Ugh, we're not doing "Blame Canada" again, are we?

My local comic shop keeps a rack by the door, of maybe not minty fresh books, but interesting ones: a lot of the Gold Key Twilight Zones I blogged last year were from there, a fistful of early Swamp Things, and a bunch of Kamandi. I'm almost getting a decent run going, but I wasn't sure if I had read this whole series before: from 1993, Kamandi at Earth's End #4, "The Man at Earth's End!" Written by Tom Veitch, pencils by Frank Gomez, inks by Mike Barreiro.

Tom Veitch wrote Star Wars: Dark Empire, which I think had one of my favorite lines in Star Wars comics, with Palpatine badmouthing Vader in a fight. I mention that, because this one...enh. This was an Elseworlds modernization of Kirby's Kamandi, but it doesn't have the evolved, talking animals anymore; which leaves a rather charmless apocalypse. It's kind of like if the original Kamandi had been inspired by Mad Max and its sundry knock-offs instead of Planet of the Apes. Raised in a bunker by the computer "Mother," Kamandi is kicked out into the world with a mission, to kill the man Mother claimed destroyed the world...a familiar figure, with a big red 'S.' Kamandi quickly picks up a couple sidekicks, um, Burly Gun-Guy, and Girl. Okay, they have names, but they're no Prince Tuftan or Dr. Canus. They're chased all the way across the country by Ben Boxer and his Terminator-like friends, who are both less and more human than they were in Kirby's version.

I didn't love this one, but I guess it did well enough that Veitch and Gomez got a prestige format one-shot sequel, for Superman: At Earth's End.