Kamandi, The Last Boy On Earth #32 [1975] – Me

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kam32

From KAMANDI #32 (inked by D. Bruce Berry), a nice page that reminds us that despite all he’s gone through, Kamandi is still a kid, as is Tuftan, prince of the Tigers. An exciting issue overall, with all out war between the Tigers and the Gorillas while Dr. Canus gets to know a strange alien being. Because this was a “Giant” issue, Kirby got a few extra pages (23 as opposed to the standard 18 of the time), which really helps the pacing of this. It’s a damn shame that comics of the era got so stingy with the story page counts (going all the way to 17 pages an issue soon after, before that was reversed).

I really like Berry’s inking from this period as well. He started off, a year before this, a bit rough, especially compared to Mike Royer who had the art of inking Kirby perfected, but he had a pretty decent learning curve and managed to maintain the power of Kirby’s pencils.

kammap

This is the map that appeared in this issue (click on it for a larger scan), in the middle of the reprint of the first issue. It’s an expanded version of the map from #1, which only had North America and part of South America. Unfortunately, Kirby only got to less than half the world sketched out here. It’s clear that, if circumstances allowed him to stay, he could have done years more on the book. Ah, to see what Kirby would have done with the Orangutan Surfing Civilization…

Also in this issue is a four page profile of Jack Kirby by assistant Steve Sherman, with several photographs.

Published 1975

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