The first character called "Ka-Zar" came from the pulps, but when Martin Goodman decided to publish comic books, he moved that character over to his very first, Marvel Comics #1. The first Ka-zar was a boy whose parents' plane crashed in the African jungle when the boy, David Rand, was only three years old. His mother, Constance, died shortly after of the fever, but his father, John, lived until he was killed by hostile natives when David was about 12 or 13. He learned to communicate with the animals and blah, blah, blah... When Lee and Kirby revived the character in 1965 it was a complete reboot, but it was the pulp adventures of Ka-Zar which inspired young Kevin Plumber to... but wait. I'm getting ahead of myself.
There has been talk on this board, from time to time, of someone starting a Ka-Zar discussion for as long as I have been a member. The 80th anniversary of the first appearance of the comic book version of the first Ka-Zar seems as good of a time as any to finally do so. Some of the earliest comics I acquired as backissues were the "King-Size" Ka-Zar reprint series and the issues of Marvel Tales reprinting the issues of Spider-Man in which Spidey met Ka-zar. when I was in high school I read Ka-Zar the Savage, and when I was in college I began collecting his early appearances, previous series and reprints via backissues. One of the latest of the early appearances I acquired was his very first from X-Men #10. Up until that time I had been pronouncing his name as I had since I was a child: Kuh-ZAR.
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Oh, thank you Luke! I have Rampaging Hulk #9 but don't recall the Shanna story. Didn't know about those Savage Tales stories. I'll have to seek them out.
The ending of Ka-Zar #20 had nothing to do with his X-Men appearance besides going "home" for him. It was, I believe, a four-panel flashback and that was that!
Yeah, it was all lip service but they did, at least, tie it up.
And it was in X-Men, not Marvel Team Up or Marvel Two-In-One where cancelled series usually get their finales!
Jeff of Earth-J said:
Yeah, it was all lip service but they did, at least, tie it up.
This was supposed to be a Marvel Team Up with Spidey and the Angel which would have been neat. IIRC, it was late or delayed then expanded on to include the X-Men and Ka-Zar.
Thanks, Philip.
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