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[MarkWarner]

So last week's choice wasn't so bad ... but just a pity that for an "educational comic" it was very cavalier with facts.

Anyway, this week was chosen by another mystery member of the group, and we are going to go "ultra-modern" with a silver-age issue and it is Kona #5  https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=33350.

The story we are concentrating is the first one ... I believe it is 27 pages long, so pretty much the whole comic anyway. First impression is that I believe I am going to find it a tad difficult to take the giant pussy cat seriously (I will do my best!)

[narfstar]

Everyone might be able to figure that the oddball collector would choose this story and would be right. This is a weird story. If you have read anything about Kona there have been suggestions the writer may have been high at the time. The violence is pretty extreme but against animals must have been OK with the Comics Code. I would suggest going back and reading the earlier issues of Kona. Issue 5 mentions that the Dinos were friends, which is why one came to the rescue. The writing and story are different which makes them kinda cool to me. I like how they devised the three fold plan to defeat the kitty, even though I feel sorry for the kitty. I had forgotten how violent this issue was or I would have suggested a different issue. The main thing going for Kona is some of Glanzman's best art. Forgive me if this story upsets you but it gives some idea of how Dell was trying to establish itself after the split.

[Lorendiac]

Okay, I've now read the story. I don't remember ever noticing Kona before -- he looks very much like a Tarzan knockoff. (Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that's a bad thing! )

Here are some first reactions:

By my count, the "flashback origin story" of the giant cat took up seven pages of the comic book.

Did it really need that many pages to tell us "the cat grew into a giant because of nuclear radiation, and now it can and does eat anything that moves"? Other Silver Age creators (Lee and Kirby, for instance) would have been capable of getting the same point across in considerably less time!

On the other hand -- I admit that those seven pages didn't bore me to death as I was reading them. They actually made me feel a certain sympathy for the cat as a character in the story, despite a noticeable lack of "coherent dialogue" coming from its mouth. So maybe the writer knew what he was doing by giving so much detail about the cat's backstory.

But that leads us to a larger point. Toward the end, I was asking myself: "Is it really necessary to kill the cat at all?"

In other words: Instead of setting part of the island on fire on the theory that this will help you destroy a giant cat, and that any associated collateral damage is no big deal . . . why not just leave the island and its denizens alone, and let the cat eventually die of natural causes in its own good time, long after you have sailed off to some other locale?

Granted: If I had read the previous issue of the series, I might understand just why the heck Kona and his friends were on this particular island in the first place.

But I couldn't help noticing that at the end of the story, they are all on a sailboat and a narrative caption assures us that they have, in fact, "determined to leave this place forever." This suggests there's no unfinished business to keep them here for a while, and wasn't any such business even before they crossed paths with a giant cat. For instance, they are not searching for some precious treasure which was buried here twenty years ago.

P.S. I was amused by the straight-faced way that Kona and the other guy (Dr. Dodd?) were able to just casually discuss the fact that Kona used to have not just one, but several pet tyrannosaurs.

[crashryan]

I remember this book from my youth, and it's just as weird as I remembered! Usually I concentrate on a comic's artwork, but this time it's all about the author.

This guy wrote a number of stories for editor Leonard Cole's Dell Comics. In my opinion they rank among the oddest comic book stories ever published. Among them are the Kona series, the Voyage to the Deep series, and the TV tie-ins Adventures in Paradise (Four Color #1301) and 87th Precinct (FC #1309). In an interview Bernard Krigstein named the last book as the stupidest script he'd ever read, and claimed he used his artwork to mock the story. The joke must have gone over readers' heads, because several critics have praised Krigstein's inventive art in the book.

Maybe somebody knows this author's name; I don't. He has an umistakable style, all the elements of which are evident in this story. (1) His stories are sprawling, violent tales with strong quasi-mystical elements; (2) He writes enormous captions in a frenzied style brimming with boldface and enough exclamation marks to make even Jack Kirby envious; (3) His dialogue, on the other hand, is sparse, sometimes even elliptical. His characters often express themselves in convoluted ways ("We are exposed to victimization at every hour of the day or night!"); (4) He likes four-, three-, and one-panel pages,which give Sam Glanzman plenty of room to strut his stuff; (5) He stretches simple conversations over a couple of pages, having a single character speak one line of dialogue in each panel; and (6) He LOVES lengthy scenes in which a character speculates upon what might happen (in Voyage to the Deep #1 the Captain's fantasy of a drowned New York runs ten pages!). All this doesn't make for very good stories, but it certainly makes for interesting ones.

DC's House of Mystery would have polished off this plot in 8 pages, though with considerably less blood and thunder. Reading it today I find I that after fifty years I still feel it's incredibly unfair to the cat. It wasn't Amsat's fault that he became a giant mutant. And though the writer expends a lot of bombast trying to convince us the cat's become a mad killer, Amsat spends most of his time just a-doin' a-what comes naturally. On a larger-than-usual scale, of course.

I understand that to the humans it's inconvenient to have a giant killer creature around. However I get the impression that if the Dodds had simply moved to another part of the island Superkitty would have found other prey and everyone would have been happy. The humans, especially Kona, seem overly eager to kill him. The method they choose is ludicrous. Burning half the island yields great visuals, but it kills off tons of innocent creatures while running the risk of raging out of control and incinerating the Dodds along with the rest of the jungle.

I find the final scene poignant. Poor Amsat dies trying to understand why he can no longer best his old adversaries, never realizing that the humans have poisoned him. Adding to the effect is the fact that throughout the story Glanzman draws Amsat as a kitten rather than a full-grown tomcat.

What a lot of words to spend on a weird comic book story! One art comment: I feel Sam Glanzman did a great job on this series, but Kona himself looks like an action star who was once hot stuff but is now over the hill. I'm not sure what gives me that impression. Kona has plenty of muscles but he seems paunchy. And his face is definitely that of a middle-aged man.

[Lorendiac]

I remember this book from my youth, and it's just as weird as I remembered! Usually I concentrate on a comic's artwork, but this time it's all about the author.

This guy wrote a number of stories for editor Leonard Cole's Dell Comics. In my opinion they rank among the oddest comic book stories ever published. Among them are the Kona series, the Voyage to the Deep series, and the TV tie-ins Adventures in Paradise (Four Color #1301) and 87th Precinct (FC #1309). In an interview Bernard Krigstein named the last book as the stupidest script he'd ever read, and claimed he used his artwork to mock the story. The joke must have gone over readers' heads, because several critics have praised Krigstein's inventive art in the book.

Maybe somebody knows this author's name; I don't. He has an umistakable style, all the elements of which are evident in this story.

I don't know for a fact, but last night, before I went to bed, I looked up "Kona" on Toonopedia and I found it offered an opinion on the subject. I quote what it says about Kona's debut in Four Color Comics #1256:

It isn't known for sure who wrote the story, but it's likely to have been Don Segall (who co-created DC's Creeper).

I didn't recognize the name, off the top of my head, but I poked around a bit on the web and found that apparently Don Segall was an editor at Dell in that era and wrote a lot of the scripts himself, but, as with this Kona story, often wasn't "credited" within the pages of the comic, which makes it hard to gauge, decades after the fact, precisely how many stories he authored in his day. Toonopedia and at least a couple of other online resources favor the idea that Segall was the regular Kona writer up through #10 of that title, after which Paul S. Newman took over until the title was cancelled.

[narfstar]

I agree with Crash on Kona's appearance.  I do not see how anyone can read this story without feeling sorry for Amsat. This may be what Glanzman wanted. He may not have liked what was happening and made a statement for the cat.

[MarkWarner]

Well ... I really can't take the cover seriously. It looks like the artist drew his pet cat. But it actually starts of crackingly .. really dragging me in .. and I have now finished it. The story is one of the monster has to die, but audience secretly is on the monsters side type. And like the others here I felt sad when the cat became fish food.

I also read the comments about Kona's pet T-Rex, and unbelievable but true I am an expert in dinosaur pets! Seriously I really am! Here is a post from me in September 2010 asking about pet dinosaurs and how tamable they would be
http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?id=4917

It is a GREAT site that you can ping off a question and professional biologists give their answers. Oh and here is a later one Feb 2011 about seeing if I could get them to talk .. lol
http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?id=5430

If you can't be bothered to read ... best guess is bird like intelligence / behavior. As you can see I wrestle daily with weighty intellectual and scientific matters

Back to the story, it was a really good read, visually exciting  and kept my attention all the way through. The Cats And Dogs Nice little one pager was a story that I feel I have read or been told before. The Anak story just seemed to have been shoehorned in there and with the catch up it all seemed rather rushed and I skimmed it, which is a shame. The last two pages with cat trivia is a really nice touch:

"if by accident on the streets of Rome one killed a cat a mod of angry citizens would instantly fall on the killer and slay him then and there"

Apart from a cart I wonder how you could accidentally kill a cat in ancient Rome ... but it is a handy thing to avoid if you are ever there.

In conclusion the book was very good ... and if this is typical of Sam Glanzman's work then he obviously took some care and attention over it, which is something that I appreciate. What I mean is that even if something is not to my taste, but I see that someone has put in a lot of thought and effort, I thank them for that courtesy! A recommended read!

[Captain Audio]

In ancient Egypt the cat was considered one of the family, much as cat lovers feel about their cats today.
Legally if someone killed your cat you could cut off their nose in revenge.

Drawing Amsat as a lovable kittenish creature worked much better than making him vicious looking. After all outside of his great size he was still a cat and doing what a cat would be expected to do in that environment.

As for burning the jungle, no primitive man would have hesitated for an instant. Well into historical times burning huge tracts of praire or veldt was a common hunting tecnique. Grazing animals might be driven over clifts by the flames or small animals killed by smoke and harvested later.

They say the art of cooking began with primitive hunter gatherers picking through the ashes of brush fires to find animals that couldn't escape the flames.

[bowers]

Kona was one of my very favorites, and I purchased or traded for every single issue. I was willing to suspend my disbelief as to the pseudo-scientific explanations for the mutant/giant creatures and just go along for the ride. Sam Glanzman's fantastic brushwork, his use of bold blacks and a frenetic style of telling a story was one of the big draws for me. I first became aware of S.J.G.'s work through Dell and Charlton war comics. As an avid modeler in my youth, I appreciated the fact that he cared enough to make a B-17 or a Mogami class cruiser actually look like one! I believe his most recent works were some naval stories in the short-lived "Joe Kubert Presents.." series. Excellent artist! As for the story, the kids were actually dragged off the schooner at night in the previous issue, but the reader was not told who did it. Also, the schooner might give the impression the party was well-equipped and could come and go as they pleased. Not entirely true- the party lost most everything while evacuating Monster Island, and happened upon a "Flying Dutchman" schooner. (Which they promptly lose the next issue.) The whole story line is pretty much them island-hopping, looking for a place of safety and each new island is worse than the one before. Killing Amsat was regrettable, but not knowing if they might have to return later, was possibly necessary. I wholly agree that drawing Amsat as a kitten gave him a tragic and sympathetic quality that he otherwise would not have had.  Thanks for this one, Mark- it was good to see an old friend! Cheers, Bowers

[Drusilla lives!]

Judging by the cover I was going to pass on this one, but then I decided to make a quick skim of it... which amounted to reading it almost in total.  Due I suppose to the numerous oversized panels/splash pages and one line text boxes. 

As I'd expected, VERY B-movie-ish, with a really absurd story concept paired with equally odd artwork.  Couldn't tell why the artist chose to characterize Amsat as he did (with a lovely kitten-like face).  Perhaps it was his way of showing displeasure with the story, or perhaps it was a true play on the cheap sci-fi effects of some movies of the day (like substitution of stock lizard film footage when needed to pass as dinosaurs)... whatever the reason, it did accomplish one thing, it made me feel for Amsat.   And the whole need for killing him in the end I found unjustified and unnecessary, since they left the island anyway. 

Some nice artwork on the ANAK story... didn't read it though.

[Lorendiac]

As for the story, the kids were actually dragged off the schooner at night in the previous issue, but the reader was not told who did it. Also, the schooner might give the impression the party was well-equipped and could come and go as they pleased. Not entirely true- the party lost most everything while evacuating Monster Island, and happened upon a "Flying Dutchman" schooner. (Which they promptly lose the next issue.) The whole story line is pretty much them island-hopping, looking for a place of safety and each new island is worse than the one before. Killing Amsat was regrettable, but not knowing if they might have to return later, was possibly necessary.

It seems to me that what this means is that the writer was taking it for granted that he didn't need to offer the readers any sort of "quick recap of what has gone before" -- he just assumed that they had all bought and read the previous issues of the title, and would automatically understand the context in which Kona and his companions were making the decision to do whatever it took to kill the giant cat -- before they promptly turned around and sailed off toward another island.

I don't think that was the most brilliant storytelling decision he could have made. Heck, I think I was assuming, through most of the story, that we were facing a sort of "Gilligan's Island"/"Swiss Family Robinson" type of situation where some stranded castaways were trapped on a remote island, and might be forced to linger there for a long time, and thus any monstrous predators which came along were "ongoing threats to life and limb for however long we'll be here," and not just things they had the option of sailing away from.

That was why it confused me so much when, at the very end of the tale, Kona and the others were suddenly hopping onto a boat and sailing off into the sunset, which I then had to presume they could have done at any previous time. Until then, I hadn't seen any hints that they had that option available, and so it retroactively ruined my previous "best guess" about their motives and decision-making process regarding how to handle the problem of the cat. In other words, that final scene raised all sorts of questions which the writer had (in this tale, when considered alone) utterly failed to answer!

[paw broon]

As I was away on holiday, I have only had a quick read at this comic.  My opinion is formed to some extent by the fact that I don't really enjoy Jungle comics and heroes like Tarzan and Kona.  And I tried reading a Kona comic decades ago and found some of the monsters a bit disgusting.
This story wasn't very exciting or entertaining or that well done, apart from the art which was pleasing. Page 4, panel 3 looked very like Kubert to me.
Isn't it a bit odd that it was only the kitten that grew to such enormous size when other animals didn't.  Or have I missed something?