Doctor Who Meets Kamandi!

Harvey's Alarming Tales #1 (1957) was an all Kirby issue--every story was drawn (and probably written...no official credits, don't you know) by the King.

And in this particular story, an unnamed scientist and his "time cube" arrive in the distant future:

And what does he find in 2154??

Woo hoo!! A full 25 years before Kamandi, Kirby was rocking the "future world where man was gone after a great disaster and the world is ruled by evolved animals" meme.

The first thing our hero finds is:

Really..."wearing clothes" is the noteworthy thing here?

And who took down the tigers?

The rat gives us the history the scientist missed on his jaunt:

Surprisingly, the rats turn out to be...well, rats. They hold the scientist prisoner, and try to force him to teach them how to build an atom bomb!!

Fortunately, there is a raid, and he is rescued...by?

I can't explain why he didn't wake up screaming his fool head off...

The leader of the non-rodent animals has a pleasant chat with our hero:


Yes, after all the anti-rodent propaganda, the scientist decides to give the good animals the plans for the bomb!

See, there's the real reason the Time Lords didn't want The Doctor running around unsupervised--blatant speciesism!! Genocide!!

So, anyway, Kirby obviously recycled large chunks of this idea when he created Kamandi--and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Why let a good idea that nobody saw lie fallow?

Oh, and speaking of early views of later Kirby concepts, we should note that the first story is this issue, also by Jack, was:

Wherein a goofy scientist creates a race of "clones" from plants!! DNAliens, indeed!