Friday, February 6, 2009

After the Great Disaster



I haven't posted because I've been way busy with a writing project. Its about 2 AM now, forget what time it actually says on the blog, its wrong. I'll come up with something when my brain isn't mush. For now...

Well, you know my love for Jack Kirby. Final Crisis just finished, and one of the characters is, sure enough, holding this folded up map Jack Kirby drew for KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH#1, back in 1972. Now I have said that this guy was totally nuts with the stuff he did for DC in the three or four years he worked there. As far as I remember, Kamandi never got past North America, he went through New York, fought gangster robots in Chicago (of course, because Chicago=gangsters FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY), and he probably got to the West Coast, I can't recall. But just look at the shit he had going on here! There is like a decade worth of craziness here and nobody has done anything with it at all. What's your favorite place on the map?

7 comments:

Michael Fountain: Blood for Ink said...

I loved Kamandi, or rather the idea of Kamandi. Just one of those ideas that never found the right artist/writer combination; the animals never quite developed interesting personalities of their own, once you got past the "Oh, look, they're tigers and they're talking" novelty. Maybe a Richard Adams type?
Over on the Marvel side, I keep wanting someone to do something with Kirby and Lee's original kingdom of the High Evolutionary and animal knights of Wundagore. Arthurian animals, cool.

James Robert Smith said...

I really enjoyed KAMANDI when I was a kid. In fact, I liked pretty much all of Kirby's stuff when he switched over to DC when he finally got sick and tired of having Stan Lee's name forced on his work. Man, that had to sting, putting up every day of your life with seeing another man's name on the products of your own imagination and artistic skills. Alas, there is no justice.

Charles Gramlich said...

I might have to pick Orangutan Surfing society. I remember reading one or two of these back in the day but i didn't know there was a such a rich concept behind them.

Steve Malley said...

Well, I do like that NZ's not on there (or is it "Island o the GOd Watchers"?), but I'd have to go with Charles: book my holiday for the Orangutan Surfing Society *any* day!

Lana Gramlich said...

I like the island of gorilla commados. What a map!

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

OK, I don't get it. No one posts for three days on ME in the purple doorway until Bob does on Wednesday. Yet 5 of you comment on the cartoon map in 12 hours. And I should have taken the surfing society as my own, since everyone else wants it, too. Think I'll take that Australian Rat deal, they are up in the cormer with the domino masks.

I just know Kirby had to be taking some good shit when he came up with this map. Here he had a kid who really was on an adventure in what had been the USA, yet Kirby gave us an entire planet of craziness. And he was in his 50s when he came up with this, not some fresh out of college smoker-doper.

I've lost track of where they are, but if I can find them, I'm posting even more insane Kirbyness, his photo-montages fron NEW GODS and THE FOREVER PEOPLE. Screw Marvel, DC treated Kirby good.

Capcom said...

I've never heard of this, most girl boomers missed out on the good old comic stuff. Must look into it! So glad to learn things like this here. :-)

In the mean time, I'll take the land of the Pueblo Builders, I think. I need to go back out West for some unfinished life-business back there.

So sorry Wayne, I meant to comment on the purple door, but I forgot to! I like how it makes your hoody look lavender. ;-)