This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero blog post will look at DC’s variation on the original Planet of the Apes. The Kamandi series was a post-apocalypse tale with animals mutated into quasi-human forms and with human intelligence.
KAMANDI Vol 1 #1 (November 1972)
Title: The Last Boy on Earth
Villains: Wolf-Men, Tiger-Men and Leopard-Men
Synopsis: Years after an event remembered only as The Great Disaster, a teenage male named Kamandi lives with his grandfather in the remains of a military post called Command D. (Yes, the post name inspired our hero’s name Kamandi.)
Kamandi is rowing around flooded Manhattan and vicinity in his daily recon. When he returns to the command post he sees that anthropomorphic wolf-men have killed his grandfather.
Kamandi slays the wolf-men in turn and abandons his former home, driving off in the late wolf-men’s wagon. (Oddly, horses did not gain human form and intelligence and are still used to ride and as beasts of burden.)
After some time, the young man gets caught in the middle of a large-scale battle between an army of tiger-men and an army of leopard-men, all wearing the clothing and wielding the weapons of the humans who used to rule the world.
Kamandi winds up taken prisoner by the tiger-men and their general, Great Caesar. Continue reading
Balladeer's Blog 