Remember the
Last (Talking) Boy on Earth?


In a post this past Friday on Highlander's fancy new blog, he recounts how the World's Greatest Girlfriend (not to be confused with the World's Finest Girlfriend, who was doubtless some tease who kept Batman & Superman at each other's throats) gave him the DC Archives edition of the first 10 issues of Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth. Truly, H is blessed among men!

(This is something I'd considered buying when I saw it first solicited, opted to put off because of the expense, but may pick up for myself sometime soon anyway. Honestly, the color isn't so important for me with this, and one of those black and white Showcase editions DCs gotten into recently would be an ideal way to collect this series in probably two volumes. Still, full color and glossy paper is a great way to go.)

Back at the start of the 1970s, Jack Kirby left Marvel Comics and started creating new properties over at DC, acting openly as writer and artist. My favorite of his new series were the adventures of a teenage boy left to fend for himself in a post-apocalyptic event ("The Great Disaster") that had left the surviving humans a mute brutes, and most animals (horses seemed exempt) "evolved" into speaking, tool-making and using bi-peds. Basically, it was Planet of the Apes run amok. This was Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth.

One spot to find out something about him would be kamandi.com, though it's another of those sites that started out with lots of ambition and fails repeatedly, mostly due to trying to be cleverly flip and failing. Plenty of good scans, though. Better, tigher overviews can be found here and here.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hey, thanks for the plug, and all the Kamandi links. I finished reading the hardcover today, and it's a wonderful trip through one of Kirby's more deranged visions. While I'd love to see an ESSENTIAL KAMANDI, which I think could just about fit in all the official Kirby issues, having this one in full color on lovely paper is a great feeling.

I wanted to mention, to anyone who may be interested, that the link to my full blog is http://www.angelfire.com/droid/annals/000, if people want to read more than just the Kamandi entry. Now that I'm using Angelfire's blog building software, I update considerably more often than I used to, so for those who are interested in geek nonsense as filtered through the mind of the man named Highlander, it may be more worth making a trip than it used to be.

Thanks again for the plug, though. And yes, I definitely do have the most wonderful girlfriend in the world.
Mike Norton said…
You're welcome!

I've had your full, general blog address (with the "/000" extension) over in my links list since you told me about it, but you're right, I probably should have included it up here, too. When I checked the targeted link it had weekly archive links over to the left, so I figured people would just click on those once they were over there to see what else you'd been writing.

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