Infinity War: Adam Warlock Explained

what's going on guys this is Rob and if you're enjoying the content here on my channel then make sure you hit the like button and make sure you hit subscribe so you can decide what direction the content on my channel goes in in the foreseeable future okay so for the past couple weeks or so we have been remastering Jonathan Hitman's Avengers and New Avengers and I mean the original contents there I just felt like remastering it is kind of a side project I don't really like the way it was it was done initially but because of the fact that that's really just kind of reach treading water this is more important so it is officially the beginning of 2018 and we have about four months in two days until we see the launch of Marvel's you know infinity war movie Avengers infinity Wars so my job over the course of the next four months is to make you guys experts in everything Marvel cosmic covering the original Cosmic Cube story when Thanos invaded earth for the first time the three major deaths that Thanos has had characters like Adam warlock who we're gonna discuss here all these things the events leading up to Infinity Gauntlet the aftermath of Infinity Gauntlet infinity war infinity Crusade all that stuff all the Marvel cosmic things my job is to cover all that stuff and we are starting with Adam warlock today so Adam warlock first made his appearance in Marvel Comics back in 1967 with Fantastic Four issue 66 and 67 now one thing to keep in mind here is that in the early days of Marvel Comics when it came to stay and Lee and Jack Kirby everything was basically a testing ground model didn't really explode onto the scene until about 1962 I mean when you look back at the old 1940s comics you know the old name with a submariner Jim Hammond the Human Torch Captain America comics that was timely publications but between the time of World War 2 's and and the fact that timely stop publishing superheroes all the way up to the early 1960s when timely became Atlas atlas became Marvel there was this huge wall of about 20 years when there really were no superhero comics coming out of timele instead it was science fiction general magazines published by magazine management incorporated and so in 1962 when Marvel really launched Fantastic Four when they launched spider-man different things like that they were basically trying to come back onto a scene of the comic book genre which had largely been dominated by DC for you know however many decades and so as a result the Fantastic Four were the most popular team they had it was Marvel's answer to the Justice League and so because of that if mother was going to premiere characters they were going to premiere teams they threw them in the Fantastic Four now for Adam warlock himself this two-part story was pretty straightforward all that really happened in this origin was that you basically had a group called The Enclave and The Enclave were basically just a general group of scientists who wanted to conquer the world that was really about it but the enclave knew that in order to pull this off with this rise of C out there they needed a being of virtual incalculable power who was wildly capable in terms of what he could do and could easily thwart all these different superheroes and so what they ended up doing was basically taking all this different you know cosmic energy more or less could finding it into a cocoon and then letting it form into a human being the problem with this was that they couldn't visually look at the being inside because the amount of energy giving a given off was too extreme and so what the enclave ended up doing is they kidnapped Alicia masters who at the time was the girlfriend of Ben Grimm but she was blind that she was a sculptor but she was well known for the fact that she could sculpt virtually anything just by feeling it and then making an almost perfect replica of it and so the result is that they kidnapped her they brought her to the enclave and they had her sculpt out what Adam warlock looked like now of course this led directly into the Fantastic Four arriving to retrieve Alicia masters battling The Enclave Adam warlock made his escape and then took off for parts unknown and the whole basis behind that was to basically say there's this new character out there now whoever wants to ride him run away with it do whatever it is that you want to do now originally because of the fact that he was just kind of a general creation that was thrown out there for virtually any rider to pick up he wasn't actually given a name instead Adam warlock was just referred to as him and that was really about it now following this there wasn't really anything going on when he came to Adam warlock after his initial introduction into the Fantastic Four instead it was about two years after his original appearance before he appeared again and this came in a Stanley Jack Kirby's story with Thor issues 165 and 166 between June and July of 1969 now the funny thing about this is that because of the fact that nobody was really picking up the slack Staley and Jack Kirby just threw out a Morlock out there was kind of a hey remember this guy still exists out there if anybody wants to ride him it was kind of interesting in terms of how it played out because at this point in time Adam warlock was kind of on a grander scale in comparison to the silver surfer and what I mean by that is well the Silver Surfer appeared in the original you know Galactus trilogy and was spun off into his own series whereby he basically traveled around the world and learned about humanity why people do the kind of things they do and how humans perceive the universe and themselves and so on and so forth Adam warlock was like that but on a grander scale the difference is that the Silver Surfer already had knowledge of all things in existence so his only real curiosity was just the nature of humanity for Adam warlock or him if we want to call Matt uh he was really kind of infantile in this sense that he really didn't understand the nature of everything that was there it was really more exploration was effectively walking out of his house for the very first time and a lot of those themes were played on when it came to his introduction and his involvement in Thor and different things along those lines the problem is that once this story was done it would be about three years again before Adam warlock made his appearance the difference is that by this point in time in 1972 Stan Lee had moved from being a writer to an editor to basically the president and publisher of Marvel and the idea of Stan Lee was to sit down and say by this point in time were 10 years out from our effective relaunch more or less with Fantastic Four Spiderman different things along those lines and the landscape of Marvel was rapidly growing but for the most part by the early 1970s they pretty much knew what characters were solid and what characters aren't they knew that the Fantastic Four were solid they knew Spiderman was solid Thor Iron Man Captain America different things like that but the whole idea behind Stan Lee's perception of Marvel was we don't have the money to just throw marketing out there for any character in any comic book that we want to write instead we need to be selective but we also want to make sure that we're growing our writer base that we're growing our artist base that we still have fans that are learning about new characters all as hot and so what Stanley had done is he had actually launched the Marvel premiere alongside a couple of other one-off publications called Marvel spotlight and Marvel feature and what these were designed to do were basically serve as an anthology series it was really kind of a throwback to the 1930s Marvel stories and 1930s DC stories in the sense that actually comics 1 for example while that that comic is most notable for the debut of Superman it featured a handful of other stories alongside it because the idea was to just introduce characters introduce teams put them and you know maybe eight page stories and see whether or not fans liked them and what they would do is they would shuffle things up so you would see a character appear and Marvel premiere for like three or four issues and Marvel would gauge the sales of it and if the stories were consistent Marvel would say okay most likely they're reading this because this one character is in this story he's been in the last three stories that's what fans are shooting for we'll take a risk and we'll give him their own publication and that's really what happened with the character of Adam warlock one thing to keep in mind here is that when it came to the character of Adam in terms of where he would go or what he would do Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's explanation for what would happen to him was largely just kind of relegated to the idea that well you know he would fight some enemy like he would fight Thor he would try to procreate with SIF Thor would beat the crap out of him and then he would just go heal in a cocoon somewhere and in truth was really just kind of a throwaway idea it was just a way for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to explain where he went to just like you know the Avengers would go back to Avengers Tower Captain America would go to his apartment or something along those lines it was a throwaway concept but the irony is that with Marvel premiere number one Android Thomas really kind of being brought on board by Stan Lee as a fledgling writer because of the fact that he fit nicely into this whole idea of using Marvel premiere and spotlight and feature and so on as a proving ground for whether or not a person could actually write stories what do I miss did is he took the whole idea of the cocoon he rolled it over into the actual Adam warlock mythos and then in turn expanded the nature of warlock now one thing to keep in mind is that when it came to Adam warlocks character the reason why people say he's so important is because he helped to kind of assure in and build on this idea of Marvel Comics becoming more grounded and more real-world in terms of how they were depicted I mean back in 1971 really the year before Marvel premiere debuted Gerry Conway had already killed off Gwen Stacy so it had already been established that like a superhero like spider-man could fail disastrously and basically lose his love interest because of his own actions and so the idea was to take some real world themes and throw them into Marvel comic characters the issue with this was that it was very very risky it was not something Marvel could just do and expect the fan base to be perfectly on board and so what ended up happening here is Roy Thomas created something called a counter-earth saga and what this did is it introduced the concept of a place called counter-earth now a little bit of history here back in for issue number 134 in 1966 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced a character by the name of Herbert Windham High Evolutionary was introduced and has been expanded on over the years as a guy who's basically obsessed with evolution of course he vote he's evolved himself but he creates new forms of life and different things like that but there's always been this ongoing theme of dissatisfaction with the existing world on behalf of the High Evolutionary and so what Roy Thomas did is he grabbed his character he grabbed the themes of his character he grabbed the character of Adam warlock and rolled them all together and so counter-earth was basically this alternate version of earth that existed on the other side of the Sun but was about a second or two outside of the dimensional barrier of Earth meaning no more Earthlings wouldn't see it and essentially counter-earth was kind of like this utopian place the problem with this was account of Earth didn't really have any superheroes to speak of however the actions of the High Evolutionary in terms of some of his creations being sent to counter earth resulted in the emergence of a character known as man beast now this is very important and the reason why was because in order for Rory Thomas to create the kind of religious themes that he wanted to do again he had to focus on an alternate version of the earth as it existed in Marvel Comics and so with counter-earth and with Adam warlock what he created were these very christ-like themes in the sense that Adam warlock himself was very much like Jesus Christ and along the way on his mission to basically defeat man beast he met like four people it was like David Carter Jason gray I think it was and then like Eddie Roberts in a girl named Allie I came over her last name I want to say it's Ellie Roberts but I'm not gonna swear to that I mean we're talking about comics in the 1970s so I'd like to think I know a lot but I don't know that much but the fact remains here that with regard to these characters these these four folks they were basically designed to be like his own not really prophets but I guess his followers they were basically Chronicle the actions of Adam now of course with regards to warlock getting its first name Adam that was given to him I believe by Ellie and again that's designed to be a homage to very judeo-christian themes in the sense that according to biblical scripture Adam was the name of the first being created by God so again it was designed to very much be in that vein now of course man beast and the counter-earth saga was really kind of this allegory for Satan in the sense that man beast was this Satan like figure he was the ultimate evil on counter-earth and Adam warlock was the ultimate good know in order to arm Adam warlock for his battle against the man beast what high evolutionary had done is of course woken him up brought him out of his cocoon and then gave him the soul Jim and the soul Jim was one of the very first indications of these insane levels of power that existed out there but the soul Jim as it was created by Roy Thomas and Marvel premiere number one was never really intended to go on to be what it is which is to say part of the Infinity stones and different things like that a lot of that was you know jim Starlin grabbing all these themes and just kind of rolling them together in the Thanos stories but the fact remains here but the soul Jim was basically used by Adam warlock to kind of enhance his abilities but you know it was also toying on this idea that the soul Jim house soul world you know it was actually able to trap Souls different things along those lines but with Adam warlock the battle between himself and man beasts really stretched for the first two parts of Marvel premier model / ears 1 & 2 and then really it was just kind of defeated and then forced back into his original form but following this again this sort of return of evil so to speak began to take its form in the power of warlocks solo series and this really ran for about a issues up until about October of 1973 and he was designed he's just kind continue the themes that were found in Marvel premiere but because of the fact that that warlock was so popular among readers at the time what Roy Thomas did is he basically spun out the remainder of the fight between man beast and Adam warlock in power of warlock issues 1 & 2 now following the defeat of man beasts going into issues 3 through 8 it was really kind of like this exploration of what the what counter-earth was like and it was really designed to be the original home of Adam warlock it was basically gonna be where his stories took place where he would travel to the main Marvel earth from time to time but for the most part he would stay confined on counter-earth as it's only real superhero very much maintaining these christ-like themes and these concepts with regards to how his character function but the issue with this when it came to the character of Adam was that by this point in time 1971-1972 Roy Thomas was making massive contributions to Marvel Comics we're writing things like the kree-skrull war characters like Ultron different things like that and because of the work that he put in when Stanley was promoted to the position of president Roy Thomas was moved to editor-in-chief and what this meant was that it only really allowed Roy Thomas to focus on the most popular titles that he was writing at the time and while Adam warlock did have a following among fans it was very similar to the original following of Doctor Strange in the sense that it was only a small niche group of people and so the result was that following the writing of Roy Thomas what he really did here is he just kind of wrapped up the plot threads from the original power of warlocks story in some strange tale comics different things like that this ultimately ran up until jim Starlin took over the title and the reason why this is so important is because where Roy Thomas had made Adam warlock a kind of christ-like figure jim Starlin expanded the cosmic scope he basically brought Adam warlock into this role of being more of a universal christ-like figure as opposed to just one on counter-earth and so running between 1975 all the way up to December of 1977 the power of warlock series was continued on numerically running between issues 9 to 15 and then of course the last little tidbits were finished up in like Marvel team-up and Avengers annual and Marvel 2 and 1 different things like that but the whole idea was to basically introduce a character called The Magus and one of the things this did was focus on the possibility of Adam warlock becoming a villain and if Adam warlock became a bad guy if he basically became everything he stood against what would that villain look like and so what uh what jim Starlin did is he crafted this story he basically said at some point in the future Adam warlock we'll become corrupted by the soul Jim he possesses and when he does he'll form a religious sect called the universal Church of Truth which will be his mindless followers more or less and the result is they will do whatever it is that he wants them to do this will cause him to grow in madness and so on and so forth and so in an effort to keep this from happening what we ended up having were all these different themes again that came together the introduction of characters like Gomorrah creation of pit Patrol Thanos being brought in and so that knows his desire to continue gaining power fit in very very nicely with the role that Adam warlock played because word saw the two of them team up for the most part at the end of the day where Magus was basically defeated it was always this lingering possibility that Adam warlock could become the Magus and so again it was really fans being brought in and kind of an underhanded way in the sense that he was well I'll help you keep from becoming the Magus all the while plotting and scheming and trying to find ways to steal the soul gem from from Adam warlock himself now again following this because of the fact that the writing of jim Starlin with regards to the handling of adam warlock and even the writing of roy thomas wasn't the most well received among the larger fanbase of Marvel and because of the fact that the mid-1970s were starting to seek this expansive scope of the Marvel cosmology with the introduction of characters like quasar Silver Surfer Galactus Tim and things like that there wasn't really a whole lot of room for a character like like Adam warlock who didn't really have stories that were granting to in terms of the cosmic scope and so what jim Starlin did is he set the seeds for future use of Adam when it came to the last little tidbits of his own story and what it effectively happened here is that Gamora had been assigned to the role of a bodyguard for Adam warlock and then Adam warlock learned the true nature of the soul Jim in the sense of the soul Jim was one of six Infinity stones now of course this also allowed Adam were like to kind of enter the soul stone and then just stay there and so what ended up happening is about eleven years after the last you know tidbits of this story Adam warlock effectively vanished off the face of the earth out of Marvel's publication history and he didn't come back until we basically got the aftermath of Thanos in Silver Surfer vol 3 issue number 34 and what jim Starlin did is he basically laid the groundwork for the return of Adam warlock by virtue of a story called the Infinity Gauntlet and what this did is an introduce the idea that Thanos had been traveling around and gaining all these different Infinity stones for the most part and the return of Adam warlock of course leaving the soul stone so on and so forth coincided with this sort of grander scope in terms of what jim Starlin perceived him to be so over the course of the Infinity Gauntlet story which you'll find down in the description Adam warlock wasn't really a guy who engaged in the fight per se instead he played very much this leadership role he didn't really act overtly he directed other people in terms of the roles that they should play but this expansion of Adam warlock came with the idea that there's this kind of nature about the universe and the forces that encompass it that nobody else really seems to have and so because of this Adam warlock basically organized the united front of the earth superheroes against Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet he organized this front from the cosmic entities it was one of these things were Starlin effectively established that on a cosmic scale Adam warlock is well known and well respected by a lot of the entities the other half of this was that the possibility of Adam warlock becoming a villain was still very real in terms of the role the Magus played and so following the events of Infinity Gauntlet whereby Adam warlock was able to secure the gauntlet for himself bring the conflict to an end this led directly into the story's aftermath and then led directly into infinity war so again it was kind of like this massive infinity story that was done by jim Starlin himself with regards to the character of adam now one of the things is Starlin played on here when it came to infinity war was that he formed something called warlock in the infinity watch it was basically this idea that in the aftermath of the Infinity Gauntlet because of the fact that all Fano sought was absolute power that it was like okay fine he can even take the place of eternity and he could have the Infinity Gauntlet according to the Living Tribunal but for Adam warlock himself he would look to rule over the universe not as an entity but as a supreme judge of what's right and wrong the problem here is that Adam warlock didn't understand the nature of people on a true scale and so this argument basically meant that Adam warlock was neither equipped mentally or emotionally to wield the Infinity Gauntlet and the power it possessed the Living Tribunal agreed and ordered Adam warlock to disperse the gems and so forcing the disbanding of the Infinity Gauntlet and then going a next step and saying if all the gems are brought together they will never work allow for you know the formation of the Infinity watch whereby Adam warlock rat pip the troll he grabbed moon dragon the daughter of Drax a destroyer and gave each of them an infinity stone he even gave one to Thanos and simply said your job will be to safeguard these things these led directly into the events of infinity war whereby we ended up learning that Adam had subconsciously purged himself with good and evil which is the whole reason for why he was deemed unworthy that the evil version of himself the Magus had basically made a return and infinity or picked up from there with Adam warlock basically having to fight an evil version of himself that led an affinity crusade whereby Adam warlock had to fight the purely good version of himself known as goddess but over the course of it all jim Starlin constantly began to expand and really emphasize this relationship that existed between Adam warlock and fan O's that were the two of them were enemies in a lot of ways they were also extremely close in terms of their greater understanding of the cosmology and so what is ended up doing is it actually allowed jim Starlin to spin out a litany of infinity books that were isolated from the main Marvel Universe line of stories that focused almost explicitly on Adam warlock and Thanos now again because of the fact that these stories of Infinity Gauntlet and infinity war even infinity crusade were so incredibly popular among Marvel readers at the time the stories of Adam warlock were actually bolstered by virtue of the writing of jim Starlin so what this meant was that instead of warlock in the infinity watch being what amounted to a maxi series which is about 12 issues long instead it was spun out into a series that ran for 42 issues it ran all the way up until 1995 the problem with this was that the success of Adam warlock really began to give way to a lot of different things the notorious coming bust of the 1990s the fact that stories were designed to be more high-octane more fast paced but the stories of Adam warlock didn't really keep up with that that style of storytelling and even the fact that a lot of readers were getting burned out and so because of that Adam warlock effectively fell back into the middle of no man's land now Marvel tried a couple times to kind of revive interest and his character throwing him off into like ultraverse stuff and things like that but at the end of the day it never really seemed to gain the same kind of popularity he did before and all this really ran up until about 2006 when the Marvel cosmology was effectively consolidated and revamped in its entirety by a guy named Dan Adnan now what didn't keep in mind is that the Marvel cosmology as it existed before Dan Abnett had taken up the pin and basically helped to form a lot of it all it was religious sort of dishevel Marvel largely focused on earth-based stories earth-based events because that's where most of the superheroes dwelled now with Dan Abbott what are you done is he had grabbed things like Peter quill who previously been created revamped his character in his entirety made him the new version of star-lord and just kind of threw him out there grabbing all these different themes really went into stories like annihilation were Annihilus from the negative zone invaded the main Marvel Universe captured Galactus different things like that conquering one planet after another and it worked exceedingly well the event of annihilation was going on for example you had civil war that was taking place and so on earth you had superheroes fighting over superhuman Registration and while that was happening the universe was being conquered and so you had times like Nova Richard Ryder would show up on earth and say why are you guys fighting over something so stupid like superhuman Registration when worlds are falling left and right in front of a nihilist by the forces he possesses why does this matter it was a great contrast to basically highlight this idea that what goes on on earth is really irrelevant in relation to everything that goes on in the universe and so what this did is it basically dead-ended into a story called annihilation conquest and annihilation conquest effectively saw this kind of return of Adam warlock now annihilation conquest itself largely focused on the idea that Ultron had previously been defeated and his essence had kind of been you know escaped out into space or been shot out into space it also greatly came across this you know cybernetic machine based race called the Phalanx Ultron effectively co-opted the race made it his own crown himself King and began the process of trying to conquer the universe this led into Moon dragon and it led into five evelle I think it was basically forming an alliance waking up Adam warlock and then bringing him into the conflict and so it was effectively a revival of his character now this was part of a much larger stage for Adam warlock when it when it came to Dan Abnett and a lot of it really came to a head in the events of Thanos imperative but the idea behind this was to basically restore Adam warlock back to being this role of kind of a cosmic christ-like figure but to also highlight the idea that he's one of many character as it exists out there in relation to the cosmic landscape so it really wasn't designed to say he was a step above everybody else so much as he fought alongside everybody else but what had happened was that with regards to defeating Ultron in like annihilation conquest and several other stories that took place after that this ultimately resulted in something called the Thanos imperative now the Thanos imperative was actually the aftermath to an event called the war of Kings and the war of Kings was basically Vulcan who had taken over the Shiar Empire as well as blackballed who had taken over the Kree Empire going to war with one another and the idea was that because of the events of annihilation and annihilation conquest like a piece of glass the universe was in a very fragile state and if someone tapped it the right way he would basically create this rift and eventually destroy the universe and so because of the entire conflict of the war of kings this led to the detonation of a massive bomb by Black Bolt and the Inhumans leading the Kree Empire created a fissure in the universe and when it did on the other side of that fissure was a universe where mistress death had been killed and nobody else had been able to die it was basically called the cancerverse and so in order to basically keep all these things from happening Adam warlock had merged timelines and the timeline he used was an alternate future where he became the Magus and what it did is it allowed an Abnett marvel and all these guys all these riders to basically grab the character of the Magus bring that character back and then launched the Thanos imperative which again really kind of saw the return of Thanos different things like that but this story culminated in the idea that the Magus was working for this version of Captain Marvel in the cancerverse who is exceedingly evil and wanted to conquer the main Marvel Universe and so what we got in the cancerverse were all these evil versions of superheroes it was all these evil versions of characters who'd been caught who'd become corrupted and so the result was that of course they were basically defeated famis imperative came to an end it led to the sacrifice of Peter quill and of nova santos eventually ended up escaping there's all these different things that went on with regards to this massive climax to a story that had been building for somewhere around like you know three or four years but because of the fact that the return of the Magus was always this concept that was haunting Adam warlock and the idea that the Magus would always make his return so long as Adam warlock live in the Thanos imperative ignition one-shot by Dan Abnett he effectively wrapped up the character of Adam warlock in the main Marvel Universe by effectively having him killed off by having star-lord kill Adam warlock to ensure that Magus would never be able to return now of course this also coincided with Captain Marvel from the cancerverse killing Magus as well but the fact remains here that it was an interesting concept because following this it kind of gets a little bit hairy with regards to Adam warlock for example stories like infinity revelation that have this depiction of Adam warlock and Thanos basically meeting alternate reality counterparts so it kind of begs the question does infinity revelation take place in the main Marvel Universe and the answer is not necessarily definitive because almost all the other infinity stories infinity abyss different things like that those take place outside of the main Marvel Universe infinity revelation Marvel the end all those things seem to be outside the main model universe and in a lot of ways jim Starlin kind of toyed on them again it's really kind of weird in terms of how those stories play out but by and large I would argue the Thanos imperative was really the last appearance of Adam warlock in the main Marvel Universe in terms of how I would define as appearances in the main Marvel Universe from there it really kind of breaks down to jim Starlin fans who were just like no it's all in the main Marvel Universe and so on and so forth and it is kind of interesting but the fact remains here again hopefully this helps you guys understand the nature of Adam you know what it is he's capable of how he's evolved over the years but without being said guys we're gonna bring this video to an end if you are new here to comment explain and make sure you guys have the sub button to become part of the robb cork you guys enjoyed this video make sure you drop a like and I will catch you all later peace [Music] 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Channel: Comics Explained

Views: 804,136

Keywords: comicsexplained, marvelexplained, fluidicbeats, Comics, Comic Books, Marvel, marvel Comics, Adam Warlock, Infinity War, Infinity Gauntlet, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2, Post Credits, Thanos, Infinity Stones, Captain America, Iron man, Civil War, Spider-Man, Origin, Annihilation, Soul Stone

Id: fSrf_5XdKEQ

Length: 25min 6sec (1506 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2018