Art by Skottie Young
- Name: Warlock
- Code Names: Warlock
- First Appearance: New Mutants #18(Aug ’84)
- Powers: Love, Shapeshifting
- Teams Affiliation: New Mutants, Excalibur, X-Factor
About
A parent’s biggest fear, and secret hope, is obsolescence. I want my son to get to a point where he can thrive without me but I am terrified of him getting there. He doesn’t need me to carry him everywhere anymore, he crawls all day long and is on the knife’s edge of walking. I don’t need to wake up at 1 AM (and 3 AM, and 5 AM) and rock him to sleep, he just needs a bottle and a pillow to drift into the realm of dreams. I have an innate desire to keep him reliant on me but I know he needs to overcome me. The Technarchy saw parenting as a battle. The son had to overcome the father but there could be no harmony, only bloodshed. This brutal practice propagated throughout their society but one son refused and instead ran. Warlock found a different way, he didn’t just replace his father, he improved on him.
The Technarchy were a techo-organic alien race ruled by The Magus and centered around a cultural tradition of Siredams and Sires battling for superiority. The Magus’ son, Warlock, was different than the rest of this race. He had evolved to develop a sense of empathy, a desire for peace and friendship. Warlock could not stand the brutal nature of this culture and when his Sire came for him, Warlock did what no Technarc had ever done. He ran.
Art by Bill Sienkiewicz and Glynis Wein
Warlock blasted through the stars until he collided with Magneto’s Asteroid M and crashed down towards Westchester. The girls of the New Mutants were having a slumber party and the boys decided to take a dip in the lake on the school grounds. The catatonic Warlock splashed down in the lake and the inquisitive New Mutants pulled him out. No matter what they had seen, nothing had prepared them for the being they had uncovered. He spoke like a machine, his body was fluid and jittery, he was truly alien and the New Mutants were at a loss with no clue how to deal with it. When Warlock began to wake, he was hungry, and started infecting items with his Transmode virus to consume them and absorb their Lifeglow. The New Mutants saw this as a threat and worked to contain him while they looked for the one mutant they knew could help make sense of this.
Art by Bill Sienkiewicz and Glynis Wein
Doug Ramsey was drug out of bed, confronted with the reality of his new world, and briefly freaked out before talking to Warlock. Warlock told Doug of his world, and Doug became the alien’s closest selfsoulfriend. The New Mutants welcomed their new teammate and helped Warlock acclimate to his new world. Doug and Lock grew closer as Warlock used his transformative powers to become a battle suite for his fragile friend. This was done at the risk of infecting Doug with the Transmode virus, but Warlock was willing to risk it to help his friend.
Art by Art Adams, Bob Wiacek, and Glynis Wein
Warlock’s bond with his teammates was hardened when his Sire, the Magus, came to Earth to confront him. Warlock was frightened and ran to Limbo with the help of his teammate Magik, but he knew he couldn’t run forever. The Magus followed him, infecting the denizens of the hellscape with the Transmode virus and inadvertently setting up Inferno (look it’s a whole thing, I’ll get to it another time). With the lives of his selffriends on the line, Warlock stood up to his father and, alongside Cypher, was able to break the cycle of the Technarchy. Instead of killing the Magus, he recoded him to infancy.
Art by Jackson Guice, John Beatty, and Glynis Oliver
Not long after their battle with the Magus, the New Mutants faced their first real loss when Doug Ramsey was killed in combat. Warlock could only deal with this as a child would, he just didn’t understand what was happening. Why wasn’t selfsoulfriend Doug alright? Why couldn’t they ever see each other again? In desperation, he used the Transmode virus to reanimate Doug’s body, and tried to bring his friend back. Wolfsbane was horrified by what he had done but knew that her friend needed assistance coping with his grief. She helped Warlock accept Doug’s death and Lock let him go.
Art by Bret Blevins, Terry Austin, and Glynis Oliver
Tragedy struck again when the team was captured by Genoshan Magistrates and taken to the island nation. The creepy head on a robot spider body known as Cameron Hodge planned on converting the New Mutants into Genoshan mutate slaves, but Warlock wouldn’t let that happen to his selffriends. He helped his teammates escape at the expense of getting recaptured by Hodge. Hodge killed Warlock in an attempt to gain his alien powers and become more than human. The New Mutants, alongside the X-Men, were able to stop the plot but they didn’t forget Warlock’s sacrifice and spread his ashes over the grave of his best friend.
Art by Rob Liefeld, Joe Rubinstein, and Brad Vancata
When the Phalanx, genetic cousins to the Technarchy, attempted to take over Earth, they created a techno-organic facsimile of Doug. Their Doug had memories of his time as a New Mutant and rebelled against the Phalanx, gaining the attention of Excalibur. Kitty Pryde and Wolfsbane were in shock to see their friend alive and refused to believe he was truly Doug. After much investigation, the being realized that it wasn’t Doug Ramsey, not truly. The boy was still in his grave, and the body belonged to a manipulated resurrected Warlock. Troubled by this revelation, Douglock struck out on his own, hoping to discover who he really was.
Art by Adam Kubert
This quest led Warlock back to his home world where he assisted Nova in freeing the Kree systems from the menace of the Phalanx and their new leader, Ultron. He was able to play a key role in weakening Ultron and curing the world of the Transmode virus. There he stayed until nostalgia got the best of him and he needed to visit Doug’s grave.
Warlock discovered that the grave was empty and rushed to his other friends on Utopia. There he found them fighting with Cypher, resurrected thanks to the events of Necrosha, and tried to calm the situation. He was shocked to discover that Selene had corrupted Doug, and Warlock’s selfsoulfriend ripped his head off and threw it into the Pacific. As Warlock died, he infected a crab with the Transmode virus and sideways crawled his way back to Utopia. With an assist from Magik, Warlock used the Soulsword to purge the malicious programing from his friend and the New Mutants were reunited.
Art by Diogenes Neves and John Rauch
During the events of Second Coming, the New Mutants lead an assault on Cameron Hodge and his anti-mutant hate group, The Right. Hodge cornered the New Mutants and a utilitarian Doug Ramsey presented his friend with a choice. Warlock had to terminate Hodge or see his friend fall to the Right. Pushed further than he had ever been, Warlock absorbed the Lifeglow of Hodge and all his soldiers. This scared Warlock, why would his selfsoulfriend force him to do such a horrible thing? Warlock was able to mend this by bonding with his fellow New Mutants when they moved into a San Francisco flat and he adopted a Hel Wolf puppy.
Art byGreg Land, Jay Leisten, and Justin Ponsor
Warlock eventually left the group at the behest of his Sire, the Magus. He had returned to the Technarcy home world to find that it had been demolished and moved the remaining Technarchs to Earth to rebuild peacefully. Warlock was approached by the Serval Industries X-Factor, including Doug Ramsey, to get to the bottom of the situation and they offered him a role on the team. The Magus was disappointed that his son would leave their rebuilding efforts but he had grown to accept that the old way no longer worked. Warlock had changed him.
Art by Carmine Di Giandomenico and Lee Loughtidge
Warlock enjoyed his role on the corporate team. He got to spend time with Doug and even harbored a crush on Danger, the living Danger Room. After Secret Wars, Warlock laid low until his fellow New Mutant called upon him. Sunspot had become the leader of AIM, now Avengers Idea Mechanics, and was under siege from The Maker and the New Revengers. Sunspot didn’t sweat, after all, he knew his selffriend had his back.
Art by Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco, and Jesus Aburtou
Must Read
The quality of a Warlock story lives and dies with the artist. Warlock should never feel like he belongs on the same page as the rest of the characters. He shouldn’t have shape, his depth shouldn’t align with the other characters, he should be truly alien. That’s why stuff like Douglock or David Lafuente art on New Mutants drug down the story. It stripped Warlock of everything that made him special. That is why I have to recommend The New Mutants: Bill Sienkiewicz Marvel Artist Select Series. This massive tome collects Bill’s entire work on New Mutants where he and Chris Claremont made Warlock an icon. It is totally sold out but you can find the issues it contained on Marvel Unlimited.
Art by Bill Sienkiewicz
Ranking
Well let’s start with the big question, is Warlock better than Cypher? Duh, the living ink blot is engaging and always entertaining on the page in ways his selfsoulfriend could only dream. I also look at someone like Mercury who is also defined in stories by how artists utilize her and I think Warlock works much better. He has an otherworldly quality that just plain outclasses her. Right above that we have big Glob Herman and this is where I think Warlock has to stop. There are too many bad interpretations of Lock that hold him back. He is a hard character to write and drawn and there have been plenty of misses with him. That’s why he ranks as the new 23 in the Xavier Files.
Warlock was requested by /u/TriscuitCracker on reddit and all of you who voted for him in the twitter poll. Thanks for the request. If you want to cut to the front of the line, we have a Patreon if you want to support it and get a line cutting reward for just a $1 pledge. We just hit our first goal and are now working toward the $25 dollar goal where I review X-Books every week in some form, maybe even interpretative dance. Oh and we also have exclusive physical items so check those out!
Make sure you check out this week’s MultiversalQ. They did a listener question episode which turned into me being the only person to tweet at them, a lot. I am counting it as an unoffical crossover!
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Next week I dive into the only good part of Chuck Austen’s X-Men as I talk about Squidboy. See you then!
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
