Kamandi
Kamandi © Ilya
| Kamandi Editor: Jeremy Lewis Contributors: Dek Baker, Ed Hillyer, Jeremy Lewis |
Kamandi is a Black & White A5 comic featuring Jack Kirby's 1970s eponymous creation who was, we are assured, the last boy on Earth. "Whatever became of Kamandi?" ask Jeremy Lewis in the brief foreword. Well, the opening story Komodo! Commandos by Dek Baker, has Kamandi finding heaps of dead gorillas. A lion and a tiger turn up & tell Kamandi that the gorillas were killed by lizards. Then some lizards & kangaroos arrive. "That's right, drongos", says one kangaoo in an affectionate tribute to 'Home & Away'. Kamandi, the lion and the tiger kill the lizards and kangaroos. The End. All very lively & unpretentious but a bit inconsequential for the lead story in a comic designed to tell us "what became of Kamandi".
This comic's worth buying though cos of the second story, Ed Hillyer's The Black Bay of Oil, is great. The art is exiting & attractive, the writing is crisp & sassy. I have to say I never liked the basic Kamandi concept: 'animals become sentient & inevitably subjugate innocent man'. Every respectable post-holocaust series should, I can't help feeling, throw a party over the fact idiotic humanity has been all-but-eradicated, giving some other species the upper hand. So I'm not going to say I loved this piece for its underlying message.
Nevertheless, the zippy pace of the story, achieved mainly though bold cuts, left me no time to get bored & dwell on p.c. reservations (as I probably would have done had I been watching a film version: one massive advantage comics have over film is that the pace at which they are consumed is determined by the creator and the reader).
Most authors would probably have supplied an expository caption at the place where the story cuts to a decadent Egyptian animal court. Ed, however, leaves it unexplained which initially confused me. BUT! The clarity of the art meant it wasn't a bad kind of confusion, which just distances the reader, but a good kind which told me to pay more attention, put more effort in, to make the story come to life in my head. This story not only piqued my (previously non-existent) curiosity as to "what became of Kamandi", it also made me wonder what elements in the original series Ed drew on in writing this nifty yarn. "Next", announces the end-of-story-box, Screamers of the Madhole. Unfortunately, the indicium on Ed's splash page says Kamandi is published 'unthly', which doesn't sound so often.
The third piece, Him by Jeremy Lewis, has loopy dialogue humorously mirroring Kirby comic bollocks, but there's no story, which is a shame.
Chris Butler
| Kamandi: 32 A5 pages, colour card stock cover | Recieved at ZUM! HQ: no info |
no info in price - suggest £1 (+P+P) | Dek Baker, Cherokee Comics, 50 Haver Av, Kingstanding, Birmingham, B44 0PP & Probably from Jeremy Lewis, but I have no current address. If you have note of Jeremy's current address, please me, ta! |