In recent years, DC has done a pretty fantastic job of releasing their inventory of Jack Kirby comics in nicely produced and fairly affordable (especially when compared to their Archives line) hardcovers. With a catalog as expansive as Kirby’s “Fourth World” work to his issues of the “Losers” to Joe Simon & Jack Kirby’s 1940s collaborations on “Sandman” all in omnibus reprints, Kirby’s apocalyptic adventure series “Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth” stood out as a glaring omission. Recently, though, the first volume of an omnibus reprinting of the classic series finally has been released.

Here’s the first page of “Kamandi” #1 via the Jack Kirby Museum.

According to a Comics Urban Legends Revealed article, Kirby created “Kamandi” when then-publisher of DC Carmine Infantino asked him to create a title like the movie series “Planet of the Apes.” Kirby’s series of tales featuring a lone boy wandering a ruined landscape dominated by a wide range of animal men certainly certainly fits the bill. He was able to take that derivative premise and use it to create some of the most exciting comics of his career. In part, some of Kirby’s success with the series ability to be as flexible as his imagination. Kamandi was a comic where Kirby could have biker gangs, UFOs, and Tiger Princes all share the same pages. It felt like no idea was too big or too weird for it. Factor in how Kamandi’s story was very much a quintessential apocalyptic road trip story that constantly moved forward to new locales just as Kirby constantly pushed the plot of the story to unpredictable places. I can’t think of a 1970s Kirby work better suited for the restless style of his comics from the decade.

“Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth” is a comic as influential on mainstream comics as it is on the world of alt-comix work like adventure stories of guys like Brian Ralph and Kazimir Strzepek. Anyone with an interest in Kirby’s work or wasteland adventure should check the omnibus out.

-Nick

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