VOLTAR THE BARBARIAN

8/4/2025

"The world was dying! The long prophesied endtime spread across the earth in the form of the first of seven dread scourges.

Goblins! Hordes of monstrous, man-eating monstrosities, blood-thirsty minions of the consummately Evil One, swarmed upon the land, mercilessly slaying all before them!

Only one man could stay the hand of the fearsomely evil warlord!"

That man's name?... Voltar!

I cannot tell you how pleased I've been to recently discover Voltar, a comic book sword-and-sorcery hero created by frequent Savage Sword of Conan artist and inker Alfredo Alcala. I'd never even heard of the character until Reddit user and frequent r/ConantheBarbarian poster u/Man_Out_Of_Time_2 purchased some Voltar art. Voltar's pretty fantastic.

If you picture John Buscema's Conan and then slap a winged Thor helmet on him, you've got Voltar. That description might lead you to believe that Voltar's just a ripoff of those two characters, but Voltar debuted in 1963, a full seven years before Conan would make his comic book debut by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith and only one year after Thor first appeared in Journey into Mystery. Clearly inspired by Robert E. Howard's Conan and a couple of other evident sources (Lord of the Rings, Norse mythology, Bible stories), Voltar is not so much a barbarian but rather a military officer in the army of the fictional kingdom of Elysium.

Magic Carpet #1's wraparound cover

Alfredo Alcala was one of the most prominent Filipino artists in the 60s and 70s who eventually made his way over to the States. In search of cheap creative labor, Marvel did a lot of hiring artists, writers, and inkers from the Philippines in those years, many of whom went on to produce classic work, including Alcala, who'd been a fan of American comics for decades. When the Philippines was invaded by Japan in 1941, Alcala was a teenager. He buried his collection of American comics under the floorboards of his house to protect them and he went to work using his art skills against the Axis powers. He'd ride his bike by military encampments and Japanese gun positions and then draw them from memory, handing the artwork off to the American forces in the area.

Those first Voltar comics in the early 1960s are damn hard to track down, though. You can see a few images online, but I'm not able to find any complete stories or even anything for purchase- not that I'm confident I'd be able to read them even if I could get my hands on them- are they written in Filipino or English (or even Tagalog)? In fact, I'm not even sure whether they're in comic strip or comic book form. Perhaps my research skills fail me (There's an omnibus of some of his work, but that one's in Portuguese!). If you know any you want to share... comments are down below!

I was, however, able to read what seem to be the only two Voltar stories to be published in America. The first is a copy of Magic Carpet #1 from 1977. This issue doesn't seem to be anywhere online, so I sprang for a copy of it on Ebay. There doesn't seem to be too much demand out there, so prices are reasonable. It also features a backup story titled "Buccaneers on the Skull Planet," which may be the coolest title in the history of fiction. The other Voltar story is a seven-issue serialized story for the Warren Publishing magazine The Rook, issues #2 through 9 published in 1979 through 1981. Both of these stories are simply titled "Voltar" within, but they're very different stories. Because so little about these stories is out there, I thought I might recap them a little more than I normally would.

Magic Carpet #1 (1977)

This 25ish-page story was written by Manuel Auad, obviously with pencils and inks by Alcala. As Alcala is listed as the sole creator of Voltar but doesn't have a story credit or anything like that, it's hard to tell if he did any direction of the writing.

An evil wizard named Kan is attacking the Tower of Zimar, the denizens of which send a desperate plea to Voltar via carrier falcon. Being a good guy, Voltar springs into action. He is warned by a blind, old man that what is sees is not always the truth, which Voltar more or less ignores at first blush. On his way to the tower, Voltar comes across several trials that are more or less previewed on the cover of the issue- he meets a tricky satyr, an aggressive centaur, an illusion-casting sorceress, and a dragon monster. When he arrives at Zimar, he's actually able to dispatch Kan pretty easily since Kan's magic is almost too powerful and seems to have deluded him, but Voltar, remembering the words of the old man, is able to just kind of stand there and then deliver one killing blow. Like early Conan the Barbarian comics, Voltar's sword more explodes off his enemies than cuts them.

Most of these encounters with fantastical enemies are told pretty episodically- Voltar meets a character, they fight for a few panels, and by the time you turn the page, he's victorious and moving onto the next one. I'm not against a picaresque.

The character and creature designs are a lot of fun here, with creepy monsters and imaginative illusions that are cast before Voltar during his journey. None of the prose storytelling is outright incredible, but we're all here for the art, not necessarily the words on the page.

The Rook #2 - 9 (1979 - 1981)

While the title pages only bill this story as Voltar once again, I've seen some sources call this one Voltar: Comes the Endtime or simply Voltar: Endtime, so that's how I've been thinking of this arc to differentiate it from Magic Carpet. This is easily the better of the two stories, this time written by Bill DuBay under the pen name "Will Richardson" as the backup stories in seven issues of the time-traveling Rook's magazine. It helps that having seven issues of storytelling gives the story a lot more space to breathe, but the central conceit of the story is a lot stronger, too.

Chronologically, Endtime takes place much later than Magic Carpet's tale, with Voltar being an older warrior on the edge of retirement (though you'd never know it based on how Alcala draws him- he still looks like the world's most jacked 25 year-old). The goblin armies of Gog and Magog are marching on Elysium, and the country is looking for a messiah. Is Voltar that messiah, or will they only tease us with that idea before making a last-minute switch? I'll never tell.

Voltar once again goes on a journey here to save his people, with most issues including a one-off villain for Voltar to defeat with either his brains or his brawn before moving closer to Gog and Magog. This story ratchets up the continuity and worldbuilding. Voltar has evidently been away from Elysium for a long time, which allowed the goblin armies to invade. We meet Antiochus, king of Elysium and Voltar's father, who also tells us of Voltar's sister and mother. Voltar implies that he might actually be immortal, despite the story telling us he's getting old. What I didn't tell you earlier is that Magic Carpet #1 didn't even make any mention of Elysium, leaving the story in an unnamed setting.

These seven issues are so much fun.

There's also a constant drumbeat through Comes the Endtime where characters or the narration bemoan the stench of war, violence, and destruction. It's always presented as a plague or a rot that disgustingly invades your nose, and I'm left wondering how much input Alcala had on this story. It would make sense for a Filipino who saw his land invaded by the Japanese during WWII to see the effects of war as a plague. Or maybe it was the California kid who wasn't even born until after the war... I don't know!

If you like sword and sorcery, or 70s comics, or just classic adventure stories, Voltar is a total blast. He feels very much like a cousin of Conan while maintaining some of his own unique traits story beats, like his obnoxious winged helmet and referring to himself in the third person.

But let's talk the art. We're all here for the art. It's incredible.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the scant few pages of Voltar that exist are some of the most beautiful Bronze Age comic art in existence. Alcala's ornately-designed pages are completely lush with detail, giving life to every inch of the page. In Endtime, every few pages is a bold double-barreled splash page. It helps the stories feel like more than the straightforward adventure tales that they are, giving them a mythical quality. I could gush about Alcala's work all day. His character designs are excellent, and it's interesting to see that Voltar looks (without his helmet, at least) exactly how Conan will be drawn by legions of artists in the coming decades, but this Voltar design got there first.

Voltar and the other fighting characters ripple with muscle that is always posed with dynamic, interesting movement. The bad guys have angular, pointy helmets or jutting goblin jaws that betray their allegiances. The landscapes are fantastical: high castles jut out of severe rock faces, beams of light shoot through impenetrable cloud masses. It makes me wish that Alcala had more chances to do the pencils and the inks on Savage Sword, because he's a master of his craft.

Now, Voltar's not really much of a barbarian; he doesn't seem to be from outside civilization, he's not a berzerking rage monster. Calling him "Voltar the Barbarian" feels like a bit of a misnomer, but it's an epithet that people seem to attach to him frequently, so here we are. Like Thongor of Lemuria, he's one of Conan's descendants. They've all got two-syllable names and a country or "the Barbarian" on the end.

If you want to check out Voltar for yourself, you can pick up a copy of Magic Carpet #1 on Ebay for a fairly reasonable price, but I'd suggest googling the Rook issues, because they're all online for free if you know which sites to go to, if you know what I mean. They're worth the risk.

0 Comments