TOR: issue 1, B-side

Here’s a final Kubert post: a 5 page silent short, Food Chain, that bookends this issue.

TOR: issue 1, part 3/3

TOR: issue 1, part 2/3

TOR: issue 1, part 1/3

Today I want to take a break from Moebius to pay tribute to the great Joe Kubert, who died yesterday. Above is the work that I’ve lived with the longest: Marvel/Epic’s 4 issue TOR miniseries from 1993. This was my first major longform exposure to Kubert, which is probably why it’s my favorite. I think I was 12 when I picked up this first issue, that age when a comic with brutal fights and a naked woman felt incredibly scandalous, like I was getting away with something by owning it. It was also one of my earliest exposures to the type if material that I would find in Heavy Metal years later(some of his silent shorts have a pretty hefty Arzach feel to them). 

TOR was created by Kubert in 1953, and he’s said that it was his response to the Korean War, observing that man’s primordial, bestial nature is still too dominant in society. Tor was portrayed as pretty much the first man with a sense of heroism, which basically means he gets to defend creatures and people in need by fighting crazy dinosaurs and rival tribes.

TOR, issues 1-4, were published by Marvel/Epic in 1993. I picked it up as a kid, really just because there was a guy that looked like Tarzan fighting dinosaurs in it. It’s huge-scale savage barbarian stuff, all meat and bone physicality(with stereotypes aplenty, like a pre-historic damsel in distress). Looking back on it, the thing that sticks out to me now is how much I love the colors, which were done by Kubert as well.