Mid-life, with Loin Cloth
Some of the more interesting experiments within the Marvel Universe had the hallmarks of the previous decade's turn towards introspection, but with the advantages brought by the ongoing changes in the comics market. In October 1981, Marvel decided to shift a few of its more marginal titles (including Moon Knight and, the following month, Micronauts) from the traditional news stand model (aimed at a mass audience, with unsold copies returned to the publisher) to selling directly to the growing network of specialty shops. No longer returnable, these comics were also marketed towards grown-up fans: gone were the advertisements that disrupted the reading experience every few pages, as well as the barcode that obscured part of the cover art. The cover price jumped according, from 50 cents to 75.
Micronauts was a toy-based property already past its brief heyday, but still appealing to hardcore fans. Moon Knightwas just hitting its stride as artist Bill Sienkiewicz began to break from the influence of Neal Adams, abandoning his initial hyperrealism for the gonzo expressionism that would become his trademark. The third comic moved to the direct market was a particularly unlikely artistic success: Ka-Zar the Savage, written for its first 27 issues by Bruce Jones, with pencils for most of the first two years by Brent Anderson.
Ka-Zar was a character who had lived on the outskirts of Marvel for a decade and a half--literally, since most of his adventures took place in the Savage Land, a prehistoric jungle hidden in the center of the earth. Introduced in a 1965 issue of X-Men, Ka-Zar was pathetically derivative. In fact, the man born as Kevin Plunder was the second character to adopt the name "Ka-Zar." Timely (Marvel's predecessor) had briefly published the adventures of a different Ka-Zar in the 1930s; when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the new Ka-Zar for X-Men 10, they didn't even bother to consult any of his predecessor's earlier appearances. The only thing that distinguished him from Tarzan and his many, many imitators (Tor, Tharn, Jungle Boy, George of the Jungle) was his blond hair. Otherwise, he was a rugged white man from central casting, helping and fighting the benighted dark-skinned Savage Land denizens, and alternating between a third-person, sub-Tarzan patois ("Stronger than mastadon! Stronger than giant boar! Mighty is Ka-Zar...Lord of Jungle!" X-Men 10, March 1965, Lee and Kirby) and the bombastic nobility of Thor ("There must be an end to human sacrifice!! /Such is the will of Ka-Zar! (Incredible Hulk 109, November 1966, by Lee, Frank Giacoca, and Herbe Trimpe).
To be fair, the only way for Ka-Zar to go was up, and his characterization and dialogue improved greatly over the course of the 1970s. But even at his best, Ka-Zar was a noble savage, protecting the primitive and natural world and distrusting of civilization. Ka-Zar the Savage, which ran from April 1981 through October 1984, changed all that. [1] In the eight years since the end of Ka-Zar's last solo series (as the headliner for Astonishing Tales), he had made a handful of guest appearances (most notably in X-Men, simultaneously wrapping up the loose ends from Astonishing Tales and re-establishing the Savage Land as a recurring setting for Marvel's mutant franchise). Now the attention was turned to Ka-Zar's psychological state, and to questions of adulthood and purpose.[2] What does it mean to be living out a young boy's heroic fantasy of jungle adventure if you're pushing thirty and inexplicably well-read? It's a premise worthy of Steve Gerber: the muscle-bound hero pauses, looks around, and questions the generic and existential premises of the life he leads.
But the differences from Gerber's comics are also instructive. Even when Gerber was writing about an anthropomorphic talking duck, the generic reference point was always superhero comics. In Howard the Duck 9 ("Scandal Plucks Duck," by Gerber, Gene Colan and Steve Leiloha, February 1977), the cantankerous waterfowl is summoned by a Canadian superpatriot wearing a giant beaver suit to fight to the death on a tightrope over Niagara Falls. For a moment, Howard gives in, and steps on the rope, but then he changes his mind; later, he calls the incident "the only fight I'd ever walked out on--'cause it was just too ludicrous" (Howard the Duck 10, "Swan Song...of the Living Dead Duck!" by Gerber, Colan, and Leiloha, March 1977). Ka-Zar is also the protagonist of an action genre, and, like Howard, his role in it is the product of sheer bad luck: Howard accidentally ended up surrounded by hairless apes in a "world he never made," while Ka-Zar was stranded in the Savage Land due to complex machinations involving his (now deceased) father. Both Howard and Ka-Zar are the hapless stars in variations of a "boy's own adventure" fantasy that neither one actually chose.
The new series' title "Ka-Zar the Savage" was a concession to generic expectations, a potentially powerful hook, and an ironic description of a character who no longer is sure that "savagery" has a lasting appeal. As "Lord of the Savage Land," Ka-Zar is implicated in narratives about the natural order, noble savagery, and unsentimental recognition that he is surrounded by animals who live and die as part of the food chain. The first issue begins with a splash page showing a starving wolf pack attacking and killing a rhino. A series of narrative captions explain that the law of the food chain "would not be questioned," but two inset panels of Ka-Zar on a hilltop, staring down at the slaughter declare the hero's dissonance with the land of which he is supposedly lord: "Ka-Zar watches it...and Ka-Zar does question" ("A New Dawn....A New World!", Ka-Zar the Savage 1, by Jones, Anderson, and Carlos Garzon, April 1981).
Though "A New Dawn..A New World" sets up the romantic and interpersonal conflicts that will dominate the first year of the series, the story itself is structured as a series of decisions Ka-Zar makes about intervening to save a life in peril: the rhino (he declines); a young dinosaur sinking in the mud (he helps, but only because his partner, Shanna the She-Devil, insists); Leanne, Queen of Zarhan (whom he helps because she is a damsel in distress); Leanne's cat Felina, who is about to be killed by her attackers (Ka-Zar tells her he sees no need to "sacrifice my own life along with your cat's"); his sabretooth tiger companion Zabu (who leaps into the fray to save Felina; "Where Zabu goes, Ka-Zar follows!"), and the calf Zabu orphans by attacking its mother for dinner (which he slaughters, so as not to let it "suffer needlessly"). Nor should we forget Zabu's own actions: in Ka-Zar's flashback origin story, it is Zabu who saves little Kevin Plunder from murder at the hands of the "savages" that had "hunted the great cats to extinction," Zabu who saves Felina (he is at least as attracted to her as Ka-Zar is to Leanne), and Zabu who kills the mother of the calf. [3]
The parallel between Ka-Zar and his cat works well here. Each is driven by instinct, but each makes decisions that go beyond predictable animal desires (Zabu essentially raises the young Ka-Zar, while Ka-Zar assesses each potential intervention through a combination of impulse and introspection). The first issue of Ka-Zar the Savage features a protagonist who is fighting against the script; this is rendered literal on the first page, when Ka-Zar, contradicting the captions about the unquestioned nature of the food chain, does wonder why. But it is also figurative: does he want to be a jungle king all his life? Is the alternative settling down with Shanna, a well-worn script of its own? And is the big city really the only alternative to the Savage Land?
Next: Goodbye, City Life!
Notes
[1] Jones left the book after issue 27 (August 1983), replaced by Mark Carlin, who took the series in a different, action-oriented, direction.
[2] Besides the first issue of Ka-Zar the Savage, there can't be many Marvel comics whose listing on marvelfandom.com includes Ayn Rand and as one of the "other characters" mentioned in the story.
[3] The species of the animal is unclear; it looks like a bull, but, despite its horns, the discovery of its calf leads Leanne to state that it's female.