Astonishing Tales#2(1970)

Ka-Zar storms into the Arlington Arms hotel demanding to see Kraven the Hunter, who has captured his beloved sabretooth Zabu. Kraven's men try to stop him, but Ka-Zar fights through the lobby chaos until Kraven himself snares him with a tightening bola-net and finishes the job with a tranquilizer spray, leaving Ka-Zar apparently helpless. Kraven makes his mistake by growing careless — he leaves Ka-Zar for dead and heads upstairs for his "ultimate prize," not knowing Ka-Zar only held his breath. Ka-Zar snaps the net apart, lets out a jungle call that pierces forty floors of concrete, and rouses Zabu from his drugged stupor on an upper level. The two reunite and take the fight to Kraven directly, but the Hunter meets Zabu's charge with a hidden electrified band and Ka-Zar with explosive pellets and a concealed blowgun. Ka-Zar refuses to risk bystanders' lives and makes a final stand, spraining Kraven's weapon hand and forcing him to fall back on a stun blast — the same trick he used in their previous encounter. Kraven retreats wounded, vowing a rematch, while Ka-Zar pulls himself off the ground, battered but unbroken, and reunites with Zabu. The issue closes on an unexpected encounter: a stone-faced stranger in the corridor who identifies himself as someone who once lived deep in the Savage Land and must return there soon — or die — and warns that if he perishes, the Savage Land itself will perish with him.