Been on something of a comic binge for months now. Why I’ve dug through the likes of late 90s Deadpool, mid 70s Daredevil, some top tier Superman work, and Dan Slot’s lovely run on She-Hulk. As I’ve been going through these trades and omnis I remembered an item I picked up precisely for its blog potential. And seeing as I’ve no other clue how to send out the month of January we might as well take a look at it together.
Way back in the summer of 2019 which, properly calculated against the length of 2020, was about 37 years ago I spent a blisteringly hot summer afternoon visiting antique stores. Might as well provide a link for that old post here and let it be known that a day of extensive antiquing is my number one to-do once I’m fully loaded with vaccine. Among the odd assortment of items brought back from that adventure was an ashcan comic called Dark Wolf The Hellwarrior. No that’s not a typo I believe hellwarrior is actually one word in this situation. Not only did I think this might make for decent blog fodder but I’d honestly never heard the term ashcan comic before and knew I wouldn’t remember to look it up later without this as a reminder. Apparently the original usage of Ashcan comics was to make a quick, low-quality, printed item to stake a claim on character rites. Later on this practice evolved as a means of advertising or providing special issues. This adds a neat wrinkle to the history of this particular book later on.
Digging into the origins of this thing ended up being almost more interesting than the comic itself. Finding the character was not only a little difficult but some databases didn’t even have the credits for who wrote or drew the damn thing let alone exact publishing dates. The introductory page said claimed it was the work of Butch Burcham but even that turned out to be something of a dead-end at first as the man now goes by his proper name of F. Newton Burcham.
Eventually I got almost everything roughly sorted out. As far as I can gleam the character was created by Burcham when he was still a teenager but there was nothing widely available until Burcham teamed-up with writer R. A. Jones and had a couple small volumes published in the late 1980s, one through Malibu and another through Eternity. At that point it seems Eternity operated much like Virtigo did for DC (or Epic for Marvel) in that it was the label for off-beat creator owned material, imports, and more mature fare. This ashcan is from the early 1990s so I can only assume it was meant either as a means for Burcham to double-down his claim to the character or to use as an advertisement to other companies to gauge interest. Whatever the reason I can find nothing more recent for Dark Wolf than the two ashcan issues.
So what happened to these guys? R. A. Jones has worked for the big publishers on rare occasion, there’s a Captain American and Wolverine mini-series from the early 2000s but he seems to have had a fairly small career in the industry. Much the same could be said of Burcham who has a smattering of issues devoted to his own characters. I found a loose trail of his actions over the years as he’s quite big on selling commissioned artwork, he ran a few small but successful kickstarters, even found his ebay profile. I wanna mention one thing about his stash of characters though. Sure he’s got a curvaceous jungle queen, and the wonderfully ridiculous Stargators, but nothing stands up to the one piece of his work I must track down… Dober-man. A mutated, man sized, totally jacked, doberman who fights the evils of the world like ninjas and hippies. Oh and, believe it or not, hippies are a continuing theme for this post.
Enough beating around the bush. Who is Dark Wolf and what makes him a Hellwarrior? For that matter what is a Hellwarrior? I hope you have the answer cause I just read this thing and I have no clue. The first few pages of the comic are printed in a seemingly stamped red ink and showcase a battle in a savage setting. All the fools we first see cutting into each-other are quickly slaughtered by our man Dark Wolf. Massacring soldiers by the score must work up quite the hunger cause we finish the scene with DW ripping a mans heart out and chowing down.
Flash-forward… or sideways, it’s not made entirely clear, but we flash to a modern U.S. city circa early 1990s comics. Given the behavior on display I wouldn’t be surprised if it were Times Square in the 70s. One racial stereotype offers crude sexual advances on a likely sex worker who beats his ass… and not in the way you pay for. This earns her the admiration of a ditsy young girl who soon starts on her way back home.
At home we meet the parents who are seeking to recreate Woodstock in their apartment. Ok maybe I’m just missing something and their just making the banners or something. Either way they feel the copies must be 100% accurate as the fate of the world is tied up in this new Woodstock. Their work is soon interrupted though lucky for them not by Dober-Man, who as we know hates hippies. Nah these are just some garden variety thugs here to scare the couple away along with threats of turning out their daughter. Scare tactics complete the baddies return to their hideout where a shadowy evil figure commands them to step their game up.
Later that day… night? Week? The passage of time is somewhat in question. The daughter is playing arcade games while hanging out with her new prostitute role-model who just lured the kid out so the thugs could deal with the hippie parents. The girl runs back home to find her parents severed heads with mocking statementss of peace & love smeared across the wall in their own blood. Quite a step up from intimidation huh? The girl soon finds The Book of La, a magic tome she claims belonged to her mother, though it could just be a travel guide for L. A. Kid takes some time, lord knows how much, to conduct a summing spell and whamo! Dark Wolf is at her beck and call and he’s brought his apatite.
While I can’t say enjoyed Dark Wolf all that much or learned what a hellwarrior is exactly I can’t help but feel the character may have fared better just a few years later. As 90s comics took on ever more obnoxious shapes the notion of anti-heroes and demonic enforcers were big sellers be it purely mystical like Spawn or sci-fi goobery like Venom. Even though this book doesn’t provide much to judge the full capabilities of Burcham the guy clearly had an idea of where the medium was headed.
For my sake I get something of a giggle outta owning this thing. It’s not an item I’ll return to for reading purposes. Instead it reminds me of those clearly fake comic books that pop up in shows and movies but it’s somehow totally legit. Best of all it gave me a small mission in life. Tracking down issue one of Dober-Man. God I gotta have that book.
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