Kong: The Great War issue 2 (2023)
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"Chapter II: The Swamp"[a] is the second issue of Dynamite Entertainment's Kong: The Great War. It was published on July 5, 2023.[1]
Description
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The men of U-184 have survived one night on the island...but the casualties mount with relentless fury, as more beasts from the annals of pre-history wreak terror on the modern world! Acclaimed author ALEX COX and international sensation TOMASSO BIANCHI bring us a vision of violence and survival in a savage world forgotten by time - where the only rule is fear, and the only law is given by Kong![1]
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Plot
The captain of the Imperial submarine U-184 continues to lead his men up the cliff face from the beach of Skull Island. At the top he asks a sailor named Werner to estimate the distance to a mountain on the horizon. With an estimate of two days, he keeps the company marching. Determined to keep order and morale among the troops, the captain keeps them moving into a swamp. There a sailor named Heinrich scouts ahead, and is quickly attacked, crushed, and eaten by a creature with insectoid legs beneath the water's surface. The rest of the crew can only watch stunned as it happens, and the captain is unsure what kind of orders would have been appropriate, and questions if it would have been better that his men accidentally shoot Heinrich while trying to hit the creature, if only to give him a quick death. He mobilizes the troops, assuring them that nothing could have been done.
The swampy ground begins to shake and squelch as a mass of much larger legs like the one that took Heinrich sprout up around them. The soldiers shoot and chop at the legs until it stops moving. The captain orders them to cease fire so that he can listen to a low rumbling sound. Roland the engineer hears it too and readies his blade as the captain orders all of the men to get down into the water. They then watch a group of nine red-feathered bipedal dinosaurs approach them. The captain and most of the party keep their heads down to let the beasts pass overhead, but Lieutenant Meyer, previously a boy of fine taste from a wealthy family in Düsseldorf, is able to beat them all back using a wrench. While the captain is thankful that the "berserker" in him has awoken, he understands that the old Meyer is gone, and replaced by "the savage."
As they continue, the captain thinks notices the survivors almost regretting their luck. Privately he agrees with them and resolves that their only course of action is to keep moving and hope they die quickly. He accepts that nothing short of a miracle will bring them home now. He shouts for them to keep marching, as the faster they get to the mountain, the faster they will be back in Berlin, where he promises the survivors beer by the barrelful. But despite their years of battle, and all the might of their empire, the untamed fury of the natural world is besting them at every turn.
The captain stops to confer with who he learns is the ship's cook Hugo, and an elderly sailor named Werner to estimate the dangers between them and their destination and plan their next moves. Just after they settle on marching until sundown before making camp and cooking the remaining rations, the earth beneath them begins to shake with monstrous footsteps. Hugo knows it can only be the thing the captain saw the night before. They then watch as it wanders past them, its head high over the jungle canopy. While the captain had wished what he saw had been imagined, or a trick of the light, he is now again faced with reality. He proclaims the creature shall be avoided, and they continue their push through the jungle until nightfall. On the march, the captain asks Werner if he has seen anywhere like this island of horrors, and Werner lists some supernatural beasts he has seen in his years at sea such as mermaids, wampyr, and huge bipedal sea-beasts. Werner muses that most men will never learn the true and savage nature of the world around them.
Just then, Roland the engineer finds a log over the top of an impression in the ground, protected on the other side by a near-bottomless pit, and they make their camp in its relative safety. By the firelight the men eat their rations and maintain their weapons. The captain begins to wonder if they have found safety, and seen the last of the ape-beast. Sitting watch atop the huge log, Lieutenant Meyer sees that the depression his crewmates are camped in, is in fact one of its footprints.
Appearances
Monsters
- King Kong (silhouette)
- Pteranodons
- Unnamed jungle butterflies
- Unnamed swamp creature
- Deathrunners
- Mermaids (mentioned)
- Wampyr (mentioned)
- Sea-beasts (mentioned)
Characters
- Captain Otto
- Werner
- Heinrich
- Meyer
- Roland
- Hugo
- Wolfgang
- Felice
Vehicles, weapons, and races
Locations
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Gallery
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Cover A by Jae Lee -
Cover B by Jackson Guice -
Cover C by Joe DeVito
Trivia
- In the list of fantastic creatures Werner has seen, he mentions "sea-beasts that walk on their back legs like a man, taller than a ship's mast," a possible reference to Godzilla.
- Despite its near-total destruction in the previous issue, the U-184 is seen in tact on the beach.
Notes
- ↑ Written as "Chapter Two" on the title page.
References
This is a list of references for Kong: The Great War issue 2. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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Comments
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