Aton
19 years ago - 12-year-old Aton becomes a pageboy in the Gladiator army of Travis Morgan & Machiste. When he tries to join the warriors riding into battle, he is charged instead by Morgan to become his herald, riding the land to share their dream of freedom for all.
8 years ago - 23-year-old Aton's path crosses again with Travis Morgan, and joins his quest to find his lost daughter Jennifer Morgan.
7 years ago - 24-year-old Aton, Travis Morgan, Mariah Romanova, Machiste, & Shakira find the restored castle Deimos. Aton is killed in the assault.
Morgan never stops adventuring across the entire run of Warlord, always pursuing some quest or trying to find some lost purpose. During that time he found himself often falling in with a wide variety of traveling companions, some of whom became longtime series regulars, others who only stuck around for a brief while. Aton is actually a particularly fun companion, both because he is meant to embody something special about Morgan himself, and also because we got to watch him grow in the span of the series.
Aton's StoryAton appeared for the first time in Warlord #12 in in 1978, in a issue called "Trilogy", in which several traveling companions of Travis Morgan share stories about him, all meant to illustrate different sides of our hero. Machiste remembered a time, back when he an Morgan were leading their Gladiator rebellion, when a young boy, Aton, approached them, trying to join their army. Rather than turn the boy away, Morgan recognized that the boy was a true believer in his cause and gave him a helmet, a beautiful steed and a banner, and charged him to be his herald, to carry his dream of freedom for all across the land. At this point in the series Morgan had already moved on from that cause, but the point was that Morgan inspires people everywhere, even if he himself isn't always moved the same way.
Not that long afterward, in 1980s issue #38, Morgan found himself among a band of traveling soldiers whose leader, a dashing hero on horseback, turns out to be a now adult Aton, illustrating how breakneck time moves in Skartaris. He would become Morgans traveling companion for a time, eager to learn from his hero and cutting a dashing image while doing so, if all the sideways glances he got from the ladies were to be believed. Aton was part of the final assault on Castle Deimos, where he tragically became the first hero to die in the series, letting him be remembered forever as a beacon of hope, and for the loss of the hero he could have been. |
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