The Kong Crew by Éric Hérenguel (2018-onward)

Cover blurb

It is 1947, 14 years after the victory of Kong over the U.S. military. Manhattan Island has been evacuated and is now a no-go zone. These are the adventures of the pilots of the elite squadron tasked with watching over Kong’s new domain, where, rumor has it, strange things have started happening…

My thoughts

Stories in the alternate history genre are usually set in worlds where real-world history deviated at some point in the past. However, there is a subset of stories set in worlds where the events of a famous work of fiction instead take a different turn. Perhaps the best-known example of this subgenre is What If?!, a series of comics and animated shows where well-known Marvel comic or movie storylines play out differently than in their original incarnations. Outside of Marvel, there are works where Luke Skywalker failed to blow up the Death Star, or where the lost world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic novel was real. A recent addition to this subgenre is The Kong Crew by French artist Éric Hérenguel. It is a comic book series set in a world where King Kong won his battle against the biplanes atop the Empire State Building. At six issues at the time of this review, the series is a love letter to both the original King Kong and the adventure comics of yesteryear.

The Kong Crew is set in 1947, or 14 years after the events of the movie. Following Kong’s triumph, the island of Manhattan was evacuated and sealed off by the military. The city has since been overrun by primeval jungle, with Kong tolerating no outsiders in his domain. A small team of U.S. pilots named “The Kong Crew” is tasked with regularly conducting flyovers of the city and making sure that Kong doesn’t escape the island. The series opens with reporter Irvin Stone and scientist Jonas Parker illegally flying into New York to solve the mystery of how the city was transformed into a dinosaur-infested wilderness. Readers are then introduced to the hero of the story, Virgil, a young pilot on the Kong Crew, who accompanies the other pilots on a flyover of Manhattan in search of the two trespassers. (I never caught Virgil’s last name, if it is given.) During the sortie, Virgil’s plane is knocked out of the air by Kong, stranding him in the middle of the vine-choked ruins of the city. He soon learns there are worse things than dinosaurs living in the Big Apple.

As Virgil seeks to escape from New York, his dachshund Spit sets off on a journey to find his missing master. Meanwhile, a nurse back at the Air Force base, Betty Pearl, uses her blonde bombshell looks to drum up publicity in support of a mission to rescue the downed pilot and his dog.

The Kong Crew is, by Hérenguel’s own admission, a tribute to EC Comics, a publisher in the 1940s and 1950s that produced comics in a wide range of genres, although it is best known for its horror and science fiction comics. Another inspiration was Mark Schultz’s Xenozoic Tales, better known as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, with the main character Virgil physically resembling the hero of that series, Jack Tenrec. Like its inspirations, The Kong Crew is a black-and-white comic, filled with gorgeous, highly detailed environments and painstaking recreations of World War II-era aircraft. The dinosaurs don’t get as much love as they mostly resemble the scaly, tail-dragging monstrosities from an earlier era of comics, but given the intentionally old-fashioned art style, it is a forgivable sin. Nitpicks aside, it is hard to express in words just how jaw-dropping some of the panels are—particularly those illustrating a 1930s New York that has been frozen in time and smothered under prehistoric vegetation. You would be hard-pressed to find better-looking comics currently on the market.

As for the story, The Kong Crew isn’t a comic with deep characters or big themes. It is a simple adventure story with an unusual premise, given its twist on the events of King Kong. There are three story arcs readers follow, with the arc involving Betty and her publicity campaign the weakest simply because it breaks up the action of the other two. At six issues, the overall story was unfinished at the time I wrote this, so I can’t give a definitive judgment yet, but I can say it is a fun, unassuming tale that fans of paleofiction should enjoy. Still, what really elevates the comic is its art, and for that reason alone, I highly recommend The Kong Crew.

Trivia

• The Kong Crew is a one-man project, with Hérenguel writing the story and illustrating both the cover and interior pages. As a result, he produces an average of only one issue a year. In my mind, the comic is worth the wait. You can read more about the artist on his Wikipedia page.

• As far as I know, no digital versions of the comic exist. You can only order print editions from the publisher’s website. This wasn’t a problem for me living in the U.S. as my order was delivered in roughly a week—although I live on the East Coast, which may have sped things up. There also is a hardcover artist’s edition that collects several of the comics in their original French.

• Kong has made infrequent appearances in the comic so far. I suspect Hérenguel is saving the big ape for a grand finale. Readers also don’t learn about the fate of Ann Darrow and other characters from the movie, or how Kong’s takeover of Manhattan changed the wider world. (I assume World War II played out more or less like it did in the real world.)

• In one issue, a character refers to a mosasaur as a “megalodon.” I don’t know if this was Hérenguel’s mistake or an error that happened as a result of the translation to English from the original French.

Reviews

• None.