Power Of Warlock - Godlings!

In Marvel Premiere #1 the elements of what becomes "The Power of Warlock" are finally gathered together. The story by writer Roy Thomas and artists Gil Kane and Dan Adkins begins with the High Evolutionary, returned to his armor and to humanity somewhat after a sojourn on other higher planes as an ultimately evolved human.

And as he's back to being human (more or less) he's also back to playing God as his scheme this time, with the assistance of the resurrected Sir Raam, is to take a mote of the planet Earth and on the far side of the Sun  build an entirely new planet, a "Counter-Earth". The Evolutionary schemes that this time he will make a world devoid of the violence which wracks his own home planet, that he will in fact create a utopia.

Witness to this creation is Him, discovered by the Evolutionary and brought into his ship, Him is still in his cocoon, but is able to communicate through technology and his golden face converses with the Evolutionary as he concocts his world. Unknown to them both the Man-Beast and his minions plot to undermine this new Counter-Earth and to that end board the Evolutionary's ship and catch him unaware while he is resting after his monumental act of creation. The Man-Beast then usurps control and injects his own whims on the new planet bringing to it the violence and destruction it had heretofore not seen. This new world is now corrupted.

It is at this moment that Him bursts from his cocoon. Having witnessed the crimes of the Man-Beast he offers to go to Counter-Earth and try to salvage the world, a world the High Evolutionary now seeks to destroy.

In Marvel Premiere #2 by Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, and Tom Sutton, Warlock is greeted after his fall from the heavens by four youths who are typically estranged teenagers of the period named David, Jason and Eddie and Ellie who are twins.

Their dads (a military officer, a rich defense contractor, and an equally rich business man) don't "grok" them, so they have struck out on their own and find Warlock, a golden superman and they think they can believe in him as something of a messiah since he fell from the heavens. But they become witness to Warlock's first battle on Counter-Earth against Rhodan (an evolved rat-man) who is sent by the Man-Beast using a flying chariot pulled by weird genetically-altered hounds to dispatch the High Evolutionary's emissary during which the eyes of the fathers are opened to the true consequences of their behavior.

Roy Thomas makes no bones about the inspiration for Warlock, as he took his guidance from the then hit musical Jesus Christ Superstar. The tendency of the Age of Aquarius to want to reinterpret and modernize the stodgy essence of classic Christianity and make it relevant was all too evident. I doubt Roy wanted to proselytize, but no doubt the broad similarities of the story of a godlike being come to a planet Earth to redeem its population perverted by the intervention of an evil also the product of the godlike creature who fashioned the planet in the first place does resonate.

I'd also suggest that the movie Journey to the Far Side of the Sun influence the mix as the placement of Counter-Earth seems very familiar.

Whatever the case, the groundwork for some potent tales was laid firmly in these two try-out stories and with the next installment Warlock will get his own title.

More tomorrow.

Rip Off