Of all the concepts Jack Kirby created in his time at DC in the '70s, the most underrated by far is Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth. If you're not familiar with it, it's essentially Planet of the Apes mixed with cold war fears about the end of the world, filtered through Kirby's signature over-the-top bombast until it came out as the story of a young man who emerged from a bunker after the Great Disaster into a shattered world overrun by animal people and sinister sci-fi concepts. And also, he had an amazing head of hair.

It's been one of my favorite Kirby books for a while, and now, it's getting the deluxe format treatment in the form of one of IDW's Artist's Editions, which once again raises the question of just how much money they are trying to get from me, personally. The answer, it seems, is all of it.

IDW's Artist's Editions reprint the art of some of the best and most historically important comics of all time using high resolution scans of the original penciled and inked pages to reproduce what it’s like to read the original art, which is often much larger than the published comics, and they are gorgeous.

Kirby has been the subject of a few of the oversized Artist's Editions before with the New Gods and the forthcoming Mister Miracle, but Kamandi represents a far less examined part of the King's legacy, and since I'd have to sell a kidney or two to get my hands on actual original Kirby pages, getting to see it reprinted from the original art at full size is the next best thing. According to IDW's press release, the 160-page volume will include issues #1- 2, 5-7, and 9 in their entirety, along with a few other covers and pages, and will hit stories in May. No price is currently listed, but past Artist's Editions have sold for around $125, so it's a safe bet Kamandi will follow suit and be somewhere in that ballpark.

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