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Starlin's Warlock Manifesto

Starlin's Warlock stories of the seventies combined excellent and imaginative superhero art, invigorating writing (if, sometimes, it bordered on the bombastic in a way appropriate to productions bearing the Marvel Comics stamp), and a series of political messages that together comprise a political manifesto.

I began this column expecting to describe a now-cliched anti-theology bias very typical in the slogan-echoing that sometimes masquerades as political depth these days. But in Starlin's work I found no such shallow and predictable product. Instead, Starlin presented a work of commendable depth, variously in ethics, in themes that relate to the human condition (free will versus determinism), in plot complexities (the contention of multi-axial factions), and just plain loud Marvel-style action.

Much in these stories bears reading and re-reading, even for those who may take exception to Starlin's depiction of organized religion. The work explodes beyond any such narrow focus, using this mostly as a device; the truth or falsity of Starlin's opinion about organized religion does not stand importantly enough in the story to detract from the various interacting layers.

The Face of the Enemy

Starlin began his Warlock saga with some necessary exposition - pages of it - summarizing the character's previous history, from his beginnings in Fantastic Four, through his pretentious messianic history in Power of Warlock, and until the present (around 1977). Warlock, at the beginning of the story proper, encounters three goons spouting religious insults at a purported heretic, whom our gold-skinned stalwart unfortunately fails to protect. Using his soul gem, then, Warlock extracts from her memories a description of the enemy.

This enemy bears the name of "Universal Church of Truth," only barely concealing a very obvious target and referent. A quick glance at a dictionary or thesaurus reveals that catholic, as a secular adjective, means "universal, ubiquitous, omnipresent," and similar things. However, in this version, the Universal Church essentially combines all atrocities recorded in history by all known present or past denominations, and a few from the future as well. Where necessary, Starlin invents some new ones here and there to make sure that the reader does not miss the point, but the initial dualist contrast between Evil Church and Good Hero stands mainly to help drive the irony home later, when Warlock discovers his own self-proclaimed goodness to stand mainly as an artifact of his own self-congratulation.

With this sequence, we see the first of Starlin's political messages. Deeds, not words, nor expressed philosophy, testify to character.

Warlock, Starlin's proxy in the story's polemical aspect, sees something admirable in the teachings of the Universal Church of Truth and very little that fails to turn his stomach in its behavior. On a shallow level, we can take this as a simple combination of hypocrisy, but it also reflects the feelings of many libertarians (in the generic, with the lower-case 'l') and of many of the near left. At the same time, Starlin's message stays outside of the grip of extremism; he does not implicate religion per se as a sickness.

The characteristics of Warlock's specific, immediate enemy established, Warlock finds himself confronted by a manifestation of the Magus, the deity of this malevolent and parasitic religion that has swallowed galaxies and destroyed countless uncooperative worlds. The Magus taunts Warlock with hints, then reveals his secret: Magus and Warlock partake of the same identity, merely different aspects of the same being.

The Problem with Power

Starlin fails in his first attack on Church goons and finds himself imprisoned in a penal ship that conveys insufficiently-humanoid prisoners to a rendering factory for recycling. The other prisoners, a menagerie of physical types bizarre enough to earn the admiration of Steve Ditko, ask Warlock to lead them in a revolt. Warlock declines, beginning a parable about the origins of political power that demonstrates a world view not too different from that of presidential candidate Harry Browne (assuming his vies haven't changed since How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World).

Warlock's parable describes government as an invention of brute force brought about by opportunists desiring to exploit their fellow men through their comparative weakness. At this stage, government does not yet conceal itself with theory; the raw and ruler-serving nature of it remains obvious to all. From Warlock's parable, Starlin intended us to conclude that government has achieved no better moral justification than in its first appearance as a parasitic relationship of the strong feeding off the weak; apparent differences, in context, would derive from simple window-dressing and intentional deceptions.

The other inmates, misinterpreting his refusal to lead as a refusal to help. revolt anyway, and Warlock brings up the rear, guaranteeing the success of the rebellion. For the first time, a rebellion against the Universal Church of Truth has succeeded. At this point, Warlock repeats his message about self-rule, the political message of his parable. We could summarize it this way: No one needs to designate a parasitic ruler to run his life, since the ability to self-govern inheres in everyone. This principle has a long lineage; in the Greek city-states, the term autarchia described self-governance.

The Man of Passion

Warlock, after escaping the death ship, moves to confront the Universal Church and its cynical Matriarch on their home grounds. Meanwhile, he learns that he can no longer separate from his vampiric Soul Gem, and concludes that it has split his personality into Magus and Warlock.

Warlock confronts the Matriarch in her palace, and the Matriarch shakes Warlock up considerably by identifying the Magus as the product of the natural evolution of Warlock's personality. She reveals the Magus as a future version of Warlock, whom the soul gem did not corrupt; Warlock tries to reject this revelation.

In The True Believer, Eric Hoffer quoted Hitler about fanaticism. I can't reproduce the exact text of the quote, but in essence Hitler claimed that he could convert a communist into a fascist with very little work, but would have difficulty working with a typical European centrist. The similar nature of fanatics on both sides of a great philosophical or political difference must provide the necessary hook to pull a zealot from one extreme to another.

Starlin, here, intends another message: Passion can become dangerous when it transforms to fanaticism, putting one at risk of conversion to one of the enemy.

The Show Trial

With the plot device of a convenient trap door - never mind that Warlock can fly and should never fall for such a time-worn gimmick - the Matriarch plunges Warlock into a dark room. When the lights turn on, he finds himself in the middle of a kangaroo court for his crimes against the Universal Church of Truth.

In Warlock's rigged trial, and in his refutation thereof, we see Starlin's next political message: The form of justice does not equal its substance. Warlock had all the trappings, including robes, gavels, jurors, and testimony, but justice itself conspicuously remained absent from the proceedings.

Fed up about as far as he gets, Warlock decides to ad lib some entertainments amidst the pseudo-judicial goings-on, and starts busting things up - remember, at no point have we actually left the superhero comics genre. He makes short work of the various goons, false witnesses, bribed jurors, and other baggage of a dubious show trial (the disembodied mouth that prosecuted him remains a truly fine piece of parody), ultimately standing against the judge himself, a lumpy, multi-limbed, ugly whatsis from planet something, or, as Starlin named him, Kray-Tor the inquisitor.

Warlock's Compromise

Warlock, previously, has held back somewhat (at least he says he has) out of doubt of the rightness of his cause, but in close confrontation with the inquisitor Kray-Tor, he realizes the pointlessness of trying to remain in the moral high ground while the goons take over the balance of reality.

Warlock redefines the curse of his Soul Gem as a blessing, in that it provides a tool for dealing with matters that would continue to spiral out of control should he refuse to act. Therefore, Warlock, willingly, deliberately, and gladly steals Kray-Tor's soul with his Soul Gem.

This deed provides him with insights. First, that the inquisitor acted sincerely, not hypocritically; he did not use his fanaticism as a mask, but as the very substance of his being. Secondly, that by vampirically stealing the Inquistor's soul, Warlock has lowered himself to the level of his enemy.

Here we encounter yet another of Starlin's political messages, this one an admonition. Beware of the methods you use confronting an enemy, lest opportunism cause you to resemble him neatly summarizes the concept. This also plays the role of central theme of the entire Death of Warlock series of stories, for with each step from Warlock's first encounter with the Magus until the resolution of that particular thread, Warlock becomes increasingly corrupt. The distance between his messianic pretentions and the reality under his feet grows and never stops growing until his death in Avengers Annual #7.

Furthermore, the flood of stolen memories and resultant insight render Warlock helpless, and the Matriarch notes that all has followed her plan. Warlock's weakness makes him susceptible to the brainwashing he needs to become the Magus. She has some handy all-purpose goons toss him in another hole in the ground, to await his re-education.

Send in the Clowns

Starlin, so I believe, achieved his most brilliant moment in the chapter where Warlock undergoes the reeducation process. Imprisoned in a cell with some kind of encephalo-enhancer helmet on his head, Warlock receives an indoctrination spiel that intends to redirect his loyalties to the very agents of fanaticism he has fought throughout this saga.

Unfortunately, Warlock's own reality filter mangles the program. Instead of the intended religious sermons, revisionist history, and special pleading one would expect of propaganda, Warlock sees an unlikely place full of colorful backgrounds, great precipices, improbably floating objects, and clownlike figures.

A loquacious guide - the clown Len, whose name anagrams to "Stan Lee" - shows Warlock the sights here in the "Land of the Way It Is," explaining that Warlock's previous experiences remain the symptom of an insanity that therapy has finally cured. Len shows Warlock to a makeup artist who puts a clown face on him (Warlock doesn't like it), and a pilloried clown tied to a crucifix as other clowns pelt him with cream pies (probably meant to stand for Starlin himself).

The telling feature of these scenes occurs in a subsequent absurdist tableau where clowns attempt to erect a great tower of trash. This tower might stand as a religious edifice (such as a cathedral), but, in context, more likely means the body of the church itself.

In spite of the high - almost universal - mortality of those clowns dedicated to erecting this foul-smelling funerary monstrosity, they continue to stack up the trash, until its own weight forces it to collapse. Warlock's guide in The Land of the Way it Is explains that the presence of precious gems in the garbage are the likely source of its collapse.

One can easily extrapolate from this visual metaphor to a model of religion as a huge structure of trashy illogic contaminated here and there with gems of valid insight that recurringly force its collapse, just as the edifice of conventional theologies seems, occasionally, to collapse.

In context, I wonder how Starlin might feel about the Zen notions of doing things not for their manifest effects, but for the effects on the doer.

Back to the main subject, though, another tenet comes from Warlock's ability to see through to the truth of things (a kind of surreality vision, taken in the original sense of "surreal" as "super-real.") The seeds of truth in a body of lies provide the likely source of the collapse of that body. This collapse offers both promise and menace - promise, in that it suggests that evil need not prevail, owing to the infiltration of truth into everything, and menace, in that the inevitable collapse will cause some people harm (such as the clowns who die every time the tower of trash topples).

Adam impugns this place as a dumping ground for madness, but Len slights off the insult, noting it as the only madness they have. Warlock has had enough of this scenario - Starlin had an eccelent feel of how long to prolong a joke in these books - and so he decides he needs to leave the Land of the Way It Is, bullying his hapless clown guide into revealing the secret way out of the place.

Len cautiously guides Warlock through some more Diktoesque scenery to the doorway of madness, beyond which awaits the Madness Monster, and Warlock grapples with this monster, exchanging a few conceptual sentences about epistemological relativism. Revelations from this conversation include the notion that the Madness Monster belongs as a component to everyone's psyche, and the new-agey premise that the term "madness" merely labels foreign viewpoints. By refusing to fight further with the Monster (whose eloquence and physical strength, in context, exceed Warlock's anyway), Warlock frees himself by embracing madness. However, in so doing, he accelerates his transformation into the Magus.

Magus, Warlock, and Thanos

In between ethical and political tenets, other things go on in the story. For instance, the counter-intriguing of the Matriarch, who sought to hold Warlock hostage to control the Magus; the wanderings of Pip the Troll, whom Adam Warlock keeps leaving behind (though he also runs away whenever this suits his own purposes); and the appearance of Pip's companion Gamora.

Loads of plot-intensive stuff follows Adam Warlock's encounters with the Magus in the flesh, a silver (purple, really) doppelganger of his own golden (orange, really) person further distinguished by the presence of a bad permanent. The Magus reveals his knowledge of all that transpires and will transpire, including Matriarch's attempted betrayal, and how almost all elements fit perfectly with his original intentions.

Fighting, escapes, more fighting, more escapes, and a demarche follow. The Magus, having marked Warlock with a radioactive beacon, believes that he has completed the last piece of the process that will convert Warlock into himself: He has summoned the "In-Betweener," a typically Marvel Comics-styled cosmic entity, to drag Warlock into a dimension of fused opposites to complete his descent into madness and his physical transformation from an orange superhero into a lavender supervillain.

Amid all this fighting, however, a new player appears - Starlin's chronic villain Thanos, who sees the Magus as (ironically) a force for life that can thwart his ambitions of universal genocide. Thanos, having agreed to aid Warlock (in a typically tainted deal with the devil), provides much needed insight and common sense when Warlock prefers to rant or give up or simply act confused.

Warlock, confronted with one of Magus' goon squads, refuses to use his Soul Gem to suck out their lives - even after more than a few killings at his own hand (or, more accurately, forehead), Warlock resists the ugly business of homicide (or xenocide).

In the segment below, Thanos puts Adam Warlock right on this point, and also proposes another tenet.

We could summarize this tenet as Don't sacrifice the lives of others to protect your own ethical credentials.

Moving Onward

Much still remains to happen in our story, including Warlock's ultimate defeat of the Magus via a kind of time-travel / surrealist suicide. Warlock enters a swirly-space domain called "Kismet" to track down and destroy the future timeline(s) that lead to his becoming the Magus; by swallowing his own (future) soul into the Soul Gem, he denies the Magus the substance of his own birth, and thus corrects both future and past.

At this point, Warlock had destroyed only one set of possible futures, and Marvel Comics, had it so chosen, could have let the character continue indefinitely regardless of this cosmic suicide. However, after a few more appearances of Warlock (including one with Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up), Starlin and Marvel went through with it, allowing the past Warlock to destroy the present version in one antepenultimate conflict with Thanos.

Warlock, however, has moved past his role as an ethical instructor-by-example at this point. Given the density of the series of stories overall, the change in emphasis from ethics back to plot does not leave one wanting; in those days, Starlin did not leave holes in a story unfilled.

Observations

In a series of superhero comics constituting one longer, connected story, I found material that suggested the following political works: How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, by Eric Hoffer.

The themes of personal corruption and compromise resonate with many works, as do Starlin's dealings with the conflict between destiny (becoming the Magus) and free will (Warlock's decision to destroy himself rather than become the Magus).

And, as well, Starlin plays a series of factions against one another: Magus versus Warlock, Magus versus Thanos, Magus versus Matriarch, Thanos versus Magus, and eventually Thanos versus Warlock. Making factional disputes with multiple players credible does not suggest a small talent nor a small vision.

Starlin, mostly by himself, got all of this into superhero comics. In the process, he left behind a piece that deserves a place in a canon of comics (if comics ever manages to achieve a literary canon like the classics of prose literature). And, at the same time, he sought to edify the reader with a series of principles.

The very possibility of comics of such substance does much to undermine the excuses ("It's just comics") that intend to deflect criticism from today's often-pointless excercises in violence and overexposure of the human form, the "fangs 'n' thongs" kinds of comics that seem to hold no meaning. Starlin, as much as anybody, has proved that comics can mean something, and has done so in a way that continues to make trifiling works look bad.