Sunday, February 26, 2023

Deadman and Shanna & Ka-Zar

 

I wondered in an earlier post about whether The Savage Land would show up in the MCU.  While I do think it will eventually, now I wonder just where it will appear.  I doubt Ka-Zar & Shanna would get their own film but could they and their home show up in another?  Perhaps a third Black Panther installment or fifth Captain America film?  Maybe Shang Chi could visit in a sequel of his own?  The Fantastic Four are always exploring new lands, maybe they could discover it down the line.

10 comments:

Carycomic said...

I've been suggesting the same thing all along, Ross. Hoping one of your many admirers at Marvel Films, itself, would read the suggested premise and take the hint. Namely, that the next Spidey sequel introduces Ka-Zar, the Savage Land, and Kraven the Hunter while reintroducing the FF. Ka-Zar could then get to meet Shanna the She-Devil in the next Black Panther sequel while studying the relict dinosaurs in Wakanda's Serpent Valley!

Anonymous said...

How much you wanna bet Rama Kushna wants to prevent a spiritual/ecological imbalance to Earth through Thanos getting hold of that Beyonder terraformer? In short, a Ross-verse remake of "Ka-Zar'98" #11.

Detective Tobor said...

Calling Dr Strange for a mission to the Savage Land for materials that are wanted by more than one group.

Carycomic said...

@Det. Tobor: are you alluding to the Strange Brothers' cover from a couple days back? If so, then, yeah, I agree. Today's cover would make for a great Part 2 for yet another Ross-verse trilogy.

Bob Greenwade said...

I've tended to associate the Savage Land with the X-Men, so I think it may show up with them first, though perhaps not with Ka-Zar or Shanna right away. On the other hand, a Black Panther film could be a good place for it, or perhaps a future season of Moon Knight or Loki. There are multiple reasons why (as Tobor mentions) a future Doctor Strange film could take him to that place. And for some reason I'm imagining the Russian contingent of the MCU's Thunderbolts (Red Guardian, Taskmaster, Black Widow II) suddenly finding themselves there.

A typo I made (and corrected) in the preceding paragraph made me think: have the Thunderbirds ever appeared here? It's no surprise that they haven't; their images would be hard to match with anyone else, and even most of their comic covers only showed their vehicles. Still, they might be fun to team up with the Thunderbolts, the X-Man known as Thunderbird, or any of many other figures. (I'd especially love to see the aquatic Thunderbird 4 alongside Abe Sapien.)

Carycomic said...

Here's the summary I would pitch to Marvel Films if I were one of their writers. BLACK PANTHER 3: a certain ring of ivory poachers is about to smuggle some of their contraband out of Mombasa, Kenya, when they are single-handedly brought to justice by the intervention of Princess Shuri of Wakanda. Shortly afterward, however, forensic analysis of the confiscated tusks reveals that they are not from modern-day elephants. But, rather, from long-thought-extinct mastodons!

Interrogation of one of the poachers reveals that they obtained the tusks from a sparsely-inhabited area, along the Wakandan border, locally known as "Serpent Valley." So a scientific expedition-- jointly sponsored by both Wakanda and the UN--is sent there under the co-leadership of Shuri and paleontologist Professor Vincent Stegron. Also accompanying the expedition, as both expert tracker and special consultant on prehistoric animal behavior, is Sir Kevin Plunder. A young English expatriate who prefers to be known as "Ka-zar, Lord of the Savage Land!" *

Naturally, everyone-but-Ka-zar is shocked to discover that mastodons aren't the only living fossils in Serpent Valley. That the dominant form of wildlife are actually relict dinosaurs. And, it's while tracking a herd of trachodonts (with the aid of his adopted pet sabertooth Zabu) that Ka-zar makes an even more startling discovery. Namely; the presence of Shanna the She-devil and her pet leopards, Ina and Biri!

Born Shanna O'Hara, she is the daughter and only child of the once-great white hunter Gerald O'Hara and crypto-zoologist Dr. Patricia Walker (namesake paternal aunt of Patsy Baxter*).

The couple had disappeared--along with their ten year-old daughter--twenty years earlier while secretly leading a similar expedition into Serpent Valley. Only their intention, back then, had been to verify it as the home of a surviving population of bear-sized baboons of the genus Dinopithecus. Instead, Shanna became the sole survivor of a massacre by the Black Spectres. A leopard-hunting cult of Dinopithecus-worshiping Amazons!

Shanna confesses how she had inadvertently attracted the cultists' attention when she rescued a black leopard cub and its spotted fraternal twin from ritual slaughter. Guilt-stricken, as a result, she had felt unworthy to try and return to civilization. Instead, she had allowed herself to be adopted and raised by the cubs' grateful mother; a leopardess she subsequently named "Julani." And when the latter ultimately died from feline old age, Shanna made a rudimentary garment from Julani's pelt for better scent recognition with the cubs.

Meanwhile, Shuri discovers that what the Black Spectres actually worship is not a surviving specimen of Dinopithecus. But, rather, a bestial-looking human mutant who calls himself "The Mandrill!" Furthermore; it is he (in conjunction with the late Erik Killmonger) who organized the poaching of mastodon tusks in exchange for arms and ammo that could be stockpiled for the eventual overthrow of the Wakandan government.

Will the collective talents and abilities of Shanna, Ka-zar, and the new Black Panther be enough to thwart this plot? And why is Prof. Stegron secretly collecting brain fluid from the bodies of deliberately over-tranquilized dinosaurs?


*See my purely hypothetical SPIDER-MAN: MARVELS NEVER CEASE (guest-starring Kraven and the FF).

**See my purely hypothetical ENTER THE CAT (guest-starring Greer Grant and Omega Red).

Detective Tobor said...

That's the trouble with this place...you start out reading one comic cover and then get cought up reading a half dozen different stories or plots with everything except actual dialogue.
You have ANY idea of how much time of your day that all takes up??

Anonymous said...

Well, those three lousy paragraphs took me almost two hours. So, kind of, yeah!---Cary

Daniel Bonner said...

The 1980s Ka-Zar and Shanna stories were a lot of fun with their back and forth teasing banter. That would be fun to watch.

Carycomic said...

What the brilliant Mr. Bonner said. :-)

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