THE WARLORD'S 30th ANNIVERSARY "DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY" Hard to believe this marks my 30th year in comics. It also means we're coming up on the 30th Anniversary of THE WARLORD. FLASHBACK - 1973... So there I am at the New York Comicon, with my portfolio in hand, expecting to be "discovered" as the next great comicstrip cartoonist. Yup, strip, not book. In my portfolio was a six-week sequence for a stirp called SAVAGE EMPIRE, about an archeologist transported through time to Atlantis. Unfortunately (or maybe not so unfortunately), nobody in the newspaper syndicate offices was the least bit interested in an adventure strip. I couldn't even get an appointment for an interview. Lucky for me, I ran into two guys - Alan Asherman, who worked for Joe Kubert, and Irv Novick, the great Batman artist - who looked at my portfolio and told me to get my carcass up to Julie Schwartz's office. Julie introduced me to Joe Orlando, who gave me my first assignment and became my mentor at DC Comics. But before I left the Comicon, I also left behind a copy of my SAVAGE EMPIRE presentation with Sol Harrison, then President of DC, who was reviewing portfolios at the convention. LATER... While working on SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES and a slew of other titles, word came down that SEABOARD comics was looking for new titles - AND - they were offering to pay $100 per page, nearly double what I was earning at DC. So, I packed up my SAVAGE EMPIRE presentation and marched up to Jeff Roven's office to give him my pitch. He liked it, and made me an offer that sounded good, but I was reluctant to jeopardize my position with DC (I had a wife and a dog to support). I asked him to hold off on announcing the deal until I had at least two issues completed, in order to ensure some security and demonstrate to DC, whom I considered my primary client, that I could do both without problems. Jeff agreed to wait, and I left to drop off pages at DC. It was about a twenty minute walk. By the time I arrived at DC, Carmine Infantino, the publisher, was waiting for me. Jeff Roven had phoned him as soon as I left the office to boast that (according to Carmine) he had "signed your boy Grell to two books a month." Naturally, Carmine wanted to know why i hadn't brought the property to him first. Money aside, I told him that, considering DC's lack of success with the sword & sorcery genre, I didn't think he'd be interested. "Why not let me be the judge of that?" he said. I followed him to his office to do the SAVAGE EMPIRE pitch. It was about a twenty foot walk. But in those twenty feet I realized "He's never going to buy it." Luckily, the phone rang as we walked in and Carmine excused himself for a couple of minutes while my brain went into high gear. In the next two minutes, I mentally rewrote the whole thing. Jason Cord, the archeologist, became Travis Morgan, pilot of an SR-71 spy plane. Atlantis became Skartaris, the world at the earth's core, a mix of Burroughs, Verne and half a dozen other "Hollow Earthers". (The name comes from the mountain peak Scartaris that points the way to the passage to the earth's core in "JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH"). The city of Shamballah came from the Tibetan city of gold, which, according to legend, lies buried somewhere beneath the Himalayas. (At the time, THREE DOG NIGHT had a song lyric: "How does your light shine on the road to Chamballah?"). Tahnee, the warrior woman became Tara, queen of Shamballah. The only name that remained unchanged was the villain, Diemos. I confess, I thought about changing it to Phobos, but It just sounded so cool. The title was lifted from a Charlton Heston movie, "THE WAR LORD." Carmine liked the pitch and said, "Run it past Joe (Orlando). If he likes it, we'll give it a year's run. Gauranteed." It was that guarantee that made the difference. Seaboard proved to be a crapshoot that didn't pan out for anyone for very long. It vanished, along with some very good titles that should have had a longer run. Unfortunately for me, Carmine wasn't exactly true to his word. I picked up the third bi-monthly issue of THE WARLORD and read "THE END" on the last page. That's how I found out it had been cancelled. No phone call, nothing. Unfortunately for Carmine, Jeanette Kahn arrived a couple of weeks later and assumed the mantle of publisher of DC COMICS. It seems that Jeanette made it a point to read all the titles in the lineup and THE WARLORD was her favorite. When she looked at the roster and found it missing, she asked what had happened to it and was told that Carmine had cancelled it. I'm told (and I choose to believe it, because it makes a great story) that she said, "Well, I just cancelled Carmine. Put it back on the schedule." Later, when the big DC IMPLOSION hit and titles were being cancelled left and right, those that survived the cut were made monthly. THE WARLORD was one of them. In a short time it became the top selling title at DC. FLASH FORWARD - 1979 The mailman delivers a package from DC. When I unwrap it, I'm surprised to discover the portfolio I had left with Sol Harrison back in the summer of 1973... along with a form-letter rejection slip, thanking me for my submission, but "...sorry, the material does not meet the publishing needs of DC COMICS." There's a lesson in this somewhere. MIKE GRELL

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