You might argue that the first Marvel superhero predated even Superman.
Thanks to the spectacular and continuing success of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Lord of the Jungle in the pulp magazines, novels, movies and comic strips of the 1910s and 1920s, the jungles were soon crawling with ersatz Tarzans.
Readers had their choice of Bomba, Bantan, Jan, Jongor, Tam, Tharn, Kaspa, Ki-Gor, Kioga — and Ka-Zar.
Starting in 1936, “Ka-Zar by ‘Bob Byrd’ was also featured in a magazine bearing his name for several issues," noted Richard A. Lupoff in his excellent book Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure. “Ka-Zar, like the earlier Kaspa, was raised by lions; like the earlier Kioga, his real family name was Rand; like Tarzan, he fought with apes, befriended elephants and generally ruled a jungle domain.”
Because Ka-Zar (pronounced “KAY-sar”) was owned and published by Martin Goodman, young David Rand slipped neatly into Goodman’s seminal Marvel Comics 1 in 1939, right alongside the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner.
Then, like many another Golden Age Marvel character, Ka-Zar was revived in the 1960s — but not as David Rand. This time he was Kevin Plunder, a lost English lord discovered by the X-Men living with his sabertooth tiger Zabu in the Savage Land, a tropical wonderland hidden in Antarctica. (The X-Men 10, March 1965).
The jungle man knocked around the Marvel universe for five years before landing his own feature in Astonishing Tales, a duplex comic he shared with Dr. Doom.
Ka-Zar’s feature outlasted Doom’s, continuing through October 1973 before being replaced by It, the Living Colossus.
In whatever incarnation, Ka-Zar displays peak physical strength, speed and agility and an uncanny ability to communicate with animals.
“More than two-thirds of a century after his first appearance, Ka-Zar is probably the only one of those 1930s Tarzan knock-offs that is still appearing in new adventures,” comics historian Don Markstein noted. “Pretty good for a guy who only managed three pulp magazines before sinking into oblivion.”
Melody Ivins wrote: You may well already know this, but I find it fascinating that Burroughs was a thin man in poor health -- not a he-man at all -- and living in booming, polluted Chicago when he created Tarzan.
ReplyDeleteAh, the lives of our fantasies!
Bob Doncaster wrote:
ReplyDeleteI always thought of Ka-zar as a cross between Tarzan and David Innes. Tarzan once having his own adventure in Pellucidar.
Cheryl Spoehr wroe:
ReplyDeleteI have read the first pulp adventure of Ka-Zar,I don't recommend it... no dinosaurs.
Andrew Buckle wrote:
ReplyDeleteWonder why they decided not to revive him as he was in the pulps / comics as David Rand, instead changing him to Kevin Plunder ? Surely they could have come up with Ka-zar frozen in a block of ice from the 30s ? Or some immortality via 'She' etc
It may be that they decided on a new origin so they could throw dinosaurs into the mix as a way to differentiate him from the various other Tarzan clones that were still extent.
I replied: It may be that they decided on a new origin so they could throw dinosaurs into the mix as a way to differentiate him from the various other Tarzan clones that were still extant.
Foster H. Coker III wrote:
ReplyDeleteI am mildly amused that, when Marvel revived the Tarzan pastiche character, the updated version was made even more Tarzan-like by the addition of the lost English Lord element.