Unbagging Thundarr The Barbarian #1
Thundarr the Barbarian
#1A
Michael Cho Regular
| Release: | Feb 04, 2026 |
Creators
| Writer | Jason Aaron |
| Artist | Kewber Baal |
| Cover Artist | Michael Cho |
| Colorist | Jorge Sutil |
| Letterer | Taylor Esposito |
| Editor | Joseph Rybandt |
Demon Dogs!
One of the best things about staying at my grandmother’s house when I was a kid was getting to watch TV.
Honestly, there wasn’t much else to do there, but that was okay, because unlike us, she had cable, so that meant there were a lot more things to watch than there were at home.
In particular, it was nice to wake up on a Saturday morning and be able to see the cartoon offerings from other networks besides CBS. Of course, that was bittersweet, because if I found something I liked, I wouldn’t get to watch it again unless and until I spent another weekend at my grandmother’s house. (And even then, because of the way the Universe works, it would invariably end up being the same episode I’d already seen.)
Such was the case when one Saturday morning I tuned in to Thundarr the Barbarian.
I was instantly hooked by the show, but I never actually got to see it again until years later when I was in college and the USA Network aired it as part of its Cartoon Express programming block.
At that time, older and a little bit wiser – or at least observant – as I watched it, I thought, “Hm, some of these things look a lot like Jack Kirby designs,” unaware until I saw the King’s name in the end credits, that there was a reason for that.
That made something that was already cool even cooler.
The point is, I’ve had a fondness for the character for decades, so I was pleased to see the launch of his first-ever comic series written by one of my favorite writers.
But since it’s been decades since I last saw the show, there’s very little I remember about it other than the main characters and the basic premise as detailed in the show’s opening narration:
The year, 1994. From out of space, comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Man’s civilization is cast in ruin. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn. A strange new world rises from the old. A world of savagery, super-science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice. With his companions, Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword, against the forces of evil. He is Thundarr, the Barbarian!
And that’s the same setup we have in the comic, which opens with that shot of the runaway planet passing between the Earth and the Moon, and then jumps to two thousand years later where we find some humans being sold as slaves.
Some rats on motorcycles show up to buy them all, and as the leader of the pack beats one of the humans, a much heartier human bursts free and attacks, though he is ultimately subdued.
Days later, we find the slaves at their destination, an inland sea in what was once Kansas – one assumes, given that it’s referred to as “the Sea of Kann-Zass”- where their job is to dive into the waters in search of a specific piece of machinery. The spirited human fights back once again, but as he does so, the older man he’d tried to save from abuse is shoved into the waters, and so the younger man dives in to save him.
He swims past the corpses of other humans who failed to retrieve the desired prize, finds the old man, but is attacked by a sea serpent as he’s swimming for the surface.
Help arrives, however, just as the man, on the back of the serpent, breaks the surface, and the woman uses magic to send a sword to the man’s hand, which he uses to dispatch the serpent.
Once his sword is in hand, the man’s identity is clear:
While the fighting is going on, the old man climbs out of the water, having recovered the sought-after piece of equipment.
He hands it over to the rat leader in hopes that it will earn him his freedom, but the rat is a rat fink and plans to deliver on the promise of freedom in the worst way possible.
Luckily – for the old man, not the rat – Thundarr steps in once again.
Before Thundarr can deliver on that promise, he and his compatriots find themselves under attack from a craft that has arrived to rescue the rats.
Though they didn’t stop the rats from getting away with what they wanted, they did at least set the humans free, though it’s clear that the experience of having to be chained once again has weighed heavily on Thundarr.
Ariel suggests that it might help for him to talk about it, but Thundarr is a man of action, not words, and so the three ride off in search of what Ariel calls out as the distraction of fighting that keeps Thundarr from addressing his emotions.
Elsewhere, we see that all of Thundarr’s old enemies have gotten together and are hatching a scheme to get their revenge.
The issue is rounded out by a return to an earlier time, when Thundarr was not merely pretending to be a slave.
As he’s roused – rather roughly – from sleep, he speaks of a dream he has of freedom, a dream in which he dies, only to wake and find that he is still alive, and still a slave.
But while he lives, whether free or slave, he continues to fight, and so, he steps out into the arena, sword in hand.
This was a lot of fun.
Aaron strikes a nice balance between the original, kid-friendly tone of the cartoon and a more mature and less constrained take on the character.
There’s just the right amount of cartoonish corniness mixed in with more violence than ever would have been allowed in a Saturday morning network TV cartoon.
He pushes things slightly more in the direction of another famous barbarian whose adventures he’s written without losing sight of the fact that this is Thundarr, not Conan.
The art from Kewber Baal is new to me, but it works well here, looking a lot like the more detailed painted art you might see in the opening credits of a cartoon that would take too much work to animate in the actual show itself but was manageable for a short segment.
I like that, as many cartoons did, this story kind of picks up in the midst of things, filling you in on what’s happening as you go, and it’s clear from the flashback – and indeed, from the upcoming time travel shenanigans of the Council of Wizards – that we’re going to go back to the beginning, and to before the beginning, to get a clearer understanding of Thundarr and his world.
As I said at the start, there isn’t a lot I remember from the show. Only one of the members of the Council of Wizards was familiar to me, and that was because he’s SUCH a Kirby design and because his character was voiced by the second voice actor to portray Fred Flintstone, both of which made him stand out for me at the time and earned him a spot in my memory. (He was also the “voice” of Ookla, the Mok)
I noticed that the name of one of the Wizards is Mindok, and that was the name of a company seen on a ruined building swallowed by the Sea of Kann-Zass, so perhaps he has some ties to the old world.
But I guess we’ll find out. Or at least I will, as I plan to continue reading this. I’m not sure that you will, unless you start reading it, too, which is something I recommend whether you share my nostalgic affection for the character or not.
Oh, and in my last Pull List post you may have noticed that I picked up a blind bag variant of this issue. If you were wondering which cover I got, wonder no more.
Dan Panosian Variant
Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.
