13: Warp Factor Ten

How to proceed with Warp then, now the storyline is concluded and the main characters effectively dead? A cunning reset obviously, courtesy of PBG...

Warp #10-19 (1984-1985)

Pencils: Jerry Bingham, Mike Gustovich
Inks: Mike Gustovich

#10 reveals seemingly scatterbrained wizard Lugulbanda to be the malefactor behind a never ending cycle of death, conflict and rebirth. Conveniently this is all forgotten by the next issue's fresh start. For the remainder of the series, the 3 leads largely go their separate ways: 

Gillis tries to develop warrior without a cause Sargon's personality beyond kickass babe with a sword, by destroying all she holds dear. He then builds her up again by having her become a general in an interplanetary war. Thankfully she also ditches the gravity defying metal bikini for slightly more practical leathers. This war between alien lizards and apes has little bearing on the main storyline, yet it's somehow more entertaining than the A and B plots.

Speaking of B's, Prince Chaos causes his usual level of well, chaos in his old stamping ground Cynosure. As much as I like Chaos, his repetitive cat and mouse game with the local half dressed constabulary is the least interesting of the three main threads. At least Cynosure gets creatively fleshed out a bit.

Meanwhile, sulky Lord Cumulus pines for his old life as David, so looks up his old flame on Earth. Probably should've changed first, as predictably his blue bathers don't go down well. A dull love triangle ensues, but once that's tied up, Gillis enlivens proceedings with a hilarious issue long fight against some cosmic idiot pretending to be the Grim Reaper. "Nobody makes a monkey out of Death!" is my favourite line in the whole series.

As with Sargon, Gillis tries to give this lug headed off the shelf hero some much needed depth, at the expense of making him remotely likable. Like Don Blake, David's life turned out to be a false identity imprinted by his omnipotent father. Unlike Thor, he still retains his David persona as Cumulus, leaving him the ultimate of identity crises. The freedom, power and uncertainty combine to form an angry, petulant and dangerous being, who wants to regain control over his life. Eventually Cumulus concludes the only way to do that is to take control of everyone. It's a brave, if not necessarily successful move by Gillis to portray his square jawed hero in such a flawed megalomaniacal light. 

With the even grimmer reaper of cancellation hanging over Warp, Gillis had to tie together these seemingly disparate threads rather rapidly in the final two issues. Cumulus and Chaos fuse together to form their deus ex machina sister Ego once more, but something goes wrong: Cumulus absorbs their powers (effectively killing Ego), then returns to Fen-Ra to rule this mostly deserted kingdom. The power hungry Cumulus also incinerates Sargon, for roughly her third death. Then the mysterious woman who's been flirting with Cumulus reveals herself to be his all powerful father in disguise, He-Who-Dreams. Talk about daddy issues. One thing Warp isn't short of is skin-crawlingly messed up relations. The two brothers are absorbed back into Dream dad, leaving everyone to be reborn and begin the cycle anew. 

It's a shame Warp concluded on this necessarily rushed finale, rather than the more epic, if rather vague plans Peter Gillis had for the title:

"What they're all embroiled in is going to be revealed as the manipulating of chess pieces on a board, assuming the proper positions for a war with some extremely nasty fellows, representatives of whom we have already seen: these demons running around. We will learn a little more about what Lugulbanda and the other wizards do, what their origin is, what the origin of Fen-Ra is, and set the characters up in a cosmic conflict in which they'll all have very special parts to play."

This may be the end, but there's still plenty more Warp loose ends to wrap up.