Adam Warlock

• 1. Introduction

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  Adam Warlock begins life with no name at all. Scientists on Earth who called themselves the Enclave built him as a perfect being, the next evolution of humanity, and he knew himself only as Him. Then he learned what his makers intended, and he rebelled.

  From that rebellion grows one of the strangest careers in Marvel Comics. It runs across planets, parallel universes and the folds of time. He carries a gem that feeds on souls, faces a dark counterpart who seems to understand him too well, and dies and returns again and again.

  Why would a being built to be flawless end up a messiah, a troubled mind and a guardian of the cosmos all at once? Who is the shadow that keeps following him? And what does it cost to hold a power that can swallow the souls of others?

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• 2. Counter-Earth Savior

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  Fantastic Four #66 carried a cover date of September 1967, and it introduced Him in a story written by Stan Lee, with Jack Kirby pencilling and co-plotting. His part in that tale was so small that sources disagree about which issue counts as his true first appearance. He returned in Fantastic Four #67 the following month, and again in Thor #163-166, from April to July 1969.

  The real reinvention arrived in Marvel Premiere #1, dated April 1972. Roy Thomas, then a writer and soon editor-in-chief, teamed with penciler Gil Kane to remake Him as Adam Warlock.

  Thomas later explained that he loved the soundtrack of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and wanted to bring that story to comics in superhero form. In 2009 he admitted, "I had some trepidation about the Christ parallels." He hoped that a tasteful approach would keep any outcry small.

  Thomas wanted a preexisting character, but he also wanted the series kept apart from mainstream Marvel Earth. His answer was Counter-Earth, a planet carved from a chunk of Earth and placed in orbit on the opposite side of the sun.

  In the story, Him quarrels with Thor and decides to leave Earth for space. There he meets the High Evolutionary, who gives him the name Warlock. The High Evolutionary asks for help saving the artificial planet Counter-Earth from the evil Man-Beast, and hands him a green gem, the Soul Gem. Four teenagers who befriend him on arrival call him Adam.

  Thomas and Kane designed the costume together. Its red tunic and golden lightning bolt were a tribute to Captain Marvel, a Fawcett Comics hero of the 1940s and 1950s.

  The saga continued in The Power of Warlock, which ran eight issues from August 1972 to October 1973. Its loose ends were tied up in The Incredible Hulk, volume 2, issues 176-178, in mid-1974.

  In a 2009 survey of the character, writer Karen Walker was blunt about the series. She felt it slid into routine superhero fights sprinkled with biblical echoes, and that the savior idea often seemed forced. She also asked whether a pacifist savior could work in a medium driven by physical conflict.

  The next revival, in 1975, would leave Counter-Earth behind entirely.

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• 3. Starlin's Cosmic Turn

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  Strange Tales #178 reached readers with a February 1975 cover date, and behind it lay an accident of scheduling. Writer-artist Jim Starlin had quit the series Captain Marvel over a dispute. He settled the dispute and planned to return, but another team was already in place.

  So Roy Thomas asked Starlin which character he wanted to take on. Starlin went home that night and dug out a stack of comics. In the Fantastic Four he found Him, and the next day he announced that this was the character. He started working that same night.

  Starlin told an interviewer in 2009 that he had turned the warrior Captain Marvel into a messiah type. Reaching Warlock, he thought, "I got a messiah right here to start off with; where do I go from there?" His answer was to make the character paranoid, in his own words a paranoid schizophrenic.

  The result pushed Warlock into far larger territory. Strange Tales #178-181, from February to August 1975, launched an extended story known as "The Magus Saga". The title then picked up the numbering of The Power of Warlock, beginning with Warlock #9 in October 1975 and running seven issues.

  Starlin first wrote and drew the bimonthly series alone. Later Steve Leialoha joined to co-pencil and ink. Loose threads were finished in Marvel Team-Up #55 in March 1977, Avengers Annual #7 in November 1977, and Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2 in December 1977.

  Alan Weiss told an interviewer in 2006 about a lost Warlock story that would have recalled Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels. Portions appear in the second volume of Marvel Masterworks: Warlock. The rest of the artwork vanished in a New York City taxicab in 1976.

  Warlock himself turned up once more in Marvel Two-in-One #63, in May 1980, although he was regarded as deceased by then. His adventures stayed in print through reprints. The six-issue limited series Warlock volume 2, from December 1982 to May 1983, carried new Starlin covers, and a further reprint run, Warlock volume 3, from May to October 1992, wore yet another set.

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• 4. The Magus Paradox

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  On his travels, Warlock met the Universal Church of Truth, an intergalactic religious organization led by the corrupt Magus. To fight it, he gathered allies: Pip the Troll, the assassin Gamora, and Thanos of Titan.

  The Magus turned out to be Warlock himself. He was a future version who had traveled back in time after the Soul Gem's use drove him insane. To secure his own existence, this older self steered his younger self through the choices that would lead to the same fate.

  Warlock chose to break the loop. He visited himself a few months in the future and stole his own soul, so the Magus could never come to exist. Warlock went on his way knowing that he had seen his own death, though not when it would come.

  The green Soul Gem at the center of that story has a consciousness of its own. It craves the life energy of organic beings in a way the source calls vampiric. Every soul it takes goes into an idyllic pocket universe, later called the Soul World.

  Warlock has used the gem to turn the followers of the Man-Beast back into the animals from which they evolved. He also used it to return the Brute to his original form, the Counter-Earth version of Reed Richards.

  The Stranger once tried to steal the gem, and in the process Warlock learned that five related gems existed. Thanos gathered them, intending to destroy Earth's sun. When Thanos inflicted mortal harm on Pip and Gamora, Warlock took their souls into the gem to end their suffering.

  He then recruited the Avengers, Captain Marvel and Moondragon. In the middle of the battle, his younger self appeared and took the older Warlock's soul. Inside the gem, Adam reunited with Pip, Gamora and others in the utopia of the Soul World. His soul was briefly freed, and that was enough to turn Thanos to stone and save Earth.

  Thanos did not stay in that state, because he was resurrected in Silver Surfer volume 3, issue 34, dated February 1990.

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• 5. Infinity Gauntlet

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  The miniseries The Infinity Gauntlet ran six issues from July to December 1991, and in it Starlin revived Warlock along with two members of his supporting cast. Thanos had again gathered the gems into a single glove, the Infinity Gauntlet. He trapped the Silver Surfer and Drax the Destroyer inside the Soul Gem for opposing him.

  There the Silver Surfer met Adam Warlock and convinced him that his help was needed once more. Warlock agreed, and Pip and Gamora chose to come along. He sent himself and his friends into new bodies, led a force of Earth's superheroes and defeated Thanos.

  Warlock took the Gauntlet and became a near-supreme being. The cosmic Living Tribunal ruled that he could not be trusted with it and ordered him to divide the gems among others. He kept the Soul Gem himself. Pip, Gamora, Drax, Moondragon and the reformed Thanos each received one, and Warlock named the group the Infinity Watch.

  The group got its own series, Warlock and the Infinity Watch. Starlin wrote the early issues, Angel Medina drew them, and the title ran 42 issues from February 1992 to August 1995. Its plots fed directly into the limited series Infinity War, from June to November 1992, and Infinity Crusade, from June to December 1993.

  While he held the Gauntlet, Warlock purged both good and evil from his being, which left him a creature of pure logic. Each half took a physical form. The evil half named itself the Magus, and the good half became a woman calling herself the Goddess.

  The new Magus wanted the Gauntlet for himself. The Infinity Watch tricked him into grabbing it after the Reality Gem had been swapped for a powerless copy. The flaw in the Gauntlet's powers let his enemies overpower him, and Warlock sealed him in the Soul Gem.

  Being only half a soul, he could not interact with the Soul World's inhabitants and lingered as a phantom. He eventually escaped in immaterial form and fed on the life energies of others to become solid again. Genis-Vell defeated him and left him an ethereal entity. He then wounded Genis' friend Moondragon and announced she was destined to be his slave.

  The Goddess starred in the 1993 limited series Infinity Crusade. She gathered Cosmic Cubes and forged them into a Cosmic Egg. With its power she recreated Counter-Earth and renamed it Paradise Omega.

  She launched a crusade to eliminate sin and used telepathy to control spiritual beings across the universe. Warlock and Earth's other heroes learned that her method was to destroy anything capable of sin. Her own followers turned on her once they understood her true goal, and she was absorbed into the Soul Gem.

  The Infinity Watch finally broke apart when Rune, a vampire from a parallel universe, stole the gems. Warlock pursued him, recovered them and returned to his home universe. The crossover one-shot Rune / Silver Surfer, a Marvel and Malibu Comics Ultraverse story, shows indicia dated April 1995 and a cover date of June 1995.

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• 6. Cocoons and Quantum Magic

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  When Warlock dies, a cocoon forms around him. This is his recuperative power. The cocoon preserves him, heals his injuries and enables his resurrection. He is immortal in the sense that his body can be killed, but his soul cannot be permanently extinguished or claimed by Death.

  He is also described as an astral outsider, so magical and cosmic senses cannot perceive his actions, presence or future. His artificial genetic structure gives him bones and muscles denser than a typical human's, along with superhuman strength and stamina. A multi-compartmental brain lets him sense cosmic and mystical forces.

  His energy powers grow with each resurrection. In one recent version he could absorb energies from others and manipulate the energies inside their bodies, which neutralized their abilities. That power helped him defeat both Quasar and the Silver Surfer on one occasion.

  In the 2007-2008 storyline Annihilation: Conquest, Moondragon and Phyla-Vell sought Warlock's help to free the Kree from the invading Phalanx. After the Phalanx fell, he joined the newly formed Guardians of the Galaxy, where he served as cosmic sorcerer and occult expert.

  In that period he gained what the source calls Quantum Magic. Its practitioner, a Quantum Mage, works spells from the energies available in his surroundings and from conjured psi-llables. The power was given to him to repair reality after the Fault expanded into the Cancerverse, in the Guardians of the Galaxy series that began in 2008.

  Trying to repair damage to the spacetime continuum, Warlock became the Magus a third time. This version served the evil Lord Mar-Vell and was killed when he failed a mission. The Universal Church of Truth resurrected him as a child, whom the Annihilators promptly imprisoned. His cocoon stayed under their watch.

  In the graphic novel Thanos: The Infinity Revelation, from August 2014, Thanos found Warlock's soul in Death's domain. When two universes merged, Warlock was retroactively replaced by a counterpart from the other universe. That counterpart ended up as a gladiator in a fighting pit on New Krall, unnaturally more powerful than before.

  Annihilus attacked, and Warlock unconsciously destroyed the universe while rescued from captivity. Panicking in the void, he called for Thanos and willed him back into existence. Together they asked the One Above All to recreate everything.

  The One Above All agreed on one condition: Adam must act as the universe's new Living Tribunal. At Thanos' request, the original Adam Warlock was then resurrected from the moment just before the merger.

  The true Adam went to Pip the Troll, who ran to him with open arms. In Thanos: The Infinity Conflict, Thanos killed Adam in the blink of an eye, and repeated the act with a rocket and then a missile. Each death led to another resurrection, and the last revival came before the Living Tribunal.

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• 7. Warp World

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  Kang the Conqueror claims he tried 112 times to prevent a calamity, and in the Infinity Countdown storyline he offers Warlock a bargain. Kang shows him a recap of his own history, then a vision called "Infinity's End", in which the universe suffers an unseen catastrophe after the Infinity Stones are reunited.

  Kang will send Warlock to retrieve the Soul Stone in exchange for the Time Stone. Warlock reluctantly agrees, hoping that keeping the two gems apart will prevent disaster.

  Warlock arrives in ancient Egypt, where the pharaoh Rama-Tut, an earlier version of Kang, shows him where the Soul Stone will be found in the future. It will be in the hands of Warlock's dark reflection, the Magus. Rama-Tut then seals Warlock in a tomb to awaken thousands of years later.

  Rama-Tut orders his guards to poison themselves, because no one can know of the plot. The Magus, for his part, later seeks the Infinity Stones to destroy the universe but is killed during that search.

  On the planet Oblitus, Warlock and Kang ambush the Guardians of the Galaxy. Gamora tries to take the Soul Gem from Warlock. Drax holds it and discovers that the Soul World inside has become corrupted. Doctor Strange then contacts the gem holders and urges them to reform the Infinity Watch.

  The Infinity Wars storyline follows. Warlock senses the corruption, asks Doctor Strange for help, and learns that Strange now holds the Time Gem. In Central Park, Gamora, using the alias Requiem and the Reality Gem, partly fuses Captain America and Doctor Strange to take the Mind Gem and Time Gem. She then beheads Adam.

  The result is Warp World, filled with fused heroes. Arachknight combines Spider-Man and Moon Knight, Iron Hammer combines Iron Man and Thor, and Moon Squirrel combines Moon Girl and Squirrel Girl. Man-Thing-Thang-Thoom combines Man-Thing and Fin Fang Foom, and Tippysaurus combines Tippy-Toe and Devil Dinosaur. A saxophone-playing version of Drax joins them.

  A creature named Devondra regenerates every time it is struck. Warlock finds that Gamora and alternate versions of Phyla-Vell and Moondragon are now in the Soul Gem. He plans to copy the souls in Warp World, so that they and Devondra can be brought into the real world, where Hulk punches Devondra through the hole.

  Warlock restores the Guardians to their normal state and separates Drax's Destroyer half from his Arthur Douglas half. Emma Frost wipes memories of the incident to avoid unrest. Warlock then grabs the Time Gem and freezes time, saying that the Infinity Gems must decide the outcome.

  When time resumes, Star-Lord notices that Gamora is gone. Warlock has sent her somewhere she can redeem herself. Later he stares at the stars in a desert and draws a symbol in the sand, saying that a part of him is missing.

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• 8. Cult Favorite on Screen

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  Will Poulter played Adam Warlock in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2023, after the character had been teased in Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. By then Warlock had already become a cult favorite in comics. That following traces to Starlin's 1970s revamp and to the character's central role in the Infinity Gauntlet storyline.

  In that film, Warlock is a perfect Sovereign created by Ayesha and the High Evolutionary, with Ayesha as his mother, to capture Rocket. The pair release him from his birthing pod before his maturation is complete. He fights the Guardians, is defeated and retreats.

  After Ayesha dies, Warlock tries to destroy the High Evolutionary's ship, but succumbs to his injuries and fails. Groot rescues him. Groot remarks that everyone deserves a second chance, and Warlock later saves Star-Lord and joins a new iteration of the Guardians under Rocket's leadership.

  Television has used him in many ways. In the Silver Surfer episode "The Forever War", voiced by Oliver Becker, he is a genetically engineered being made to fight the Kree. His paranoia has left him in a time prison, and after being freed he chooses to return.

  The Super Hero Squad Show, with Dave Boat voicing him, imprisons him in the Soul Gem. After he and Thanos escape, the two start a chicken farm together. In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the episode "Michael Korvac" casts him as a Guardians member, voiced by Kirk Thornton.

  Guardians of the Galaxy (2015) features Warlock and the Magus, voiced primarily by Eric Bauza, with Tara Strong voicing the child Magus. The Universal Believers worship him and intend to use him to usher in a golden age. After he emerges from his sarcophagus, the Guardians and Cosmo the Spacedog convince him to do good, and he leaves Earth to find his destiny.

  He also has a non-speaking cameo in the animated film Planet Hulk. In video games, Warlock and the Magus appear in Marvel Super Heroes: War of the Gems, and Warlock is playable in Marvel Avengers Alliance and Marvel: Future Fight. Brent Skagford voices him in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, and he is a playable character in Marvel Rivals.

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