Our fourth and final installment taking a look at the Warlock 5 series from Aircel begins with a head scratcher. Remember the cliffhanger in issue #3, with Zania holding all of the Guardians hostage with a nuclear warhead? Yeah...well that seems all but forgotten here, as issue #4 ignores the previous story.
This one kicks off with Doomidor sleeping within his castle, when Savashtar invades his realm by astral form.
Savashtar proceeds to take Doomidor on a journey through his lands in an alternate time in the past, showing him the error of his ways and how he could have created a better world rooted in serenity, tranquility and peace. It feels like a bad take on Scrooge and the ghost of Christmas Past.
Savashtar is bombarded by knights while traipsing through Doomidor's medieval realm, and we get a couple of cool pages depicting him at battle in Dragon form. But that's pretty much it for this issue.
Moving on to Warlock 5 #5:
As you might tell from this awesome cover, issue five goes a little bit into Argon's background as we take a look inside his ship, floating in deep space.
We learn his obsession for creating androids like himself, and his plans to make android versions of the other Guardians.
Argon sends an android resembling Doomidor to try and take out the other Guardians, but Tanith destroys it with her sorcery.
That's pretty much the highlight of this issue, as it ends with Tanith meeting with Savashtar to declare their brief love affair to be over. As Tanith leaves she is jumped by some sort of Escaped convict with a Nazi symbol on his head.
Which brings us to Warlock 5 #6, and the last issue we'll be checking out for this retrospective.
The sixth issue was misnumbered as #5, and focuses on Tanith's realm this time around. After Savashtar saves Tanith from the Nazi inmate guy, she returns home to her magic dimension.
It is there that good and evil must co-exist to balance the realm, and she is quickly greeted by a mysterious evil witch who wants not only the realm for herself, but Tanith's powers as well.
The witch summons a giant Troll to kill Tanith, but a knight comes in out of nowhere to slay the beast.
Tanith learns of the witch's scheme, and then the witch transforms into a giant fucking monster of Doom.
By now you've had a chance to see just how spectacular Denis Beauvais' artwork was for this series, as it is clearly the star of the show here. Beauvais went on to create artwork for several Dungeons and Dragons modules, as well as some pretty famous Dragon magazine covers. I can also forgive Gordon Derry for some of the obvious plot holes, as he created an interesting bunch of characters for this series.
Although I have yet to read the rest of Warlock 5, this was probably my favorite series by Aircel. I'll have to pick up the handful of other Derry/Beauvais Warlock 5 issues in the near future, just to see how they turned out. I hope you enjoyed this Cult Classic retrospective, see you next time!
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