Kamandi Watch

It's now been a full year since I last set foot in a comic book shop. For awhile I was keeping my habit in check by methadoning ComiXology e-comics. But then that Amazon Thing happened, and my only resort was to go to the public library website. Which is great, and I appreciate it mightily--they have saved me hundreds of dollars. But you don't get NEW comics there, do you. So I supplemented that fix with checking out previews on ComiXology. And that helped. For one thing, there are quite a few comics of which a cover picture and three pages are quite enough, thank you. Until I saw this:

And by this, I really mean this:

Oh, Kamandi. Oh, oh, oh.

Of course, I've been fooled before. Remember that Justice League arc wherein they made it look like Kamandi was a star player, when in fact he was just sitting on the sidelines looking stupid in the few scenes in which he was included?

So I looked at the preview pages. First page, six panels. Kamandi is in six of them. Second page, two page spread. Featuring Kamandi and Prince Tuftan. Third page, seven panels. Kamandi is in four of them. It wasn't hard to decide that I needed that comic book.

My first thought was that I would just let Amazon (and hence ComiXology) back into my life. That was the easiest way, wasn't it? But 💩, y'know? Then I thought about going to visit The Great Escape. I'm fully vaccinated, after all. It'd be cool, right? Well...they're still not sure if you can carry the virus after you've been vaccinated, though. And I have a daughter who hasn't been vaccinated who's with me pretty much all of the time. Nope, it wasn't worth taking a chance. 

Then as I was farting around, the ante got upped:

A thing called Generations Forged. And once again Kamandi was on the cover. Clearly I was going to need to find a way to get these comic books.

Midtown Comics to the rescue. I went online to see what I could do about getting these comics sent to me, and found that at Midtown Comics, not only did they have both comics...but they had the much preferable alternate covers (which I've shown for Generations Forged, because the regular cover barely showed Kamandi...and he didn't look anything like Kamandi, to boot:

Although the Dark Knight Returns figure was kind of cool. Oh, the Generations Shattered alternate cover? Sure. Here it is:

And another bonus: the books were discounted, so even with shipping it was pretty close to what I'd have paid at the stand.

I placed my order on February 26th. They arrived on March 6th.

And hey, I just now realized (with this side by side set-up) that they are the same cover (-ish). 

Now the big questions: was it worth it? Was it worth it?

Our survey says...

Generations Shattered #1 was kind of interesting. It's one of those Cast of Thousands vis-à-vis the art chores (20 different artists!), but only three writers, and that kind of held things together. Also, for the most part the artists weren't really all that different from each other, which made for a more cohesive feel than might normally be the case. (Though it was pretty easy to pick out the John Romita, Jr. pages). 

I was a little confused by the story. From the get-go it's obvious that we're going back to the Crisis on Infinite Earths (from 1985 - 1986), and I didn't know if I had missed something set-up wise or if DC just had a flashback. Wikipedia let me know that it was a bit of both: there were some precursors...Wonder Woman #750, The Flash #750, Flash Forward TPB (collecting a six issue mini-series), and Detective Comics #1027. (If I were still doing ComiXology, I could be reading all of those for $41, by the way. On the other hand...I just checked the Public Library, and they had everything but the Detective Comics, so there's another bundle of bucks they just saved me.)  But from what I can discern (to be amended once the library comes through for me, perhaps) is that this is pretty much a BOOM! time to reboot the universe again thing, and since the Dan Dido plan had been deep-sixed, Dan Jurgens decided to go this way.

But it wasn't really all that confusing if you're familiar with Crisis on Infinite Earths. Which I am. More or less. I mean, I haven't read it in 35 years, but I still have the gist of it. And the good news is that Kamandi actually does play a central role in the action, and he's not just a dumbass standing around and occasional shooting someone with his pistol (hello, Justice League). In fact, he's actually the central figure in that it is left to him (for reasons which I shan't divulge, though it happens pretty early on in the book) to hop through time collecting heroes to try to stop The Crisis. And did I mention that this is a big old fatty of a book--80 pages, and no ads? I'd have to say that if you're a Kamandi fan, this is worth your $10. 

As for Generations Forged #1...again there's a large cast of artists (11 this time, quite a few of them who also appeared in Shattered), but the three writers are the same...and I think it's pretty clear that Dan Jurgens is leading the show. Which I'd have to say is a good thing--not just because it means there's one guy in charge, but because it's Dan Jurgens, who might not be a Hot Name like _____ (I don't know who the hot names are any more...but whoever is the Now equivalent of the Then Frank Miller, Howard Chaykin, John Byrne, etc.), but who is a really good writer who has handled some amazing (and complex) storylines, like The Death of Superman and The Reign of the Supermen, both of which I thought were top notch stories. (Man, I can still remember the fervor I felt whilst reading Reign of the Supermen. I really wanted to know which one of those motherfuckers was the "real" Superman!)

Anyway. The story here was actually better than the Shattered story for a couple of reasons. One, there was a Framing Sequence which we went back to several times during the course of the story, and that gave it a very cohesive feel. Two, there were some really good character bits in the writing. For instance, this was the first time I've ever read a Superboy story in which Superboy seemed like a boy. And once again, Kamandi was a key component of the action. And oh, I forgot to mention...OMAC shows up for this story, too. And we even spend a little bit of time in Electric City, so there's a nice Jack Kirby vibe running through this. As for the resolution of the Crisis plot...well, you know. It was fine. A few twists on what you'd expect, at least. Again, I'd have to recommend putting your money down for this thing. Let's see, both issues would put you $20 in...but you do get 160 pages of story. That's close to 50% more buck bang than you get on regular comics these days, isn't it? Or you could wait until it shows up at your local library.

Meanwhile...I heard a rumor that there's a mini-series spinning out of these two one-shots. Could it be so? Could there be (gasp) more Kamandi coming my way?

Time and I will tell.

☮📤

☮ in  So Blogger has a symbol for an outbox, but not an inbox? That seems illogical. Anyway...since then ↑, I got my hands on all of the "precursor" stories mentioned above. 

Short Version: it wasn't worth it, and I'm really glad that I didn't spend any money on them. 

Long Version: 

"A Brave New World" in Wonder Woman #750: This is an 8 page story--one page of which is a one panel "pin-up." The art is ostensibly Bryan Hitch, but he must have been in a hurry, because it is way below his usual level of quality...so much so that I would not have known it was Bryan Hitch without the credit line--and I'm still not sure that I believe it. It's a story about Wonder Woman emerging as a super-hero...the first*...and so far as I can discern it has nothing to do with the Generations storyline. There's also no appearance of nor even a reference to Kamandi or his world. If I'd paid $10 for this, I'd be really mad. Hell, if I'd paid $1 for this I'd be mad.

* So apparently political correctness has now met revisionist history for DC Comics. That's a shame.

"Generation Zero" from The Flash #750 and, according to Wikipedia, from the Flash Forward trade paperback as well. First off, that's not true. The story which appears in The Flash #750 is entitled "Flash Forward: Epilogue," and is 12 pages long. The story in the Flash Forward trade paperback is entitled "Flash Forward: Epilogue: Generation Zero," is 19 pages long--the first 12 pages of which are identical to the story in The Flash #750. I know that's picking some nits, but I like to get things right, so I'll be moving over to Wikipedia to try to do some editing in a few moments. (For the record, though, this is now:

See addendum below for my update.)

"Both" stories are pretty bad: sloppy, crowded art with garish coloring, a "story" which is actually just Flash (Wally West version) sitting in a chair (albeit a Möbius Chair) ruminating, and yet another attempt to reconcile the conflicting elements of DC history. So at least it really is a lead-in the the Generations storyline. On the other hand, there's no hint of Kamandi, and that's what I was here for. So again, if I'd spent the bucks (about twenty of them this time) to read these pages, I'd have been seriously unhappy. 

"Generations: Fractured" in Detective Comics #750: I wasn't able to get this from the library. I made a half-hearted attempt to buy a copy for cheap on eBay, but big surprise, the bidding went from 99¢ at the start to More Than I Wanted To Pay in the final minutes. But (shhhh) I did find a video on YouTube of a young fellow talking about, reading, and showing the panels of this story. Yeah, I know. Sorry. Anyway....