771. Warlock 1972 #9 ... #Avengers ...

This is for us the start of the Thanos saga even though yes he made some earlier appearances elsewhere. Why do we say this? Because this is when he went cosmic with figures like Warlock and his other identities like Magus. And then there's Pip and Gamorra too!

And the artwork is by Starlin whose works even in these early days were chock full of lively energy and detailed facial expression ... though there are some splotchy stuff along the way but generally just plain awesome!

In this issue, we see Warlock finally encountering the Magus, the head of the Universal Church who is actually the evil side of him from the future and unfortunately whatever Warlock has planned in mind has already been anticipated by the Magus simply because the Magus has went through exactly the same thing in addition to having a scrying pool of sorts to view and monitor things. And the Magus calmly tells Warlock that everything has been orchestrated by himself to ensure that the past proceeds according to plan so that the Magus will come to be

So this is an issue of desperation

And the Magus is summoning the In-Betweener to absorb Warlock into his realm. This is to free Warlock's complete psyche to crash him until he emerged after centuries as the Magus

And on Warlock's side, there is the annoying Pip the Troll who serves no purpose whatsoever in this issue except be an ugly wallflower and his one attempt of rushing the Magus was easily brushed aside. Unfortunately for Gamorra even though she has plans and support from Thanos as the new element in Magus' games, it still wasn't enough because the Magus obviously detected her and waited for her to make her move and similar to Pip, swatted her aside. Pathetic, woman!

So how did the team ended this issue of about 19 pages? By letting Thanos finally enter the fray directly and leaving us readers hanging to wait for the next issue!

Ratings: 7/10