I've read once or twice that Warlord was actually DC's best selling book during a chunk of the 70s. With that in mind you'd think they'd have tried to market it to TV or films over the years.
That always struck me as odd too. I'd seen it mentioned in the 1970's that both WARLORD and KAMANDI were tremendously popular and among DC's best-selling titles.
Maybe DC was tapped out in their capacity to mass-market in that era, with Super-Friends, Shazam and Isis, and several years of ramping up for the first Superman movie.
Dennis O'Neil in one interview expressed that when licensing work and movie adaptations finally came around the DC offices in 1978 and he was passed up for that work, he was embittered by the snub, and immediately moved to Marvel when his contract ran out in 1980.
In the decades since, though, only those of us who grew up with KAMANDI and WARLORD remember how immensely popular they were. They no longer have the large audience they once did. The collected trade WARLORD: SAVAGE EMPIRE, reprinting the first 12 issues, hasn't been reprinted since 1991.
Although a larger black-and-white SHOWCASE trade of WARLORD issues was recently published.
Likewise, KAMANDI had two archive hardcovers (issues 1-10, issues 11-20) published, along with two Omnibus collections (issues 1-20, and 21-40), but none of these have been complete sellouts either.
And I'm guessing they have print runs of less than 5,000 copies.
I'd love to see either of these get tv, animation or film adaptation, but if they do, it won't be from a huge public outcry for it. Much as they deserve the treatment.
