It’s a look to the future with two distinctly different tales.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Jurgens, Tom Sniegoski
Art: Eric Gaptur, Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund
Colors: Hi-Fi, Marissa Lousie
Letterer:
What They Say:
Story 1 – On Earth-A.D. (After Disaster), the world is a very different place-a post-apocalyptic wasteland, full of talking animals and other strange sights. While exploring his dystopian home, Kamandi, the last living human, stumbles upon a robot butler patiently awaiting the return of his human masters, who disappeared years before. Kamandi takes pity on the loyal butler and tries to reunite him with his long-lost family…however unusual that reunion might be.
Story 2 – In the far future of the 31st century, the super-powered teens known as the Legion of Super-Heroes protect all the citizens of the United Planets. But when Legionnaires Sun Boy and Wildfire are kidnapped, their teammates must infiltrate a mysterious ice planet to try to save their friends…and the planet!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The second installment goes for a split story approach with very different teams and characters involved. The opening tale is a Kamandi one where we get Tom Sniegoski writing it and Eric Gapstur on the artwork with Marissa Louise providing for some very grounded and appropriate colors. The second story takes us to the Legion where Dan Jurgens gets to step in with these classic characters to both write and illustrate it – something I haven’t seen of his in quite some time – with Norm Rapmund on the artwork as well. It’s got a great old school feeling to it in the way that I really enjoy and it feels like a wonderful little trip back in time to when the Legion, well, made sense.
Kamandi isn’t a character I’m too familiar with but I’ve read a little bit here and there and completely understand the basic concept and overall importance in comics history. Here, we see him venturing out into the world again and has come across a vehicle with several dead bodies in it before finds himself accosted by some pretty intelligent and dangerous human-sized rats. The story takes us to a mansion where a robot butler is waiting for its master to come back and helps to take care of Kamandi for the moment, but also has Kamandi join him in defending the house. You can see the basic pattern easily enough, it is a short story, but this plays out like so many futuristic anime episodes I’ve seen over the years that it’s really quite wonderful. Sniegoski hits all the rights marks for a short story without it feeling jumbled or rushed.
The Legion story is a very fun if simple one as you’d expect, taking us to the “classic” 31st century where we see that Wildfire and Sun Boy have been kidnapped and taken to the non-UP world of Hustrava. That has Brainy, Dawnstar, and Colossal Boy tracking them and closing in on a rescue. It’s fun watching them come up with a plan while inside we see that the pair were kidnapped because they were needed to help power things as their sun is wilting and dying. There’s an obvious route to fixing some of this but the story delves into the pride of the people, not asking for help, and not wanting to be a part of the UP. It serve sup some good action with Brainy’s plan put into motion to rescue the others and offers a glimmer of hope, but mostly it was just a blast to see what I consider “my” Legion getting some ime to shine here.
In Summary:
Sniegoski and Gapstur put together a strong classic kind of Kamandi tale that highlights the world at that time and offers up the kinds of stories that would populate it and make good for an anthology series. The Legion tale takes us back to the core version of the series and runs with that in a really fun way with Dan Jurgens capturing the look and feel of it wonderfully with an assist from Rapmund. The result is a book that reminds that the old style and stories, the old characters and their worlds, can be produced just the same as today with some minor tweaks and still be thoroughly fun and engaging. I’d love to see a lot more of both of these in this form to be able to enjoy something that was successful for decades and from a much different time.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Amazon Kindle
Release Date: July 3rd, 2020
MSRP: $0.99