This week, I got up to Kamandi #32, and the series is still going strong! At this point, I don't see any reason not to make Kamandi #1 to #59 a regular reading project, something to tackle every year (or maybe every two years ... 59 issues is A LOT!).

Kamandi #21 to #25 is a storyline that I've been calling "Seaway," but I think maybe "Monster Lake" is a better title for this little run as a whole. Kamandi and Ben Boxer meet the dolphin civilization! And for once, the animal civilization isn't automatically trying to kill or enslave him. The dolphins seem to have more advanced media than we're used to because Kamandi somehow becomes a sensation among the dolphin teenagers. So much so that a female dolphin named Teela wants Kamandi to be her "squire," her fighting partner. The dolphins team up with humans as fighting pairs to defend themselves against the killer-whale civilization and their dangerous human thralls. The worst of these is called the Red Baron.



Tragically the Red Baron kills Teela (among others) before Kamandi has a chance to agree to be her squire. (And because Teela was sort of flirting with Kamandi, this could be categorized as another dead girlfriend for Kamandi.) So Kamandi joins in the fight to get the Red Baron! And even runs into the killer whales. (The killer whales are unfortunately colored incorrectly as the white spot over the eyes is colored gray in every panel. The spot is there, but Kirby must have had the only guy in New York who never looked at a photo of a killer whale in his life as the colorist on Kamandi.)

"Seaway" continues for a few more issues after this, with a weird "haunted house" on an island in Monster Lake, a snow monkey with a band of trained humans, and EVIL FLYING FISH!



Next up is a whacky three-parter which I call "Devils and Bulldogs." It takes place in Canada, which has become a radio-active haven for giant insects. And the Leopard Pirates are devastating the landscape, harvesting the resources for Sacker. But because of a weird treaty (that I never really understood), Rule Britannia bulldogs, Napoleonic Wolves and Prussian gorillas are attacking the leopard pirates. The highlight is a parody or homage or something to "The Charge of the Light Brigade"!

Bulldogs to left of him
Leopards to right of him
Gorillas in front of him
Ransacked and plundered

Was there a reason why?
Flower and Teela had to die?
But e'en now Kamandi knew
Someone had blundered

Then Kamandi #29 offers up another great one-shot!



I'm tempted not to say ANYTHING about this one. I find it wonderful and HILARIOUS!

I'll just say this: There's a scene where the gorillas in a Superman cult willingly allow themselves to be catapulted into the air in order to prove they are worthy of the suit!

I've read the next three issues, and #32 ends without a story resolution ... yet. So I'm not sure exactly where this storyline ends. But I call this one "Pyra," even though Pyra doesn't actually appear in Pyra form until #33. (And I can hardly wait until we get to Pyra! What a freak! She's noticeably freaky even for Kamandi's world.)

Kamandi and Ben Boxer come across a UFO on an island. The UFO is inhabited by a weird energy being, who floats around like a blob of electrical energy, splits in two or three, takes over Ben Boxer's body and makes him grow and turns him hostile. Then the tigers show up (including Prince Tuftan) and get in a fight with Ben Boxer. And then Dr. Canus makes friends with the energy being and defuses the situation. Then, waterborne gorilla commando raiders attack everybody. They even attack the UFO, but are quickly and effortlessly subdued and taken prisoner by the energy being. At the end of this issue, Kamandi announces that Canus and the energy being have made a deal, and Canus is going to make a body for the weird, floating energy creature so it doesn't have to float around and look weird all the time.

The next issue blurb promises "The Surprise of the Century"!

Kamandi #32 is giant-sized, and it includes a reprint of Kamandi #1, a four-part profile of Kirby and the map of Kamandi's world from the first issue.

I'm still loving this title!

Hoosier X, you've inspired me to finish up the Kamandis that I do have and haven't yet read, #23-27.

Yes bran, that was the best non-Kirby Kamandi story ever published. And the fullpage newspaper format was great.

I always think of the Bangles.

Just another Manic Kamandi Monday.

If you go to #27, you have to continue on to #29!

And at that point, Pyra is just around the corner! And you have to read those stories! 

And then Arna shows up! And Kamandi goes to Hollywood! And Spirit turns into a butterfly!

Has the Gibbons/Sook Kamandi story ever been collected on its own? I bought the first issue of Wednesday Comics and almost kept going with it just for Kamandi, but in the end I didn't like enough of the other features to justify buying every issue.

I read Kamandi #33 to #50 this week! I thought it would go a little slower post-Kirby because there wouldn't be so many full-page panels and two-page spreads. But I read more issues this week than any other week. Partly, it's because the page count is down to 18 per issue. And for several issues, there were only 11 Kamandi pages! There was a six-page "Tales of the Great Disaster!" and I usually just skimmed that. (An outcast ape decides to explore the After Disaster Earth and he meets a female ape, who's a feminist, independent ape and talks like a conservative stereotype of a feminist all the time. And there's a rat character named Otis. It's not very good, but it's not completely lacking in Bronze Age Bonkers charm.)

Even at the series low point (#46 to #50), it's not boring. Just rather uninspired. Sacker's characterization is way off from the calculating, avaricious serpent of his earlier appearances. Arna is a hostage for way long and spends a lot of issues doing nothing as Sacker's prisoner. There's a boar character who can fly a plane, and he's discarded as a character as soon as he flies Kamandi and company back to Florida. There's a just so many missteps in these issues. But it wasn't until the last two issues (#49 and #50) that I was dreading reading the next story. (I forced myself to read them yesterday so I could get past the Denny O'Neil issues.)

But let's go back to #33!



I call the run of issues from #31 to #35 "Pretty Pyra." The energy being from the previous two issues eventually forms a physical body (with the help of Dr. Canus) and she has red skin, weird yellow hair that looks like a diving cap made of potato chips and a white jumpsuit. She's totally a freak! She can do just about whatever she wants, but she's kind of unpredictable. There's a few issues where she doesn't appear much, but she'll be around, mostly palling around with Canus, for the rest of the series.



The Joe Kubert cover start with #34. And they are very nice! You almost don't miss the Kirby covers.

The run from #36 to #40, I call "Adventures with Arna." Kamandi encounters a group of humans who seem pretty close to normal, if a bit aggressive and militant. But they are actually pretty desperate because they are mutants who grow from babies to being elderly in only five years! There's some great scenes with the war council where some of the leaders are toddlers wearing diapers and holding bottles. They are capturing the primitive humans and studying them and trying to figure out how to rid themselves of this curse of being so short-lived.

Arna is put in charge of Kamandi. She has a pageboy haircut (because who has time for a complicated 'do when you only have five years total to live?) and a red and yellow outfit, and she's pretty dedicated to saving her people. But Kamandi escapes and she goes with him because she knows her people will kill her for letting him get away.

During his short stay with the mutants, Kamandi is talked into putting his hand in a machine at the same time as Arna. Just a routine device for checking DNA, Arna says. But Arna then reveals that it's actually a machine that puts their DNA together and will eventually make a baby. Kamandi freaks out, and she says she was lying to calm him down.

(I'm almost up to the part with Kamandi's son. These two, Kamandi and Arna ... what can you say about them? Is Arna a mature woman who shouldn't be dallying with the tender heart of a youngster like Kamandi? Or is it more creepy that Kamandi had a baby with a girl who's less than five years old?)

So they're on the run and they get captured by a giant crab and a clam and a snail and they get put in an "Airquarium" with a bunch of primitive humans where they are treated like pets in a terrarium.

Meanwhile, Pyra and Canus are looking for Kamandi, and they've run into some lizard people.



And Ben Boxer has been a prisoner of the tigers for quite a few issues and everybody seems to have forgotten about him.

Gerry Conway took over the writing as of #38 and did a really good job on the "Airquarium" issues (#38 and #39) and the reunion of Kamandi with Pyra and Canus in #40. But #40 was Kirby's last issue of penciller, and we're about to enter a whole new era for the Last Boy on Earth.



The first few issues after Kirby leaves are pretty good! Gerry Conway is the writer for four or five issues and the art team is Chic Stone and Mike Royer for three really good issues. I like the art a lot. you can tell it's not Kirby but it still has a very Kirbyesque vibe.

In #41 and #42, Kamandi, Arna and Canus go to Hollywood where they are forced to make a movie by fanatic film fan coyotes! The crazy coyote director forces them to get into desperate fights and then films the conflicts. The film isn't finished because the coyote director is killed, but I've always assumed that the raw footage has been edited into a weird exploitation film called something like "Kamandi: Hero or Hoax?" and it's floating around Kamandi's world and the Last Boy on Earth is a cult-film celebrity in many places on Kirby's After Disaster map.

#43 starts the Tales of the Great Disaster back-up for a few issues, and I won't go into any more detail about the stories. Gerry Conway, David Anthony Kraft, Pablo Marcos, Bob Smith, Steve Mitchell, Mike Nasser, Joe Rubinstein (and probably a few others) all worked on this bizarre little feature.



The rotating creative team is a problem for much of the post-Kirby era. After those issues I like in #41 to #43, Conway, Marty Pasko, Dennis O'Neil and Elliot S! Maggin all contribute to the writing in issues #44 to #50, and Keith Giffen, Jack Abel, Dick Ayers, Alfredo Alcala, Ernie Chan and probably a few others all have art chores at one time or another.

After the Hollywood adventure, Kamandi and Company get involved in a very long adventure where Sacker sends them to the Caribbean (with a leopard pirate named Rongo) to capture some tiny humans (who turn out to be mutated monkeys). The first few issues of this storyline are OK, but it goes on too long and after Denny O'Neil takes over, we get a really wicked vindictive and sadistic version of Sacker that is not just badly written but also very much at odds with Kirby's characterization. And Arna is held hostage to force Kamandi and Ben Boxer to compete the mission, so we see her for a few panels in every issue, saying "Let me out!" while Sacker laughs diabolically.

But Spirit shows up again! She helps Arna escape ... but they are quickly recaptured and Sacker puts them in a gas chamber that will kill them in 24 hours while Kamandi and the other rush to the rescue. Kamandi shows up just in time and has a big showdown with Sacker.



As much as I don't like the way Sacker is portrayed, I think this is a pretty cool cover.

Kamandi #49 is a flashback written by Elliot S! Maggin about the time when Kamandi was still in New York with his grandfather, before Kamandi #1. It doesn't really make much sense, as far as I'm concerned.

And in #50, Pyra is treating Canus and Kamandi for an aggression virus they picked up (in #35, I think; long story), but because she forgot to adjust the treatment from canine to human, Kamandi turns into OMAC. For some reason. This story isn't bad for a Dennis O'Neil Kamandi story. It ends with Kamandi encountering some sloth people who worship a human skeleton. And the way they attack Kamandi, it looks like they made the skeleton themselves with their teeth!

These frequent writer changes continue as Steve Englehart writes #51 and then Jack C. Harris takes over for #52 and I think he finishes out the series.