Ka-Zar 1

I’ve read some first issues and one-shots that were, in craft and technique terms, significantly worse than this, but I don’t recall any that were so unutterably boring. I’m amazed that the first-issue synopsis was approved by editor Tom Brevoort.

What happens: there is a big fire in the Savage Land, which, um, well we just leave that scene, so I don’t know how that ends. There is someone or something blowing things up, and we do see who that is right at the end, except I don’t recognize them so that doesn’t liven things up any. There are economic difficulties, and the UN votes a kind of aid. This economic stuff is explored at considerable length: one panel has someone talking about the UN resolution for 112 words (and this may not be the wordiest panel, but I can’t be bothered counting some other contenders). It’s creditable that Jenkins has a full enough conception of the Savage Land (the opening exposition is quite strong in this way too, even intriguing in its richness) that he can work this sort of thing in with reasonable conviction, but that doesn’t make it exciting or compelling or entertaining.

Partly I guess I miss what I have liked in some Ka-Zar stories in the past: there are no fight scenes, so none of the dynamism that Kirby initially offered; and there is no detectable characterisation of any kind – I liked the Kev ‘n’ Shanna days, just because of the endearing personalities and lightness of touch. So we need something else, some action or excitement or intrigue or something to get us interested, and unless you find UN aid resolutions endlessly thrilling, or you’re excited by the supervillain (who might be well known to others, I don’t know, and without a name I can’t google), it’s beyond me to imagine where that could come from here.

The art doesn’t help at all. Alixe is credited with art, Aburto and Maese with ‘colour art’. It looks painted to me, so I don’t really know what that distinction means. Anyway, it is dull, lifeless, without movement, with characters often looking not quite right in face or pose, with panels inserted apparently to fill the page rather than fulfilling any narrative, atmospheric or character purpose, and the colour artists seem to have had an awful lot of various brown tones to use up, so it all looks very muddy and dreary.

I am mystified as to how such a boring comic, in story and art, gets published, or how it will find an audience, given that Ka-Zar is far from a guaranteed big seller. I’m a lousy judge of commercial success, but this surely has flop written all over it.