Kamandi

Kamandi is a DC Comics comic book character created by acclaimed artist Jack Kirby. The bulk of Kamandi's appearances occurred in the comic series Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, which ran from 1972 to 1978.

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Kamandi is a young hero in a post-apocalyptic future. After a huge event called "The Great Disaster", humans are a persecuted minority in a world ruled by intelligent, highly evolved animals.

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The concept for Kamandi seems to have come from four different sources:

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• The name "Kamandi" was recycled from a newspaper strip idea Kirby had once pitched, entitled "Kamandi of the Caves."
• In Alarming Tales # 1, September 1957, Kirby drew a story entitled "The Last Enemy." In this story, a man travels in time to the year 2514, where he finds that humans are extinct and the world is ruled by tribes of intelligent tigers, dogs, and rats. Kirby's drawings of these animals are very similar to his later drawings in Kamandi.
• The 1968 movie Planet of the Apes also portrayed an animal-ruled world. The cover of Kamandi # 1, showing a demolished Statue of Liberty, was clearly inspired by the similar scene in this movie.
• The premise for the book was suggested to Kirby by DC publisher Carmine Infantino. It is unknown whether he was familiar with Kirby's works mentioned above, but he certainly knew of Planet of the Apes.

As with the other books Kirby drew for DC in the 1970's, the plot was very much art-driven. Kirby's imagination would come up with a grandiose scene involving a battle between animal armies or a robot-run artificial satellite, and he would create a plot to go along with his artistic vision.

Kamandi: Origin of the concept ►



 

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Comic book: A comic book is a magazine or book containing the sequential art in the form of a narrative. Comic books are often called comics for short. Although the term implies otherwise, the subject matter in comic books is not necessarily humorous, and in fact its dramatic seriousness varies widely. The term...

Jack Kirby: Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994) was one of the most influential, recognizable and prolific artists in United States comic books. Born Jacob Kurtzberg to Jewish parents in New York City, he was also a comic book writer and editor....