of Deimos.

Daamon sends our heroes off to refresh themselves. Hi wife Jezreen asks him why he didn’t kill Morgan for the affront. Daamon wants the ships (he intuits that they mean power) and he needs Morgan and the gang alive to understand them. Still, Morgan’s mistake intrigues him. He decides to consult the nether-spirits to find out what’s going on.

Later, in his ritual chamber, Daamon calls upon the nether-spirits. They tell him Morgan and his friends are from the far future—and that Morgan is an enemy of his and theis. They reveal how Morgan killed the last of the Deimosian line. They bid Daamon kill him.

At dinner, Reno tells Morgan they're stuck here. They dare not use the time ships again without repairs. Morgan thinks there may be something these “gods” they keep hearing about can do. Their conversation is interrupted when Jezreen arrives to give Daamon’s regrets and deliver his invitation to a hunt for the great dragon-lizard tomorrow. Morgan and Shakira accept.

At dawn, the three mount their hadrosaurish steeds. While Daamon has decided he’s unable to strike at Morgan directly, he’s planned on an “accident” befalling Morgan on the hunt.


Things to Notice:
  • Atlantis here doesn't necessarily jive with the Atlantis seen elsewhere in the DC Universe (though admittedly, Warlord hasn't been explicitly placed in continuity at this point).
  • This isn't the first time a hunt as a pretext to murder someone has shown up as a plot device in Warlord.  Ashir's enemies went after him the same way.
  • Deimos's ancestor has the same fashion sense.
Where It Comes From:
Though not much has been revealed yet, this annual seems designed to tie up disparate plot threads.  It references old issues of Warlord more so than anything else  More on this as the review continues.

2 comments:

Jim Shelley said...

Wow! That's a pretty good story so far. I look forward to part two.

The Angry Lurker said...

Looking forward to more, Morgan's always in trouble....