theairtightgarage:

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 his work that I’ve lived with the longest: issue 1 of Marvel/Epic’s 4 issue TOR miniseries from 1993. This was my first major exposure to Kubert, which is probably why it’s my favorite. I think I was 12 when I picked up this first issue, so it was the right 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 fell 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. He was portrayed as pretty much the first man with a sense of morality, 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(and even a pre-historic damsel in distress). The thing that sticks out to me now looking back on it is how much I love the colors, which were done by Kubert as well.