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Kamandi Archives
Kamandi Archives, Vol. 1
The first archive in a series collecting the adventures of Kamandi, the last boy on Earth, by Jack Kirby! In these tales from KAMANDI #1-10 (1972-1973), Kamandi --one of the few survivors of the Great Disaster -- must make his way in a world populated by bizarre mutated animals and other strange wonders!
242 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2005
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153 people want to read
About the author
Jack Kirby
2,802 books473 followersJack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) was one of the most influential, recognizable, and prolific artists in American comic books, and the co-creator of such enduring characters and popular culture icons as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, and hundreds of others stretching back to the earliest days of the medium. He was also a comic book writer and editor. His most common nickname is "The King."
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 13, 2013
This hardback collection gathers the first ten issues of Jack Kirby's kitchy mid-1970's classic series Kamandi, the last boy on Earth. The comic book series is set in an apocalyptic future where mankind is all but extinct with humanoid animals being the norm. The color is bold and the pages surge with that dynamic structure Kirby brought to page design. There are a dozen ideas in the first few issues, but it feels forced and ultimately flat.
Much like Sherlock Holmes solved the Riddle of the Dog Who Did Not Bark, for me, Kamandi solved the Riddle of the Missing Co-Creators. Without Stan Lee, the dialogue is clunky and the stories lack focus. Without Joe Sinnott, the art is not grounded in a believable reality.
It's a gloriously loud mess of a book that has been grist for future mills. Like any corporate character, Kamandi will not slip away, but will be endlessly reinvented and reimagined. These stories feel like they're one good re-write short of being great.
Much like Sherlock Holmes solved the Riddle of the Dog Who Did Not Bark, for me, Kamandi solved the Riddle of the Missing Co-Creators. Without Stan Lee, the dialogue is clunky and the stories lack focus. Without Joe Sinnott, the art is not grounded in a believable reality.
It's a gloriously loud mess of a book that has been grist for future mills. Like any corporate character, Kamandi will not slip away, but will be endlessly reinvented and reimagined. These stories feel like they're one good re-write short of being great.
November 21, 2022
While there's some cool designs here, it's not exactly Kirby's greatest art, and it's all in service of an uninspired Planet-of-the-Apes knockoff plot.
January 21, 2024
One of my favorite comics from my childhood, Kamandi still holds up as delightful escapist fiction. I revisit the dystopian class reversal world of Kamandi every couple of years and am always delighted at it's blend of action, adventure, mystery and excitement. While Kamandi does not always sit well with all comic book fans, or even fans of Jack Kirby, it should delight anyone who craves adventure, has a strong suspension of disbelief and is young at heart. If you are a fan of either the original Jonny Quest or Planet of the Apes, you should check out Kamandi - and if, like me, you are a fan of both - you will love Kamandi.
Update: I just reread, again, the ten issues collected in this volume and they are an adrenaline rush of pure excitement, non-stop action and thrills, with mysteries and cliffhangers galore. No-holds-barred adventure!
Update: I just finished rereading these issues again. When this series was first coming out this volume contains both the five issues (#1, 3, 4, 8, 9) that made me fall in loving obsession with this series, and the five issues (#2, 5, 6, 7, 10) that I missed which resulted in massive frustration and caused me to make Kamandi the first series to which I got a subscription. So half of these issues I’ve read so many times that I can almost recall them from memory and half that still feel like new when I reread them now. But in either case, Kamandi represents a series that I cannot imagine ever getting tired of. Kamandi is a series that illustrates Kirby’s boundless imagination as well as his ability to get distracted, head off on tangents, and refocused over and over again.
Update: I just reread, again, the ten issues collected in this volume and they are an adrenaline rush of pure excitement, non-stop action and thrills, with mysteries and cliffhangers galore. No-holds-barred adventure!
Update: I just finished rereading these issues again. When this series was first coming out this volume contains both the five issues (#1, 3, 4, 8, 9) that made me fall in loving obsession with this series, and the five issues (#2, 5, 6, 7, 10) that I missed which resulted in massive frustration and caused me to make Kamandi the first series to which I got a subscription. So half of these issues I’ve read so many times that I can almost recall them from memory and half that still feel like new when I reread them now. But in either case, Kamandi represents a series that I cannot imagine ever getting tired of. Kamandi is a series that illustrates Kirby’s boundless imagination as well as his ability to get distracted, head off on tangents, and refocused over and over again.
January 30, 2023
In an unspecified future time, a boy emerges from an underground bunker, where he had thus far spent his entire life. He finds a world in which humans have become feral creatures, while tigers, lions, leopards, gorillas and other “animals” have become anthropomorphized members of advanced civilizations.
Yes, the PLANET OF THE APES parallels are striking…and deliberate. The APES movies were quite popular in 1972, when KAMANDI debuted, and Wikipedia tells me that publisher DC Comics wanted a piece of that pie. According to Wikipedia, DC couldn’t obtain a license to publish PLANET OF THE APES comics, so they charged writer/artist Jack Kirby with creating something similar.
Of course, this was the Jack Kirby who co-created (with Stan Lee) much of the Marvel universe. He isn’t going to just copy PLANET OF THE APES. While the inspiration is evident, then, the end product is pure Kirby. Thus, we have a great variety of anthropomorphic animals, with apes being only one species. The animals have built cities, and they fight wars, drive cool-looking futuristic vehicles, and even hunt humans or put them in “nature reserves.” There are tiger soldiers, dog scientists, lion park rangers and gorilla cowboys. Kamandi encounters them all - and many more - as he explores this strange new world.
As is typical with Kirby, ideas come fast and furiously, and the story moves at a frenetic pace. There is thus little time for details, and in this first volume (reprinting the first ten issues from 1972-1973) we never learn what caused this massive world change. We’re merely told that there was a “natural disaster” and that radiation somehow resulted from this. When did this disaster occur? Did the grandfather who raised Kamandi (We never actually see him, and he dies offscreen.) remember the world before the disaster…or did several generations of Kamandi’s family live in that bunker? If so, then how did they survive that long? Why do most animals seem anthropomorphized, except, apparently, for the horses that some ride and the giant, savage bats who attack Kamandi near the end of the volume?
As I read, I came to appreciate Kirby’s wisdom in leaving such matters vague. This decision left my imagination to roam and likely allowed Kirby to get on with the story and let it take him wherever it will. If you’re looking for sophisticated fantasy world-building, then…well, you won’t find it here, but you will find plenty of imagination and a lot of fun.
If you’ve read to this point, then you may already know if KAMANDI will be for you. It’s true that it won’t be for everyone. Comics fans love Kirby for his contributions to the medium but are decidedly divided on his post-1970 work without collaborator Stan Lee. To detractors, Kirby had great ideas but also some silly ideas and shallow characters. Lee, they argue, added greater characterization, better dialogue and irreverent humor. Kirby’s work does sometimes seem quaint and old-fashioned now, and KAMANDI does often read as an old-fashioned “boy’s adventure story,” with the scarcity of female characters being especially noticeable today.
There are also ways, though, in which Kirby seems ahead of his time. I noted his frenetic pacing, for example, and in this sense, KAMANDI often feels like a modern action movie. Something is always happening or about to happen, and while you might deem KAMANDI goofy, it’s unlikely to bore you. Kirby’s art, as always, is very dynamic, and Kirby especially excels at action scenes, of which there are many. In fairness, I’ll note that some also find Kirby’s art ugly, but to many others - including myself - it remains kinetic, dynamic and exciting.
Some argue that Kirby doesn’t write characters well. It’s perhaps worth nothing, then, that Kirby's characters have endured much longer than those of virtually any other creator. Even if we only consider his post-1970 work, we still have the Fourth World characters (with DC especially making frequent use of “cosmic” villain Darkseid - who in turn inspired Marvel’s Thanos), the Demon, Cobra, OMAC, the Eternals (who recently starred in their own film.), Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur and the villain Arnim Zola, to name a few. Writers clearly find something appealing about these characters, as they revive them again and again, and I’m not convinced that later efforts to give them more depth have improved them. Say what you will about Kirby’s characters, but they’re always well defined and memorable. Kamandi himself is young and a bit naive and impulsive, but also brave and heroic. He well serves the story that Kirby wants to tell.
This last point may explain modern fans’ gripes about Kirby. Like many writers of his generation, Kirby puts the story first and his characters exist in service of it. Today’s fan audiences, however, often prefer the reverse. The current existence of highly profitable character-driven media franchises have only solidified both the supply of and demand for such material.
Kirby is most definitely “for me,” and I find KAMANDI a bold, exhilarating romp. Will it be for you? If you’ve encountered Kirby’s work before, then you’ll already know the answer, as KAMANDI is not a big departure from his canon. If you haven’t encountered Kirby before, then I encourage you to do so, and KAMANDI is as good a place to start as any. Given that the series is completely stand alone, in fact, with no shared universe continuity baggage, it might even be a better place than most.
If you’re STILL wondering whether to try KAMANDI, then I’ll note again that there are “tiger soldiers, dog scientists, lion park rangers and gorilla cowboys,” along with giant, savage bats, futuristic vehicles, a deadly sentient virus, a small misshapen villain with a large head, tigers warring with gorillas, and…I could go on and on. If you’re like me, then you were probably hooked with the phrase “gorilla cowboys.” Seriously - how could that NOT be a winner?
Yes, the PLANET OF THE APES parallels are striking…and deliberate. The APES movies were quite popular in 1972, when KAMANDI debuted, and Wikipedia tells me that publisher DC Comics wanted a piece of that pie. According to Wikipedia, DC couldn’t obtain a license to publish PLANET OF THE APES comics, so they charged writer/artist Jack Kirby with creating something similar.
Of course, this was the Jack Kirby who co-created (with Stan Lee) much of the Marvel universe. He isn’t going to just copy PLANET OF THE APES. While the inspiration is evident, then, the end product is pure Kirby. Thus, we have a great variety of anthropomorphic animals, with apes being only one species. The animals have built cities, and they fight wars, drive cool-looking futuristic vehicles, and even hunt humans or put them in “nature reserves.” There are tiger soldiers, dog scientists, lion park rangers and gorilla cowboys. Kamandi encounters them all - and many more - as he explores this strange new world.
As is typical with Kirby, ideas come fast and furiously, and the story moves at a frenetic pace. There is thus little time for details, and in this first volume (reprinting the first ten issues from 1972-1973) we never learn what caused this massive world change. We’re merely told that there was a “natural disaster” and that radiation somehow resulted from this. When did this disaster occur? Did the grandfather who raised Kamandi (We never actually see him, and he dies offscreen.) remember the world before the disaster…or did several generations of Kamandi’s family live in that bunker? If so, then how did they survive that long? Why do most animals seem anthropomorphized, except, apparently, for the horses that some ride and the giant, savage bats who attack Kamandi near the end of the volume?
As I read, I came to appreciate Kirby’s wisdom in leaving such matters vague. This decision left my imagination to roam and likely allowed Kirby to get on with the story and let it take him wherever it will. If you’re looking for sophisticated fantasy world-building, then…well, you won’t find it here, but you will find plenty of imagination and a lot of fun.
If you’ve read to this point, then you may already know if KAMANDI will be for you. It’s true that it won’t be for everyone. Comics fans love Kirby for his contributions to the medium but are decidedly divided on his post-1970 work without collaborator Stan Lee. To detractors, Kirby had great ideas but also some silly ideas and shallow characters. Lee, they argue, added greater characterization, better dialogue and irreverent humor. Kirby’s work does sometimes seem quaint and old-fashioned now, and KAMANDI does often read as an old-fashioned “boy’s adventure story,” with the scarcity of female characters being especially noticeable today.
There are also ways, though, in which Kirby seems ahead of his time. I noted his frenetic pacing, for example, and in this sense, KAMANDI often feels like a modern action movie. Something is always happening or about to happen, and while you might deem KAMANDI goofy, it’s unlikely to bore you. Kirby’s art, as always, is very dynamic, and Kirby especially excels at action scenes, of which there are many. In fairness, I’ll note that some also find Kirby’s art ugly, but to many others - including myself - it remains kinetic, dynamic and exciting.
Some argue that Kirby doesn’t write characters well. It’s perhaps worth nothing, then, that Kirby's characters have endured much longer than those of virtually any other creator. Even if we only consider his post-1970 work, we still have the Fourth World characters (with DC especially making frequent use of “cosmic” villain Darkseid - who in turn inspired Marvel’s Thanos), the Demon, Cobra, OMAC, the Eternals (who recently starred in their own film.), Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur and the villain Arnim Zola, to name a few. Writers clearly find something appealing about these characters, as they revive them again and again, and I’m not convinced that later efforts to give them more depth have improved them. Say what you will about Kirby’s characters, but they’re always well defined and memorable. Kamandi himself is young and a bit naive and impulsive, but also brave and heroic. He well serves the story that Kirby wants to tell.
This last point may explain modern fans’ gripes about Kirby. Like many writers of his generation, Kirby puts the story first and his characters exist in service of it. Today’s fan audiences, however, often prefer the reverse. The current existence of highly profitable character-driven media franchises have only solidified both the supply of and demand for such material.
Kirby is most definitely “for me,” and I find KAMANDI a bold, exhilarating romp. Will it be for you? If you’ve encountered Kirby’s work before, then you’ll already know the answer, as KAMANDI is not a big departure from his canon. If you haven’t encountered Kirby before, then I encourage you to do so, and KAMANDI is as good a place to start as any. Given that the series is completely stand alone, in fact, with no shared universe continuity baggage, it might even be a better place than most.
If you’re STILL wondering whether to try KAMANDI, then I’ll note again that there are “tiger soldiers, dog scientists, lion park rangers and gorilla cowboys,” along with giant, savage bats, futuristic vehicles, a deadly sentient virus, a small misshapen villain with a large head, tigers warring with gorillas, and…I could go on and on. If you’re like me, then you were probably hooked with the phrase “gorilla cowboys.” Seriously - how could that NOT be a winner?
June 13, 2025
Old school Marvel from the 1970s. I think Kirby was capitalizing on the popularity of the original Planet of the Apes movies. Fun stuff to inform my DCC gonzo Mutant Crawl Classics Role Playing Game/Star Crawl game (if we ever get around to playing it!)
April 3, 2018
It's mid-70s Kirby, so it's awesome. It's not nearly Fourth World or OMAC awesome, but Kamandi has a pretty great concept and Kirby goes about establishing his world and its various tribes very effectively. And it's filled with crazy Kirby action and totally insane imaginings of the future. I really enjoyed it.
December 28, 2025
Jack Kirby's nickname is "The King" for a reason. And Kamandi is one of his very best works. I had never read more than a couple of issues. I don't even care if he was greatly influenced by PLANET OF THE APES, this is great stuff. LOVED IT.
March 25, 2018
Mostly solid action-adventure, with a few poignant reflections on human folly and dignity.
June 11, 2014
One of the nice things about visiting my brother is that I never leave empty handed. This holiday he lent me two volumes of Kamandi Archives, beautiful full color glossy reprints of the (to me, anyways) relatively obscure Jack Kirby series from the 1970s. Although Kirby is best known today for his superhero work, he worked in most comic book genres, from romance to adventure to science fiction. Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth is an adventure/sci-fi/strange tales comic, set generations in the future where a great cataclysm has reduced man to a beast-like state while elevating animals to the level of humans. In the opening story Kamandi, a boy who grew up in "Command Post D", a military bunker, is torn from his protected hideout by raiding wolf men, who kill his grandfather and destroy his home. Kamandi begins to wander this strange new world, aided by his knowledge gained from his family's "microfilm library" and the training they gave him. Kamandi is nearly as highly (and randomly) trained as a James Bond or Captain America, always knowing what he needs to know to fight and think his way out of a given situation. Although the story obviously owes a deep debt to Planet of the Apes, as it goes on it evolves (pardon the pun) beyond being a rip-off and into something new, reminiscent of earlier stories like Flash Gordon (with it's hero wandering from place to place, always finding new challenges and new allies, usually won through his noble actions). I can only imagine how many of my older brother's Gamma World campaign ideas came from pages of comics like these. It's also easy to see the book's influence on the later series Thundarr the Barbarian, whose production design was also worked on by Jack Kirby.
If you enjoy Jack Kirby, post apocalypse settings, mid 20th century Sci-Fi, or just a good romp of a story, you'll love Kamandi
If you enjoy Jack Kirby, post apocalypse settings, mid 20th century Sci-Fi, or just a good romp of a story, you'll love Kamandi
August 3, 2008
Jack Kirby was the King of comics, and Kamandi was one of his babies. A wonderful mess, a parody of society in the spirit of Gulliver's Travels and an "homage" of sorts to the movie Planet of the Apes, as well as to Boulle's original novel. (Later movies on the Planet of the Apes series would return the honor by freely borrowing some of Kirby's story points.)
Set some decades after the mysterious and terrible Great Disaster, Kamandi is The Last Boy on Earth. Except that he isn't, not necessarily, since there are plenty of other humans on Earth, mostly reverted to a wild, dumb state. Nor is Kamandi the only talking boy on Earth: in the first few issues we meet plenty of other humans who can talk. Consistency was never a huge consideration in this series, and plot points are often discarded almost as soon as they are brought up.
But none of that is important. The art is pure Kirby, rough and beautiful at the same time. These stories are just a fun, ridiculous romp, as Kirby puts his vaguely homoerotic hero up against talking apes, pumas, leopards, rats, dogs, lions, tigers, and bears, giant bacteria and spandex-wearing bats, pumpkin-headed Misfits and atomic-hearted Mutants.
Kamandi is brash and impetuous, guaranteed to react to any situation in the most inadvisable way possible, usually with tremendous violence and disastrous consequences all around. His situations tend to go from bad to worse, but he's a born survivor who manages to make it through - and meets plenty of bizarre characters along the way.
Kamandi Archives Volume 1 collects issues 1 through 10 of the series, from 1972 through 1973. If you're a fan of Kirby or just have a taste for post-apocalyptic satire, this is a must-read!
Set some decades after the mysterious and terrible Great Disaster, Kamandi is The Last Boy on Earth. Except that he isn't, not necessarily, since there are plenty of other humans on Earth, mostly reverted to a wild, dumb state. Nor is Kamandi the only talking boy on Earth: in the first few issues we meet plenty of other humans who can talk. Consistency was never a huge consideration in this series, and plot points are often discarded almost as soon as they are brought up.
But none of that is important. The art is pure Kirby, rough and beautiful at the same time. These stories are just a fun, ridiculous romp, as Kirby puts his vaguely homoerotic hero up against talking apes, pumas, leopards, rats, dogs, lions, tigers, and bears, giant bacteria and spandex-wearing bats, pumpkin-headed Misfits and atomic-hearted Mutants.
Kamandi is brash and impetuous, guaranteed to react to any situation in the most inadvisable way possible, usually with tremendous violence and disastrous consequences all around. His situations tend to go from bad to worse, but he's a born survivor who manages to make it through - and meets plenty of bizarre characters along the way.
Kamandi Archives Volume 1 collects issues 1 through 10 of the series, from 1972 through 1973. If you're a fan of Kirby or just have a taste for post-apocalyptic satire, this is a must-read!
November 1, 2008
The art is great. The question about KAMANDI is whether or not it is just a rip-off of PLANET OF THE APES. The answers are yes and no, sadly.
Yes, Kirby blatantly rips off the key extrapolation that makes PotA science fiction. This is very very bad because it is the core of another artist's work. The look and feel and somewhat different, but the emotional heart and key idea of PotA is utterly stolen.
No, Kirby does not JUST rip off PotA. He adds his own amazing genius and creativity to the mix, with original ideas, mind-blowing original plots (at times), and the true crazy Kirby science fiction ideal that made him what he was.
So both are true. It has much originality, and it clearly stole the most original thing that makes PotA what it was--a man's world flipped over and ruled by animals. When he ripped off mythology, it felt new and fresh because gods have been around since man could imagine. But Pierre Boulle's idea was truly original, and for some reason Jack felt he could just take the heart of PotA and use it himself. Sad. But the art rocks!
Yes, Kirby blatantly rips off the key extrapolation that makes PotA science fiction. This is very very bad because it is the core of another artist's work. The look and feel and somewhat different, but the emotional heart and key idea of PotA is utterly stolen.
No, Kirby does not JUST rip off PotA. He adds his own amazing genius and creativity to the mix, with original ideas, mind-blowing original plots (at times), and the true crazy Kirby science fiction ideal that made him what he was.
So both are true. It has much originality, and it clearly stole the most original thing that makes PotA what it was--a man's world flipped over and ruled by animals. When he ripped off mythology, it felt new and fresh because gods have been around since man could imagine. But Pierre Boulle's idea was truly original, and for some reason Jack felt he could just take the heart of PotA and use it himself. Sad. But the art rocks!
August 20, 2013
No matter how much DC Kirby I read, his style just so definitively says Marvel to me that it's hard to see this as a DC book. Since it doesn't really exist in DC continuity--no other DC characters appear--that's not as disconcerting as it can be in, say, Jimmy Olsen comics. Not that that really makes these much better. Kamandi is typical Kirby, really, lots of bombastic action and silliness (guys with atomic hearts who press their chests and turn int steel? giant bats that can tear though metal doors? A giant germ named Mortococcus? Ay-yi-yi!). Several of these early stories are very derivative. Indeed, one story that very closely rips off King Kong winkingly talks about how the story's events are so much more unimagineable than even the most outlandish old-style movie. Well, at least he knew he'd be caught out for it. It's kitschy fun but not for the ages.
July 20, 2011
A totally gonzo book with all the usual Kirby touches; don't expect it all to make sense: Kamandi accepts his name, based on Command D -- but surely his grandfather didn't name him Kamandi? What is the purpose of silver suits to protect from radiation when Ben and his cohorts never wear them? Why was the Lincoln Memorial found in the south? Why is the title "Kamandi: Last Boy on Earth" when he isn't the last boy on Earth?
Don't overthink it...this is pure 60s comic book insanity. It's more about the concept of exploration of the world, post-disaster, and that is what makes this book fun.
Don't overthink it...this is pure 60s comic book insanity. It's more about the concept of exploration of the world, post-disaster, and that is what makes this book fun.
February 12, 2016
I read these in the original comic format when they came out. Jack Kirby changed his style in the early 1970s and I fell out of being a fan of his art and stories, overall I never could seem to get into the books. If you are a Kirby fan then these are the core of his creation. Recommended
Read
July 31, 2011A masterpiece of lunacy. (Is it okay to list it this way if I'm just reading the original comics?)
June 4, 2016
just love this future !!!!!
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