Kamandi
Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth (Eng. "Kamandi, the last boy on earth") was the title of a comic series which the American publisher DC Comics published in the 1970s.
The series was conceived by the author and draftsman Jack Kirby - who also wrote and drew the stories of the first years - and can be found in the field of science fiction and fantasy . Due to the anti-utopian initial scenario, there is also the element of an indirect social and political criticism that pessimistically reflects the zeitgeist of the arms race of the major nuclear powers and the belief in technical progress.
Plot and main character
Kamandi is set in a dystopian future (called Earth A [fter] .D [isaster]), in which humanity fell back to the cultural stage of the Stone Age as a result of an unspecified, devastating event . The exact circumstances of the event, which is only known as the "great disaster", are never exactly disclosed within the series. The dialogues of the characters within the series only suggest that the great catastrophe took place "a few generations" before Kamandi's plot began. Given the contemporary historical background of the Cold War, however, it is obvious that a nuclear war to accept as a reason for just that devastation, especially as such in other about published at the same time works the same starting scenarios - such as the Planet of the Apes films - the standard explanation for the relapse of Humanity formed into "barbaric" stages of development.
In the opposite way to the development of mankind, Kamandi shows the evolutionary line of animals, which in the future world of the series have developed mentally and physically, can speak and think like humans, and just as they wear clothes, build houses and machines and Can handle tools and weapons.
The plot of the series begins with the death of Kamandi's grandfather, the "last boy on earth" mentioned in the series title (which is quite inapplicable within the series in the literal sense). A retrospective explains that grandfather and grandson had lived for a number of years in an abandoned bunker , where the senior raised his grandson and prepared him for the life in the wilderness, into which the now more self-reliant boy came after Death of his grandfather moves out to seek his fortune. He takes the name Kamandi after the name of the bunker, "Command D", which he takes up phonetically and reshapes.
Released into the wilderness, the boy experiences countless adventures resulting from the scenario of a Stone Age-like world populated by intelligent animals: he competes with intelligent gorillas , has to evade the pursuit of hordes of animals , and has to assert himself against a gang of criminal robots that rule Chicago and escape the pursuit of wild tribes. One of the recurring supporting characters in the series is Kamandi's mutant friend Ben Boxer.
Artistic templates
Possible sources for Kamandi include the 1968 film Planet of the Apes as well as two stories that Kirby himself had created years earlier: One is a newspaper comic strip entitled Kamandi of the Caves - from which at least the title of the "Stone Age Comics" is borrowed - and a story called The Last Enemy which appeared in the September 1957 comic book Alarming Tales # 1. The latter was about a journey back in time to the year 2514, when mankind died out and the world was ruled by tribes of intelligent tigers, dogs and rats.
Publications under the Kamandi title
The first issue of the Kamandi series appeared in November 1972. The series reached a total of 59 issues, with the last issue in October 1976. Since then, the series has been picked up again and again, for example in 1993 with the mini-series Kamandi at Earth's End .
Artists involved in Kamandi
Jack Kirby was not only the creator of Karmandi, but also the author of the first 38 issues and illustrator of the first 40 issues of the series. Kirby Gerry Conway , Dennis O'Neil and Dick Ayers followed as authors .