"The End" Week: Ka-Zar #20!

Here's a cancellation that feels like it caught the creative team by surprise, but you very likely might have read the character's next appearance! Which does not really do this one justice, or even lip-service. From 1977, Ka-Zar #20, "Assault on a Cold Fortress!" Written by Doug Moench, pencils by Val Mayerik, inks by Ernie Chan. 

 

This opens with Ka-Zar and his...gnome companion Zartros, on the distant planet Quarl, trying to steal their queen, and escape on a winged shark? Well, the 'queen' was really reporter Tandy Snow, brainwashed by the Quarlians, who thought she was some embodiment of prophecy. Ka-Zar kills more than a few of the aliens in the escape, while yelling at Tandy to try and snap her back, since the queen bit was annoying. But, as they fly off to meet their friends; long-time supporting character Tongah of the Fall People, paleontologist Bernard Kloss, and Zabu the sabertooth tiger; were all dying of old age! Their youth had been stolen by some jerky tribe--the Kramen?--which at first seems to be unrelated to the next plot: the alien Sheenarians (who were also from Quarl?) have somehow crossed a portion of their dimension with a chunk of the Savage Land. They also had Klaw, who was primarily concerned with getting his ass back to earth.

Ka-Zar and company find the Kramen marching on the Sheenars--Sheenarians?--whatever; since the aliens had been stealing their youth, like they stole Tongah and Zabu's. Zartros even points out, it was suspicious the Kramen were young again all of a sudden; but Ka-Zar needed allies against the Sheenars. While Klaw makes his move to bail, Ka-Zar sneaks into the city on the winged shark, but finds himself under fire from a flying saucer: is this the end? The final page has a closing blurb: "To be continued...somewhere." Ka-Zar was being wrapped, possibly to make room for something else; and Moench and Mayerik would go on to Doc Savage (although Moench may have been already writing it) and maybe Planet of the Apes. And for Ka-Zar? The letters page promises, as was traditional at Marvel, the cliffhanger would be wrapped up in some other book later. Marvel Team-Up maybe, or Marvel Two-in-One? No, it would be wrapped up about a year and a half later, in X-Men #115! It got about four panels, and I think Zartros might've got sent back wherever, but still.