The Warlord

55 years ago - Travis Morgan is born in South Dakota

43 years ago - 12-year-old Travis Morgan learns to hunt on his uncle’s land, becomes an expert marksman.

41 years ago - 14-year-old Travis Morgan learns to fly on a Piper Tomahawk over his uncle’s land.

37 years ago - 18-year-old Travis Morgan joins the Air Force, and begins Special Reconnaissance training.

35 years ago - 20-year-old Travis Morgan is imbedded with troops in active war zones as an Air Force Special Reconnaissance Airman.

28 years ago - 27-year-old Travis Morgan's daughter Jennifer Morgan is born. He marries her mother.

23 years ago - 32-yeat-old Travis Morgan's wife died in a car crash. He sends their daughter Jennifer Morgan to live with her aunt.

21 years ago - 34-year-old Travis Morgan survives a missile attack while flying a reconnaissance mission with a specially outfitted SR-71 Blackbird. He bails over the north pole as his plane crashes, finding one of the rare openings into the trans-dimensional Hollow Earth, Skartaris. He encounters Tara, saving her from a Terrorsaur. He gives her his wristwatch, which she takes as a talisman. They are captured by the Theran forces of Deimos. He is sold into slavery, and meets Machiste as galley slaves.

20 years ago - 34-year-old Travis Morgan & Machiste are sold to a gladiator school, becoming two of the most infamous gladiators in Skartaris. When Deimos attends one of their tournaments, Morgan sees Tara in attendance, and Machiste is able to identify her as the princess of Shamballah. Morgan begins planning his rebellion.

19 years ago - 36-year-old Travis Morgan & Machiste lead a rebellion against their slavers, building a Gladiator army. He makes Aton, a pageboy, his herald, riding the land to share their dream of freedom for all. They take the city of Thera, freeing Tara and the other slaves, and killing Demios. Machiste returns to Kiro.

18 years ago - 37-year-old Travis Morgan & Tara depart Thera for Shamballah. They assist a disguised Ashiya in recovering her people's lost artifact, the Mask of Life. Discovering the lost ancient technology of Atlantis, Morgan is separated from Tara, and while drugged he communes with a nameless Atlantean Death Goddess who names him her most loyal servant. He arrives in Shamballah through the ancient computers below the city, reuniting with Tara and discovering that she has born his son, who they name Joshua Morgan.

17 years ago - 38-year-old Travis Morgan & Tara's son Joshua Morgan is stolen from his bed by a resurrected Deimos. Morgan & Tara quest across Skartaris to find him. They recover the Hellfire Gem. In Kiro, they find that Machiste has been corrupted by an evil ax. Morgan & Machiste duel and Travis cuts off his hand freeing him from his curse. He joins their quest.

16 years ago - 39-year-old Travis Morgan, Tara & Machiste find Deimos's hidden lair. Morgan is forced to fight and kill his infant son Joshua Morgan, magically grown to adulthood. Morgan cuts Deimos in half and knocks his body off a cliff. Heartbroken, Morgan departs to wander the land alone.

15 years ago - 40-year-old Travis Morgan travels into the magical tombs of the ancient Atlanteans. He finds the Hellfire Blade.

14 years ago - 41-year-old Travis Morgan first saves Shakira from trolls. She begins to follow him, becoming his new travel companion. They fall in with a mercenary band, and rescue hapless rogue Aram al Ashir, agreeing to help him hunt for a hidden temple with a supposed secret treasure.

13 years ago - 42-year-old Travis Morgan & Aram al Ashir are enslaved by a hidden civilization of Snake People. They escape with the help of Shakira, fleeing the undercity. Ashir reveals that he is the lost prince of Kaambuku, and returns to his home to take his crown.

12 years ago - 43-year-old Travis Morgan witnesses the Theran army marching toward Shamballah. He warns the surrounding villages of the coming threat with the help of a woodsman, not realizing that he is the adopted father of his son Joshua Morgan. He uses a cache of ancient Atlantean weapons found by Shakira to break the siege of Shamballah saving Tara and it's people. He almost succumbs to the corruption of the Hellfire Blade, casting it aside. He becomes the Queen's consort.

9 years ago - 46-year-old Travis Morgan is found by Mariah Romanova, a fellow surface worlder, who tells him that she came here with his daughter Jennifer Morgan, who was taken by Theran slavers. Morgan, Mariah, Machiste & Shakira ride off to find and save her.

8 years ago - 47-year-old Travis Morgan, Mariah Romanova, Machiste & Shakira assist Aram al Ashir in retaking a Kaambuku outpost held by the Snake People. When Shakira is killed in battle, Morgan follows her into the realm of the nameless Atlantean Death Goddess, and trades 10 years of his lifespan to save her, forever bearing an X on his chest to show her claim. They are joined by the herald Aton.

7 years ago - 48-year-old Travis Morgan, Mariah Romanova, Machiste, Shakira & Aton find the restored castle Deimos. Aton is killed in the assault, but they breach the castle, where they confront the resurrected Deimos, whose follower Faaldren turns on him, allowing Morgan to finally, truly kill him. Ashiya attempts to absorb the death energy of Deimos to ascend in power, but she is stopped by Jennifer Morgan, who claims the mantle of Sorceress Supreme, and Castle Deimos for her own. Morgan returns to Shamballah, and to Tara.

5 years ago - 50-year-old Travis Morgan is the victim of a coup, attacked inside the walls of Shamballah and placed in an iron mask in the dungeon and replaced with a doppelganger. He is visited by Tinder, a street thief, and tells him stories of the surface world. Tinder frees him, and he kills his doppelganger and reclaims his place as the queen's consort. Tinder reveals that he has Morgan's watch talisman, and that he is Morgan & Tara's lost son Joshua Morgan.

Make absolutely no mistake; Skartaris is Travis Morgan's story. Possibly even more than MOST genre fiction, be it fantasy epics of superhero comics, the story told in Mike Grell's Warlord is absolutely, 100% about the adventures of One Guy. The world might be populated with supporting characters, but all of them really only matter in howeversomuch they relate to Travis. He is possibly the most blatant self-insert hero in the history of comics outside of Grant Morrison just fully writing themself into Animal Man, but I don't think anyone would argue that he isn't all the more charming for it.

Morgan's Comic History

Travis Morgan is the hero of Mike Grell's ongoing Warlord series, debuting in 1st Issue Special #8 in 1975 before the ongoing series started and ran all the way to 1989. While Grell's original idea involved an archeologist traveling back in time, Travis evolved to become an Air Force pilot whose surveillance flight with a retrofitted one-man SR71 Blackbird survived a dogfight over Russia but was losing fuel too quickly and had to attempt to reach Canada over the North Pole, only to wind up following the curved lip of the entrance into Skartaris, where he crashes and begins a new life of adventure.

Just to get the obvious out of the way; Mike Grell has made absolutely zero secret of his penchant to base his heroes on himself. He was also in the Air Force, and Travis's unmistakable facial hair was Grell's. Grell was also responsible for a classic run on famously goateed hero Green Arrow, who would actually meet Travis in-universe and comment on their near-identical look, but Ollie's goatee was the work of Neal Adams in 1969.

Even more than his iconic beard, Travis was a particular blend of heroic tropes; he was a jovial swashbuckler like Captain Blood, a mysterious gunslinger like the Man with No Name, a tragically flawed barbarian king like Conan or Elric of Melniboné... Grell found such a singularly crafted persona for Travis, and kept true to it for the DURATION of the series.

As much as Morgan was the core of the series, it is very clear that there are times when we are absolutely not specifically meant to like him. He was sometimes melancholy, or short sighted. He always did the HEROIC thing, but that wasn't always the RIGHT thing. Perhaps most of all; As the series went on, the constant rush from one epic quest to the next slowed as... as things tend to happen when you're a hero out there trying to make the world better... the world got better. It became clear that Travis NEEDED to be out there questing, that he simply didn't have it in him to settle down with his lover Tara, the Queen of Shamballah. His constant running away became a regular theme of the story.

There is a distinct sense that somewhere along the way Travis Morgan's story had clearly passed its logical stopping point, where the hero's journey would come to an end, whether it was a happy one or not. The book was probably just too popular for its own good at that point, and rather than getting an appropriately epic conclusion, it instead seemed to peter out. There were some attempts at returning to the series, a six-issue miniseries by Grell in 92, a poorly-received attempted reboot in 2009, and then a completely new series by Grell in 2010 that actually picked up the classic continuity and, Spoiler Warning here... finally gave Morgan a tragic sort of ending that actually befit his peculiar, epic story.

Our Morgan Story

We didn't really have to change or invent anything to build out a huge and, dare we say, pretty solidly epic timeline for Morgan in our project. The events of the Warlord series are nothing if not epic, so we really had a wealth of stories to pick from. If anything, the main thing we had to do was actually stretch everything out, give it time to really HAPPEN. The comic moves so fast, massive arcs that feel like they could have driven years of content were introduced and resolved in single issues. The book plays so fast and loose with time that it's even openly accepted that it just moves differently in Skartaris, that in the time it takes one person to grab a drink in a tavern, another person can do a week's worth of work, and no one really bats an eye at it. I guess it was probably necessary to explain the strange way time seemed to move in the series (Morgan discovers he's been in Skartaris for eight years in only issue six), but by just letting everything have space to breath time can move naturally, and we can really sink our teeth into Morgans epic quests.

Another change we can make in our reimagined timeline is to actually let some of the stakes of some of these stories resolve. Morgan was constantly being whisked away into the next adventure, and as the series seemed to go on long after it should have ended, you never really felt like the world found a sense of equilibrium. The best stories, as always, are the ones that find a satisfying conclusion.

Morgan's Costume

I do want to include this point, because it's definitely relevant; I don't think I'd shock anyone to say that one of the main contributing factors to the success of Warlord was the rampant cheesecake. Grell was obviously just having a grand time drawing all sorts of scantily clad bodies with a classic Frank Frazetta energy. It winds up being a case study in the difference between the Male Gaze and a Male Power Fantasy, because while Travis and Machiste might be just as semi-naked as Tara or Shakira or Mariah... there is a distinct difference in how they actually look on panel. I'm sure you'll see it in the art we use.

All that said, I don't really know if you can actually say it's problematic without specifically bringing that critical lens WITH you. For what it is, the series feels more like it's right at home in the same space as Boris Vallejo doing John Carter or Conan. It's part of the tropes the comic plays in, and I would probably even argue part of the fun.

Focusing more on Travis himself, his classic loincloth look actually debuted in issue #9, a change from his original black jumpsuit. He also would very periodically change into a whole separate outfit for stories that needed to feel more pirate-y and less barbarian-y.

Morgan's Future

For our timeline, we've actually wrapped up the story of Travis Morgan, and of Skartaris, a number of years ago as Morgan and Tara are finally reunited with their lost son Joshua. In the comics, It's understood that Morgan never actually settled down, but was constantly leaving Tara to travel the land, only to return in times of crisis. Maybe that is, in the end, the type of character Grell always intended Morgan to be... but I just don't know that he ever really HAD to be that guy. For us, we just don't really mind it if our hero eventually finds a way to hang up his sword.

Mostly, of course... because there always comes a day when he needs to take it down again.

It's understood that there WILL, inevitably, be a new calamity that threatens Skartaris, and that Morgan and Tara and all the other heroes will absolutely need to come together again in defense of their home. In the comics, Morgan actually does eventually meet his end and his son Joshua takes up the mantle as the new Warlord... and I actually think that our story, where Morgan and Joshua actually do reconnect and have time to adventure as father and son, might actually lend itself to that idea even better.

Related Characters

Tara

Aton