Kamandi Challenge #4 Review and **SPOILERS**

Everybody Wants a Piece of the Last Boy on Earth

Writer: James Tynion IV 

Artist: Carlos D’Anda 

Colorist: Gabe Eltaeb 

Letterer: Clem Robins 

Cover Artists: Paul Pope & Lovern Kindzierski 

Cover Price: $3.99 

On Sale Date: April 26, 2017

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

With this issue, we are one-third through the Kamandi Challenge, and I have been enjoying it quite a lot! Mind you, I am a weirdo, but it has been handled by some great talent and the issues have been of good quality. Just a little weird, is all. So why wait? Let’s check out my review of the Kamandi Challenge #4, right here!

Explain It!

We left Kamandi and his new planty girlfriend Vila offered as a King Kong style sacrifice to a giant tiger, by a bunch of anthropomorphic tigers that are like the sixty-seventh strangest thing about this dystopian future. After a tussle, Kamandi is swallowed whole by Tiger Kong, and winds up in a control room for this massive robot controlled by the nerdiest tiger folk around. Vila is also swallowed by Tiger Kong, but chewed first, so she comes through with some pulpy bite marks that she’ll have to regrow. Kamandi decides that he doesn’t feel like being experimented upon by two crazy tiger scientists, so he and Vila scamper outside of the tiger’s mouth and climb down to a jet plane, adorning Tiger Kong’s tribal gear like he’s some giant schizophrenic hobo. Kamandi and Vila hop in the jet and—whaddoyaknow?—it’s got just enough fuel to take off and burn the crap out of Tiger Kong, revealing the nerd tigers’ ruse to their faithful and fuzzy.

Kamandi and Vila get away, but quickly lose oxygen as the plane reaches mach speeds, which by rights it really shouldn’t be able to. You really have to suspend your disbelief with this series, folks. Kamandi comes to in a desert, the plane in a wreck at the end of a trench carved by its abrupt descent. Vila is still in the jet, but looking severely dehydrated. Kamandi grabs her weakened form and walks along a giant wall until he is unwillingly picked up by a creepy spaceship and knocked unconscious. Come on, he was only awake for about six whole minutes! When he comes to again, he’s lying in a comfortable bed within a lavish bedroom, Vila is looking well-saturated and picking through some nearby racks of weapons. Then an anthropomorphic kangaroo pops on a giant circular television screen, and explains, in stereotypical Australian accent, that they’re in the Outback. He further explains that they’ve got to protect the sanctity of the wall, but they’re not monsters, so Kamandi and Vila are well-fed and rested, given their choice of weapons, and selection of bonkers-looking vehicle before they’ve got to take off—because this is a race…to the death! Wait, how about: The Kanga Rat Society is hunting the most dangerous game…mankind. Hold on, how about: For thousands of years, humans have exploited the animal kingdom for their own luxury. It’s payback time. No, the first one was the best one, should have just stuck with that.

This is the most ridiculous, outrageous comic book being published by DC Comics at the moment, and I am loving it. For one thing, the artwork in this issue is absolutely phenomenal, perhaps a little cartoony but amazingly expressive and lively. The story is thrilling and hysterical, and the nuts and bolts of it in terms of pacing and plotting are well in place. I don’t know if Jack Kirby would have come up with this story, but I think he would have liked it. Ahh, who am I kidding? He would have determined it was a worthwhile “product” and moved on to the next thing.

Bits and Pieces:

If you like goofy, old school comic book fun against a freakish, dystopian background, then this is probably the only game in town. And it's a good game, at that. The art by Carlos d'Anda in this issue is phenomenal and the story by James Tynion IV is expertly hilarious. I'd say the creative team rose to the challenge with this issue.

8/10