Artists: Jack Kirby, D. Bruce Berry, Pablo Marcos
Free Comic Book Day not only gives us the gift of aforementioned free comics, but also usually showers us with other gifts.
Gifts in the form of sale priced or clearanced loot. Most shops run a table or two (or three!) of highly discounted merchandise they can't move or are otherwise tired of looking at. Almost always these tables hold that Promised Land of a Dollar Box or Quarter Bin, and any store that doesn't needs to pick up their game.
You know who you are . . .
This year I picked up enough moldy oldies and mid-'90s stock to fill this column for about a year, and today we'll take a look at the finest comic that 1976 DC had to offer: Kobra.
I've always had a fondness for snake-themed villains, probably due to my early exposure to James Earl Jones' Thulsa Doom, and Kobra is no exception. Though sporadic at best, I always treasured those rare DC comics I'd find that had some calling for a Ruthless Terrorist Organization to menace the world, and if Ra's al-Ghul was busy that week I could always count on Kobra.
Kobra is a great book, brimming with vintage purple prose and phenomenal interiors by Jack "Hail to the King" Kirby. The book opens with the snake cult's hidden temple under Manhattan, and among the trophies and relics within, we are treated with the appearance of a miniatures mastodon from Atlantis preserved in suspended animation. I only make mention of this because somebody was awful damn proud of that woolly mammoth as it was pointedly expounded upon, almost verbatim from my sentence above.
Old school comics, everyone?
Exposition tells us that Kobra is one of a set of Siamese twins, separated at birth and secreted away by a sinister serpent cult to reign as their Evil Prophesied Dalai Lama. His brother, Jason, is in the dark about his brothers' actions or even his existence but is soon clued in by a streetwise NYPD lieutenant. The police want to use Jason as bait in the hopes of luring Kobra out of his Bond Villain lair, but Kobra has other plans.
Plans that involve sending a giant alien robot rampaging through the streets of New York on the hunt for his brother.
As it turns out, Kobra and Jason share a specific cliché trait as some fictional twins are wont to do. As the Corsican Brothers before them and GI Joe's Crimson Twins to follow, Kobra and Jason feel one another's pain.
Not in an empathetic metaphorical sort of way. In a way, where if I smack Jason in the head, Kobra looks up and goes, "Ow! Dammit, who did that?!!!"
You all know what I'm talkin' about.
This puts a damper on Kobra's plan to send his rampaging alien robot across town to kill his brother.
When all is said and done, Jason Lives and Kobra shakes his fist and escapes to bedevil our heroes another day. As to be expected, considering he is the titular character.
If I were a betting man, I'd say a majority of folks aren't scrabbling for copies of 1976's Kobra. I might go so far as to say a lot of readers might not even know who the hell Kobra is, but if the opportunity presents itself, I'd recommend finding out. The Jack Kirby art alone is worth the price of admission.
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