#The Kamandi Challenge

[balu8]

The Kamandi Challenge #5

by Bill Willingham; Ivan Reis; Oclair Albert; Marcelo Maiolo and Clem Robins

DC

[ginge1962]

Kamandi Challenge #11 - January 2018, cover by Nick Bradshaw.

[tomoleary]

Steve Rude - Kamandi Challenge #8 Alternate Cover Original Art (DC, 2017)

Source

[maxwell-grant]

After watching I Will Save The Universe For Food and the last Like A Dragon games, I had an idea.

What happens in a superhero universe when superheros and supervillains become obsolete, like knights and cowboys before them?

When society outgrowns their neccesity and the system which they are part stops working how will they adapt to a world that no longer need, wants or supports them?

Which will fight back and which will try to give them a place in this new world?

(If this question is too complicated, just respond in the context of the Marvel universe)

I think that depends on what you mean by "like knights and cowboys before them", because that can mean different things. The simplest answer for these is that you don't have a superhero universe anymore, if your universe is one where superheroes can just vanish into irrelevancy and become historical curio figures that definitely 100% won't need to come back to stop the Anti-Monitor from exploding a world or two, as they always do everytime they have a "but what if we didn't need superheroes anymore?" story in a superhero universe.

Closest example I can think of within the Big Two is, probably the stretch of time between the disbanding of the Justice Society in the 1950s, and however long it takes in the continuity for Superman and the Justice League to be a thing and inaugurate the age of heroes proper, where in-between you have all those less-known almost-superheroes and your Task Force X / Challengers of the Unknown / fringe guys guys running around until the superheroes become the center of the universe again. Alfred's espionage career goes here until it's time for the Waynes to be shot, that kind of thing. And of course, that's not an ending, that's backstory, that's a gap in between proceedings. The DCU didn't stop being a superhero universe during those years and it doesn't really stop being one when all capes are gone in the Kamandi future either, where the lack of dominant superheroes is supposed to be an outlier state.

(And to address the proverbial elephant here: Watchmen is a world where superheroes are depicted as socially detrimental and warped, and yes there's only one guy with outright superpowers, but this is still 100% a superhero world where superhero things have and have happened, where superheroes and masked crimefighters were and still are an incredibly useful thing for the powers that be even in spite of being specifically outlawed. The best thing for the people who live in Watchmen would be for them to live in a world where the superhero was truly no longer supported and allowed to fade into irrelevant fantasy, but they don't, they live in the 35 minutes murder squid massacre world)

If we're comparing superheroes to knights and cowboys in the sense of the archetype, the storytelling tradition they socially occupy, the superhero as a character figure the way knights and cowboys are, then if they go, they go the way those did, and become historical characters and costumed personas within the realm of fantasy. In fact, if this is a thing that can happen or always could happen and the story chugs along just fine, it's possible you didn't even really have a superhero universe in the first place, you just had a universe with superheroes in it.

Which is a thing that can happen, and happens quite a bit in universes that want to take a crack at superheroes but don't want the proceedings to revolve around them. Like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or Redline with Lynchman and Johnny Boy, deranged pastiches of Batman and Robin who are very much real superheroes, fighting supervillains and outrunning cars while tanking gunfire and all, they're just not the thing the film revolves around nor are they even the weirdest thing in it, so they don't warp the universe and they're just one more freakish thing about it. The key word here is irrelevancy: Captain Universe is not the protagonist of LOEG, the universe of Redline and it's races do not revolve around Lynchman and Johnny Boy, the Crimson Chin doesn't show up to pull Timmy Turner out of trouble on most Fairly Odd Parents episodes, and etc. These guys are superheroes, they can even solve some big problems, but they are not needed, the universe spins just fine without them, which means they're not really much of superheroes to begin with. It's not for nothing you mostly see this play out with gag characters, or at least, characters whose superhero-ness makes them dissonant next to their surroundings (think Captain Falcon in Smash Bros).

Now, if we're talking about comparing superheroes to knights and cowboys in the real world practical sense of what they were and did, if we're talking about them as part of a system through which they operated and applying it to how superheroes operate, well, then we still have cowboys, and knights, and samurai and all that. Individuals or groups with enhanced weaponry or fighting skills who go around stopping crime and enacting vigilante justice with a mission to defend something / "society". It's just we generally call them cops or private military contractors now. Or mercenaries, if you wanna split hairs a bit and go with the "independent operator who sells his services and brutalizes people for money/political favors", which was what knights and cowboys did also, but they all work within and for the same system.

There's been a lot of commentary already on how the superheroes, as a western action genre, operates as an extension of cowboy stories, most visible when we get to the superhero-supervillain dynamic, the "eternal frontier of gangsters and super-scientific menaces who play the role that Indians take in frontier narratives" as I elaborated here. And it's easy to point out the similarities between cowboys and knights, who comparatively skew a little closer to the mercenary side of things than the "cops-and-robbers" paradigm, but historically tended to benefit from political privileges and whitewashed reputations as adventuring defenders and champions of the community in very similar ways. Works that explore superheroes as an institutional power, like The Ultimates or Worm, tend to touch on this, and how "lucky" these guys are that there's always a bigger villain or monster in the room to fight to justify the continued superhero project. The superheroes can have as many Civil Wars as they want provided there is a Norman Osborn at the end of the day to be the bigger bastard they can settle their differences by punching out.

A story about a society that "outgrowns their necessity and the system which they are part of stops working", a story that abolishes the need for superheroes entirely and doesn't provide them allowance anymore, is a story about a society that would have to, at minimum, either have cops and law enforcement so effective and powerful that there's no room for superheroes or any kind of alternative to even pretend to exist, in which case congratulations, you're writing Judge Dredd, or a society that has completely abolished a need for cops and law enforcement of any kind so thoroughly that superheroes are not needed or able to fill the vacuum either, which is a much taller order and it's the kind of stuff you find in speculative political fiction and utopian sci-fi. But, even that wouldn't even necessarily stop superheroes from being active figures.

Because for one, systems fail, in several ways by design, and superheroes tend to exist in the first place because of that, conceived and presented as a superior alternative to traditional law enforcement. And two, obviously the concept of independent policing exists, the concept of communal policing or unlawful vigilantism and so on, and it's typically the thing that gets brought up as a rebuttal whenever superheroes are criticized for being too much like cops, the fact that they don't answer to law enforcement or government and therefore cannot be exploitative or opressive or, god forbid, that dirty word that starts with f and ends with -ascist. But we already live in a world where vigilantes are not supposed to be needed, a world that doesn't support them, and still they exist. And we do have a name for unaccountable, community-based solutions to crime policing and what those look like, people got very angry at Alan Moore for bringing it up even.

Of course this is an extreme negative example (if no less of a foundational one because of it), there are many many different degrees and reasons and methods by which vigilantes operate, just as there's a difference to the degrees by which heroes associate with law enforcement, but that's part of the issue here. No matter how repugnant a precedent is set by the KKK and others, vigilantism is an extremely popular idea for many reasons and it accounts for so much of why knights and cowboys and superheroes become so popular.

Everyone has their own reasons as to why they would support or become vigilantes, everyone has things and causes they'd fight or kill or die or embrace violence for. So unless we're going the utopian sci-fi route again, there is no rendering vigilantism obsolete, and there is no rendering the superhero obsolete in a superhero universe, even if we completely strip away superpowers from the equation. Vigilantism is and will always be deeply popular no matter how wrong or horrible it is as a thing for people to embrace. There is no pretending otherwise in the aftermath of this

being the most globally beloved political development of the past 5 years at minimum.

Superhero universes trap themselves into the vicious cycle where superheroes are needed to stop super-menaces and even other superheroes, and they all justify each other's existences and they all recreate Cold War dynamics just by existing (and this is something that Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard are gonna be exploring in their upcoming mini The Power Fantasy, so be on the lookout for that), even if just those who become vigilantes to stop other vigilantes from going rampant. But if superheroes aren't on some level impossible to replace, whether it's because they are genuinely necessary or simply too enmeshed into the inner workings of society to be removed without issue or ending the story, then you don't really have a superhero universe.

The questions of what happens when they go, where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods and where is streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds, those I think tend to get explored a bit, but not too much, because generally speaking you write superhero universes to tell stories about superheroes, not to write about what happens to those universes when they're completely and utterly gone and never coming back.

Again, it is entirely possible to have fantastical universes with hero stories in them and not have superhero universes, superheroes are not synonymous with cowboys, knights, samurais, wuxia and other kinds of hero stories either. In fact, if you take a step back from America and away from European and Japanese works exploring said relationship with the US, the idea of a superhero, let alone a whole universe full of them where everything has to revolve around them, kinda shatters. Much as I may be trying to do just that, it is more than a fair bit ridiculous and self-defeating and even a little impossible to authentically put superheroes in the global south, although that is considerably less of an issue when thinking of supervillains. Those can and do crop up whenever and whatever.

And I'm ending on those because, the reason I'm not even really touching so much on the supervillain side of the question because supervillains don't actually need any kind of superhero context to exist, as I keep reiterating they predate superheroes by a significant margin and are far less defined and restricted in terms of how they exist and operate. By design, supervillains can and do exist in systems that don't allow for them and don't want them, it's kinda what they're supposed to be doing even, it's even kinda the main thing that separates a supervillain from a regular villain.

But you don't even need supervillains most of the time to be a superhero. The masked avenger pulp heroes tended to not have them, and the Golden Age superheroes took a while to get going there. You need supervillains only when you're strong and good and long-lived enough at it that you need, well,

[chernobog13]

Sandman (vol. 1) #1 (March, 1974).  Cover by Jack Kirby, Frank Giacoia, and Gaspar Saladino.

I hate to admit it, but it wasn’t until later in my life that I came to appreciate and love Jack Kirby’s work.  Especially the books he did at DC after leaving Marvel the first time.  But as a kid, not really a fan.

However, even back then, I was absolutely in love with this book and how bonkers it was!

From Sandman (vol. 1) #1 (March, 1974).  Written by Joe Simon.  Art by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer.

Part of that may be attributed to writer Joe Simon, Kirby’s long-time on-again, off-again partner (I believe this issue was the last time they worked together).  But there is sooooooo much Kirby madness/brilliance in this book that carried over, even into the two issues he didn’t draw (although he did draw the covers for all six issues that were published).

Ostensibly, this book was a reboot of the Golden Age Sandman (Wesley Dodds) character that Simon and Kirby had revamped for DC thirty years earlier.  But other than the name and yellow bodysuit, this Sandman had as much in common with Dodds as Neil Gaiman’s version (Dream of the Endless) did.

This book was cancelled after six issues.  A seventh story was completed, but never published for the comics public to read until 2017′s The Kamandi Challenge Special #1. 

Those six issues - even the ones Kirby didn’t draw - still hold a spot in my heart.  I take them out every so often and re-read them for the sheer, silly joy of them.

Just don’t get me started about what happened to this Sandman after the book was cancelled!

[wanderingmind867]

I don't hate Jack Kirby by any extent. I can understand his anger about not being paid well or with being treated well by society. I still really relate to Stan Lee, but I don't hate Jack Kirby. But i think the problem is just that Jack Kirby's writing style doesn't always appeal to me. It can appeal, but it's hit or miss. Also, sometimes I don't like how he draws faces. But Jack Kirby's work on Thor and the Fantastic Four and stuff is really good.

I personally don't feel much of any interest in his Fourth World saga. I also dislike OMAC, Kamandi and Devil Dinosaur. The only solo work of his I definitely like is Etrigan (although the challengers of the unknown aren't bad either). But really, I can ignore his superman stories, because Darkseid and the New Gods and Project Cadmus and all this stuff don't hold too much interest too me. And Mister Miracle isn't great, because I heard he took shots at Stan Lee and Roy Thomas (two writers whom I like). I don't even remember what Project Cadmus was anymore. But on a funnier note: I think I somehow dislike both Thanos and Darkseid. But I think I find Jim Starlin worse than Jack Kirby, on the whole. Jack Kirby is still better than a lot of other people, though.

[imjustheretoseetheprivateblogs]

Reblog for a larger sample size

[the-antiapocalyptic-man]

What’s a marvel concept that you think would fit in at dc?

This question has sort of an interesting problem in that a lot of Marvel concepts already made the jump (there's a whole set of universes known as the "Marvel axis" in the 52 Earths, multiple characters a piece who are just Cap or the Hulks, etc.) and then a lot of ideas that are just incredibly similar (Doom Patrol and the X-Men, Challengers of the Unknown and early F4, Namor and Aquaman--tho I'd say a Namor/Arthur/Mera three-person marriage could be a lot of fun; MODOK and Hector Hammond)

The Eternals are such a pure Kirby idea in their original conception that I could see them being reworked as an extension of either the New Gods stuff or just the general OMAC to Kamandi pipeline foisted on those narratives by later writers, with OMAC as an Artificial Eternal and Kamandi as maybe a version of Ikaris who incarnated as a child for whatever reason.

Symbiotes could be cool, I always kinda like the idea of a living Batman suit based on Venom, but it could also just be Venom.

That said, the funniest option is just to give the Squadron Supreme or the Great Society their own DC Earth

[jedivoodoochile]

Kamandi es un personaje de historietas estadounidense, creado por el escritor y artista de historietas Jack Kirby y publicado para la editorial DC Comics. La mayor parte de las apariciones de Kamandi fueron en su propia serie en solitario, titulada Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth , publicado entre 1972 y 1978. Kamandi es un joven héroe huérfano, sobreviviente en un mundo afectado por el llamado Gran Desastre, un posible futuro del Universo DC post-apocalíptico, en el cual, los seres humanos involucionaron a un estado de barbarie, viviendo en un mundo gobernado por animales inteligentes, altamente evolucionados. Hace pocos años, el personaje reapareció en la serie limitada The Multiversity, y luego en una miniserie en plena etapa DC Rebirth, titulada Kamandi Challenge.

[dicktripwire]

DC Comic Wallpapers

[hellyeahheroes]

This was both not what I was expecting and exactly what I was expecting.

Kamandi Challenge #11-12 continue to be what this series has been through the entire run - really fucking weird. First Rob Williamson and Walt Simonson take us back to the levels of insanity I haven’t seen even in this book since issue two, but then again it has jetpack sharks AND gorillas piloting flying saucers fighting a little genocidal dwarf on a space station with an army of robots. Then Gail Simone and her team of artist somehow start with Kamandi meeting and falling in love with his female counterpart to have him save the world from a giant robot by riding an army of human-sized rats that combined into one gargantuan rat with nuclear heart and end on him seeing other futures of DC Universe (including Legion of Super-Heroes and Batman Beyond) and meeting Jack Kirby.And this is where, in the epilogue, Paul Levitz and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez take over, Kamandi comes face to face with his creator and is given three wishes to make the world right. And although Levitz despairs in the afterword that the epilogue would be much better, had it been written by late Len Wein, a good friend of Kirby, I find it extremely satisfying still (also, loved that Detective Chimp cameo at the end). And so I do the entire series, it is a love letter to King from fourteen amazing teams, each taking their own spin on Kamandi and his mythos. I will always be recommending this book, both to loves of Kirby who look for books in his spirit and for kids, I’m sure it will be a delightful adventure for many young readers. Who knows, maybe it will get them interested in picking Kirby’s original series, which I recall was beloved by kids in its time, as well?

- Admin

[marcussour]

I don’t even know where to begin describing this, but I guess if you’re paying homage to Jack Kirby, you either go big or go home...

From “The Kamandi Challenge #10″, by Greg Pak (writer), Shane Davis (penciller), Michelle Delecki (inker), Hi-Fi (colorist) and Clem Robins (letterer)

[comradewallpapers]

The Kamandi Challenge 012

High Res

http://www.mediafire.com/folder/c0px4kef77jpr/Command_D

[theblackestofsuns]

“Outta My Way, Ro-Bros!”

The Kamandi Challenge #11 (January 2018)

Rob Williams, Walter Simonson and Laura Martin

DC Comics

[comicarthistory]

Kamandi Challenge #11 cover. 2017. Art by Nick Bradshaw.

[fllmetl]

The Kamandi Challenge  #1

Story & Art: Dan Didio, Keith Giffen & Scott Koblish

Colors: Hi-Fi

Letters: Clem Robins