By the time the early 80s rolled around, I was pretty sick of movie studios still trying to mine old novels (pulp or not), radio heroes and early newspaper & Golden Age comic book characters, all inspired by the success of 1978's Superman the Movie. After the Donner movie, suddenly studios were scraping every IP barrel trying to produce the next "vintage hero" film, from the abysmal Popeye, Flash Gordon (both from 1980), The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981) to 1982's Annie (first a musical, but its comic strip roots made it a candidate for adaptation to film). As seen throughout film history, the success of one film or concepts usually spawns imitators, which are almost always crap.

Greystoke was yet another example of a lesson ignored by studios, as they seemed to forget that by the 1980s, the world's culture and their pop culture interests were no longer fascinated by tales of "big-um, naked white king-um of jungle-um", seen as simple and often offensive. That was not the movie hero anyone wanted see when they had Luke Skywalker, Admiral Kirk and other heroes. Even Indiana Jone--although set in the 1930s, was a very different kind of adventure hero due to the more ruthless, modernistic personality of Jones and the unique threat of the Nazis attempting to find/use the Ark of the Covenant. Tarzan was standing still compared to the aforementioned movie characters.

Further, we know Marvel had the Tarzan property as a monthly (29 issues published from 1977 - 1979), but it was not a success, nor did it have the grittier, truly "wild, lost land" appeal of DC's version. Considering that, you would think a level head would have assumed if their monthly failed, then an adaptation of a film about the same character--who by decade's end no longer enjoyed mass pop culture appeal--would not be a promising undertaking.

While I have no issues with the great Spiegle's work (especially when he worked for Gold Key), perhaps the miniseries would have sold if Marvel empoyed Charles Ren's fine brushes to adapt the entire story. On visual impact alone, a fully painted Tarzan would have caught the eyes--and possibly dollars--of otherwise disinterested readers.

ESCAPE FROM DEVIL’S ISLAND, 1952, Avon Periodicals


Vicious cover by the legendary Everett Raymond Kinstler!

Read this comic here.


Kinstler supplies another fine illustrative introduction page on the inside front cover:



The writer is unidentified, but the interiors are signed by the art team of Mart Nodel and Vince Alascia.

Chapter 1, “The Isles of the Living Dead” tells how Pierre Gavril is set up by the lovely Lisette and her accomplice to show her his employer’s safe full of jewels. He’s forced, at gunpoint, to open the safe and hand over the treasure, when his boss, M. Durant, arrives. Durant is shot, the thieves flee, the alarm summons the gendarmes, and Gavril takes the fall when Durant’s final words unintentionally imply that Gavril was the sole responsible part. Gavril is sentenced to life in prison on the Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana.



In Chapter 2, “Waters of Terror”, we catch up with Gavril clearing the jungle with a prisoner work gang. He’s given an axe but is warned to use it only on trees. Gavril is hatching a scheme to escape, because “one day the guard will not be watching, and then…”

When the prisoner Goudet collapses in the jungle, the guards beat him to revive him, and Gavril snatches a whip from a guard and fights back to protect the man. Naturally, he ends up chained in solitary, where his intent to escape grows even stronger.



Gavril is eventually back in the jungle, chopping trees, and conspires with Goudet and some other prisoners: during their monthly bath in the bay, one prisoner will draw attention by pretending to drown, and Gavril and Goudet will swim across the river in an escape attempt. Goudet is attacked by piranha and perishes, but Gavril and another prisoner, Planton, make it to the opposite shore, where they will head for Dutch Guiana. (I can’t quite reconcile the geography with maps of Devil’s Island, but if they reach the Dutch area, they can’t be extradited.)



In the depths of the jungle, the pair find a trail that they trust leads west to their destination…

Here, the comic breaks for a two-page text piece (of course!) giving the history of Devil’s Island.

Chapter 3 is titled “Road to Death.” First, Gavril is attacked by a boa constrictor, and his companion saves him by stabbing the snake with a knife.



Next they are captured by natives, who plan to return them back to the French for a reward, not believing their cover story about being plantation workers (who just so happen to be wearing prison stripes—these spear-throwing tribesmen are no dummies!).



The men are tied in a hut, and escape by breaking a pot and cutting their bonds with a shard. They fool their guard by the old trick of one pretending to be sick, and the other cold-cocking the guard when he comes to investigate.

The dangers of the island jungle are limitless, though, and the men are next attacked by a jaguar. Planton dies before Gavril can kill the jaguar with a rock, leaving our protagonist desperate and alone in the jungle.



When he finally finds humans and calls out for aid, he realizes he has stumbled back to his original prison camp, where he is taken captive again. But he has a glimmer of hope now, because the prisoner ordered to take Gavril by litter back to the camp has a face Gavril recognizes: he is the man who forced Gavril to open the safe—the one man who knows that Gavril is innocent of his employer’s murder! Thanks to a heavy beard, Gavril knows that he has not been recognized in turn by Lisette’s criminal boyfriend…

The story concludes in Chapter 4, “Death Unchained.” The guards are eager for Gavril to recover so that they can punish him more. When he’s well enough to return to work, Gavril is shackled with irons still hot from the flames!



Gavril’s burns heal, and he gets to work with pick-axe on the rock pile, always keeping an eye out for his enemy. When Gavril is assigned to run the forge instead of busting rocks, he continues to inquire about the man who carried him to the hospital, and the other prisoners try to determine who and where the villain is.

Eventually, one prisoner provides the needed information: it’s a man named Michaud, who works in the prison hospital.

Gavril smuggles an iron bar in his pants, and swallows soap to give himself poisoning, so that he can be taken to the hospital. The soap has made him genuinely sick, but he recovers the very night before he is scheduled for surgery.



With the iron bar, he snaps the chain holding him to the bed, then sneaks through the ward with one goal: taking vengeance on Michaud!



Facing a scalpel blade wielded by the crazed Gavril, Michaud pleads for his life, promising to tell the authorities the truth. In an unlikely conclusion, the guards have arrived and a doctor has overheard the men’s conversation. Michaud’s confession is accepted and Gavril is set free, but he will be haunted by the memory of Devil’s Island for the rest of his life.

Whew!

Well that’s not your typical jungle comic! It’s got enough of the classic jungle tropes to qualify, with savage natives and attacking animals. This kind of book-length one-shot is something of a treat from the usual jungle fare. It’s clearly inspired by the “men’s sweat” magazines that were popular in the 50’s, which typically featured prisons, jungles, wild animals, and lots of violence. The cover, with is scene of whippings with visible lash marks on the victims, is the kind of fare that would be eradicated with the coming of the comics code, as would comics like this which were obviously intended for a more mature reader.

The novelty of this one establishes it as a Jungle Gem. Sure, the cascade of violence becomes almost comedic, but it makes its brutal, lurid point very clearly. The setting of this real-life prison adds to the intensity, and even now, Devil’s Island looks like a nightmarish place to serve a life sentence:




Avon put out quite a few one-shots in many different genres: science fiction, Western, Burroughs-esque science fantasy, piracy, romance, horror, frontier, and one of the most intriguing: THE HOODED MENACE, about a KKK analog!

Very cool!

KA-ZAR #1, August, 1970, Marvel Comics.



This cover is infamous for hiding a naughty word. It’s pretty easy to find, and I think it’s too clear and too dissimilar to its surroundings to be unintentional, but it made it into print without notice. It would have been inserted at the inking stage, but I have heard nothing to indicate that inker John Verpoorten ever suffered any consequence, so it may have been an unidentified touch-up artist that sneaked in the profanity.

Aside: I was always rather intrigued by the logo for this comic. It wasn't as "on the nose" as most comics logos of the time were; it looked classy, pulpy, and commercial all at once. I do love how Zabu's head subs for the hyphen! I can't work up any enthusiasm for the Daredevil "sub-logo", that looks like the letterer lost hold of the page and started drifting upwards...

KA-ZAR popped up as a quarterly from Marvel with an August, 1970 debut, at the oversized 25-cent format. Marvel had been publishing a number of these larger comics since the late 60’s. Usually these were annuals or reprint series such as MARVEL TALES and MIGHTY MARVEL WESTERN, but the format was also used for the all-new content in SILVER SURFER and the lead story in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES. Alongside KA-ZAR, Marvel published the 25-cent WESTERN GUNFIGHTERS the same month, featuring primarily new (or previously inventoried) material, so the reader who so KA-ZAR on the stands would have a reasonable expectation that behind the Marie Severin/John Verpoorten cover were brand new stories featuring the jungle lord who had been rebooted 5 years earlier in X-MEN #10.

No such luck, though; Ka-Zar would appear only via reprints here. Ka-Zar had not had a solo story since MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #27 in January 1942. Marvel might have chosen to reprint those, but today’s Ka-Zar was a different character entirely.



Ka-Zar had originally been introduced in a pulp magazine, KA-ZAR, which lasted three issues, the first dated October 1936. That magazine featured Ka-Zar in “King of Fang and Claw” in a story attributed to “Bob Byrd”. A reproduction of the magazine can be read at the Internet Archive here.

When publisher Martin Goodman got into the comic book business in 1939, one of the features he included in MARVEL MYSTERY MAGAZINE #1 was “Adventures of Ka-Zar from the Famous Character Created by Bob Byrd”. Goodman had been publisher at Manvis Publishing, which had released those Ka-Zar pulps, and presumably retained the rights to reintroduce the character in the comics.

Aside from a cameo in HUMAN TORCH #5b, the famous battle between the Torch and the Sub-Mariner, this incarnation of Ka-Zar limited his Golden Age appearances to backups in the first 27 issues of MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS.

Let’s take a look at MARVEL MYSTERY #18, in which Ka-Zar appeared not only in a 5 page comics story, but also had the lead in the obligatory text story.



The text story is “Young Ka-Zar”, written by Ray Gill with illustration by Ben Thompson. Ka-Zar’s enemy Paul De Kraft, who murdered David (Ka-Zar) Rand’s father John, has returned to the jungle and has taken Ka-Zar’s friend N’Jaga, the leopard (Ka-Zar, naturally, can talk to the jungle animals). Ka-Zar’s monkey Nono reports having seen N’Jaga’s ghost in De Kraft’s camp, and all the humans in the immediate area have gone missing.

Ka-Zar raid’s De Kraft’s stronghold and sees the glowing white form of N’Jaga but discovers him to be warm and alive. De Kraft escapes, and Ka-Zar finds the explanation: N’Jaga has been coated with luminous paint! “I shall keep it to paint the body of De Kraft, and hang him in the sky—as an evil star, if he should ever return!”

It’s a little confusing—in fact, writer Gill accidentally drops a paragraph that appears to have been taken straight from a synopsis, because it shifts into present tense: “…Ka-Zar soon comes upon the camp of Paul De Kraft and his safari. Ka-Zar notes that every native in the safari is standing guard—the only sleeper being De Kraft himself.” This makes me wonder whether this was adapted from one of the Ka-Zar pulps, which did feature N’Jaga and Nono; perhaps Gill was taking notes on the story and those notes got into the final script? From what I can piece together, De Kraft painted the leopard in rder to scare away the locals, which does sound like a piece of a larger narrative.

The text story is immediately followed by “Beasts of the Black River”, penciled and inked by Ben Thompson, who may also have scripted the story. One glance at the splash and we can see that this one will be very much in the vein of the rebooted 60’s version will be, as Ka-Zar is confronting a dinosaur!



Ka-Zar takes a raft down the “Black River”, determined to solve the mystery of why no one has ever returned from this feared region. The river flows through a narrow pass, after which the raft plunges down a waterfall, then into a dark tunnel. Ka-Zar is knocked unconscious and is washed ashore in strange surroundings, with unrecognizable plant life and monstrous giant beasts fighting each other. A single-horned creature picks Ka-Zar up and nearly eats him, but the leviathan is felled by a gigantic arrow.



This realm is also populated by giant humanoid hunters! Ka-Zar follows the one that unwittingly saved Ka-Zar’s life, and is led to a cave. He follows the giant and finds him cooking a giant stew, with human skeletal remains all about! Ka-Zar is trapped by a second giant, and realizes why no one returns from the Black River: these beings are cooking and eating men who have been lost here!



This feature is continued in the following issue; evidently Ka-Zar ran serialized stories throughout most of its MARVEL MYSTERY run.

While the art is crude and the story-telling is primitive, this one is still a lot of Golden Age fun. In stories like this, the pleasure is obviously not in the character, but in the events he’s leading the reader through.

Although my approach to this project is sampling individual issues, I couldn’t resist checking out the following issue, where Ka-Zar escapes becoming stew when an earthquake hits. He saves one of the giants, who then befriends him (conveniently, the giants speak a similar language to that of the jungle animals with whom Ka-Zar can communicate).

The duo is then attacked by the Limbos, lizard men from deep under the earth! Ka-Zar and the giant are near defeat from the endless hoard of Limbos when an overheated plane lands, bearing a white man and woman who are fascinated by the strange landscape. With only four panels left, the newcomers are taken by lizard people, Ka-Zar drives the plane toward the creatures, the man and woman climb aboard, and Ka-Zar flies them out while the giant continues walloping Limbos with his giant club. The end!



Wacky, insanely fast-paced stuff! Hey, I like it, I won’t apologize. It’s not a Jungle Gem, but daft stuff like this is way more enjoyable than a lot of more coherent but boring Golden Age material I’ve waded through.

Since this stuff wasn’t quite the material to take the lead in a 1970 Marvel Comic, what did this reprint? As hinted at on the cover, this issue, and the two following, reprinted the guest appearances the character had made over the previous half decade, treated as if Ka-Zar were on par with the actual lead features of the two stories reprinted: an X-Men (X-MEN #10) story that established the character and his setting, and a Daredevil story (DAREDEVIL #24). Conveniently, both issues gave Ka-Zar high prominence with his name in the story title of the X-Men tale and his name plastered as “Guest-starring” in the Daredevil issue. (In the third and final issue, the opening page of the story from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #57 sees Spidey’s masthead over the story title replaced by “Ka-Zar, Lord of the Jungle! ™”)

But getting back to our sample, issue 1, the first story is “The Coming of.,. Ka-Zar!” from X-MEN #10. Such an early issue of a super-hero team title strikes me as an unexpected place to introduce what the splash promises will be “a fascinating journey to: the world that time forgot!”. From mutant mayhem to blatant Burroughs borrowing! This all smacks of Kirby busting with an idea—admittedly, not one of his most novel—and unable to resist working it into whatever he happened to be assigned. A primitive jungle lord with a pet sabretooth tiger in a hidden “Savage Land” of barbarians and extinct animals. Hey, the X-Men might find some reason to go to Antarctica, right?



There's some really odd relative sizes on this splash page that make me wonder if this was originally lacking any of the X-Men, and they were pasted in later. None of the X-Men are casting shadows, and they don't seem grounded on the rocks, uncharacteristic of Kirby's instinct for composition and weight. Could this have begun life as a Ka-Zar solo story, introducing the character, and then reworked into an issue of X-Men? It's not impossible; Fantastic Four #1 was quite clearly Frankensteined out of a Mole Man story for the monster comics with the FF inserted. The X-Men's presence here is much more effectively integrated, so if this was converted from a Ka-Zar solo, it was probably done before the story was completed. 

Following the familiar Danger Room sequence, the X-Men see a tv report of a shirtless wild man in Antarctica with a “saber tooth” tiger who had rescued a member of an Antarctic research facility, who attacked, then fled the facility after being fired upon (?!) by the researchers. The X-Men are excited, because this guy just has to be a mutant, right? Prof. X has already fielded a request from Washington to investigate (back then the mutants were on call to the government!), but this “Antarctic Wild Man” is not a mutant, based on the lack of Cerebro vibes. Still, the X-Men have been itching for adventure, so Xavier gives them the go-ahead to investigate.

The team discovers a hidden passage to a world where dinosaurs still live and rock-slinging, bird-riding warriors are eager to attack outsiders like the X-Men! The warriors incapacitate the mutants and kidnap Marvel Girl, and then Ka-Zar arrives to show off his strength to the X-boys.



Next he’s attacked by Maa-Gor, the last of the man-apes, defeats him, and leads the boys to the land of the swamp men, Marvel Girl’s kidnappers and Ka-Zar’s enemy.



The Angel is taken captive when he flies where he shouldn’t and he ends up tied next to Marvel Girl, both about to be sacrificed to a dinosaur! Ka-Zar and the rest catch up, Ka-Zar summons a herd of wooly mammoths to break down the swamp men’s walls, and the X-Men head home, having made a new friend in Ka-Zar. Ka-Zar’s not so keen on friendship with the surface world, and he has his mammoths block the entrance to the Savage Land with boulders.



Before anything, I’ve got to object to the splash page advising the reader that our jungle lord’s name is to be pronounced “Kay-Sar”. I will never call him “Kay-Sar” in my internal narrating voice. At the very least, a hard ‘Z’ needs to start that second syllable, and I just can’t bring myself to treat a terminal a has if it were a long a. We don’t pronounce “ha” the same as “hey”, and we don’t pronounce “ma” like “may” or “pa” like “pay”! You can pronounce it KAH ZAR like I do, or kuh-ZAR, but please, not KAY SAR!

There’s little plot and little sense to this story; it’s an excuse to draw cool, exciting, dynamic action, and clearly intended to set Ka-Zar up for his own feature. Both dinosaurs and jungle heroes were popular topics in the mid-60’s, if not so much in comics, in tv, film, etc.

After a new story featuring Marvel’s Hercules, by Allyn Brodsky, Frank Springer, and Dick Ayers, we get the DAREDEVIL reprint. Here’s where the format proved a bit inconvenient: the follow-up to Ka-Zar’s debut comprised two consecutive issues of DAREDEVIL, so rather than split the chronologically next appearance over two issues, they filled out the issue with Ka-Zar’s third appearance in DAREDEVIL #24. That permitted them to present that entire two-issue saga in the second issue of KA-ZAR, but it leaves a gap between these two stories, with a footnote referring readers to DAREDEVIL #13-14, where Daredevil and Ka-Zar first teamed up (and where Ka-Zar’s origin was revealed). We do get a one-page recap here, though:



One would be hard-pressed to call this story a jungle comic, as it involves Ka-Zar and Daredevil fighting the Plunderer in a castle, and it’s a tedious stream of action that I can’t bring myself to synopsize. After that X-Men appearance, all of Ka-Zar’s guest-starring roles have been pretty weak, lacking the verve and excitement that Kirby brought to the character. In the final panel, Marvel promotes the coming of Ka-Zar and Zabu in ASTONISHING TALES:



(For the first two issues of AT, Ka-Zar would again be rendered by Jack Kirby, who seems to have had a lot of fun with the issue reprinted here.)

I am a little surprised that Marvel would have been publishing two Ka-Zar books at the same time, but this quarterly would have been a relatively inexpensive boost to the character’s presence. Ka-Zar’s run in ASTONISHING TALES would be moderately successful (moreso than the Dr. Doom co-feature in AT), leading to Ka-Zar’s own ongoing all-new solo series (starting over at #1). I’ll get to that one in a future post, and I’ve already sampled ASTONISHING TALES.
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Interesting. There're a few panels in there I could almost buy as early Wally Wood. Maybe that's Avon house style coming through.

Yes, it's interesting how non-villainous a blue-and-white super-costume looks!

There was a panel that followed that last one, where Tarzan slaps his forehead as Korak displays his manhood to the village. He adds, "That Boy ain't right!"