WARLORD By Mike Grell Omnibus Volume 1

In 1975, DC made one of its most notable expansions beyond the world of superheroes with the introduction of the Warlord -- a new fantasy hero created by writer and artist Mike Grell. Mike would soon be a fan-favorite for his character-redefining Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters and ultimately for his First Comics series Jon Sable Freelance and Starslayer. in Warlord, Lt. Colonel Travis Morgan of the United States Air Force is attacked while on a reconnaissance mission over Russia. Fleeing toward the arctic circle, he is forced to abandon his dying aircraft over the Yukon and parachutes through a swirling mist into the strange and unrecognizable land of Skartaris where he returns to the primitive a la John Carter or Tarzan. Grell wrote and drew the Tarzan comic strip from July 19, 1981, to February 27, 1983 (except for one strip, February 13, 1983, by Thomas Yeates). These strips were rerun in newspapers in 2004 - 2005. Through the 1980s Grell developed creator-owned titles such Jon Sable Freelance and Starslayer. Jon Sable Freelance was published by the now-defunct First Comics. Starslayer, a space-born science fiction series, started at Pacific Comics, but shifted to First after Pacific went out of business. The titular character of Jon Sable Freelance was a former Olympic athlete, later an African big-game hunter, who became a mercenary. First appearing with a cover date of June 1983, Jon Sable was a precursor to what would eventually be called, by some, "the Dark Age of Comics", when even long-established super-heroes would become increasingly grim and violent. The character was heavily influenced by Ian Fleming's James Bond novels as well as drawing on pulp fiction crime stories. Many of the stories of Sable's hunting exploits in Africa were influenced by Peter Hathaway Capstick's novels. At a convention in the late 1980s, Grell stated that his idea for Sable was "something like a cross between James Bond and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer". Sable was adapted into a short-lived television series and the character's origin tale, "A Storm Over Eden", from the comic book, was expanded and novelized by Grell under the title Sable, which was published in 2000 by Tor Books. In 1987, Mike Grell wrote and drew the three-issue prestige format limited series Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters. He redesigned the character's costume, away from the costume Neal Adams had designed in 1969, and recast Green Arrow as an "urban hunter" going up against non-super-powered, real world villains such as serial killers, terrorists, street gangs, American mobsters and Japanese Yakuza. He did away with Green Arrow's arsenal of "trick arrows" and instead rearmed him with penetrating broadheads with which he actually killed his opponents. Longbow Hunters showed the first instance in which Green Arrow ever deliberately killed someone. The popularity of Longbow Hunters led to an assignment writing -- and occasionally drawing -- the ongoing Green Arrow series for 80 issues from 1988 to 1993.