We pre-empted last week's installment due to Prince's passing...
...so let's continue where we left off!
On a post-atomic war Earth, civilization has reverted to medieval levels.
Radiation-mutated BeastPeople are used as slaves by unmutated humans.
Jaggar, leader of a team of slavers, comes across Shan and Vereena, a BeastFolk couple who have just given birth to a baby who appears to be a normal human!
Shan tries to keep Jaggar from stealing his newborn son and is slain, leaving Vereena to mourn both her mate's death and the loss of her child.
Jaggar uses the child to replace the stillborn child of ruler, Zar Totth.
(Totth's wife had suffered stillborn births three times, and her midwives were put to death each time.
Jaggar's wife, Ingla, was the new midwife, and would suffer the same fate if the fouth child was stillborn...which it was!)
Jaggar and Ingla make the switch, Zar Totth names the baby Carn Whitemane, and proclaims the child to be his future heir...
Riding high on the success of the Sword of the Atom
mini-series and follow-up annuals which re-imagined the hard sci-fi
character in a barbarian adventure setting, Gil Kane (along with
collaborator Jan Strnad) was given the go-ahead for another high-adventure series, this time based on a new character.
Planned as a 12-issue mini-series, cutbacks at DC
dictated that the already-penciled and scripted first two issues be
combined into a one-shot whose sales would determine if the project
would continue.
Unfortunately, the unfamiliar character didn't attract a large enough audience (as The Atom had), and only the single, open-ended issue came about.
It's never been reprinted since its' publication in 1987.
It's never been reprinted since its' publication in 1987.
BTW,
if you're thinking the plotline seems familiar, It's because Kane based
it on the Biblical tale of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt, transposed
into a barbaric future!
