The origin of Ka-Zar. It’s billed as “revealed at last,” but we saw at least one other version before this, in Daredevil #13.
But this one is much more involved, so I suppose it is truth in advertising. Plus Ka-Zar pretends he’s in Apocalypse Now.
Uh-huh.
The story shows Ka-Zar rescuing two (British?) explorers from a big, fat snake, which causes him to tell his own story in flashback. Starting when he was a boy of privilege whose father, Lord Plunder, discovered a rare element and gave a piece of it to young Kevin and another to his brother, Parnival.
Daddy takes Kevin to the Savage Land. Daddy is killed by the Man-Ape tribe. Kevin nearly is as well, but Zabu rescues him.
We learn that the same tribe and tribal leader, Maa-Gor, killed Zabu’s family.
He grows up to be Kevin, and he doesn’t speak in stilted, broken English.
That’s a bit important for two reasons. First, it makes more sense than other renditions of Ka-Zar because he was a fully verbal kid when his dad was killed. Second, it starts to re-tool the character for the modern age as more than just a clone of Tarzan. Ka-Zar, rather, is a smart and articulate clone of Ka-Zar. He does still talk about himself in the third person though.
Eventually, he tracks down Maa-Gorr, and gets his vengeance.
But he doesn’t kill Maa-Gorr. Rather, he kills Maa-Gor’s entire tribe, just as Maa-Gor did to Zabu and Ka-Zar, and then leaves the man-ape live.
Ka-Zar then leaves with the British explorers to return home.
That’s the final panel of the series.
Besides the really well-done story in the final issue, this post is sweeping past issues #10 and 11, which feature a bunch of meh stories about Ka-Zar. More meh stories about Shanna. A few additional meh stories that simply take place in the Savage Land.
Actually, I would find the concept of stories that take place in the Savage Land sans established characters to be pretty interesting. You gotta figure the Savage Land is a pretty interesting place, and there’s lots of things going on there on a daily basis ( does the Savage Land even have days, considering it’s position on the Antarctic continent, or does it enjoy twenty-four hour sunshine, the same way that parts of the Arctic Circle gets six months of night?? If so, that would go a helluva long way in explaining all the giant fauna running around eating people all the time ) that doesn’t involve the X-Men, or even Ka-Zar and Zabu, for that matter. For me, a “Tales of the Savage Land” feature, identical to the ‘Thor’ series’ “Tales of Asgard” would be interesting. Of course, a lot of people think “The Micronauts” and “The Golem”, and “Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy”, and “Dazzler” are interesting, so what do I know??
If they’re done right, they can be good. I gave this one a B+!
By last issue of the series, I think you mean Savage Tales Annual #1, since there was no Savage Tales #12. The panels shown on this page must be from a black and white reprint in Savage Tales Annual of the story “A Day of Tigers!” from Astonishing Tales #11 (1972). Your post on the original story appearance (“ASTONISHING TALES #7-11 (1971-1972): Ka-Zar Stories only”) only gives it a D. But looks like you liked it a lot more the second time around with the B+.
Oops. I’m nothing if not inconsistent.
Don’t sweat it. I’ve certainly changed my opinion of a comic on a second read for better or worse. Maybe the Ka-zar origin story just works better in black and white.