Greetings, Groove-ophiles! Jack Kirby's second (and final)
Ka-Zar job for
Astonishing Tales (#2, July 1970) was a rare teaming of The King with the incredible Roy Thomas. Sam Grainger's still on the inks (and who messed with
Ka-Zar's face on page 4, panel 3 and again with the entirety of the second and third panels of page 5 --Marie Severin?) and
Kraven the Hunter is still the villain--at least for part of the story until the
Petrified Man makes the scene!
 |
| Cover art by John Buscema and John Verpoorten |
Beautiful finale for the King. One of the collections I've always wanted from Marvel and have never seen is a compendium of Ka-Zar's adventures. He sort of takes over for the Hulk as the itinerant character moving from X-Men to Daredevil to Spider-Man and elsewhere before landing his own one-shots and his eventual series in Astonishing Tales. Would love to have seen that in an Essentials and now in an Epic collection.
ReplyDeleteRip Off
How many times did Roy and Jack work together? I can just imagine that first splash page if Stan had scripted it - the bellboy would be saying "Why, it's Ka-Zar, the Lord of the Savage Land!" ...the older lady next to him would be exclaiming "I've never seen such brazen display in all my days!"...the African-American lady up the back would be thinking "Wait till I tell the girls about this!" The man front left would be saying "Jenkins! What's the meaning of this outrage?" while the fellow front right would be replying "I can assure you, Mr Fotheringay, it's never happened on my shift before!"
ReplyDeleteI'm diggin' it Groove! Wow how many times did the Lord of the Marvel jungle tussle with the ultimate hunter? Forget Hulk vs Thor, man, I'd cough up big bucks to see these two throw down anyday!
ReplyDelete- Mike from Trinidad & Tobago.
Awesome action in this. Thanks Groove!
ReplyDeleteWhen Marvel first announced the artists for Astonishing Tales would be Kirby and Wood, I naturally assumed Kirby would be penciller for Dr. Doom, a character he had excelled at portraying in the FF's mag. After getting over my initial disappointment with finding the King on Ka-zar instead (and bowled over by Wally Wood's artwork on the despot from Latveria), I really enjoyed Jack's 2 issue foray with the King of the Jungle. By the next issue Barry Smith would bring his unique talent to Ka-zar, giving the strip a semi-Conan feel. One thing I got tired of in the 70s was to open an issue of a comic and find an incompatibly drawn Marie Severin or John Romita, Sr. face/figure imposed on the artwork. Don't know what the problem was with pages 4 and 5 but the Severin redraws really disrupted the flow of the story.
ReplyDelete