Ka-Zar: Lord of the Savage Land

Not my thing.

Ka-Zar was basically Marvel’s answer to Tarzan, the son of an English lord who was raised by a saber-tooth cat named Zabu in the Savage Land after his father’s untimely death. He didn’t have much in the way of super powers, but was a muscular guy in a loincloth who could usually hold his own against most superheroes and villains. At some point he married a jungle babe named Shanna the She-Devil and had a son named Matthew. Also at some other point he got killed but he was brought back to life. Which is where this series kicks off as a hero reboot.

And it’s quite a power-up, right down to his now high-tech breeches. Ka-Zar has gone from being a Tarzan figure to becoming something more like DC’s Animal Man, channeling the strengths and abilities of whatever animal he wants (including dinosaurs, which still live in the Savage Land). In fact, he’s even more than this now, and the comparison I made most readily was to Swamp Thing as the Knight of the Green. But then Animal Man was more recently revealed to be the defender of the Red or animal world, so these books are all talking the same language. Suffice to say that Ka-Zar is not just the Lord of the Savage Land but a god. Indeed, he even proclaims himself the God of Balance, which I thought being a bit full of himself, even if it’s true.

To be honest I never found Ka-Zar that interesting, but somehow with this new mythological overlay I found him even less so. And his domestic set-up with Shanna and Matthew (now a teenager) was dull too. The only bright spot here is the bad guy he’s up against, a figure known as Domovoy the Flesh Weaver. Now I didn’t really know what Domovoy was, or what his issues were, but he looks like a sort of walking octopus and he’s the half-machine creator (or perhaps just the leader) of an army of “Polyscions” who are also biotech monstrosities. As far as I could Domovoy the Flesh Weaver and the Polyscions (a great band name) constituted some sort of Savage Land death cult. They sort of have an environmentalist point of view, but it’s tainted by all their machine parts. In any event, Ka-Zar has become one with all of nature and so has evolved to a point where he knows that “death is just the beginning of a new phase.” Like Swamp Thing, he is now an eternally dying and reviving god, here to preach a green gospel: “Domovoy’s technology won’t save us. It’s callous to think so. The only thing that can save us now is being mindful. We must focus on today and reintegrate ourselves with nature. It’s sincerely that simple.”

As with so many of today’s comics I found myself thinking that less would have been more. Shanna doesn’t have much to do here aside from nursing Ka-Zar back to health, while freckle-faced Matthew is the most annoying character I’ve come across in a long time. This would have been a better comic if those two had been left out of things and Ka-Zar had fought Domovoy one-on-one with only his hands and some stone-flaked knives. But the mythic impulse seems irresistible, and it’s become a fatal attraction.

Graphicalex