Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Warlord Wednesday: Bring On the Back-Ups!

For the majority of issues 29-88, Warlord featured a back-up story. One of these short series, Wizard World, was connected to the action of the main title, but all of the others were completely independent. Let’s take this Warlord Wednesday to look at the first two.

OMAC
First Appearance: OMAC #1 (1974)
Last Pre-Warlord Appearance: Back-up in Kamandi #59 (1978)--also the last issue of Kamandi
Featured as Back-up: Warlord #37-39, #42-47
Next Seen: DC Comics Presents #61 (1983)
His Story: OMAC (One Man Army Corps) was a Jack Kirby creation, a mohawked super-cop in the near future (“The World That’s Coming”). The Warlord back-ups were by Jim Starlin who had also done the back-up in the last issue of Kamandi.
How He's Like the Warlord: he fights for justice; his fashion sense is perhaps questionable.

ARAK
First Appearance: Warlord #48 (1981)
Featured as Back-up: (technically an insert) Warlord #48
Next Seen: Arak, Son of Thunder #1 (1981)
His Story: Arak was a Native American taken by Vikings to Carolingian Europe where he interacted with characters from The Song of Roland, and mythological creatures, in a very Robert E. Howard-esque way--not surprising since Arak was the creation of Conan’s original comics scribe, Roy Thomas. Arak’s series lasted for 50 issues.
How He's Like the Warlord: he swings a mean sword; he romances a warrior lady.

3 comments:

Matthew Slepin said...

I really loved Arak back in the day. I even had an Arak action figure (and a Warlord one too): they were too He-Manish in physique, but still.

Trey said...

I had those too! I did a post on the Remco Warlord figures a couple months back.

netherwerks said...

The original OMAC was cool...the revamped/revised OMAC just left me cold. It should ahve been it's own thing. OMAC was just fine the way Kirby established him. Oh well. Money talks...