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Kamandi: The Planet of the Apes Connection

When Jack Kirby premiered his post-apocalyptic adventure Kamandi in the 1970s, pretty much everyone felt that he had been "influenced" by the Planet of the Apes film series. But as the comicbookresources.com column "Comic Book Legends Revealed" explains, Kirby actually preceded the Apes films with the idea of intelligent animals ruling the world.
Offers the column, "Carmine Infantino became the publisher of DC Comics [and] he wanted to acquire the license to make Planet of the Apes comic books, since the film series was very popular (a new sequel came out once a year from 1970-1973). He was rebuffed in his attempts, so he tasked Jack Kirby with coming up with a comic book that was LIKE Planet of the Apes. Now Kirby had not actually seen the film, but he knew the basic gist of the story, and surely enough, Kirby had done a story years earlier in 1957 (before the novel, Planet of the Apes, was written, let alone the film adaptation) when he was working for Harvey Comics' Alarming Tales, about a post-apocalyptic future where talking anthropomorphic animals ruled the world. So this was definitely something Kirby was comfortable with. As for the name, Kirby had a comic strip pitch that had not been picked up called Kamandi of the Caves from 1956.

"So there Kirby had the basic plot for his series as well as the name of his main character. Later, Infantino would suggest that he came up with the basic concept for Kamandi and Kirby ran with it, but I dunno, that doesn't seem to match up with Kirby's Alarming Tales story as well as the comic strip. Kirby wrote and drew Kamandi for 37 issues and drew another three. Lasting for 59 issues, Kamandi was the most successful comic launched during Kirby's 1970s tenure at DC Comics. Annoyingly enough, though, when Kirby pitched the idea, his intention was that someone else would write and draw it, as he wanted to devote his time to his Fourth World comics. Infantino 'helped' Kirby out by canceling Forever People so Kirby could devote his time to Kamandi (Infantino 'helped' Kirby out in a similar fashion when he canceled New Gods so that Kirby could launch The Demon). Much to Infantino's chagrin, I'm sure, Marvel ended up getting the Planet of the Apes license in 1974."
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EdGross
2/20/2010
Comic Book Resources

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