Issue(s): Astonishing Tales #9
Cover Date: Dec 71
Title: "The legend of the Lizard Men!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
John Buscema - Penciler
John Buscema - Inker

Review/plot:
This is the first issue of Astonishing Tales where Ka-Zar gets top billing. Dr. Doom is gone, and the "Astonishing Tales" logo on the cover is much smaller than "Ka-Zar Lord of the Hidden Jungle". It's not exactly an auspicious start as a solo series, though. The issue is a fill-in, interrupting a story that began last issue. I also suspect that this story was originally intended for another format. To explain that, recall that there was a Ka-Zar story in the Savage Tales black & white magazine that only lasted one issue. And that was by Stan Lee and John Buscema, and it got reprinted as a fill-in in Astonishing Tales #14. I suspect that this story was originally intended for Savage Tales #2, and when that series got cancelled, the story got put here. This story is also the same length as the story in Savage Tales #1 / Astonishing Tales #14, and like Astonishing Tales #14, the remainder of this issue is filled up with jungle lady reprints.

Whatever it's origins, no one's going to complain about a Lee/Buscema story after some of the creative team jumbles we've been seeing in Ka-Zar's Astonishing run.

This issue has Ka-Zar looking for a tribe of villagers that, according to a blind man that was left behind, were kidnapped by lizard people.

Ka-Zar encounters a woman named Iranda...

...who tells Ka-Zar that the blind guy got it wrong and that the lizard people are good people that would never kidnap villagers, and she promises to help Ka-Zar find the real kidnappers. I kind of perked up at this point; a story about lizard people being misunderstood could be kind of cool. Poor lizard men are always having the worst assumed about them, you know what i am saying? But in fact the lizard people are the bad guys...

...and Iranda is one of them, with a magic crown that gives her a human form and also turns the kidnapped villagers into lizard men.

Still a fun swords & sorcery style comic.

The back-up is a Lorna the Jungle Girl reprint...

...but it's a mess. They accidentally reprinted halves of two different Lorna stories. So we go directly from this...

...to this.

It starts off being a story about evil tom tom drums but then we get the conclusion of story about a magic green opal. The green opal story also features a Russian commie in blackface, so there's that.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This is a fill-in interrupting a story that ran between issue #8 and #10. The MCP place it before issue #8, although it could really go either way.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

This probably is the ST#2 story; Iranda's boobs do seem to be unnaturally covered up.

The Lorna story is by Don Rico/Jay Scott Pike.

Buscema and Ka-zar feel like such a natural fit, but thats probably because I'm so used to him on SS of Conan.

"Stronger than the mastadon! Stronger than the giant boar! Mighty is Ka-Zar- Lord of the jungle!" Ka-Zar proclaims as he suplexes a lizard man to the ground. Oddly enough, this catchphrase just didn't have the zing of the Thing's "It's clobberin' time!" or Wolverine's "best there is at what he does". My word of advice to Lord Plunder? BREVITY! Still, overall a fun issue and, much like with Conan, Buscema's Ka-Zar looks more like a linebacker than Barry Smith's lean and lithe jungle lord.

Just gave this issue a re-read, and apparently I left out a whole zoo of animals Ka-Zar compares himself to. When he saves a lizard man from falling, he needs to "move like the python" and "leap like the tiger". At another point he says he needs "the courage of Zabu", "the strength of the long tusks", and "the stealth of the devil fin". Personally, the late, greatest Muhammad Ali's "I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee" is shorter, sweeter, and far cooler. Brevity, Lord Kevin, brevity! Something else I noticed the second go-round is letterer Artie Simek is inconsistent in his punctuation; it's like he was allergic to using periods.