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In 2012's Teen Titans #9, the Titans and Legion Lost (time-displaced Legion of Super-Heroes members) woke up on a mysterious island filled with dinosaurs. Over the next few issues, the mysterious island was given the name Mystery Island. However, writer Scott Lobdell originally had other plans.

“At one point I wanted to use the teen characters in this kind of teen universe to rejuvenate some of the existing properties,” Lobdell tells Popverse during an appearance at Dragon Con.  “I went to DC and said I wanted to do Warlord. It would be a younger pilot who winds up landing in Skartaris.”

Warlord was introduced in the 1975 comic 1^st Issue Special #8 before getting his own ongoing series in 1976. The series centers around a Vietnam veteran named Travis Morgan who finds himself transported to an underground world called Skartaris. From there, it becomes an action, adventure, and fantasy story. By 2012 the character had fallen into obscurity, and Lobdell hoped to reintroduce him to the DC Universe.

“DC said, ‘Okay, sure.’ So, I did the first issue, and halfway through the first issue, where they all crash land on this world that is crazy with dinosaurs, with five pages left DC said, ‘Oh yeah, we can’t touch Skartaris. We’re not allowed to use it.’ This was a six-month plan.”

Lobdell pivoted and removed all Warlord references from the story.

“I said, okay, instead of them meeting Warlord, it was already established that they had ended up on this alternate world, so then I had the alternate world be Mystery Island. And it turned out they were underneath it and now they’re on top. Things like that, there was a bunch of things where DC would say do something different, and then you would start a story, and it would have to change.”

Whatever issues preventing DC from using Warlord seem to have been resolved, as the character has appeared in recent storylines, including Simon Spurrier’s The Flash. Who knows, maybe there’s room for Lobdell to pitch his Warlord revival again.

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