Thursday, October 09, 2025

I don't see how you're going to use disaster power for your planet's energy, but I guess I'm not the alien scientist.

All the days after the Great Disaster probably run together, and this might be a typical one for the Last Boy on Earth. From 1976, Kamandi #38, "Pyra Revealed" Written and edited by Gerry Conway, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Mike Royer.
While Kamandi is captured by a strange band of humans--they look human so far, which means they're probably going to peel their skin off any minute--Pyra's spaceship had been shot down and crashed, and after she pulls the shaken Dr. Canus from the wreck, the alien girl tells him her story. Her people, the Zirandians, were basically fireballs that occasionally took humanoid form to build or work; but when the planet started running out of energy, Pyra was sent searching for new sources, and saw what she later learned was the Great Disaster--whatever it was--from far in space, and began investigating earth. Unfortunately, most of earth was a flaming ruin by the time she arrived, with no one that could tell her what happened. She began collecting "artifacts," up to and apparently including the Great Sphinx from Egypt, and teleporting them back to Zirandus. But, she hadn't heard back from them, in all the decades she had been there.
One of the humans of "the tribe" had seemingly been a talking baby, and the girl Arna takes Kamandi to "the stalls." The tribe was what was left of a "top secret experimental population center," breeding children that grew from infancy to adulthood inside of three years...but they would also die around five or six. Arna asks Kamandi to put his hand in a machine, and he obliges, getting surprised with a "ZAZZZK" and a numb hand! Arna tells him that's only temporary, but that he'll soon be a father! The machine took "a reading of his genetic pattern," seemingly not even taking cells? And combining them with Arna's...shades of A Boy and His Dog there; not even having kids the fun way.
Kamandi, freaked, takes off running; and Arna gives chase, not just to get him back, but because losing a prisoner would be a sign of weakness and a death sentence in the tribe; so the guards were after them both. By the time Kamandi gets to a boat, the whole tribe was after them: a gaggle of really pissed off children with guns. As usual, Kamandi's too soft-hearted to leave Arna to die, so takes her onboard, but accidentally throws the boat into full speed. Arna also picks a bad time to admit, the machine wasn't a "genetic sampler," but took a sample of his "life energy," and would've taken more and more if he had remained: Kamandi considers putting her off the boat, but then has to knock her out when they struggle over the controls. Still, as usual Kamandi's out of the frying pan, into the fire, as their boat is attacked--and destroyed--by a giant lobster! Which seems a fairly typical Kamandi cliffhanger, as the next issue blurb teases "The Air-quarium!"
This was the first issue scripted by Gerry Conway, and Kirby only had a couple left on pencils.

4 comments:

Mr. Morbid said...

I’m honestly curious how Kirby felt about no longer being allowed to be the sole person in charge of dictating Kamandi’s stories. Was he slightly relieved to an extent? I know he was probably going through the motions to honor the remainder of his deal with DC, but still….Thankfully DC finally pulled the plug not too long after Kirby left.

H said...

No, it went on for almost two years after that- the only reason the book got canceled was the DC Implosion.

I’m pretty sure Kirby was glad DC let somebody else take over. He didn’t want to keep it going that long anyway- the Fourth World stuff was the big one for him, but Kamandi sold better so DC canceled most of them so he’d have time to do more Kamandi.

Mr. Morbid said...

Yeah Kamandi definitely went on far longer than it probably should’ve without Kirby’s direct involvement. Funny how with the exception of that all-too brief Wednesday comics strip in the 2010s, DC hasn’t done anything with the character in decades. I wonder why the lack of interest.

H said...

They’ve actually done a bunch with him, though admittedly mostly during the Kirby 100 celebration. There was the Kamandi Challenge maxi-series and I think he was a back-up feature in one of the specials too. He’ll occasionally show up in one of the specials or anthology miniseries DC puts out. They’ve used him in a couple of cartoon series as well. The future Earth thing does make it hard for him to guest star in any of the main series though, so that’s probably why so much of it is self-contained.