I believe that the earlier Warlock  series had some racist themes too it. Adam Warlock was supposed to be a genetically perfect human, and he takes on the form of a bloned haired blue eyed white man with immense power in the early series. And then there is the firist incarnation of the Magus, Warlocks evil future self who funded the universal church of truth, a religous organization bent on total universal rule.
            The Magus took on the form of a mutated black man with dark grey  skin  and hair, and this is what annoys me. Warlock is ahero and he he takes on the form of a man of European decent, and some where alog the line in some alternate, negated continuum, he become the Magus a villian modled on a human of African decent. And this infurryiates me. 
             I can understand a white man fighting a black man, because its two humans fighting each other, but what I can not understand is how Warlock became black. Did the enclave, the group of scientist and engieers the produced Warlock, who was known simply as "Him" at the time, engineer him with psychsomomatic phenotypicplacticity, the ability to shape shift in to other humans?Dispite the fact that Adam Warlock's appearence has changed recently, it has not shown him shapeshift, ever in any of his appeareaces, however it did show him  with a different appeareance after he emerged form his recoperative cocoon in Annihilation Conquest, so that may explain it.
                 So the question still remains, how did Warlock become the Magus? the cocoons , an unknow power, was he curropted by some entity, power, or bizzar event? Saddly we will never know because the first incarnation of th e Magus was negated.
feel free to comemnt

Warlock became the Magus (the first time) because of the In-Betweener. The In-Betweener molded him into the Magus (I'm a little rusty on the subject). As far as him turning 'black,' I don't necessarily agree. He had purple skin and I think the giant afro is what makes you assume he is black. And it was the 70's. If you read comics from the 60's and 70's, they definitely had racial and sexist tones.
 
Warlock traveled through time to kill himself before the In-Betweener could take him and turn him into the Magus, thus removing the Magus and the Church of Truth from reality. 
 
The Magus returned when Warlock had the Infinity Gauntlet and split the good and evil from himself. Good = Goddess. Bad = Magus. The new Magus had memories of the old Magus because Adam remembered the events, thus the Magus could remember, being a part of Adam.

In the 70's, nothing could get much cooler than wearing a big nice afro, so i don't see the downgrading effect there...
 
What really bothered me was that it was never explained where the Magus got all that machinery to help him control the power he had...

Pointing-out racist themes that aren't really there is a good way to stir-up trouble. Besides, Astro has a thread specifically for that type of thing. "WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?!" is what it's called...
 
Why can't someone that has GOLDEN skin turn PURPLE, signifying his evil side taking control, without someone calling foul? If anything, if you see something racist about that, you should probably question your own ability to judge things, or maybe just unclench. If every dark-hued color MUST mean it's a reference to African-Americans, than I'd hate to think what your thoughts are on the original Hulk, who transformed from a genius white man to an angry gray-skinned monster. 
 
Now think about that and tell me Warlock/Magus is racist...

Then we also have a sexist problem there: why is his good side encarnated by a woman? Does a woman have better judgement than a man? Can a woman have pure intentions and a man can't?

So many things to address in this post.....Warlock is not white. He is golden skinned. No blue eyes either....GOLD AGAIN! Genetically perfect in form....except for his facial features.....his body features could be black or white....perfect though.  And finally.....I have to agree with the theory you propose...that warlock morphed with each untimely demise, and rebirth.  The cocoon allowed some changes, strength, powers, and maybe even physical, eventually.........What do you think?