Thursday, August 19, 2010

The one animal in Skartaris that the Warlord didn't shoot:

By the time Warlord reached issue #128, Travis Morgan had killed more dinosaurs, giant animals, and prehistoric beasties than your average comet strike. (It helps that Travis apparently brought more bullets than the Alamo on his spy mission over Russia; even in the last issue recently, his son goes back to the plane for more bullets!)
This time, Travis has joined up with masked barbarian Dreadnar, in a mission of vengeance against Puff there. Dreadnar had lost his village, his family, and most of his face to the dragon; but the dragon gets the caption boxes this issue, and Dreadnar is made out to be the psycho killer...even though the dragon admits in passing using sacrificial virgins to feed newborn dragon hatchlings; which doesn't make his claw-like hands clean, either...

In the end, Dreadnar is killed, and Morgan holds back: the dragon doesn't press the attack, since Morgan wasn't his enemy. Unfortunately, Dreadnar wasn't quite dead, and kills the dragon with a final blow. Unfortunately again, the dragon falls on Dreadnar, squashing him flat, and shooting his blood down to the hatchlings; meaning Skartaris is probably arse-deep in dragons now, if I remember Reign of Fire correctly, and I almost certainly don't.
Please use this sentence in the office today.  Please, please, please.
Elsewhere this issue; in fact, a good chunk of this comic, is devoted to Morgan's old companion Mariah, who went home to Russia and ended up in a prison camp. She makes her escape back to Skartaris with a prisoner named Maddox, who's had a beef with Morgan since he beat him up in grade school. And was going to expose his black-market smuggling ring in Vietnam. And Morgan shot him down after Maddox went to the Russians' side. Dude, there has to be a point, where you realize he's got your number, and leave the field gracefully...

And Morgan's daughter Jennifer gets a page to recap the not-quite-death of Morgan's wife Tara. And look hot. You can tell she's her father's daughter, since she's got the traditional skull on her outfit. Oh, and the white hair, I guess...

From Warlord #128, "The Brood" Written by Michael Fleisher, artwork by Jan Duursema, with ink assist by Tom Mandrake. I was thinking of this issue since I've been on the eBay lately, and saw the old Spawn: the Horrid figure, a pretty good-sized dragon crammed into a blister card. I used to have one, but either lost or gave him away--the wings may have broke, and while the Horrid was a noble try, I think he was just too heavy for his joints. And yet, I still want a new one. Hmm.


3 comments:

Sea-of-Green said...

You can bet, though, that Morgan probably offed quite a few of those baby dragons at one point or another.

googum said...

Yeah, I know I'm heartless, but I couldn't muster a lot of sympathy for the dragon back then, either.

Anonymous said...

Its a complete shame this book got cancelled when it Grell came back to the series. Even he couldn't save the franchise.