Warlord (DC Thomson)

Warlord was a comics anthology published weekly in the United Kingdom between 28 September 1974 and 27 September 1986. It was first published in 1974 by D.C. Thomson. The comic was dedicated to wartime adventures and was a popular success, leading IPC Magazines to create a competitor, Battle Picture Weekly, in 1975. Warlord included several stories per issue, initially centred on a character called Lord Peter Flint (Codename: Warlord), a World War II version of the popular spy James Bond. At the end of 1978 Warlord absorbed D. C. Thomson's action comic Bullet. In total, Warlord ran for twelve years (627 issues), from 1974 until 1986, at which point it was incorporated into the long-running Victor. For the next four years after the comic's demise the publishers produced summer specials, ending in 1991. Characters and stories included the popular Union Jack Jackson, Spider Wells, Bomber Braddock and Wingless Wonder. Features included True Life War Story and articles on weaponry called Weapons In Action. After Bullet was added to the comic, it featured that publication's main story Fireball — a secret agent who was Lord Peter Flint's nephew. The comic would often include free gifts such as replica military badges and plastic model warplanes. By solving a cryptographic puzzle and paying a small fee, a reader could become a "Warlord Secret Agent" with an identity card and code book, allowing him to decipher secret messages printed in the comic each week (a gimmick originally employed in the 1950s radio series Captain Midnight). Before the addition of the more generally action-orientated Bullet, Warlord had been specifically geared towards stories and articles about World War II. Much of the language used in the stories was modern, and terms given used to describe the enemy reflected commonly used descriptions. The Allied forces always won in the end, and both Germans and Japanese were frequently negatively stereotyped. Sometimes the Germans were shown in a heroic light, usually with honourable Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe officers as the heroes, and committed Nazis or SS officers as the bad guys.