I had no idea that yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of a comic I enjoyed every week as a kid in the 70s – Warlord. I’m sure many British readers of a certain age will let out a nostalgic sigh as they cast their mind back to that mid-week war-comic treat. Come on, own up, how many of you joined the club and had your Warlord badge, wallet and secret decoder wheel so you could decrypt the messages each week from Lord Peter Flint (and maybe help him fight the dastardly Gestapo nasty Adolf Gruber!)? I liked that strip but I have to say Union Jack Jackson (a tough British Royal Marine fighting alongside some US Marines in the Pacific theatre of WWII) was my favourite Warlord strip. Jeremy Briggs looks back on the occasion of the 35th anniversary (more or less – see the comments on the post) of Warlord’s first publication on Steve Holland’s excellent Bear Alley.
(Warlord #1 cover; along with the later Battle, Beezer, Topper and Beano – and a smattering of Commando Books, this was a vital part of my childhood British comics reading in the mid 70s)
September 29th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
My cousin Geoff got WARLORD – I got its sister comic BULLET, and at some point during the week, we’d swap.
June 29th, 2010 at 7:08 am
Wow!!! Nostalgia city. I have two stories about Warlord apart from that yes I read it from the age of 4. 1. My sister got jealous and flushed it down the toilet (though to be honest it might have been one of 5 other possibilities) – basically she got the Beano and I got Warlord and I would read the Beano as well but she would not read Warlord so FLUSH!! (She was only 5 or 6 or 7 or ?)
2. I had a German born Uncle – he was married though to my Irish aunt and at 5 I asked him knowing that he was German was he a Nazi. Let’s say it did not go down very well. That was most surely brought on by a quick read of Peter Flint’s adventures.