Issue(s): Astonishing Tales #10
Cover Date: Feb 72
Title: "To end in flame!"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Script
Roy Thomas - Plot
Barry Windsor-Smith - Penciler
Sal Buscema - Inker

Review/plot:
This issue concludes a story wherein a group of German and English soldiers have been fighting each other since they were stranded in the Savage Land during World War II. We're into the second generation of soldiers at this point, and it turns out that the fathers of each "tribe" have been colluding to keep the war going.

It's a cool concept (as far as i know, it isn't swiped from anywhere) but it's not all that engaging. Decent art, though. Barry Smith inked by Sal Buscema, of all things.

The story began in Astonishing Tales #8, and issue #9 was a fill-in by Stan Lee and John Buscema.

I was mainly interested in seeing the development of Bobbi Morse, but all i can tell you is that in this issue she has blond hair instead of brown.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Continues directly from issue #8.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Smith inked by Sal Buscema kinda looks like Jack Abel here.

Bobbi's hair color...my guess is it's the same "instant hair color in a can" Jessica Drew would eventually use. She's been a blonde ever since so that's all I can say about it.

I appreciate that the Marvel Cinematic U introduced Bobbi with brown hair before turning it blonde as well. A neat and obscure nod!

The giant smilodectes depicted in this issue looks like the prototype for the Cap/Spidey foe Vermin.

The story's concept reminds me of a twisted combination of the 1968 film "Hell in the Pacific", where Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune are a shot-down pilot and a washed-ashore captain (respectively) on a deserted island who fight with each other then work together to be rescued, and the ending to Denys Rayner's book "The Enemy Below", made into a 1957 film starring Robert Mitchum. Unlike the film, where the American destroyer captain and the German sub captain work together to save their respective crews when their crafts are destroyed, in the book the two captains are seen throwing punches at each other while wading in the Atlantic. Regarding this story, some may find the message of families and the cost of war on them a bit ham-fisted. In addition, in my comments for issue #8 I touched on the Eurocentrism in WW2-based fiction. Still, the concept was welcome and refreshing in a book that at times felt like it should have been called "Savage Sword of Ka-Zar".

Reexamining the content of this story, there are similarities to this and Edgar Rice Burroughs' "The Land That Time Forgot", which was set during the First World War and details the confrontation between a German U-Boat and a British tugboat, where the crews wash ashore in the Antarctic in a land where dinosaurs still exist. This in turn would inspire Bob Kanigher's war/sci-fi/fantasy hybrid "The War That Time Forgot" at DC in the '60's. Stands to reason the creators would borrow from an ERB story, considering Ka-Zar is so modeled after Burroughs' most famous creation.