The Kamandi Challenge #9

Chapter 9 of DC's twelve-part Kamandi Challenge drops the blond, bare-chested last boy on Earth right into the thick of it — the cover by Mark Buckingham places Kamandi at the center of a pressing crowd of uplifted animals, including an ape in a suit, a towering purple elephant in a fedora, a deer adorned with jewelry, a green reptilian figure, and a bird of prey, all closing in from every side. The cover's cheeky tagline — "Can YOU solve it before they do?" — perfectly captures the relay-race spirit of this twelve-issue collaborative experiment, where each creative team picks up a cliffhanger and runs with it. With Tom King writing and Kevin Eastman on interior art, this issue keeps Jack Kirby's wild post-apocalyptic world feeling genuinely alive and unpredictable.