This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at Marvel’s Astonishing Tales Vol 1 when it featured separate stories about Dr. Doom and Ka-Zar.
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #1 (Aug 1970)
Ka-Zar Title: The Power of Ka-Zar
Villain: Kraven the Hunter
Synopsis: After several guest appearances in series like The X-Men and Daredevil, Ka-Zar got this tryout for a series of his own. He is a Tarzanesque hero who operates in Marvel’s Savage Land, a hidden prehistoric jungle in the middle of Antarctica – a jungle heated by geothermal sources. Kraven the Hunter arrives in the Savage Land to capture Ka-Zar’s saber tooth tiger Zabu.
After a clash with our hero in the dinosaur-ridden jungle, Kraven wins and flees with Zabu in a net. Ka-Zar trails the villain to his ship where he plans to transport Zabu in a cage to the U.S. Ka-Zar defeats all of Kraven’s crew members but falls to a sneak attack by the Hunter himself. He survives a fall into the ocean and resolves to follow Kraven to America to rescue Zabu.
Dr. Doom Title: Unto You is Born … the Doomsman
Villain: Andro the Doomsman
Synopsis: Marvel’s popular villain Dr. Victor Von Doom got this tryout for his own series. From his castle in the fictional nation of Latveria, Dr. Doom watches the latest American Apollo flight to the moon. He teleports one of his communication devices to the moon right in the astronauts’ way on the lunar surface. Through the device he taunts the world that his teleportation technology is superior to any country’s rocket tech.
Meanwhile, Prince Rudolfo, the rightful ruler of Latveria, leads an attack on Doom’s castle with his freedom fighters. This distracts Victor from his just-finished android creation called Andro the Doomsman. While Dr. Doom defeats Rudolfo and his forces, Andro comes to life and wanders off.
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #2 (Oct 1970)
Ka-Zar Title: Frenzy on the Fortieth Floor
Villain: Kraven the Hunter
Synopsis: Ka-Zar tracks Kraven and his men to their high-rise lair in New York City. Our Lord of the Hidden Jungle defeats all of Kraven’s thugs and frees Zabu. The two then beat Kraven, who manages to escape. In the same building, Ka-Zar meets the new character Garokk the Petrified Man (later an X-Men villain) who threatens the destruction of the Savage Land.
Dr. Doom Title: Revolution
Villain: Andro the Doomsman
Synopsis: The captured Prince Rudolfo turns out to be an android duplicate constructed by the alien called the Faceless One. That alien has allied himself with the real Rudolfo and they resume plotting Doom’s overthrow. They recruit the Doomsman (at right) into their army and launch a new attack on Castle Latveria, with Rudolfo’s army now armed with laser weapons from the Faceless One.
Doom faces the new attack from the freedom fighters, then the Faceless One fights him to a draw. To tip the scales, the Doomsman now joins in against his creator.
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #3 (Dec 1970)
Ka-Zar Title: Back to the Savage Land
Villains: Garokk and Zaladane
Synopsis: Garokk explains to Ka-Zar that he is a British sailor from 500 years ago transformed into a man of living stone by a serum made by Zaladane, High Priestess of the Sun God in the Savage Land. She and her pterodactyl-riding lizard-men warriors are waging war in the name of their Sun God and have been slaughtering villages of primitive tribes. Ka-Zar and Garokk return to the Savage Land and inspect a village wiped out by Zaladane. Another flying army of hers is about to strike our heroes.
Dr. Doom Title: Doom Must Die
Villain: Andro the Doomsman
Synopsis: Andro winds up trying to destroy both Dr. Doom AND the Faceless One while Prince Rudolfo and his rebels continue their attack on Castle Latveria. The Faceless One retreats back to his spaceship and Doom exiles Andro to another dimension. Victor stops Rudolfo’s advance but the Faceless One attacks in his ship, blasting Doom with anti-particles. Doom seems defeated but then uses his secret Vibration Machine to level all the buildings in Latveria rather than surrender.
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #4 (Feb 1971)
Ka-Zar Title: The Sun God
Villains: Zaladane and Garokk
Synopsis: Ka-Zar and Zabu lead the Vala-Kuri tribe in defending themselves against the aerial attack by Zaladane and her troops. Meanwhile, Garokk’s body completes its transformation, revealing that he is not just a duplicate of the stone idol of the Sun God, but IS the Sun God reborn. Ka-Zar convinces the confused Garokk to order his worshippers to lay down their weapons and stop slaughtering in his name. All obey except Zaladane, who flies off with Ka-Zar her captive.
Dr. Doom Title: The Invaders
Villains: The Red Skull and the Exiles
Synopsis: Dr. Doom mops up Rudolfo’s forces amid the devastated Latveria. Next, with typical cruelty his regime forces Latveria’s citizens into slave labor to rebuild all the tiny country’s buildings and infrastructure while he vacations in the Riviera. Captain America’s archenemy the Red Skull and his subordinate team of supervillains called the Exiles take advantage of Doom’s absence to covertly take control of Latveria in the following months. When Doom at last returns to the rebuilt nation, the Red Skull and the Exiles reveal the citizens are now loyal to them.
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #5 (Apr 1971)
Ka-Zar Title: Rampage
Villains: Garokk and the Guardian of the Black Pool
Synopsis: Ka-Zar and the High Priestess Zaladane fight it out on her pterodactyl high above the Savage Land. The battle causes the pterodactyl to crash-land, but the Lord of the Hidden Jungle spares Zaladane’s life. She joins forces with Ka-Zar when the fully transformed Garokk’s insanity drives him to rampage through the Savage Land killing everything in his path.
Zaladane leads our hero to the Black Pool, source of the liquid that Garokk drank long ago, hoping those same waters can cure the Petrified Man. Ka-Zar defeats the giant Guardian of the Black Pool, then he and Zaladane lure Garokk there. Ka-Zar and Zaladane expose Garokk to another dose of the Black Waters, curing him of his immortality and seemingly bringing on his death.
Dr. Doom Title: A Land Enslaved (Like it wasn’t before?)
Villains: Red Skull and the Exiles
Synopsis: Dr. Doom is attacked by the Red Skull, the Exiles and an army made up of the citizens Doom mercilessly ruled over. All of them together manage to entrap Victor in a sarcophagus made of adamantium and leave him in it to die of thirst and hunger.
Assuming they are now in full control of Latveria, the Red Skull and the Exiles drop their pose of benevolence, disarm the citizens and make it clear they will rule the country like the Nazis ruled. Doom manages to make the sarcophagus unlock itself since it can’t be broken. Freed, he drives off the Red Skull and the Exiles and is once again the dictator of Latveria.
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #6 (Jun 1971)
Ka-Zar Title: Beware the Winds of Death
Villain: Damon
Synopsis: Ka-Zar and Zabu have befriended Tongah and his tribe the Fall People. Eventually, a being called Damon unleashes his storm and lightning powers on the Savage Land. Tongah points out that 5,000 years ago, the alien Damon and his mate Lelania landed in the Savage Land. When frightened humans caused Lelania’s death, Damon unleashed a powerful storm that lasted for days, then, exhausted fell into stasis.
The alien has awakened and has renewed his attack on the realm. Our hero, Zabu and Tongah try fighting Damon, while in England, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Barbara “Bobbi” Morse arrives at the castle of Lord Kevin Plunder (Ka-Zar’s real name) seeking his help. Damon drives all of the Fall People into caves, where a strange light attracts them.
NOTE: Yes, Ka-Zar was really an English Lord, like Tarzan. And Bobbi Morse goes on to become the superheroine called Mockingbird and marries the Avenger Hawkeye in the 1980s.
Dr. Doom Title: The Tentacles of the Tyrant
Opponent: The Black Panther
Synopsis: Dr. Doom decides he wants to seize large amounts of the fictional metal vibranium, which is to be found (in 1971) only in the Black Panther’s land of Wakanda and in the Savage Land. Oddly, rather than do a Dr. Doom vs Ka-Zar story, the writers have Doom locate Wakanda and raid the country to steal tons upon tons of vibranium.
The Wakandans, aware only that vibranium is being plundered, contact the Black Panther at Avengers Mansion in New York City. T’Challa flies home in a Quin-jet and winds up face to face with the vibranium thief, Dr. Doom.
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #7 (Aug 1971)
Ka-Zar Title: Deluge
Villain: Damon
Synopsis: While Ka-Zar, Zabu and Tongah continue ineffectually fighting Damon, his storm builds to the level where it threatens to cause a flood killing many people and dinosaurs in the Savage Land. Among the Fall People in the cave, it turns out the strange light is from Damon’s ancient spaceship, which contains the unconscious body of Lelania. Reuniting Damon with his mate prompts him to stop the storm he unleashed. He and Lelania leave the Earth, while Bobbi Morse learns she must seek Lord Kevin Plunder in the Savage Land.
Dr. Doom Title: And if I be Called Traitor
Opponent: Black Panther
Synopsis: Dr. Doom defeats and imprisons T’Challa. While Victor resumes his destructive raid of Wakanda, the Black Panther manages to escape. Using some of Doom’s own technology he threatens to cause the vibranium ore to explode, destroying Victor along with Wakanda. Dr. Doom surrenders and agrees to never attack Wakanda again in exchange for his life.
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #8 (Oct 1971)
Ka-Zar Title: The Battle of New Brittania
Villains: Heinrich Draco and his Neo-Nazi forces
Synopsis: When S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Bobbi Morse’s plane is shot down over the Savage Land’s Lost Lake, Ka-Zar and Zabu are recruited to find her. They beat a lake monster and find her on New Brittania/ Neu Deutschland, a large island in the middle of the lake. Bobbie bailed out via parachute and met some of the island’s inhabitants.
Those inhabitants are World War Two soldiers led by Rob Christopher who got stranded in the Savage Land in the 1940s while searching for nazi bases in Antarctica. Stranded, they intermarried with Savage Land women and led the tribe and the mixed British descendants in a war with Heinrich Draco and his Nazi troops whom the Brits were clashing with when they all got stranded.
The Nazis call the island Neu Deutschland and the Brits call it New Brittania. The Germans likewise intermarried with Savage Land women and lead a tribe and their own descendants in a never-ending war with their old WW2 enemies. Each side’s soldiers ride atop trained dinosaurs, and Bobbi, Ka-Zar and Zabu are stuck in the middle.
Dr. Doom Title: Though Some Call It Magic
Villain: Satan
Synopsis: It is the one night per year that Satan permits Dr. Doom to challenge one of his demons to a battle in order to free his mother Cynthia Doom from Hell. This time around, Satan pits the stone demon Kagrok against Victor in the depths of Castle Latveria. After a monumental battle, Kagrok wins, and a jeering Satan returns to Hell with the stone demon and with Cynthia Von Doom’s soul.
When he comes to, Doom vows to win next year’s battle.
*** This was the last Dr. Doom story in Astonishing Tales. Beginning with the next issue it was Ka-Zar’s series. If there is enough interest in this blog post I will cover the remaining issues featuring Ka-Zar, including part two of this New Brittania/ Neu Deutschland story.
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