Issue(s): Astonishing Tales #11
Cover Date: Apr 72
Title: "A day of tigers!"
Credits:
Roy Thomas - Writer
Gil Kane - Penciler
Frank Giacoia - Inker

Review/plot:
Maa-Gor, last of the Man-Apes, first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #10, which was also Ka-Zar's first appearance. He seemed like a complete throwaway character, one of a million prehistoric concepts Stan and Jack threw at us while introducing the Savage Land. Maa-Gor then appeared again in Daredevil #12-13, but even though Ka-Zar was in those issues, Maa-Gor only tussled with Daredevil so we didn't learn anything new about him and it just seemed like a clever little wink to old readers to have him included again.

But in this issue, Roy Thomas raises his importance by giving him an origin that ties into Ka-Zar's.

The story is that Ka-Zar's father fled to the Savage Land with his son Kevin, on the run from criminals who wanted the "anti-metal" he found on a previous expedition there. The father is soon killed by a tribe of Man-Apes...

...but Kevin is rescued by Zabu.

Zabu and Kevin flee to the "Place of Mists" where the Man-Apes would not follow, and it turns out that the Mists give both Ka-Zar and Zabu great strength, and also prevent Zabu (at least) from aging.

Eventually they leave the Place of Mists and encounter the Man-Apes again. Ka-Zar and Zabu flee, but Zabu is injured and Ka-Zar triggers an avalanche that kills all of the Man-Apes except Maa-Gor. In the battle that follows, Ka-Zar says that Maa-Gor is responsible for the deaths of Zabu's loved ones as well as Ka-Zar.

That's all flashback. The only part of the issue that takes place in the present is just Ka-Zar accompanying Barbara Morse and her fiancee Paul Allen out of the Savage Land while he reflects on his past (the MCP lists both Maa-Gor and Kevin's brother the Plunderer as appearing in the non-flashback part of the story, but it's a mistake).

We still haven't learned anything about Barbara Morse or why she needs Ka-Zar's help. It's such a Roy Thomas move to introduce that plotline in issues #6-7 and then drop in the "World War II continued" story and this origin flashback before moving that forward at all.

Gil Kane's art works pretty well in the Savage Land setting if you can look past the Crazy Faces and nostril upshots.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

The "anti-metal" was later revealed to be an isotope of vibranium. Ka-Zar's increased strength due to the Place of Mists also got reversed in an early Marvel Universe Handbook.

All that intro and then you forgot to list Maa-Gor as a character appearing

As i wrote, the Maa-Gor portion of the story is flashback, and i don't list the appearance in that case.

Oh, really? Wow, I never realized that.

Yeah, because the idea is you should be able to click on any character name and get a chronological list of the issues they appeared in. And since i'm placing the entire issue and not individual scenes, listing appearances in flashbacks cause them to appear out of order. Flashbacks are often from someone's memory or some other source that may not be reliable, too.

With all the examples of Gil Kane's nostril shots out there, he really missed an opportunity for a second career illustrating medical textbooks for students seeking to be ENT doctors (ear, nose and throat, of course). I suppose I could have said for med students who wished to specialize in otorhinolaryngology, but that word is best left for contestants in the National Spelling Bee.

On the first page, Kane looks to have drawn Paul Allen to resemble Clark Gable, right down to the pencil-thin mustache and large ears. Considering the setting and that he had a blonde female companion with him, this may have been inspired by Gable in John Ford's "Mogambo", though Bobbi Morse doesn't resemble Grace Kelly. Also, due to a coloring error on the cover (or perhaps an error in the transfer in my Marvel Masterworks edition of this story), unless you look closely it could appear that Ka-Zar is nude while swinging his left leg to give Maa-Gor a roundhouse kick.

At the climax of the fight with Maa-Gor, when Ka-Zar uses his legs to push a boulder onto his adversary, the Jungle Lord lets loose once again with that remnant from when Stan Lee wrote him: That awful, immodest "stronger than giant boar" catchphrase. This time "stronger than the mastadon" is replaced with the "thunder lizard". Even with a change in the wording, the battlecry reveals a level of suck so unbecoming a master of his domain. Ben Grimm or Wolverine couldn't possibly say anything like that with a straight face. Thankfully, later scribes would ditch this silly bit of braggadocio and more or less let his actions speak for him, and Lord Kevin was all the better for it.