Issue(s): Ka-Zar the Savage #33
Cover Date: Aug 84
Title: "Brother, can you spare a mine?"
Credits:
Mike Carlin - Writer
Paul Neary & Marie Severin - Penciler
Carlos Garzon - Inker
Bob DeNatale - Assistant Editor
Danny Fingeroth - Editor

Review/plot:
Parnival Plunder continues to, well, plunder, anti-metal from under the noses of Ka-Zar and Shanna. During the mining operation that he's hoodwinked the local savages into, a strange bone is unearthed.

The bone is really our vehicle into next issue. The majority of the plot for this issue has Ka-Zar and Shanna eventually discovering what Parnival is up to.

Shanna, who has come across as naive in her dealings with Parnival, also doesn't have a good showing when his plot is out in the open.

She's in complete hostage mode.

It might have been nice to have her redeeming herself by taking care of a single guy with a handgun, but i guess not.

On the plus side, we get a little Zabu time.

Although he gets handled pretty easily too.

I guess i'll console myself with the fact that as the Plunderer, Parnival is technically a super-villain, although there's really nothing super about him.

Parnival makes it all the way out of the Savage Land on his raft, but Ka-Zar is already there waiting for him.

In the final fight with Parnival and the sailors on the boat, we see the effects of the anti-metal that Parnival is plundering.

Parnival does have an odd moment of heroism...

...and in the end, he is seemingly dead, trapped under ice.

A little more Zabu for you:

Now back to that bone:

In this issue it's announced that Ka-Zar is cancelled due to Marvel ending the "experiment with taking certain magazines which were available everywhere and distributing them exclusively to direct sales comic shops". It's said that the title will be return as a regular, non-direct market only, title. That does happen with Micronauts and Moon Knight, the other books that were part of this experiment, but not Ka-Zar.

In any event, we still have one more issue to go.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Since it's really a separate story, i'm keeping this in a separate entry from issue #34. But the story continues directly from this issue, even repeating the scene of Shanna and Ka-Zar touching the teleporting bone from the end of this issue.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A