Dinosaur Week Extreme!

KA-ZAR #2, Marvel Comics, June 1997
Ka-Zar is this Tarzan type who lives in the Savage Land, a "Lost World" in the middle of the Antarctic. This series by Mark "can do no wrong" Waid and Andy "Son of Joe" Kubert sent Ka-Zar and his family to the "urban jungle" of New York, but in this issue at least, they're all back in the real jungle of Antarctica. Uhm... yeah (it's a comic, folks!).

Now, like Batman and Siskoid, Ka-Zar is a cat person, and in the previous issue, his sabertooth tiger Zabu was severely injured in a fight, so naturally, Ka-Zar wants to KICK SOME SERIOUS ASS! I can't blame him, I would be the same way. So he goes off after this guy Gregor who claims to have been Kraven the Hunter's teacher (you know, the guy who hunted Spider-Man before making himself a shotgun sandwich) while his wife Shanna takes care of Zabu. After all, she's a vet.

The last time I went to the vet for my own cat Gazou a couple of weeks ago (Gazou, Zabu... fairly close) for a urinary tract infection, if my vet looked anything like Shanna, I would have gladly let her fiddle with his "peenooss" (his pronunciation, not mine) for 5 minutes and paid my 130$ without so much as a peep. Gentlemen, I believe I hear you asking for a closer look:
Meeow indeed. Watch out though. They don't call her the "She-Devil" for nothing. So Ka-Zar has an immensely hot wife and a killer cat. And you should see the babysitter! She takes on a whole tribe of Gregor's loyal followers and breaks quite a few heads when they attempt to kidnap Ka-Zar's young son. And as Gregor asks our hero: "I have strength on my side! Cunning and bloodlust! What have you?"
"Allies." BAM!!! And here Gregor thought he was on a tree trunk. This is Dinosaur Week after all! And as you can see, Ka-Zar is a bit of a jungle Aquaman. To me, that rocks. But wait! Didn't a villain kill the blond Aquababy? And now Gregor gets his hands on a certain blond Jungle Tot! This can come to no good. And as the action gets bolder and bolder (by which I mean more and more like Transporter 2 and less and less like Greystoke), you're not sure if the kid's gonna make it.

Dinosaur week! I keep forgetting. Ok, here's a Triple X extreme (i.e. ridiculous) action bit starring a dinosaur. Gregor, baby in hand and Ka-Zar in tow, pilots a Return of the Jedi flying sled through the Savage Land trying to shake our hero off. Can he make it through the jaws of death in time?
Well, I'm not really sure Gregor should make it through, but since Mark Waid can do no wrong, I'm just gonna say it's Kubert who fails to sell it, but also that this isn't the best crafted moment in the book (no Shanna, for one thing). A couple of pages later, the sled crashes and burns in the wintry snows of Antarctica and it's all over for baby-Zar. Or is it? Well, it just isn't revealed here, so you'll just have to track down your own copy of the Ka-Zar #3 until I decide to review it myself.

Comments

mwb said…
Oh, yeah. Kazar. I remember that fondly.

One of the more interesting pocket worlds of Marvel.

My favorite is still that Hulk microworld with Jarella.
Siskoid said…
That was Mantloriffic.