Warlord Wednesday: Teen Titans in the Lost World

Here's another installment of my examination of  the adventures DC Comics' Travis Morgan--The Warlord.  The earlier installments can be found here...

"The Lost World of Skartaris (Part 1-3)"

Teen Titans (vol. 2) #9-11 (June-August 1997)

Story and Pencils by Dan Jurgens, Inks by George Perez

Synopsis: Prysm, one of the Teen Titans, is running through a jungle from a tyrannosaur when Travis Morgan comes to her rescue. Against his better judgement, Morgan decides to get involved and asks her who she is and how she got here. She doesn't remember. Morgan lets her accompany him on his search for his daughter.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Titans are flying over the Arctic looking for Prysm. She was critically injured and Argent (a teammate) tried to revive her with her energy powers. Prysm revived alright--then flew off. They tracked her to the North Pole, but they run into a fierce storm. Their plane goes down but instead of crashing, they glimpse dinosaurs and jungle through the clouds.

The Titans walk away from the crash, but they're attacked by a group of warriors. Their powers allow them to hold their own, but they're in danger of being taken down by sheer numbers. Then, the leader of the warriors appears:

Morgan and Prysm have troubles of their own. A gigantic cobra emerges from the ground. It shoots blasts of energy from its mouth, knocking out our heroes. The snake's mistress emerges:

Normally, the Warlord would be quite a trophy for Motalla, but Prysm is worth even more!

The other Titans are taken back to Shamballah by Tara and her troops, though they have to combat a horde of stampeding triceratops on the way. The Titans convince her that they don't know Morgan. She tells Argent about the strange sky city now floating above Skartaris and how their are attacks by giant snakes when it appears.

Morgan, Shakira, and Prysm wake up in some high tech room. Motalla enters and allows them to believe she saved them from the snake. She tells them their are in the floating city of Timmanis. Motalla tempts Prysm with the promise of making her human again--and takes over her body. She drops Morgan and Shakira through a trap door.

The other Titans (in their new Skartarian outfits) fight the strange snakes appearing throughout the city, but the snakes neutralize their powers and they're taken captive. They wake up in a smelly dungeon...

The Titans free Morgan and Shakira--only for all of them to get blasted by Motalla with Prysm's powers. Cody in particular gets blasted out of the city, while somewhere close by, a now-human Prysm daydreams about finally being able to have a relationship with him.

Cody flies through Prysm's ship like a cannonball before crashing into the ground. Luckily, he's able to catch Prysm as she falls:

After he chastizes her for her selfishness, the two run into Tara and Tinder. They suggest the two Titans take a pteranodon ride back to the sky city.

Meanwhile, Motalla is beating Morgan and the Titans pretty soundly. The Atom riding Shakira manages to escape and find Motalla's mysterious power source:

Adding Jennifer to the mix starts to turn the tide for our heroes, but only the timely arrival of Prysm wins the day. Jennifer is able to reverse Motalla's theft, and Prysm is back to her previously self. Motalla ages to a crone for her trouble.

Evil defeated, The Titans prepare to return to Earth through a portal Jennifer creates for them. Prysm (still down on her inhuman form) considers staying in Skartaris, but ultimately decides to stay with her teammates.

Things to Notice:

• Dan Jurgens returns to the character that launched his professional comics career. 
• Morgan initially thinks the Teen Titans is the name of a rock band.
• Skartarian fashion must be really appealing. Every time a superhero winds up there, they adopt it pretty quickly.

Where it comes from: 
This crossover doesn't reference a any old Warlord stories in particular (other than the existence of a sky city), but does get the characters and their relationships right. The pony-tailed guy accompanying Tara is pretty clearly meant to be Tinder, though he is never named in the story.

Caliban Ferox

The Caliban are a humanoid culture found in a torrid, jungle-choked orbital habitat on the border between the Coreward Reach and the Vokun Empire. They're infamous in the popular imagination for their warlike nature and enthusiastic cannibalism.

Appearance and Biology: Interestingly, there is no fauna in the Caliban's habitat larger than a rat of Paleo-Earth that isn't in the same genetic family as the primary Caliban sophonts: there is a group of presophont pack hunters that look like a semi-quadrupedal version of the Caliban, for example. The primary Caliban are basically human in bioform, though they exhibit less sexual dimorphism than baseline type. Their faces are heavily wrinkled and shriveled appearance. All the Caliban family lifeforms share this facial appearance. Their skin tones range from a grayish brown to an ashen gray-white. Their teeth are sharpened to points, though this is a modification they make, not their natural form. Their skulls are somewhat small for their body size.

Psychology: It's believed that the extinction of most fauna in the habitat led to the prominence of cannibalism in their culture. In any case, they like to indulge even when other food sources are available. They do not view sapience as a reason not to eat an organism--a trait that lends them a negative reputation among other sophonts. Caliban don't care. They have little empathy for those outside of their kinship group. Those who employ them as mercenaries often insist they take special drugs to induce a pheremonal response mimicking their natural response to genetic relatives. Though this produces more cooperative behavior toward employers and comrades than would be shown otherwise, it will not stop Caliban from consuming their bodies when they die.

No. Appearing:1-6

AC: 7

Hit Dice: 1

Saving Throw: Warrior 1

Attack Bonus: +2

Damage: by weapon

Movement: 30’

Skill Bonus: +1

Morale: 9

Guns of the Lost World

This painting by Sanjulian packs a lot into one image! It suggests (to me, at least) a cross-genre campaign setting: a lost world like Ka-Zar's Savage Land, Turok's Lost Valley, or Warlord's Skartaris, where dinosaurs still roam and lots of Edgar Rice Burroughs-esque lost cultures are to be found.

Maybe this place is found in a hidden valley in the Sierra Madres, or maybe its an underground world accessible from the Superstition Mountains (where Apaches say (supposedly) that there is an entrance to the underworld) or the Grand Canyon (we've already had reports of strange artifacts). Where ever it is, here's what I think the picture suggests you'll find:

Dinosaurs: From all shorts of eras, cheek and jowl with prehistoric mammals and humans.

Conquistadors: Several groups of Spanish explorers found their way into the lost world. Some are undead thralls, toiling in the castle of an alchemist. Others are immortals zealously guarding a fountain of youth that just might be an alien artifact.

Primitive tribes: Descendants of Native Americans, a Lost Tribe of Israel, Phoenicians, Vikings, and maybe even ancient Romans. Most have reverted to paleolithic levels and are at the mercy of the monsters in their world. A few do interesting things like tame pteranodons for mounts or sacrifice captives in the name of some cargo cult.

Giants: Remains of giants used to be found in tombs all over the U.S. These primitives (Nephilim descendants, probably) are mostly more belligerent that the regular sized primitives, and the one in the picture at least has a sword. They may often be solitary and have unusual powers like the ability to call lightning or command a pack of wolves (or hyenadons).

Humanoids: Some of the human tribes degenerated so much they because something other than human. Maybe its simple degeneration, or maybe is exposure to weird radiations from a long-buried alien spaceship, or maybe it's worshiping dark gods? Or maybe all three? Whichever, they're almost universally hostile and creepy. Some of them are probably Dero.

Apocalypse Unbound

"Kitchen sink" role-playing settings like Rifts and Synnibar are well known for their anything goes approach. While comic books have never got as freewheeling as those settings (well, their respect universes taken as whole are, probably), they managed to create some high concept post-apocalypse settings based on some really interesting mashups. What they lack an "anything goes" they make up for in greater coherence.

The world of Killraven first appeared in Amazing Adventures vol. 2 #18 (May 1973). It posited an apocalyptic future of mutants and sword-wielding heroes in thigh-high boots that resulted from a second Martian invasion after War of the Worlds.

1975s Hercules Unbound #1 reaches even further back for his literary antecedents to Greek mythology. Shortly after world devastating nuclear war, the demigod Hercules breaks free from where Ares had imprisoned him and resumes his fight against the evil god of war. Mutant humanoid animals are among the challenges he faces, and these explicitly establish the world of Hercules Unbound as the same animal-dominated future as Jack Kirby's Kamandi. Later, it was also linked to the world of the Atomic Knights--which turned out to be a dream, so we'll ignore that.

Planet of Vampires (also in 1975) borrowed from Planet of the Apes in having astronauts return to a future earth gone mad, but instead of being overrun by animals like in Kamandi, it was dominated vampires like in Omega Man. Of course, forgo the astronauts and goth it up a bit, and you've got Vampire Hunter D.

Check out any (or all) of these for some fresh post-apocalyptic gaming inspiration.

Panoptes

No. Enc.:  1
Movement:  90' (30')
Armor Class:  4
Hit Dice:  5
Attacks:  1 (weapon)
Damage:  by weapon (+3 for strength)
Save:  L5
Morale: 10

Argus was a pious herder, devoted to Hera, who agreed to be transformed by Olympian science into something more than human. Given the epithet Panoptes ("All-Seeing"), he killed monsters in Hera's name and attempted to protect her servitor Io from the wiles of Zeus.

Argus is over 8 feet tall and more massive than a normal human. The top part of his skull and his eyes are covered by a helm, which is actually a biomechanical lifeform bonded to his nervous system. It is able to manifest various forms of impromptu sensors, routed into Argus's enhanced visual cortex. A swarm of some ten flying spheres, somewhat larger than a walnut, are linked to the lifeform and also controlled by Argus.

Argus's visual enhancements give him 360 degree vision and mean he is never surprised (unless his visual system is somehow rendered dysfunctional). He is able to utilize any vision related mutation including: increased vision, night vision, ultraviolet vision, and thermal vision, though he can only manifest one of this powers per round.

Art by Francesco Biagini

Warlord Wednesday: Endangered Species

Here's another installment of my examination of  the adventures DC Comics' Travis Morgan--The Warlord.  The earlier installments can be found here...

"Dragon Country" / "Empty Quest" / "Menu for Disaster"

Green Arrow (vol. 2) #118-120 (March 1997-May 1997)

Written by Chuck Dixon; Pencils by Dougie Braithwaite, Inks by Robert Companella

Synopsis: Connor Hawke, the then-current Green Arrow, receives a black and white photo that looks like his Oliver Queen, his father and the original Green Arrow, in the jungle. His friend (an ex-government agent of some sort) Eddie recognizes the mountain in the background as in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. The two head out to see if Oliver Queen is still alive.

The two get help from some of Eddie's old criminal contacts and wind up parachuting out over the jungle in the Shan State. Connor saves a girl from what appears to be a velociraptor but gets captured by the a Kuomintang-descendant Generalissmo.

The Kuomintang take him to where they've got another "dragon-slayer" captive; a man who looks a lot like Oliver Queen. Connor stages an escape attempt. It fails, but Eddie and some allies show up just in time and turn opium-addicted velociraptors on the Kuomintang through the use of torches impregnated with opium.

Freeing the other captive, they discover his true identity:

They take Morgan to a hotel to recover. He tells them about falling through some weird portal in Skartaris after chasing a pack of raptors than stole his meal. He plans to head back to Skartaris as soon as he's fully recovered. Connor and Eddie leave him, and get into further conflict with nefarious types after an American woman they erroneously believe to be a CIA agent. A Green Arrow's work is never done!

Things to Notice:

• In the flashback sequences, Morgan is wearing the armor he wore in the Warlord mini-series.

Notes: 
This barely qualifies as a Warlord appearance. He really doesn't have much to do in the story. Still, it does reference the events of the previous crossover with Green Arrow, back when Oliver Queen was alive.

In the story, Eddie refers to "smack-fields." "Smack" is a slang term for heroin, but there aren't any heroin fields; it's a synthetic product made from opium. The fields are, of course, the opium poppy (papaver somniferum).

Return of the Avatar

After a wait of over a year, The Legend of Korra returned last week for it's second season. If your not familiar with Korra or the Avatar franchise, take a look here.

Like the first season, it seems societal change will pay a part in the action as it unfolds. This time, the conflict may be between tradition and modernity, though as has been true of both Avatar series so far, family dynamics seem to play a big part. The story is set outside of Republic City this time (the first two episodes feature the territory of the Southern Water Tribe and the Southern Air Temple); Hopefully will get a bit of a "world tour" like in the original Avatar. Unlike the first season where Korra's foes were strictly human, malign spirits get in the game this time around--presenting a threat Korra seems ill-prepared to handle.

The animation and writing is just as good as it ever was. While it's hard to tell from just two episodes, it seems this season may not require extensive knowledge of the first to follow, other than knowing the characters and the basics of setting--something easily gotten from the internet (Though the first season is available on Amazon Instant video.)

Check it out. The first two episodes are online at Nickolodeon and new episodes air on Fridays.