Strange Tales featuring
Warlock #180
This is the first issue
of an American-style comic I can remember seeing. I think my brother
brought it home from a trip in to London, perhaps with the scouts. I
was used to typical British fare – Valiant, Lion, Whizzer &
Chips and so forth – and I might even have seen UK Marvel reprints, but this just looked like something out of
another universe.
Could easily be Deptford High Street |
There’s an recap page, inevitably, but I don’t remember
it and it looks too wordy for a six year old. I probably skipped
right over to the next page where Pip the troll gets into a fight.
The thing I remember
most vividly is Chapter II – The Trial of Warlock. I can remember
finding the whole sequence disorienting and alarming. I’ve never
forgotten the jury of faceless mannequins, the giant eye and giant
lips, the bizarre creature (Kraytor) sitting in judgement. Nor have I
forgotten the transparent injustice of it, the growing fury as
Warlock is gagged and not allowed to defend himself.
The big mouth is prosecutor and the big eye is defence. |
Nowadays it looks to me
like the absurd trials in Alice in Wonderland or The Trial, or the
final episode of The Prisoner. The climax sees Adam succumb to the
power of the soul gem once more and eat Kraytor’s soul, and suffer
another paroxysm of guilt. It’s this that lets the Matriarch
capture him – his own guilt leads to his downfall even though he's been arguing his innocence. Ironic!
I also recall the pages
featuring Pip and Gamora. These seemed almost incomprehensibly grown
up to me. They meet in a bar, and a not a nice place either but a sleazy dive.
Gamora herself, and the even the Matriarch, are definitely not the
sorts of ladies you found in The Beezer.
Gamora doesn't dress like your mum inless your mum is Cher. |
After this I didn’t
see anything more of Adam Warlock for a long time. I think I first
re-encountered him in Marvel The End, in 2003, another great Starlin saga. That’s a long gap to
find out what happened in this story.
Actually, I already know because I read it in the Handbook of the Marvel Universe in the 1980s. Oh well, every story's spoiled these days.
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