“Nuclear Roar!”
Story and Words: Peter J. Tomasi
Artist: Neal Adams
Colorist: Hi-Fi
Letterer: Clem Robbins
Editors: Brittany Holzherr and Dan DiDio

At the end of last month’s “K–is for ‘Kill’!”, King Caesar had triumphantly returned from battle with a “god” that he planned to awaken in order to add its power to that of the Tiger Empire. Only Kamandi, claimed as a “pet” by Prince Tuftan and guarded by Dr. Canus, recognized the “god” as a nuclear missile, left over from the times before the Great Disaster. As Caesar activated the missile’s computer system, it began a countdown, with Kamandi certain that the ancient device was going to blow up the entire city and everyone in it.

As this month’s continuation, “Nuclear Roar!”, begins, Kamandi struggles against his captor, attempting to reason with the tigers and halt the countdown, or escape, only to be put in his place. The last few seconds tick away, but instead of detonating, the missile opens a hatch, from which emerges a gorilla commando, guns blazing! “A giant ape hiding inside an old nuclear missile like it was a Trojan horse!” Kamandi exclaims, accurately summing up the situation. Indeed, the gorillas were able to track their inside man to the tigers’ hidden city, and a wave of gorilla soldiers begin invading.

In the confusion, Kamandi escapes and heads back to the Museum of War seen last issue. There, the jackdaw guards that confronted him before are even more bloodthirsty, with one in particular sensing Kamandi’s presence and promising to shred him with his talons, among other graphic threats. After struggling against the jackdaw using the stockpiled weapons, Kamandi comes across a mysterious high-tech chair. Warned away from it, he naturally sits down in it out of spite, just in time for Prince Tuftan and Dr. Canus to arrive and try to pull him out of it (like many of the relics of the past, it is considered sacred, despite–or because of–the tigers’ inability to understand it).

Somehow Kamandi activates the chair, and he, Tuftan, and Canus are teleported a great distance: all the way to the ruins of San Diego, in fact, far outside the Tiger Empire. Canus, frightened, recognizes the place as the site of a “wild human reserve,” but before he can explain what that means to Kamandi, he and Tuftan are struck by robotic “Manhunters” who attempt to capture Kamandi. In a last-ditch effort to escape, even if it means death, Kamandi leaps from the ledge upon which he stands, into the unknown. To be continued . . .

I can’t say I was crazy about “Nuclear Roar!” After the fluid, expressive art of Dale Eaglesham last issue, Neal Adams’ treatment of the same characters looks stiff and, dare I say it, ugly. Adams is of course a giant in the comics world for his work on Batman, but in recent years his style has become stiff and over-rendered, with an emphasis on goggle-eyed, open-mouthed expressions of shock. It’s . . . distinctive, I’ll admit, but not something I care much for. Combined with Peter J. Tomasi’s dialogue (“Your new god’s a mushroom cloud, idiots!” is a typical bon mot), this chapter is functional but not very subtle as storytelling.

The biggest development in the ongoing serial is getting the threesome of Kamandi, Tuftan, and Canus out of Tiger City and into a dangerous, remote area that can jumpstart the quest/journey elements central to most of Kamandi’s previous adventures, and will presumably force the three main characters to work together. As yet, we haven’t seen anything to indicate that they will be uneasy allies, much less friends, but I appreciate that the friendship angle is being given time to develop organically: for all of Kamandi’s pugnacious bluntness in Kirby’s original saga, he typically made friends quickly. One of the opportunities of revisiting or retelling this story is in decompressing and smoothing out some of the original story beats, or at least exploring them from a different angle. Or, who knows? Maybe they’ll all kill each other in this version of the story. But somehow I doubt it.

There are some nice touches, however, as well as more clues about the world Kamandi has been dropped into. We don’t learn any more about his search for his parents, but it is mentioned again, just to make sure we (and the next team to take over the story) don’t forget about it. I also got a good laugh out of the reveal of the gorilla hiding inside the missile: if you’re not going for subtlety, then this kind of audacious broad stroke is a good alternative, and saving it for a three-quarter page splash after a page turn maximized the element of surprise.

There’s also the jackdaw guard who uses what are unmistakably explosive Batarangs against Kamandi during their fight in the Museum: this is obviously a tip of the hat to the artist’s most famous work, but could it be more? In Jack Kirby’s original series, it was established that Superman was a real person in the past, connecting Earth A.D. to DC’s mainstream continuity as an “alternate future.” In Dan DiDio and Keith Giffen’s prologue “The Rules” from issue no. 1, we see a glimpse of Superman and Batman posters on the wall of Kamandi’s bedroom; by itself that doesn’t prove anything, but the connection to other heroes’ continuity remains a tantalizing possibility. Maybe the Batarangs in the Museum were actually the Batman’s, salvaged from one of King Caesar’s excursions into a future Gotham City?

What about the Manhunters who confront our heroes in San Diego? These appear identical to the Manhunters who preceded the Green Lantern Corps as an interplanetary police force in past DC comics, even referencing their catch phrase “No man escapes the Manhunters,” but what their role here is remains to be seen.

Finally, the most overtly meta moment in the chapter is the full-page illustration of the group in mid-teleportation. In addition to the dramatic image of Kamandi, seated in the chair and struggling to hold onto Tuftan and Canus, there are cameos of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman; Gorilla Grodd; the Sandman’s mask; a Mother Box; and most intriguingly, a stack of comic books. And they’re not just any comics: visible covers include Kamandi no. 1, an issue of Kirby’s New Gods, DiDio and Giffen’s New 52 OMAC, an issue of Green Lantern and Green Arrow (another landmark Neal Adams series), and Legion of Superheroes. Fragments of narration or speech dot the panel as well. In the spirit of an ongoing comics jam, these could be inside jokes, referring to some of the creators’ other work, or they could be clues to the mysteries of Kamandi’s parentage and destiny: depending on how future writers pick up on them, they could go either way.