Pulp Beginnings
The Savage Land from the Ka-zar comics had an unusual birth in Marvel Comics. It all begins with the Pulps. Bob Byrd wrote three issues of the Pulp Ka-Zar in October 1936, January 1937 then renamed Ka-Zar the Great for June 1937.
“King of Fang and Claw” was later adapted in Marvel Mystery Comics #1-17 (October 1939- March 1941). With issues 18-19 (April-May 1941), the comic creators had to come up with their own adventures. The novel is pretty standard Tarzan jungle stuff with lions and elephants and poachers. The later issues were filled up with Nazi-punching propaganda.
A Special Treat
But issue 18-19 were special. Ka-Zar meets dinosaurs and giants. This was his only fantastical adventure (one that like Frank Frazetta’s Thun’da, King of the Congo in 1952 was an Edgar Rice Burroughs style cavemen and dinosaurs deal to begin with.) The script was by Ray Gill and the art by Ben Thompson (who drew the comic from the start).
It is fascinating to look at this comic (and a few others) and see what Jack Kirby (and Stan Lee’s) process was to create the Savage Land later in the 1960s for The X-Men #10 (March 1965). First, let’s look at Ka-Zar’s dino-adventure:
Part One – Issue 18
Ka-Zar is out enjoying some rafting when the river’s current becomes too strong. He is drawn into a great tunnel.
This leads to a secret world hidden away from space and time. He hears dinosaurs crying in alarm. They are running from…
Ka-Zar is about to die at the hands of the savage dinosaur when a gigantic arrow strikes the beast. It flees knowing that the giant will soon be there.
Ka-Zar follows the giant to his cave. He is caught when a second giant shows up.
Part 2 – Issue 19
The giant is about to throw Ka-Zar into the dinner pot when an earthquake shakes the cave. A fissure opens up in the floor, swallowing the giant.
Ka-Zar grabs a rope and saves his enemy. The giant’s name is Bogat and he promises to always be a friend. Only there is other trouble– the Limbos!
The Limbos are lizard people from the planet’s core–the only thing the giants fear. They caused the earthquake so they could attack.
Which they do! The giants and Ka-Zar rain boulders down on the monsters but some still get at them. Bogat warns Ka-Zar the Limbos’ bite is deadly poison. When things look bad an airplane appears with a man and a woman. The Limbos attack them. The giant distracts them long enough for the three humans to escape.
Jack and Stan took several ideas from this comic for their Savage Land debut. (Not the Limbos.) They had to have a T-Rexish dinosaur like the original.
The giant got shrunk but he’s still there in a largely superfluous fight scene.
Ka-Zar takes out the bad guys at the end by summoning a herd of mastodons. This did not appear in Issue 18-19 but he did do it several times in his other adventures, especially those against the Nazis.
There is one question left unanswered: why the Antarctic? For that one, you need to look at Marvel Mystery Comics #22 (August 1941). While Ka-Zar was off dealing with Nazi “Agent Orange”, the Vision was busy with another strange bad guy. “Khor, the Black Sorcerer” has the Vision looking for a missing ship, U. S. S. Olympus. This comic doesn’t really offer any Ka-Zar elements but it does have a tropical land in the Antarctic accessed through a cave. Jack Kirby had been the artist on this strip and he must have remembered it.
Jack and Stan had the perfect place for a Jungle Lord to live and not be known by the world of satellites and TV cameras. They used the Savage Land for a one-off in The X-Men but Stan Lee would revive the idea six years later for a black & white comic in Savage Tales #1 (May 1971). “The Night of the Looter” was the first of eleven adventures in that magazine before Ka-Zar would move to color comics, off and on over the following decades.
Conclusion
It is well known that the Pulps were the sire of the comics. All those Exciting and Thrilling titles prove that if nothing else. In this case the line of Pulp to comic is pretty obvious. When comic fans read Ka-Zar comics (and there have been many over the years) they might think of Tarzan first, an obvious Pulp progenitor, but I hope this shows there was a little more to the birth of the Savage Land that just ripping off Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar.
Great history