It's true what they say, with a big winged helmet, comes great responsibility. Wait, that's not it.

Still, here's a rock-solid issue, in the middle of a longer storyline, tying into an old story, with great art and interesting monster design. From 1985, Warlord #90, "Demons of Days Past" Written by Cary Burkett, art by Rich Buckler.

In sunny Skartaris, Travis Morgan was feeling a bit gloomy today: the war against the invading New Atlanteans and their Beast-Men was not going swimmingly, and in the previous issue he had caught an earful, accused of constantly running off to play hero rather than put in the work to build on the dreams he'd inspired. Which, of course, was brutally, devastatingly accurate; no notes. Travis wishes he could bag out, explore Skartaris, get away from everyone that was counting on him; when he is approached by a weird old man. Real Merlin type. The geezer advises, Travis was facing a choice: try and build a kingdom, based on fairness and justice; or keep performing individual deeds of heroism and valor that were good but maybe didn't add up in the long run. Travis notices the old man didn't have a reflection...which is weirdly not brought up again, and later he thinks he might've dreamed that. Or been out in the sun too long, it didn't set there...

Meanwhile, another long-running subplot continued, as Jennifer Morgan frees Tinder (secretly her younger brother, which no one knew, so keep it under your hat) and his weird cave-monkey friend Chakka from the thrall of the gem of the Evil One. Taking the gem for study, Jennifer does advise Ashir against pocketing any of the pile of gold there, as it was almost certainly cursed...

But, her dad was also about to head out for some gold, needed for the war effort: their new base was near a certain pyramid, the ruins of Shaban D'aba. Which was from a million issues ago--oh, all right, it was from Warlord #31, and one of my favorite stupid posts here: "Dear Tara." Speaking of, today Tara decides she's not putting up with Travis's nonsense and opts to go with him on this one. This does of course involve a dinosaur attack on the way there, because this was Skartaris and you had to expect this sort of thing, the unexpected and all that.

This pyramid was from back in the "Wizard World" days, and was basically a vault to keep the wizards' gold away from the Evil One, who since we've brought him up twice: yeah, he was coming back soon. Travis had found the secret entrance by accident and didn't think anyone else could get in, but they're surprised when some local villagers are dropping off a sacrifice, which appeared to be baskets of fruit and a dead horse. The head villager advises them to get clear: sometime back, some asshole freed some demon from the pyramid...Travis doesn't have long to feel bad about that, as Tara asks him how he killed the demon-bird that flew him away--you know, it is legit touching that she believes that story, especially since Travis came back with Shakira after that one. They're interrupted by the demon at hand, a lion-headed, multi-hooved thing. Biblically-accurate demon!

When their weapons don't do any good, Travis and Tara retreat into the pyramid, but the demon turns into smoke to follow. Grabbing an ax, Travis grits his teeth and gets ready to go down swinging, telling Tara he loves her. Tara, on the other hand, keeps her head, and spies a bottle and stopper, with the same symbol on it as the demon. Hoping the wizards had used it to trap the demon, Travis manages the same, burning his hand a bit in the process. But, it seemed to bring him and Tara closer together again...probably until the next time he goes off on some adventure. Oh, and for good measure--well, sort of good measure? I'm not sure it helped this book any, but the Monitor from Crisis on Infinite Earths makes an appearance, watching Travis and Tara from his satellite. Pretty sure they didn't have much idea what was going on there, but it would cue up a recap of Travis's origin next month, with some new wrinkles.