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KamandiKamandi was a DC Comics comic book character created by acclaimed artist Jack Kirby. Kirby recycled the name from an earlier newspaper strip idea of his "Kamandi of the Caves." He was the eponymous protagonist of the series Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth. Kamandi was a Tarzan-like hero in an post-apocalyptic future in which after a huge event called "The Great Disaster" (whose nature is never explained) humans are a persecuted minority in a world ruled by intelligent, highly evolved and human in form animals. The two main factions are the gorilla and the tigers. Many animals can stand upright walking on two legs and can speak. Some animal were unaffected in form but can still speak such as snakes, dophins and killer whales. Some animals appear not to have been affected such as horses. In issue # 16 an explanation is given for the talking animals. A gorilla Doctor reads the diary of a dead human doctor that was written at the time the Great Disaster occurred. As the night goes on and a battle rages between the gorillas and the tigers in the ruins of Washington D.C. the gorilla doctor reads how Dr. Michael Grant invented a chemical called cortexin. The chemical apparently spilled into the water supply and when the animals ingested it it gave them greater intellegence. Some of these animals came from the Washington Zoo. The gorilla doctor has recreated this chemical and while he is dying he sees the same effects occur with the formerly animalistic humans. It is stated that cortexin's effects will be passed onto the animal's children. Most humans in the series do not talk and are dependent on the intellegent animals. There are some exceptions such as Kamandi's mutant friend Ben Boxer but he is after all a mutant and not truly human. One of the key issues of this series is issue #29 in which he fights for Superman's costume, thus linking Kamandi to the first time to the DC Comics Universe proper. Kamandi appeared in DC Comics Presents and The Brave and the Bold teaming up with Superman and Batman. Kamandi was cancelled after issue 59. Issues 60 and 61 were written, pencilled, and partially inked, and can be found in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. A mini series was made but had little relation to the Kirby comic except by name. When the maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths unified all of the future timelines in the DC multiverse, the character's placement in the DC Universe was drastically altered. In the revised timeline, Kamandi is the son of OMAC, and was left in a shelter until he was rescued and renamed to Tommy Tomorrow - the name of a character that predated Kamandi by twenty years. As a tribute to Kamandi the boy was found in Command D which when said aloud is similar to the characters name. Later on a tribute is paid to Kamandi in the 1990's Superboy series when Superboy appears in a Kamandi like world in a homage to the series.
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