“Bug in Your Ear”
Writer: Jimmy Palmiotti
Artist: Amanda Conner
Colorist: Paul Mounts
Letterer: Clem Robins
Editors: Brittany Holzherr and Dan DiDio

When last we left Kamandi, he had leapt off a cliff into an unknown abyss rather than be captured by Manhunter robots. As Chapter Three begins, Kamandi’s descent is spotted by a hidden watcher, and a pair of bat people, Kreeg and Saparta, is dispatched to catch him; they sort of succeed, but not before Kamandi hits his head and loses consciousness. Upon awakening in a darkened cell, Kamandi is cautioned to be careful by a flying insect. “Yer in danger. They have eyes everywhere,” the bug says.

Then an organic pod emerges through the floor of Kamandi’s cell, which upon opening reveals a green-skinned half-vegetable girl who introduces herself as Vila. “I am yours,” she says enticingly, although her offer isn’t quite what we’re at first led to believe.

It turns out that Kamandi is aboard a ship in the clutches of the God Watchers, a crew of various animal types who believe Kamandi to be a messenger of the gods they have been waiting for; they possess a torn photo of Kamandi (or someone who looks like him) as a young boy, seated in front of his parents, the “true gods.” (Remember that Kamandi’s search to find his parents has so far been the one unifying thread in this round-robin series.)

Despite being hosted as a god, Kamandi doesn’t trust the God Watchers or their turtle leader, Fritz, and is deeply unsettled by what he sees of their ways: the bat people who saved Kamandi are slaves, captured in combat, and when he encounters them again they are undergoing punishment for failing to rescue him unharmed. At a feast held in his honor, Kamandi discovers that Vila and others like her are raised as food: he’s horrified to watch the animals bite off strips of the plant people’s “flesh,” even as Vila assures him that it will grow back. And everywhere, Kamandi is being watched by the hovering insects that serve as the God Watchers’ spy network. Despite his protests that he is not a god, he comes to realize that he is in great danger if the God Watchers begin to doubt him.

The crisis arrives when Kamandi draws his own blood in front of the God Watchers to prove that he is mortal, but that revelation is overshadowed by an attack from the bat people as the ship passes near their territory. In the confusion of the attack, Vila is grabbed by one of the attacking bats; Kamandi hangs on to her by one of her arms and rescues her by chewing through the other. The two of them free the still-captive Kreeg and Saparta (they cannot return to their own kind, as they are considered “tainted”), and are about to ride to freedom when Fritz corners them. “Arrest this impostor and kill the other three,” he orders. But then Fritz and his minions are slaughtered by the attacking bats, and Kamandi and Vila escape on Kreeg and Saparta’s backs just before the invaders firebomb the entire ship.

Whew! That would be enough for an episode of any adventure book, but true to the source material, the four protagonists have only escaped from one danger to step into another: the island they land on is reputed to be the home of a Sun Cult, and almost immediately they are ambushed by intelligent jaguars. After a struggle, Kamandi is again knocked out and taken captive. When he awakens, he and Vila are tied to posts on a ceremonial altar. Kreeg and Saparta have already been ritually cooked and eaten, and “sun-haired” Kamandi is next in line to be sacrificed. After being paralyzed with a drug and ritually decorated by attendants, Kamandi finds himself (with Vila thrown in for good measure) in Fay Wray’s position as a gift to the King Kong of jaguars. “Mmm . . . dinner!” the giant cat purrs. To be continued . . .

“Bug in Your Ear” is the contribution of husband-and-wife team Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, who have worked together on many projects and who obviously know each others’ strengths. Conner’s art is always attractive, with a clean and slightly cartoony style, and here she leans into that quality with a big-eyed plant girl who resembles a sexy spin on the Jolly Green Giant, and a host of funny animals reminiscent of mid-century Disney productions like Robin Hood. The Disney comparison extends to the flying insects: the first one we see, who warns Kamandi to be careful, suggests something like Tinkerbell or Jiminy Cricket, a voice of wisdom from a tiny, unseen source. But that doesn’t last long, as the bug falls prey to an anteater who can’t resist snacking on the God Watchers’ spies.

In fact, despite how busy this chapter is, a great deal of the interest is in the characterization of the many different non-humans and their various motives as they’re thrown together in different combinations. The cuteness of the art and the humor of the characters offsets the gruesomeness of the plot, which lest we forget includes copious examples of (sort of) cannibalism, dismemberment, and ritual sacrifice. (The role reversal of having Kamandi wind up a body-painted “damsel in distress” at the end gives the story a touch of equal-opportunity sensuality, as well.)

Both the God Watchers and Jaguar Sun Cult were listed on the map of Kamandi’s world that Jack Kirby left behind before handing Kamandi off to other writers. I’d go so far as to say that “Bug in Your Ear” represents an ideal form of at least one facet of Kirby’s creation: funny animal characters and themes viewed through the lens of science fiction: not hard science fiction, but at least giving weight to the behaviors of real animals and by extension satirizing the human societies that the animals parody. As in previous iterations of Kamandi, and indeed a great many funny animal books (including those aimed at children), the animal societies mirror human cultures associated with the geography they inhabit.

Aztec jaguars are a natural, of course, and whether the use of Mesoamerican cultural signifiers like step-pyramids and human sacrifice is meant to suggest that the jaguars have taken over where humans left off, or rather that there is some sort of geographical essentialism involved in culture, is something left for the individual reader to ponder. And could we read Fritz and his multi-species crew of God Watchers as L. Ron Hubbard tooling about on a yacht for years as the head of Scientology’s Sea Org? Or perhaps his ship is an inverted Noah’s Ark, run by animals and searching for humans to save? Probably not, but it is fun to speculate. More importantly, no matter how far-fetched the settings and characters of fantasies like Kamandi may be, they connect because we recognize in them the passions for freedom, compassion, and meaning, as well as the cruelty, lust for power, and religious fanaticism that have always been with us, and have always been part of our fiction. As in the Planet of the Apes series, the most dangerous animal is man, no matter what skin he wears in his stories.