Warlord's Return

 

World's Finest #51 by Mark Waid and Adrian Gutierrez came out this week, and as I mentioned previously, it features an appearance by Skartaris, Travis Morgan, and several of Warlord's supporting cast. The conceit of Waid's World's Finest series is that it is "earlier" adventurers of Batman and Superman so he can give it a bit of a retro spin will having set in the current DC Universe (whatever that actually means in terms of continuity these days). This means that we are treated to Batman's and Superman's first meeting with Travis Morgan and perhaps a bit of a setting how his backstory and Skartaris are interpreted these days.

In dialogue with Robin, Batman fills the reader in that Travis Morgan was an Air Force pilot that disappeared over the Arctic in his SR-71 "years ago" as they follow the course of a more recent SR-71 pilot to disappear named Kreitzer. We are later told Morgan's disappearance was "a year or so" before Batman and Superman went public, so the timeline is kept vague, but they are clearly retconning his disappearance being in 1969. 

Waid keeps (or rath re-introduces, since DC dropped this after Grell left) the aspect of time running differently in Skartaris than on Earth. Morgan is whitehaired as always and says he has lived "a lifetime" in Skartaris. Krietzer, who only disappeared recently from Earth's perspective has been there for "years" Skartarian time. In the original series, time was strange in Skartaris, but mostly it appeared that time ran quicker on Earth, so this inverts things.

Much of Warlord's supporting cast makes an appearance, including Machiste, Tara, Mariah, and Shakira make an appearance, prompting an amusing comment from Robin:

While the art looks nice overall (with Guerrero's coloring really stealing the show for me), I can't say I care for Guitterrez's rendition of Morgan or any of his crew. Morgan's winged helm looks like it has actually feathers stuck to it. None of the fur garments worn by Morgan, Shakira, or Tara look particularly like fur. I get the since Guiterrez is a superhero guy out of his area of competency drawing these Frazetta-descended costumes.