Strange Tales #180

I have been a fan of Adam Warlock for a long time.  I encountered him first in the Infinity Gauntlet crossover event, which with the Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars events from the ‘80’s seems to be the lodestone for good crossover events.  The Infinity Gauntlet crossover appears to be the basis for Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, at least up to present, each of the movies prominently featuring one of the stones composing of the Infinity Gauntlet in their movies. 

Oddly, Adam Warlock has been almost absent from the Marvel cinematic movies.  (Speculation had been made that in one scene of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, wherein the Guardians visit the Collector, one could see Adam Warlock’s chrysalis in the background.)

Adam Warlock particularly flourished under the watch of comic artist and writer Jim Starlin, who stretched Warlock’s story beyond the panels into a metaphysical contemplation of several larger, more adult themes such as religion, justice, and self-determination, some of which was explored in the Magus Saga featured in Strange Tales #171 through 181. 

Issue #180 was particularly fun for me to read not only because of the wonderful story telling and artwork but because of the exploration of the legal system and commentary on its apparent flaws.  The issue begins with Warlock and his new friend, Pip the Troll arriving on Homeworld, the alien home of the Church of the Universal Truth founded by Adam Warlock’s future self, i.e., the Magus, and led by the Matriarch.  The Matriarch schemes to use Warlock to destroy the Magus and to take control of the Church of the Universal Truth for herself. 

In the meantime, Warlock attempts to resolve the conflicts of his possession of the “vampiric” soul gem, a gem with a mind of its own that seduces Warlock to captures the souls of his enemies despite his wish to do only good and his knowledge that his future self is essentially his own nemesis, a contradiction of his current self. 

After losing Pip the Troll, Warlock is captured by the Matriarch and sent before Kray-tor for judgment.  During the scene, Adam Warlock faces a jury of his “peers,” a faceless mass of bodies.  The prosecutor is a comically over-sized mouth.  Warlock’s court-appointed public defender, a giant eyeball that falls asleep in court.  After a hearing in a kangaroo court in which the only witness in favor of Adam Warlock is vaporized and whose testimony is stricken from the record and in which Adam Warlock’s motion for dismissal denied without consideration, Adam Warlock is found guilty and sentenced to “re-education.”  When Warlock protests, he is sentenced to death.  His only escape is to use the soul gem on his judge, Kray-tor.

In using the soul gem in such a way, Warlock realizes that he has become guilty of the sins of which he was charged causing him additional anguish to the mental stress of having imbibed on all of the memories of Kray-Tor.  He discovers that the trial and ultimate destruction of Kray-Tor was merely the devise of the Matriarch to bend him to her own will. 

Wonderfully poignant is the Martriarch’s observation that “We’re all heroes in our own minds.”  It is a relativism that serves as an antidote to Adam Warlock’s insistence of a black and white world, one in which he attempts to represent all that is just and right and his nemesis, the Magus, represents all that is evil and unjust.  The fact that he is fated to become the Magus hints that even the best intentions can lead one to become evil.  This incident is one brick in his corruption into the Magus.

The art is amazingly well done, the color work fascinating, as can be seen above, which adds to the layer of darkness upon the whole story, a kind of fatalism upon which Starlin relies to create tension in Warlock’s own personal development. 

This comic is perhaps is as good as it gets with Marvel who I’ve always seen as being very shallow in the area of story telling, relying heavily on the explosions rather than development.  I wish comics were more heady like this one.