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Ka-Zar: Guns Of The Savage Land

by Chuck Dixon & Timothy Truman

(Art by Gary Kwapisz and Ricardo Villagran)

When a man from a primitive culture walks out of the Nevada dessert, Wyatt Wingfoot suspects he has discovered a new entrance to the primeval Savage Land.  Enlisting the help of Ka-Zar and his wife Shanna, Wyatt leads an expedition into the subterranean world, only to discover it already being exploited by people from the surface.

I can't claim to have ever been particularly invested in Ka-Zar, but my experience of him and the dinosaur-infested Savage Land has always been as a fun pastiche of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, Pelucidar, etc.).  I grew up watching and loving stop-motion dinosaur movies (or iguanas with horns glued on), so that sort of thing has a certain appeal for me.  This, however, is an absolute character-assassination of Ka-Zar.

Now, it has to be said that all of the points made here are entirely valid and it's appropriate that it's the Native American Wyatt Wingfoot who is used to call out the 'white saviour' attitude (even if, as far as I know, both writers are white guys).  However, I feel like this could've been taken as an opportunity to rehabilitate the narrative of Ka-Zar instead of just show him to be terrible person.  If you want examples of what we get here; we see Ka-Zar (a white British man, in case you didn't know) more or less forcing his rulership on a group of natives, calling them 'like children' and then driving them to war against their will.  On top of that, he tries to rape his wife on no less than two occasions.  Thankfully for the latter, Shanna Plunder can handle herself and fights him off, but that certainly doesn't mitigate what he was trying to do.

This could've been a fun romp with sabre-toothed tigers and dinosaurs, but instead is just an exploration of how awful the title character is.

2 out of 5