Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Warlord Wednesday: A Chronology


One minor element I liked about Warlord as conceived and written by Grell was that it progressed somewhat close to real-time. Sure, in the timeless world of Skartaris characters didn't age, but time went by in the outside world. Here's a timeline of dates given directly or easily inferred from the series:

1926, prior to April 15: Travis Morgan is born. [Warlord #6 gives the date as April 15, 1977, and Morgan bemoans that it means he is 51.]

1943: Time displaced, Morgan, Shakira, and Krystovar visit the U.S.S. Eldridge during the Philadelphia Experiment. [Warlord #79. This could be an alternate past, as it is related to an alternate future.]

1959, after June 16: Jennifer is born to Rachel and Travis Morgan. [In Warlord #38, Jennifer says a man arrived on her 10th birthday to tell her that her father had died, so it must have been shortly after his crash on June 16, 1969.]

1967: After the death of his wife, Travis Morgan sends Jennifer to live with her aunt. [According to Warlord #38, Jennifer is 8 at the time.]

June 16, 1969: Morgan is shot down and crashes his plane in Skartaris. [Date given in First Issue Special #8.]

1973: Danny Maddox is thrown in the gulag. [According to Secret Origins #16.]

April 15-16, 1977: Morgan returns to the surface world and meets Mariah at Macchu Picchu. [Date given in Warlord #6.]

1980: Jennifer Morgan arrives in Skartaris. [In Warlord #38, Jennifer says that she was told her father was a traitor "3 years ago" which would be after the government discovers that he's still alive in Warlord #6.]

1989, after June: Morgan visits the surface world and winds up meeting Green Arrow in Seattle. [In Green Arrow (vol. 2) #28, Morgan comments his flight was "over 20 years ago" after seeing the date on a newspaper.]

2009: Morgan encounters Ned Hawkins, the self-styled Golden God, and several other arrivals from the surface world. [Warlord (vol. 4) #4. Morgan says he's 82 when McBane tells him the year is 2009. Either Morgan somehow knows it's prior to his birthday, or he's off by a year. McBane continues to repeat this number throughout the next few issues. Given the timelessness of Skartaris, it's unclear how much time passes between this issue and Morgan's death, but since there seems to be very little time for breaks in the action, it's likely 2009-2010. If we go be publication date, it's 2010.]

Danny Maddox (a post-Grell creation) poses a few problems for the "publication year approximates year of occurrence" of the Grell years. He is the same age as Morgan, but he's spent most of his life on the surface. But Maddox doesn't seem to be in his 60s when Mariah meets him in the Russian gulag. Given that the Soviet's aren't surprised the Mariah hasn't aged either, it seems like it's the early 80s at the latest. Maddox still doesn't appear to be in his fifties either, and it's hard to square with the rest of the saga, but it's the only real explanation.

I also didn't include the two alternate futures in the above timeline. Neither is specifically dated, and they're just two of an infinite number of possibilities, in any case.

4 comments:

Timothy S. Brannan said...

I like it.

Personally I have always wanted to know more about Rachel and Jennifer Morgan (no surprise).

Trey said...

@Tim - I agree. If we trust Danny Maddox, we know that Morgan and Rachel got married right after high school, but that leaves a rather long delay before they had a child: 15 years! I wonder what Jennifer wanted to be, whether she went to college or not. Becoming sorceress supreme takes over her whole life; What was she like before?

Eldrad Wolfsbane said...

The Warlord was a staple of my childhood back in the 80s. Did you ever notice the writer kinda looked like Travis Morgan? At least back in the 80s he did.

http://backtothedungeon.blogspot.com/

Trey said...

He did in the 70s, too.