Warlord #38
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeWarlord #38 is the first appearance of Jennifer Morgan, the daughter Travis Morgan left behind on the surface world before his accidental descent into Skartaris, and she grew into one of the series' most enduring supporting characters — ultimately becoming the powerful sorceress who would shape the mythology of the underground realm for years. Her debut deepened the emotional stakes of Travis Morgan's double life, grounding the sword-and-sorcery adventure in genuine family drama in a way few genre titles of the era attempted. The issue is also a piece of DC publishing history: its eight-page OMAC backup, written and drawn by Jim Starlin, was among the shelf-ready material orphaned by the 1978 DC Implosion and finally reached readers here, making Warlord #38 part of the slow, creative salvage operation that rescued some of that era's most intriguing lost work.
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At the time of this issue, Mike Grell was still the series' sole writer-artist, the role he held continuously through issue #52 — a sustained creative run that gave Warlord an unusually consistent voice during DC's turbulent Bronze Age. The OMAC backup tells a different origin story: Jim Starlin had prepared those pages around 1978 as a continuation of his work in Kamandi #59, but the DC Implosion — the sudden mass-cancellation of roughly thirty titles following the publisher's over-expansion — left the completed material in a drawer. When DC reintroduced backup features into larger-format books like Warlord in 1980, Starlin's shelved OMAC installments finally found a home across issues #37 through #39, with Romeo Tanghal inking the #38 chapter titled 'The Decision.'
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: October 1980 (DC Comics, Volume 1, #38 of the original 133-issue run).
- First appearance of Jennifer Morgan, daughter of Travis Morgan/The Warlord and his first wife Rachel Morgan; she arrives in Skartaris having tracked down rumors that her father, long believed dead, is still alive.
- Main story 'The Shape of Things Gone By' is written and drawn by Mike Grell with inks by Vince Colletta.
- Eight-page OMAC backup story titled 'The Decision,' written and drawn by Jim Starlin with inks by Romeo Tanghal; it continues a storyline originally prepared circa 1978 for Kamandi but shelved by the DC Implosion.
- The OMAC backup ran across Warlord #37–39 (September–November 1980), representing the first time Starlin's three completed installments reached print — roughly two years after they were produced.
- Jennifer Morgan went on to become a major recurring character in the Warlord mythos, eventually acquiring sorcerous abilities through an encounter with the villain Deimos and his ally Ashiya.
- The issue was reprinted in France in Démon (Arédit-Artima, 1985 series) #3, in black-and-white with reframed art.
- Mike Grell based Travis Morgan partly on his own Air Force background; he wrote and drew the title for its first six years, through issue #52 (1982), after which Sharon Wright (his then-wife) ghost-wrote many scripts.
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Reprinted in Démon #3 (1985), Countdown Special: OMAC #1 (2008)
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