Friday, January 18, 2019

Wouldn't a solid silver crossbow bolt be pretty heavy and fly like crap?


Well, I'm sure there's a reason for it. From 1979, Warlord #22, "The Beast in the Tower!" Written and penciled by Mike Grell, inks by Vince Colletta.

Travis is at a low point this month: in the previous issue he defeated Deimos again, but seemingly at the cost of his son's life. (Not really; Deimos had a clone made.) Without his wife or his companions, Travis is drinking abusively in a bar in the terminator area of Skartaris: that's a section of perpetual twilight instead of eternal daylight, and probably easier to drink your problems away in. An old seer offers to read his palm, and Travis drunkenly tells him he knows his future. He's not completely wasted, though, as he's able to fight off some bandits outside the tavern, with the help of a mysterious girl, who saves him by killing one with a silver crossbow bolt.

Immediately after, the girl is captured by soldiers, and locked in a tower before Travis can intervene. Shooting his way in, he finds the tower bigger on the inside, but enh, that probably wasn't even the weirdest thing he saw today. He's attacked by a giant snake that gives him two pages of hassle--with four pages of ads between them, which made it seem like a tougher fight--then the remaining soldiers, before encountering...whatever this thing is!

Pinned, Travis stabs the beast with the crossbow bolt he picked up earlier, killing it. Of course, it reverts into the girl, and he realizes she was a werewolf...of some sort. (Not the last he'd meet in the series; nor the first if you count the Snowbeast from Warlord #9.) The old seer explains she was his daughter, and this had been a ruse to set Travis up to save her.

This issue would be a return to single issue stories for a bit, and this might've been a start of pulling Travis out of depression. Maybe. I'm going to read the next issue in a moment, even if I won't post about it for years...

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