Tuesday 1 September 2009

Warlord issue 94 1976

Warlord was another comic from my youth - it ran from 1974 until 1986 and was hugely popular - indeed it was the success of Warlord that spurred rival publisher, IPC to produce Battle Picture Weekly.


I didn't get Warlord regularly when I was a kid - hey I already had a comic on order and we couldn't afford too many comics. But a friend of mine, a fellow comic nut took the title and so I would borrow his copy every week to read.

This issue comes from 1976 and is priced 6p - the first story is Killer Kane which is about a air ace known as Killer Kane. The character had some mystery in his past and details of which were drip fed to the reader each week.





The stories would usually run for awhile before being rested while other strips were brought in.










The most popular strips would always return - one of the most popular characters in the comics history was Union Jack Jackson, about a heroic Brit fighting with a group of GI's but he's not in this particular issue.













Following Kane is Old Calamity and it's not a strip I remember. It's not mentioned among the notable strips on the comic's WIKI entry.













It seems to be about about a squadron who operate out of a tank called Old Calamity.













The comic then published the winner of the 1975/1976 Army Photographic Competition. The pic shows a crew of Royal Dragoon Guards at training.














This is then followed on the facing page by a strip called,Crane of the Cutlass. It is a strip set in 1940 and the Normandy Invasion.














Ghost Fighter comes next - set in the second world war it tells of a pilot whose father was a hero in the first world war and now his spirit protects his son from all manner of enemy nasty.












It was an unusual concept for a comic strip and again is not listed as a notable strip in the WIKI entry so I imagine it only ran for the one series. It seems to be fun, though. Any Warlord fans out there who can let us know how long the strip ran for?















The centre pages, of course, belonged to Warlord himself - Lord Peter Flint Code name Warlord, was a sort of World War II James Bond.














"Lord Peter Flint is the James Bond-like secret agent whose missions take him to various areas of conflict, including Germany itself.














The storyline borrowed "The Scarlet Pimpernel" idea of a seemingly upper class fop actually being a daring wartime agent. Stories would generally start off in Britain with Lord Peter Flint, who hadn't signed up to fight, being accused of cowardice before secretly going off on a mission then returning home. There was a recurring cast of enemies representing various aspects of the Third Reich such as the Gestapo and the SS."















In the episode in this issue Peter Flint comes up against Hitler himself.

















After Warlord we had the letters page which doubled up as the page for Warlord Agents - readers could join the Warlord club for 20p - for that they got a wallet, badge, membership card and code breaking device. There would be codes to decipher in each issue.
















All of the letters are addressed to Lord Peter himself - check out how seriously the readers take the Warlord Club.















Then there is a complete story, A Right Villain which tells of a burglar who has no intention of changing his ways just because he's in the army.



















Then comes the final strip, Tommy Atkins War. Note the Charles Atlas AD and the stamp collecting offers - both regulars in boys comics of the period.

















This strip is set in Crete in 1941.

















The back cover is taken over by photo feature on the firepower of the modern RAF.

2 comments:

Keith said...

This looks very cool. I really enjoy checking out your blog. I find out about so many books, etc. that I never knew about before.

Gary Dobbs/Jack Martin said...

Thanks Keith and please keep coming back for more and more random musings.

VAPING IS SAFER THAN BREATHING

 The UK's new tax on vaping which will come into force in 2026 is not only immoral but patently insane, and will hit those reformed smok...