Warren Presents: Rex Havoc - Warren

Nov. 1981 - Rex Havoc and His Raiders of The Fantastic!

This looks a little...familiar, no? I had never seen this Warren mag before, and I assumed it was some sort of unabashed Raiders of the Lost Ark. I mean, just look at this cover! (Nice as though it is, by Bob Larkin)

I found it for sale at the MonsterMania con last month, and the seller had a sticker on the plastic bag saying it was a total ROTLA rip-off. He was only asking $3 for it, so that was too good for me to pass up.

But after I got it home and I had a chance to read it, I learned that, despite the cover, Rex Havoc really isn't an Indiana Jones rip-off:

In fact, Rex Havoc and his team are monster-hunters, and live in a world where they are openly part of society.

All the stories (three in total) are by Alabaster Redzone (aka the always-entertaining and inventive Jim Stenstrum) and Abel Laxamana:

These stories a lot of fun, and feature healthy doses of humor and horror, a mix Stenstrum did well. In addition, these stories are in on the joke; and while you could say that about Raiders too, these Rex Havoc adventures are much more out-and-out comedy than any of the Indy films were.

After looking up this issue in TwoMorrows' superb Warren Companion book, I learned that all these stories originally ran in 1984, in issues released in 1978 and 1979, so they weren't even remotely inspired by Indiana Jones. Heck, the stories were originally called "Rex Havoc and The Ass-Kickers of the Fantastic."

Turns out that Warren itself got the idea to reprint these stories as part of their Warren Presents anthology series, partly renaming the series and adding the very Raiders-ish cover. So the seller I bought this from was only partially correct; the packaging is certainly a Raiders "rip-off"; the original material, not so much.

This was the final issue of Warren Presents, and like all of the Warren mags it features a healthy dose of Captain Company ad pages. With the remake out now, I couldn't resist scanning in this inside back cover:

I'm surprised Warren never did anything with Clash of the Titans; it seemed right up their alley!