Kamandi

Somewhere in an alternative future, Earth was in great danger of a war that would lead to the destruction of the entire human population. The Global Peace Agency transformed office worker Buddy Blank into the superhero OMAC who fought various threats to world peace. But the agency was destroyed by its enemies and Omac failed to prevent what is known as the Great Disaster.

This disaster may have been natural, but it was linked to a mysterious energy source called the vortex. It could have been that a nuclear war brought about the Great Disaster, for radiation was clearly involved. However, by the time of Kamandi, these levels of radiation had fallen to that of safety. The disaster involved worldwide devastation from earthquakes and fires. Human civilization collapsed and within two generations, virtually all of humanity had digressed to an animalistic state.

Before the Great Disaster however, Dr Michael Grant had developed a mutagenetic chemical called cortexin. Many of his research animals were exposed to cortexin in the course of the Great Disaster. The chemical greatly increased their intelligence, and also seemed responsible for giving them the power of speech, the ability to walk upright, and opposable thumbs.

The animals' descendents inherited these genetic changes, and as a result (within two human generations), talking animals-, including Lions, tigers, gorillas, leopards, rats, dogs and dolphins - dominated the earth.

Having long ago lost his OMAC powers, Buddy Blank lived out the years after the great disaster in a bunker in the New York area. There he raised his grandson Kamandi - named after the bunker itself, "Command D," using a micro film to teach him about past civilization . Finally Buddy Blank was killed by humanoid wolves, and the teenage Kamandi set out on his long wanderings through much of the Earth after the Disaster.

In his travels, Kamandi made various friends, including Ben Boxer and his friends Steve and Renzi, who were three survivors of the scientific community, the scientist dog Doctor Canus, and the young girl Spirit. Kamandi, Ben and Canus did not wish to conquer the animals but to restore humanity to a civilised state so that human beings could live as equals with intelligent animals.

As a result of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Kamandi's timeline is no longer one of Earth's alternate futures. The boy of the future who would have been called Kamadi will instead grow up to be space adventurer Tommy Tomorrow.

In other media
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He makes his first animated appearence in Batman the Brave and the Bold.