Post by Hoosier X on Aug 21, 2017 17:29:00 GMT -5
I read all the way to the last issue of Kamandi (#59) and I also got the cross-over in Karate Kid #15, the team-up with Batman in The Brave and the Bold #157, the team-up with Superman in DC Comics Presents #64 (which is pretty good, with a lovely Gil Kane cover), and the special reprint edition that included the black and white art that was scheduled to appear in Kamandi #60 and #61 but were never published. (Until NOW!)
I didn't get to The Brave and the Bold #120, but that leaves something for the next Kamandi Monday!
I like the next few issues quite a bit, despite the change in tone. Steve Englehart is the writer on #51 as Arna dies and Kamandi meets his son, Kamarni! But Kamarni turns out to be a robot, and is only the son of Kamandi and Arna in the sense that their genetics were analyzed and somehow made into a robot. It's science!
And it's not just Arna that dies. All her people, the People of the Crater, die in this issue. The robots were a last-ditch effort to preserve the memory of the Crater People and the scientific discoveries they had made.
Then Jack C. Harris takes over the writing for the rest of the series, and I like his issues, especially up to about #54, but at the end, the series goes way off the rails and, for me, it just gets too far away from all the things that made Kamandi such a fun series for so long.
While Canus and Pyra go off searching for "the Vortex," the power source that might save Pyra's people from destruction, Kamandi and Spirit sort of wander around looking for Evermore, a place or ritual or something that has something to do with Ben Boxer, Steve and Renzi. The secondary quest of looking for a shirt for Spirit is once again put on the backburner. (I always envision her wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers sweater).
Meanwhile, a consortium of Kamandi's enemies (including Sacker and Great Caesar) have hired a bloodhound Sherlock Holmes parody named Mylock Bloodstalker to track down Kamandi. His sidekick is a bulldog named Doile.
Kamandi and Spirit run into some Toucan People, and then some Butterfly People, who wrap up Spirit in a cocoon that eventually gives her web-spinning powers when she emerges a few issues later.
They also run into some Cat People who are high on catnip and dress up like 1960s flower children and talk with Australian accents. And a magic brain pool tries to eat Spirit.
And then it gets silly.
There's a bit where they are attacked by Kangaroo People and they run into a huge cosmic wall and they eventually meet up with Mylock Bloodstalker and Doile (who become their friends) and the cross-over with Karate Kid where they are captured by Lobster People who worship the 1950s and have a machine that puts Kamandi and Karate Kid into movies that are being screened at a Lobster-People drive-in.
There are some neat ideas here, but it's a bit of a mess. The art is nice. Dick Ayers is on pencils throughout, as the inking changes almost seamlessly from Alfredo Alcala to Danny Bulandi.
But it's not really Kamandi by the end!
Kamandi #61 was going to be mostly a reprint! There's a framing sequence where Kamandi meets Brute and Glob and the 1970s Sandman, and they tell him about a time when the Sandman went to the North Pole to rescue Santa Claus, who had been kidnapped by the Seal Men. This lengthy flashback is a 1970s Kirby story that was probably in the DC inventory after the Sandman comic was canceled in the early 1970s. It's pretty cool! Bronze Age Bonkers and Kirby Chaotic!
I didn't get to The Brave and the Bold #120, but that leaves something for the next Kamandi Monday!
I like the next few issues quite a bit, despite the change in tone. Steve Englehart is the writer on #51 as Arna dies and Kamandi meets his son, Kamarni! But Kamarni turns out to be a robot, and is only the son of Kamandi and Arna in the sense that their genetics were analyzed and somehow made into a robot. It's science!
And it's not just Arna that dies. All her people, the People of the Crater, die in this issue. The robots were a last-ditch effort to preserve the memory of the Crater People and the scientific discoveries they had made.
Then Jack C. Harris takes over the writing for the rest of the series, and I like his issues, especially up to about #54, but at the end, the series goes way off the rails and, for me, it just gets too far away from all the things that made Kamandi such a fun series for so long.
While Canus and Pyra go off searching for "the Vortex," the power source that might save Pyra's people from destruction, Kamandi and Spirit sort of wander around looking for Evermore, a place or ritual or something that has something to do with Ben Boxer, Steve and Renzi. The secondary quest of looking for a shirt for Spirit is once again put on the backburner. (I always envision her wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers sweater).
Meanwhile, a consortium of Kamandi's enemies (including Sacker and Great Caesar) have hired a bloodhound Sherlock Holmes parody named Mylock Bloodstalker to track down Kamandi. His sidekick is a bulldog named Doile.
Kamandi and Spirit run into some Toucan People, and then some Butterfly People, who wrap up Spirit in a cocoon that eventually gives her web-spinning powers when she emerges a few issues later.
They also run into some Cat People who are high on catnip and dress up like 1960s flower children and talk with Australian accents. And a magic brain pool tries to eat Spirit.
And then it gets silly.
There's a bit where they are attacked by Kangaroo People and they run into a huge cosmic wall and they eventually meet up with Mylock Bloodstalker and Doile (who become their friends) and the cross-over with Karate Kid where they are captured by Lobster People who worship the 1950s and have a machine that puts Kamandi and Karate Kid into movies that are being screened at a Lobster-People drive-in.
There are some neat ideas here, but it's a bit of a mess. The art is nice. Dick Ayers is on pencils throughout, as the inking changes almost seamlessly from Alfredo Alcala to Danny Bulandi.
But it's not really Kamandi by the end!
Kamandi #61 was going to be mostly a reprint! There's a framing sequence where Kamandi meets Brute and Glob and the 1970s Sandman, and they tell him about a time when the Sandman went to the North Pole to rescue Santa Claus, who had been kidnapped by the Seal Men. This lengthy flashback is a 1970s Kirby story that was probably in the DC inventory after the Sandman comic was canceled in the early 1970s. It's pretty cool! Bronze Age Bonkers and Kirby Chaotic!
