Jungle Lords and Armored Despots, Part 2

Astonishing Tales #4 (February 1971) picks up Ka-Zar's story again, using this issue and the next one to finish up the current story arc. And there's a lot that happens in this story arc. It's actually interesting to consider how much story writer Gerry Conway and artist Barry Smith manage to fit so comfortably into a total of 20 pages.

It's another case in which multiple plot twists make it difficult to effectively summarize the plot. Ka-Zar is back in the Savage Land, hoping to somehow stop the rampaging army of the Sun People. The army is currently attacking a city of peaceful lizard men, who have been at peace so long they have no idea how to fight back.

I love Ka-Zar's attitude when he arrives to help. The story as a whole is an effective portrayal of the tragedy of war. But at the same time, Ka-Zar is given some dialogue that also points out the necessity of being ready to confront evil. "While you awaited your champion," he tells the lizard people when they say they can't fight for themselves, "your women died. Is this peace--or sheer folly?" Comic books from this era often don't get the credit they deserve for how thoughtful they could be.

In the meantime, the Petrified Man's continuing mutation gives him the power of the Sun God and he pretty much just orders the army to stop fighting. Queen Zaladane objects to this and has her pterodactyl snatch up Ka-Zar. The P. Man, though, soon goes insane with power. The action moves to the temple of the sun god, where lots of shenanigans ensue and Zaladane and Petrified Man end up dead. 

A great story, compactly and effectively told, visually striking and salted with a number of strong character moments.

The Dr. Doom half of the book is also fun, but I think a little less effective in its storytelling. Written by Larry Lieber, the art in issue #4 is still by Wally Wood (who had been the regular artist on the feature), with George Tuska taking over for the fifth issue.  Doom, while he's waiting for his castle to be rebuilt after the events in the previous issues, decides to spend a few days at the French Riveria to see how more mundane rich people entertain themselves. He's not impressed and after wrecking the casino in the hotel after someone implies he might be interested in mere money, he heads home.

In the meantime, the Red Skull--who is currently hanging out with a band of would-be despots known as the Exiles--decides that Latvaria would be a good place to start a Fourth Reich. Taking advantage of Doom's absense, he and his gang take over.

Doom returns and is, I think, too easily captured when he's knocked out via a gas attack. How many times in the past have we been shown his armor is air-tight? Gee whiz.

He escapes, though, fairly easily and sends the Red Skull and his gang packing without too much trouble. He also uses hypnotic gas to make them think he's shrunk them down before sending them back to their island hide-out.

The story has some fun imagery in it, but the Skull and his gang are far too underpowered to give Doom any significant trouble. There are some effective moments in the story showing how living under tyranny can bring out the worst aspects of human nature in some of the populace, but the action sequences simply don't have enough tension or excitement to them. Also, Doom seems far too merciful to the Skull and the other Exiles.

On the other hand, watching Doom taking some vacation time in the Riveria is undeniably fun.

Doom's feature lasted just a few more issues, though this does involve a great story featuring the Black Panther which I'll probably review eventually. Ka-Zar took over the feature as the sole lead through issue #20, then we got an unusual but fun set of stories featuring It, the Living Colossus--a character taken from a Tales of Suspense story from 1961. Deathlock the Destroyer showed up in issue #25 and stuck around until Astonishing Tales came to an end with its thirty-sixth issue.

So the days of anthology books featuring the seperate tales of two different characters came to an end. As I said last week, I miss books like that, but the economics of modern comics would probably never allow for it again. Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted.

We are overdue for a look at the next issue of Tragg and the Sky Gods, so we'll do that next week.

Jungle Lords and Armored Despots, Part 1

I wish the economics of modern comics still allowed for anthology books like Astonishing Tales. The first issue, cover-dated August 1970, featured two 10-page stories, each starring a very different character, with their individual stories told in a serial format. The book (along with Amazing Adventures, which premiered the same month) called back to the books of the 1960s that did the same thing.

At the time, comics were still priced low enough to be impulse buys and there was a good chance kids would buy one if at least one of the features captured their imagination. Besides, even when superhero comics once again became the dominant genre in comics, they still represented a lot of sub-genres--science fiction, fantasy, jungle adventures and so one were all mashed together. So I think you can argue that comic book fans have a wide range of interests in different genres. Maybe sometimes this is a little unconscious--we think "superheroes" and that's enough whether the story is set in an urban environment, a jungle or another planet. Heck, maybe a vibrant Comic Book Universe can build up our appreciation of different genres.

I think that Astonishing Tales and Amazing Adventures (which featured the Inhumans and the Black Widow) were the last gasps of the shared anthology book. But while they were around, they gave us some fun stories. Today, we'll take a look at the first three issues of Astonishing Tales, then next week we'll finish up this journey with the fourth and fifth issues.

Ka-Zar, the Lord of the Savage Land, headlines one of the features. The first two issues, written by Stan Lee (#1) & Roy Thomas (#2) and drawn by Jack Kirby, is a straight-forward tale. Kraven the Hunter decides that Zabu, the last sabertooth tiger in the world, would be a worthy prey. He travels to the Savage Land and manages to capture Zabu, escaping from Ka-Zar's wrath with the judicious use of knock-out gas. But Ka-Zar trails Kraven to New York City and another fight, this one in and outside a swank hotel, ensues. Kraven is injured and opts to run away.

The second issue ends with Ka-Zar confronted by a guy called (with good reason) the Petrified Man. In the third issue (with Gerry Conway now writing and Barry Smith providing some wonderful art), we discover that this guy was a sailor shipwrecked on the Savage Land who ended up drinking an elixar produced by a culture that worships a sun god. He became immortal, with his skin slowly turning to stone.


He warns Ka-Zar that the Sun People has gone on a rampage of destruction, fueled by religious fanaticism. Their queen, Zaladane, is leading an army riding pterodactyls and armed with weapons that are essentially tiny flamethrowers. Ka-Zar and his new ally return to the Savage Land to put a stop to this, but they appear to be too late.

So we have two issues that establish Ka-Zar's prime character traits (loyalty, responsibility to his homeland, kickbutt fighter) and give us several typically awesome Jack Kirby fight scenes. Then an issue that sets up the next story arc, but is expertly paced to still provide us with action and cool imagery.

But what is Dr. Doom doing all this time? Fighting off an attempted coup in Latvaria that involves robots, aliens and rayguns. Which I'm pretty sure is an average Tuesday for the good Doctor.

The first issue is written by Roy Thomas, with Larry Lieber taking over after that. Wally Wood draws all three issues (making Astonishing Tales extremely blessed in the quality of its art). The story is too convoluted to effectively summarize, so I'll be brief. Prince Rudolfo, the former ruler of Latvaria before Doom took over, is leading a rebellion. He plants a mole in Doom's castle--a lady who is the physical double of Doom's gypsy girlfriend from his youth. He also has an ally called the Faceless One, who turns out to be a small alien in a globe using a robot body.

Shenanigans ensue, in which Doom's latest creation--a robot with Doom's own brain patterns called the Doomsman--breaks loose. Alternately rampaging on its own or controlled again by Doom on brief occasions, he turns out to be a wild card that upsets everyone's plans. The Rudolfo leading the rebellion turns out to be a robot double which gets destroyed, the Faceless One is forced to fly off in a space ship and Doom destroys his own castle to also destroy the rebels.

It's a great story told very effectively over the course of the three issues, with the plot twists coming at a fast and furious pace. The one weak point is the Faceless One, whose exact identity and motivation are never explained. But he'll turn up again about three years later in an issue of Luke Cage and we'll eventually learn more about him.

So next week, we'll continue looking at the ongoing Ka-Zar story while also learning what Dr. Doom does when he decides to take a vacation.