Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #22
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeIssue #22 launches the celebrated 'Seaway' story arc — widely regarded among collectors and critics as one of the strongest multi-part sequences in Kirby's entire run — by staging Kamandi's reunion with Ben Boxer and company inside an underwater dolphin civilization at war with killer whales. The debut of the Red Baron as a villain trained by killer whales to terrorize the dolphin society gives Kirby a vehicle to explore the brutality and futility of war through his characteristically kaleidoscopic post-apocalyptic lens. The death of Teela, a dolphin who bonds with Kamandi in only a handful of pages, demonstrates Kirby's ability to generate genuine emotional stakes at pulp-comic pace, a quality contemporary reviewers and later historians have consistently singled out. Together with issues #21 and #23, it forms a self-contained three-part story that stands as a high-water mark for Bronze Age world-building within a single ongoing series.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
By issue #22, the series had transitioned from inker Mike Royer — who handled the first sixteen issues — to D. Bruce Berry, who took over inking and lettering duties from issue #17 onward and remained through the end of Kirby's run at issue #40. Kirby served as writer, penciller, and editor throughout this period, a level of solo creative control that was unusual even for a creator of his stature at DC. The series itself had been conceived after DC editor Carmine Infantino lost the Planet of the Apes comic license to Marvel and asked Kirby for a conceptually similar property; Kirby drew on both an unpublished 1956 strip called 'Kamandi of the Caves' and an earlier Harvey Comics story to construct Earth-A.D. By late 1974, Kamandi was comfortably into its monthly stride, and the Seaway arc reflects Kirby at his most expansive, freely inventing entire civilizations — complete with social hierarchies, military structures, and moral ambiguity — across just three issues.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: October 1974; written, pencilled, and edited by Jack Kirby; inked and lettered by D. Bruce Berry.
- Story title: 'The Red Baron,' presented in four chapters including 'The Way of the Dolphins' and 'Hit-Run Killer.'
- First appearance of the Red Baron — a human operative trained and deployed by the intelligent killer whales to attack the dolphin civilization of Seaway.
- First appearance of Teela, a dolphin who bonds with Kamandi; she is killed by the Red Baron within this same issue.
- Marks the return of Ben Boxer, Renzi, and Steve after a ten-issue absence (their previous appearance was issue #11); they are revealed to have been living and working in Seaway as a Radiation Rescue Squad for the dolphins.
- The issue is the second chapter of a three-part arc spanning issues #21–23; Inspector Zeel and Ahab (introduced in #21) continue as supporting characters, while the Red Baron meets his end in #23.
- The cover depicts Kamandi and Ben Boxer inside a bathyscaphe watching the Red Baron fire missiles at dolphins — one of the series' most visually dynamic Bronze Age covers.
- The full Kirby run of the series (issues #1–40) was collected in the Jack Kirby's Kamandi Omnibus HC published by DC, making this issue readily accessible in reprint form.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Topp-serien [Toppserien] #12/1977 (1977), Année Zéro #2 (1979), Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth by Jack Kirby #2 (2013), Kamandi: El último chico de la Tierra #2 (2020), Kamandi #22
Key issues in Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth
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