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Who is Adam Warlock? Everything you need to know about Will Poulter’s character in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 3’

At this point, we will not surprise anyone to remember that the Marvel ’70s was a weird, weird place. What may surprise you is how much the mcu has borrowed from that cosmic chive for its most popular sagas, since the innocent days of tesseract until Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. A film that is the marvelita goodbye to James Gunn… and the film debut of a certain Adam Warlock.

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (for a change) in 1967, the character he now plays Will Poulter was a very minor figure in the Casa de las Ideas until the mid-70s. It was then that, after a redesign by Roy Thomas and the cartoonist Gil Kane, his name became forever associated with the author who has clung to him like a limpet during his marvelite journey: Jim Starlin.

But let’s not anticipate events, because here there is a lot of fabric to cut. Let’s just leave it at that, when Adam Warlock debuted in cartoons, He did not do it with the name we know now, but with another much shorter…

The origin of Adam Warlock

“He”, with a capital letter Or in English, “him”: that was the word our man responded to when the Fantastic four they met him for the first time. To make matters worse, by now, Adam Warlock was a prick. Something that, we could add, has been maintained over the years, even though it had a literal meaning then.

Because the future Adam was not an ordinary human, but the creation of a society of scientists called the Enclave, whose goal was to create a perfect and super-powered individual who would help them conquer the world. After emerging from his gloomy package, the character found that his creators were the bad guys in history and decided to leave Earth, returning shortly after to measure his ribs with Thor.

If it depended on these two first interventions, Adam Warlock would have been a mere anecdote within the Marvelite cosmos, although some of its elements (such as that chrysalis from which he emerges to be resurrected again and again) have been maintained over the years. If we can now see him on the big screen, it is due to a chain of references that links him to himself. Camilo Sesto.

A messiah for Marvel

the footprint of Jesus Christ Superstar in the pop culture of the 70s is wide and labyrinthine: adapted to the cinema by Norman Jewson in 1973, premiered in our country with Sesto and Angela Carrasco and declared anathema by the church of El Palmar de Troya, the biblical musical was also the reason why Roy Thomas rescued Warlock from oblivion in 1972. According to the scriptwriter, the songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber they inspired him to endow the Marvel Universe with a Messiah.

Although this return didn’t last long either, it did add new elements to the Warlock saga: the character was not only given his final name, but also met the man for the first time. High Evolutionary (much grander here than in the movie) and his human/beast hybrids. Likewise, our anti-hero also received a strange rock that was embedded in his forehead and which, at that time, was known as the Soul Gem. Does this remind you of anything?

The elements that would make Adam a cornerstone of the Marvel Universe were already there, but it took a mind to bring them together. And that mind turned out to be that of Jim Starlin, by then a long-haired Vietnam veteran who had already made publishing history by turning the adventures of Captain Marvel in a accused lysergic spread.

Against Thanos and the Infinity Stones

Making the good guy suffer a thousand and one marr-vell, Starlin introduced characters with a certain significance (headed by drax the destroyer and true mad titan the one we all know) and unique concepts like that cosmic cube that would come to the MCU under the name “Tesseracto”. But Warlock was the character who encouraged the writer and cartoonist to step on the accelerator with one of the most risky jobs of an era already prodigal in rarities.

Thus, with the slogan of turning Warlock into a failed savior, fed up with the universe and with himself, Jim Starlin invented characters that we have already seen in the movies, such as Eros (Harry Styles) Pip the Troll (Patton Oswalt) and one Gamora about which words would be superfluous… if it were not for the fact that the character of Zoe Saldana she appeared in the comics as Adam’s love interest. We’re sorry, starlord, But that’s what there is.

Of course, Thanos was around too. But his threat paled before that of Warlock’s true archenemy, the Magus. A villain who, as the anti-hero discovered, was none other than his alter ego from the future, become the leader of the despotic Universal Church of Truth. Because, in addition to being a key character in the history of superhero comics, Starlin has always been a great comecuras.

During those two years (1975-1977), Warlock became Marvel’s most unpredictable title. The metaphysical conversations between smacks and smacks were almost the most normal part of a comic where editorial bosses could appear turned into clowns, where references to ‘adult’ themes were commonplace and where the laws of narrative causality worked backwards. (or didn’t work).

Always butting heads with his bosses, Starlin found himself struggling to bring to the cartoons the ending he had planned for the story: in order to avoid his transformation into a Magus, Warlock had no choice but to travel back in time to end his own life, reuniting with Gamora and Pip inside the Soul Stone. Even so, the anti-hero was able to treat himself to a short-lived resurrection, as a result of which Thanos ended up turned to stone.

Inspiration for ‘Avengers: Infinity War’

In this way, the Adam Warlock saga could have gone down in history as one of those eccentricities so common (and so funny) in the Marvel of the 70s. But this changed in 1991, when Jim Starlin returned to the editorial to take charge of an apocalyptic crossover whose title should ring a bell: The Infinity Gauntlet.

Both this comic and its prelude, the search for Thanos, have been the most direct sources of inspiration for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. And they also represented a return in style for a Warlock as bitter as ever, but more powerful than ever, capable of speaking face to face with Eternity, he Living Court and other cosmic entities and Marvelites.

Thanks to the overwhelming success of The Infinity Gauntlet, Adam once again had his own collection (Warlock and the Infinity Watch). And, although this was ephemeral (for vary), Starlin continued to cling to his fetish persona in the infinity war and The Infinity Crusade two events each more deranged.

Since then, Adam Warlock has been a constant presence on the more cosmic side of Marvel, though he’s never been a front-runner or found many authors who have done him justice other than Starlin himself. Even so, it is worth mentioning his stage as member of the Guardians of the Galaxy when the scriptwriter Dan Abnett governed the destinies of the group.

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