Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Greetings from Skartaris: "All Men Are Mine" by Mike Grell

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! We're headed back to Skartaris with Mike Grell and his savage creations, and boy, is this gonna be one far-out trip (and Ol' Groove does mean "trip")! Mike Grell delves into Jim Starlin territory with Warlord #14 (May 1978) and "All Men Are Mine". I mean, the whole ish is a head-trip with Travis Morgan fighting for his life against Death in the form  of a (usually) beautiful woman. Warlord doesn't go cosmic, but hey, it's knockin' around the edges! And don'tcha just love Grell's experimental layouts this ish? That's Iron Mike feeling his artistic oats, right there! Ol' Groove has said it before and I'll say it again--Mike Grell's experimentation with storytelling in his Warlord run was bound to have had a huge influence on the next generation of comicbook storytellers (the good ones, at least)!
















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3 comments:

  1. NobileFebruary 16, 2016 at 4:19 AM

    I guess this is technically the same character we later met in Gaiman's Sandman. Was it acknowledged by the post-COIE Who's Who?

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  2. Dave RyanSeptember 28, 2017 at 12:44 AM

    This story was done as a filler, so that Grell could devote most of his time that month to the Superboy/Legion wedding story in LIMITED COLLECTORS EDITION. But even so, it's a fantastic story, with a number of full-page and double-page spreads. I love these first 14 issues where Grell was fully immersed in the WARLORD series, doing story, pencils and inks. After this, Rubinstein inked issue 15, and Either Colletta or Bob Smith inked the remainder of issues up to 50. Grell was neither doing full art, or as focused on the WARLORD storyline, the plots seemed less imaginative and half-hearted for the most part. Although the Atlantis story in issues 26-27 was another highlight in the latter part of the series.

    But Grell was already looking ahead to his STARSLAYER series. Which Grell was initially creating for DC, until he got a better offer for royalties and creator rights from Pacific Comics.

    Most of these first 14 issues were single-issue stories. And for me, because they weren't storylines that dragged for a year or more in sub-plots, more seemed to happen in this first 14 issues of WARLORD than happened in 33 or so issues of Claremont/Byrne X-MEN issues. Both great in their own way, two very different styles of storytelling, but I love the humor and visual narrative in Grell's WARLORD.

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  3. AnonymousJune 7, 2021 at 12:59 AM

    Here's a link to Groove's post of the next issue, WARLORD 15:
    https://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2017/11/greetings-from-skartaris-holocaust-by.html

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


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