Issuu

by MICHAEL EURY

COMICS GONE APE! The Missing Link to Primates in Comics by Michael Eury Book design by Pamela Morrow • Logo designed by John Morrow • Edited by Michael Eury “Q & Ape” telephone interviews transcribed by Rose Rummel-Eury • Proofread by Christopher Irving

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Published by TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 919-449-0344 • www.twomorrows.com ISBN 978-1-893905-62-7 First printing, April 2007 • Printed in Canada

The front cover’s recreation of the cover to The Avengers #4 was a surprise gift by artist Arthur Adams to art collector David Mandel after David’s purchase of several of Arthur’s “JLApe” original covers; cover colors by Tom Ziuko. The Avengers TM & © 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Artist Jay Stephens’ back cover homage to the cover of Wonder Woman #170 was won by Michael Eury at the charity event Wonder Woman Day, organized by Andy Mangels and taking place on October 29, 2006 at Portland, Oregon’s Excalibur Books and Comics. Wonder Woman TM & © 2007 DC Comics. No primates were harmed during the writing of this book (except for the author’s sleep deprivation).

The author extends a Kong-sized THANK YOU!! to the one-and-only Arthur Adams for the eye-popping cover art, and to David Mandel for its use. Also, very special thanks to Art Adams and the other Q & Ape interview participants: Nick Cardy, Frank Cho, Tim Eldred, Carmine Infantino, Joe Kubert, Tony Millionaire, Doug Moench, Bob Oksner, Jeff Parker, and Anne Timmons. You fine folks helped make Comics Gone Ape! special. In researching this book, I found the following online sources invaluable and recommend them to any comics fan, scholar, or monkey boy: Grand Comic-Book Database (comics.org), Scott Shaw!’s Oddball Comics (oddballcomics.com), Comic Book Gorillarama (members.shaw.ca/comicbookgorillarama/cbgindex.htm), the Pulse (comicon.com), Dial B for Blog (dialbforblog.com), DarkMark’s Comics Indexing Domain (darkmark6.tripod.com/indexintro.html), Don Markstein’s Toonopedia (toonopedia.com), the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe (marvunapp.com), Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org), the Gorilla Age of Comics (lethargiclad.com/gorilla), Monster Blog! (monsterblog.oneroom.org), Lambiek (lambiek.net), the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), Hoknes’ Planet of the Apes Chronology (hoknes.com/apechronology.htm), “Archer St. John and the Little Company That Could” by Ken Quattro from Comicartville (comicartville.com/lib.htm), and Welcome to the Clubhouse (geocities.com/Area51/Labyrinth/7393/index.html). Also helpful were the publications Planet of the Apes Revisited by Joe Russo and Larry Landsman with Edward Gross (2001, Thomas Dunne Books) and the “Lords of the Jungle” essay by Camille E. Cazedessus, Jr., in The Comic-Book Book by Don Thompson and Dick Lupoff (1973, Krause Publications). Finally, the following individuals generously donated their time, artwork, approvals, comic books, support, and/or information, for which the author is sincerely grateful: Phil Amara, Jim Amash, Michael Ambrose, Sergio Aragonés, Mark Arnold, Terry Austin, Alan Bahr, Michael Bair, Dave Ballard, John Bamber, Spencer Beck, Christian Beranek, Edgar Rice Burroughs estate, Gary Chaloner, John Coates, Comic Book Artist, Jennifer M. Contino, Colleen Coover, Ray Cuthbert, Dark Horse Comics, DC Comics, Brent E. Erwin, John S. Eury, Mark Evanier, Rich J. Fowlks, Sandra Galfas, Marty Golia, David Hamilton, Jason Harris, Fred Hembeck, Heritage Auctions, Amy Huey, Houghton Mifflin Company, Adam Hughes, Christopher Irving, The Jack Kirby Collector, Ryan Jorgensen, Chris Khalaf, Wilf King, Robin Kirby, Ken Knudtsen, Erik Larsen, Mark Levy, Steve Lipsky, Marvel Comics, Alan Maxwell, Todd McFarlane, Gina Misiroglu, Modern Masters, NASA, Debbie Olshan, Orangutan Foundation International, Jerry Ordway, Jim Ottaviani, Valerie Parish, Ken Quattro, Dan Ripoll, John Roche, Budd Root, Werner Rosenauer, Rose M. Rummel-Eury, Lew Sayre Schwartz, Scott Shaw!, Simian Scrolls, Philip Simon, Dan Slott, Matthew Smith, Anthony Snyder, Chris Staros, Jay Stephens, Ty Templeton, Roy Thomas, Mike Tiefenbacher, Paul Tobin, Scott Trego, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, Brett Warnock, John Wells, and Tom Ziuko. If I’ve overlooked any contributor, please accept my sincere apologies for the oversight. COPYRIGHTS

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to H. A. Rey’s Curious George, the mischievous monkey that made most of us go ape long before we read our first comic book. Illustration from Curious George by H. A. Rey. © 1941, and renewed 1969 by H. A. Rey. Copyright assigned to Houghton Mifflin Company in 1993. Curious George is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Company. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Angel and the Ape, Animal Man, Anthro, Aquaman, Batman, Beppo the Super-Monkey, Bizarro Titano, Chigger, Congo Bill, Congorilla, Detective Chimp, Doom Patrol, the Flash, Gorilla Boss of Gotham City, Gorilla City, Gorilla Grodd, Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth, King Colosso, Kingorilla, Midnight and Gabby, Mod Gorilla Boss, Monsieur Mallah, New Teen Titans, Rex the Wonder Dog, Shazam!, Star Spangled War Stories, Strange Adventures, Superboy, Super Friends and Gleek, Superman, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, Titano the Super-Ape, Tomahawk, Weird War Tales, Ultra-Humanite, Wonder Woman, and related characters and titles TM & © 2007 DC Comics. Agents of Atlas, the Amazing Spider-Man, Apeslayer, the Avengers, Captain America, Devil Dinosaur, Fantastic Four, the Gibbon, Gorgilla, Gorilla Man, Gorr, Killraven, Man-Ape, Monster Ape, Not Brand Echh, Rawhide Kid, Red Ghost and His Super-Apes, Tales to Astonish, Terry Vance, War-Head, and related characters and titles TM & © 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Tarzan, Korak, and John Carter of Mars TM & © 2007 Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. • Conan the Barbarian TM & © 2007 Conan Properties. • Tor TM & © 2007 Joe Kubert. • Wild Person in the Woods and “Talking” Orangutans in Borneo TM & © 2007 Orangutan Foundation International. • King Kong and B.J. and the Bear TM & © 2007 Universal Pictures. • Konga © 1960 Herman Cohen Productions. • Robot Monster © 1953 Astor Pictures. • Great Grape Ape, Space Ghost and Blip, Peter Potamus and So-So, Magilla Gorilla, Herculoids, and Banana Splits TM & © 2007 Hanna-Barbera. • Cavewoman and Klyde TM & © 2007 Budd Root. • Gorilla Gorilla TM & © 2007 Walt Disney. • Monkeyman and O’Brien TM & © 2007 Arthur Adams. • Bride of the Beastman TM & © 2007 Allan Gross and Frank Cho. • Monkey Boy Cho TM & © 2007 Frank Cho. • The Wizard of Oz © 1939 Loews, Inc., © renewed 1966 MGM. • Maakies and Sock Monkey TM & © 2007 Tony Millionaire. • Archie, Betty and Veronica, Top-Notch Comics, and related characters and titles TM & © 2007 Archie Publications. • Rags Rabbit, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and related characters and titles TM & © 2007 Harvey Comics. • Y: The Last Man TM & © 2007 Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. • Banana Sunday TM & © 2007 Root Nibot and Colleen Coover. • Dial M for Monkey, Mojo Jojo, Powerpuff Girls TM & © 2007 Cartoon Network. • Drunken Monkey TM & © 2007 Rich Stahnke. • Jitter the Monkey © 1936 A. A. Kelleher. • Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp TM & © 1971 SBM Productions. • Supercar TM & © 2007 Carlton International Media Limited. • Monkey in a Wagon vs. Lemur on a Big Wheel TM & © 2007 Ken Lillie-Paetz and Chris Moreno. • Monkey vs. Robot TM & © 2007 James Kochalka. • My Monkey’s Name is Jennifer TM & © 2007 Ken Knudtsen. • The Spirit and Orang TM & © 2007 Will Eisner estate. • Ape Man and Monkey Boy TM & © 2007 Larry Williams, Tim Williams, and Matthew Smith. • Big Max Comics TM & © 2007 Dan Slott and James Fry. • Savage Dragon and BrainiApe TM & © 2007 Erik Larsen. • Spawn and Cy-Gor TM © 2007 Todd McFarlane. • Go-Go Gorilla and the Jungle Crew TM & © 2007 Ape Entertainment. • Tom Strong, King Solomon, and Weeping Gorilla TM & © 2007 America’s Best Comics. • Radioactive Ape TM & © 2007 Bongo Entertainment, Inc. • Sky Ape TM & © 2007 Phil Amara, Richard Jenkins, Tim McCarney, and Mike Russo. • Grease Monkey TM & © 2007 Tim Eldred. • Stuntman © 2007 Jack Kirby estate and Joe Simon. • Zot!, Butch, and Monkeytown © 2007 Scott McCloud. • The Monkees TM & © 2007 Screen Gems. • Planet of the Apes TM & © 2007 Twentieth Century Fox Corporation. • MAD TM & © 2007 EC Publications. All other characters and images (including inside cover images) are TM & © 2007 their respective copyright holders, as indicated in conjunction with the individual illustrations or photographs. All images herein are used here strictly for historical purposes. Editorial content is © 2007 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. The viewpoints expressed in the interviews are the opinions of the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the writer/editor or of TwoMorrows Publishing.

BARREL OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . . 5

1 BORN TO BE WILD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Girl-Grabbing Gorillas Cover Gallery . . . . . . . . . . .15 Tarzan Through the Years Cover Gallery . . . . . . . 16 Q & Ape with Joe Kubert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Q & Ape with Anne Timmons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2 WALKING TALL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Kong-a Line Cover Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Q & Ape with Arthur Adams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Q & Ape with Frank Cho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

3 MONKEY BUSINESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Mo’ Monkeys Cover Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Q & Ape with Carmine Infantino . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Q & Ape with Tony Millionaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

4 GORILLAS IN OUR MIDST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Super-Heroes Battle Super-Gorillas Cover Gallery . . 92 Q & Ape with Bob Oksner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Q & Ape with Tim Eldred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

5 MAKE A MONKEY OUT OF ME

. . . . . . . . . . . 102

Going Ape Cover Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Q & Ape with Nick Cardy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Q & Ape with Jeff Parker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

6 WHERE MAN ONCE STOOD SUPREME . . . . . 126 Planet of the Apes Cover Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Q & Ape with Doug Moench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Unpublished 1973 cover art by Gil Kane featuring Marvel’s 1950s-era Tarzan-twice-removed, Lo-Zar (alternately Lozar and Lo-Zarr). This “Lord of the Jungle” was renamed Tharn when his stories were reprinted in the 1970s. © 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Safari-goers and beastmasters never know when they’ll meet a monkey with a mad-on! Watch your step as you bungle into the jungle, where the apes are...

BORN TO BE WILD! snorted commands of their middle-aged editors hot to ape ave you ever seen a jungle movie that didn’t depict the Hollywood’s lucrative jungle craze, tapped the gorilla on the gorilla as really, really angry? That’s fang-snarling, shoulder (from a safe distance, of chest-pounding angry. course) and knighted him the poster No, Gorillas in the Mist doesn’t child for cantankerous critters. Sure, count. you’d find the occasional savage-lordFrom the 1930s and through the vs.-lion cover, and the suggestive early ’50s, movie houses played lots jungle-queen-vs.-anaconda cover, but of cheaply produced jungle serials the ones that most grabbed readers’ and pictures. You know the type: attentions featured grumpy gorillas They open with a bunch of snooty (or other ornery apes). This wasn’t the Europeans in pith helmets on holiday exclusive terrain jungle or “adventure” in the jungle, or a gang of ne’er-doseries—once in a while, some of wells out to purloin some weathered comics’ earliest caped crusaders found artifact. These interlopers inevitably themselves mask-to-face with a stumble across an enraged bull ape maddened monkey! that’s jackhammering his pecs and How can I put this delicately…? frothing like a busted washing Oh, forget that, here it is, straight up: machine, grunting something that, in Many of these artists could not draw his language, can only mean “Git off apes. Some of them drew the dumpymy property!” Or “I’m taking the guy-in-a-baggy-gorilla-suit gorilla. blonde, sissy-britches, just you try Some evoked racial or sexual stereoand stop me!” Hollywood knew that types, many blatant. Some pulled off a grumpy gorilla was always good passable swipes from nature photos. for a scare… or a laugh, if you But in their defense, the entire comiclooked close enough to see the book art form was in its infancy then. zipper in the gorilla suit. And as Arthur Adams says, “…in life, Why the rage, Congo king? you’re not really required to know Look at it this way: How would you how to draw a gorilla.” feel if a chattering tour group Not that it mattered to the tromped through your back yard? average readers of the Great Territorial squabbles have led countA gorilla beat out neo-star Superman for the spotlight on Depression and World War II, the era less countries to war, so really, these Leo O’Mealia’s cover to Action Comics #6 (Nov. 1938). we now call comics’ Golden Age. apes are entitled to a little bluster. © 2007 DC Comics. They were unpretentious, usually poor Many of the moviegoers kids looking for a quick and affordable escape from their reality watching those jungle serials and pictures were young men (and of hardships. Few could discern between a hack and a master. occasionally, women—you go, Tarpe Mills!) who made serialized Toss a snarling beast on that funnybook cover, and Junior would pictures of their own in the flourishing field of comic books. And toss down his hard-earned dime—that’s the law of the jungle. those impressionable writers and artists, marching in step to the

Born To Be Wild!

SPOTTED AMONG THE APES IN:

JOE KUBERT with

Conducted by telephone on September 13, 2006

Tor, Tarzan, Sgt. Gorilla in Star Spangled War Stories, random DC Comics gorilla covers

OTHER CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Flash Comics, co-creator of 3-D comics (1953), Viking Prince, Silver Age Hawkman, Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace, Tales of the Green Berets comic strip (1966–1968), The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Fax from Sarajevo

I understand that your caveman, Tor, is returning. As a matter of fact, it’s going to be published by DC, and their procedure is to first run six issues of the comic book and then encapsulate or enclose those six issues as a graphic novel. Now, I’ve already written the story and am almost finished with the first issue, but it does deal with apes… or hairy people, anyhow.

You might argue whether or not these would be apes at that stage of evolution. But I’m assuming you had a monkey as inspiration when you and Norman Maurer concocted Chee-Chee in 1953… Right. [Chee-Chee’s] not in this particular series. What I’ve tried to do is bring it up a couple of steps, which is a result of a couple of things that I have learned. It’s not much dealing with dinosaurs and killing all these crazy animals so much as it is dealing with people and different kinds of people, and the nature of people. That was always the fascinating thing about Tor being the next step in the evolutionary chain, the way he interacted with the more primitive world around him. I understand that when you first produced Tor for St. John, there was a bit of controversy about evolution vs. creationism. The comments made by the people who read the magazine were that man did not exist at the time of dinosaurs. I had done as much research as I could, and have had several comments from archaeologists that there could have been some crossover… for

example, something that resembles people—not necessarily people who looked like the character of Tor—they could be designated as people and could have possibly existed during the time that dinosaurs were dying out. So that’s my answer. I grew up with The Flintstones, so I’m used to a wooly mammoth as a vacuum cleaner, you know. The medium of comics enjoys the suspension of belief… some things have to be taken with a grain of salt. That was my very optimistic answer! [laughter] So apes are involved in the new Tor storyline? Well, kind of. I sort of stepped off the classic gorilla type and tried to make the crossover, the missing link, where they still resemble apes to a great extent, but are taking on more the look of humans.

Photo courtesy of Ken Quattro.

Regarding the original material, what do you think Chee-Chee brought to Tor? Well, as you’ve described, he was a monkey-type second banana, so to speak.

This photo of then-partners Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer was originally published in 1953 in 1,000,000 Years Ago! #1. On their drawing board is the cover artwork for Three Stooges #1 & 1,000,000 Years Ago! #1. Good choice of words. At the time, when I put the story together, I thought it would be great. Tarzan had Cheeta the chimp as buddy and friend, and Chee-Chee was a smaller version of that—a monkey, a likeable monkeylike form, and it made it easy for him to tag along and add a little bit of humor to the story. The original King Kong movie was released during your childhood. For those of us who discovered Kong from reruns or remakes, describe what it was like when this was something brand new. Incredible. As a young person coming into a movie theater, where the screen was so large, especially compared to today, when

you saw this ape appear on the screen, it was shocking—shocking and mesmerizing at the same time. It just drove my imagination into all kinds of directions. All these things—the movie, reading the Tarzan stories originally done by Hal Foster—all engendered an interest in me to want to draw these things and other things as well, to at least in some way generate the kind of impact in my drawing that these things created on me. You’ve succeeded quite well. As a matter of fact, I’ve recently reread some of your very first Tarzan stories that you produced for DC… there’s a timelessness to them, and they hold up very well today. It was a joy to do it. It was like revisiting my younger years. When I started Tarzan, what I did was go through all the Burroughs books—I think there were 30 or 31 of them that were originally written—and I reread them. I had read them when I was a kid, but I wanted to get back that same flavor that I got when I read them as a kid, which is what I wanted to inject when I did them. Then I read the Foster Tarzans, and those really impressed me. I think those newspaper strips came out in the early ’30s, [when] I was four or five years old. I still recall getting the newspaper where I saw the strip for the first time, The New York Mirror, in which Tarzan took the whole back page of the tabloid paper. I looked forward to that; it only appeared on one day of the week, on Sunday. I just loved it. Foster and his work beyond Tarzan was an inspiration to me and I don’t know how many [other] guys who came into the business. When I read that as a kid, it was more alive to me than many of the movies I saw afterwards. When I read the stuff that Foster did, I felt that I was in that jungle. I felt that absolutely that the Tarzan character was a real, living person. That’s what I tried to do. That’s why I reread the stuff and got as much of that material as I could. Not to emulate, not to copy what I saw, but to get that certain element that he was able to get into his work. Foster was a master at storytelling and characterization.

I think you’ve succeeded at that just as well. Both of you have been able to produce a dense, but very alive jungle atmosphere for Tarzan. I thank you for what you’re saying. You’re welcome. When [former DC editorial director] Carmine Infantino was approached by the Burroughs people to do Tarzan, you weren’t part of the package, is that correct? There are perhaps two stories. [laughs] My

Born To Be Wild!

BIG APES YOU CAN LOOK UP TO! 1. TITANO THE SUPER-APE Joining editor Weisinger and writer Binder on Superman #127’s “Titano the Super-Ape!” were penciler Wayne Boring and inker Stan Kaye. Just imagine those idea wheels turning in Weisinger’s New York office back in ’58: Chimpanzees Cheeta and Zippy are household names, so why don’t we turn a chimp into King Kong? (Herman Cohen was thinking the same thing 3,000 miles away in Hollywood…) In Superman #127’s Titano origin story, Titano was born Toto, the “famous intelligent chimp” that had a crush on Lois Lane.

Comics Gone Ape!

Like Ham the astro-chimp in the real world’s headlines, Toto was blasted into orbit, where his ship was whacked by uranium and kryptonite meteors. Returning home, the irradiated Toto mutated into the giant ape Titano, and his newly acquired Kryptonite vision kept Superman from getting too close. Readers responded positively to Titano, although a few felt twinges of déjà vu: Before Superman #127, the character had already been tried out, as “Big Boy,” in the Superman comic strip. Weisinger brought back Titano the next year, in Superman #138, by the Binder/Boring/ Kaye team, even recycling the original “Titano the Super-Ape!” story title for the © 2007 DC Comics. rematch. Boring originally drew Titano with a chimp’s head on giant gorilla body, just like he had done earlier as the artist of sequence of syndicated dailies featuring “Big Boy.” For the Super-Ape’s second outing, Titano’s head was now a gorilla’s, making his appearance more Kong-like. Titano was a semi-regular in Weisinger’s Super-titles until the mid-1960s, then returned in 1970 in one of the editor’s last Superman tales. Writer Martin Pasko brought back Titano in 1978, in Superman #323–325. In Pasko’s own words (from his March 2006 interview in my book, The Krypton Companion), the SuperApe’s return was ill-fated: “We kept forgetting that what you got when you called upon the hyper-realistic and earthbound Curt Swan to draw menacing giant monsters invariably they looked cute and cuddly at best, and at worst, like something that reminded you of an old Toho movie and made you look for the zipper. I seem to recall that the mail suggested that Titano was one Weisingerism that was best relegated to obscurity.” …Which is where Titano resided until Superman Annual vol. 2 #1 (1987), when he was reintroduced in Superman’s post-Man of Steel revised continuity. John Byrne wrote (with co-plotter/penciler Ron Frenz) “Tears for Titano!”, the story of a genetically altered laboratory chimp mutated to gigantic proportions by a scientist attempting to create an army of super-soldiers. Frenz’s Titano returned to the original chimp-faced interpretation for the character’s single appearance. A shapeshifting menace did a messy walk-on “as” Titano in Superman/Batman #28 (2006). Outside of comic books, Titano has appeared in Superman TV cartoons in 1966 and 1997.

2. BIZARRO TITANO By the time 1962 rolled around, Superman’s dopey doppelganger, Bizarro No. 1, had populated his backwards Bizarro World with imperfect duplicates of just about every character in the Superman family. Titano got his shot in Adventure Comics #295 (Apr. 1962), becoming a raging Bizarrobeast in “The Kookie Super© 2007 DC Comics. Ape!” Since the Bizarro Code is “Us do opposite of all earthly things,” BizarroTitano should have been docile instead of the easy-to-anger big ape written by Jerry Siegel and penciled by John Forte. But logic never applied to a Bizarro story, and besides, Bizarro-Titano’s wrestling match with Bizarro-Lois No. 1 ranks as one of the goofiest moments in DC’s Silver Age. 3. KINGORILLA Titano wasn’t DC Comics’ first attempt to squeeze “King Kong” into its Superman mythos. In Adventure Comics #196 (Jan. 1954), Superboy (“The Adventures of Superman When He Was a Boy”) had a smackdown with the rampaging giant Kingorilla. This story, drawn by John Sikela and possibly written by William Woolfolk (remember, story credits were rare in those days), took teenage Clark (Superboy) Kent and Lana Lang into the African jungle to find Lana’s missing parents. It soon blatantly © 2007 DC Comics. sponged off King Kong by having the Langs and Clark held captive by natives as sacrifices to Kingorilla, but seeing Superboy in action against a mammoth ape was a heck of a lot of fun.

4. GORGILLA Before he co-created the Fantastic Four in 1961, writer/editor Stan Lee had had his fill of scripting the innocuous monster stories that were Marvel Comics’ bread and butter during the early ’60s. So the assignment to pen “I Discovered Gorgilla! The Monster of Midnight Mountain!” for Tales to Astonish #12 (Oct. 1960) went to Stan’s brother, Larry Lieber. Like King Kong, Gorgilla was a giant ape (or missing link, actually, between ape and man) that lived on an island (Borneo) on the highest hilltop (Midnight Mountain), where he was worshipped as a deity by the locals. (He also fought a T-Rex.) Unlike King Kong, Gorgilla was designed by Jack Kirby, who gave him the four fingers and toes so common among Kirby monsters, as well as a tail and a flowing mane of © 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. rock-star hair. Marvel brought Gorgilla back in Tales to Astonish #18 (Apr. 1961), this time having him visit New York, where he was cornered atop—no, not the Empire State Building—the Statue of Liberty. (Careful where you sit, Gorgilla. Lots of sharp points up there.) Gorgilla could have slinked away into limbo like so many of the other Marvel monsters, but after a couple of 1970s reprints (in Monsters on the Prowl #9 and Where Creatures Roam #5), he got an overhaul. Gorgilla’s origin was reprinted, albeit with art and lettering changes, in Weird Wonder Tales #21 (Mar. 1977), with the Marvel mystic Dr. Druid substituting as the lead character, replacing Scotty, an anthropologist from the original tale. Gorgilla later appeared as a menace in a few Marvel titles, and reappeared as a monster-fighter in 2005’s Marvel Monsters: Fin Fang Four #1. No longer your father’s “Monster of Midnight Mountain,” the retooled—and rehabilitated—Gorgilla has learned to speak, and has been shrunk to human size by super-whiz Mr. Fantastic.

arthur adams with

SPOTTED AMONG THE APES IN:

Conducted by telephone on November 1, 2006

Monkeyman and O’Brien, covers for “JLApe” crossover in 1999 DC Comics Annuals, drawing gorillas (and Godzillas) every darn chance he gets OTHER CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Longshot, X-Men, Gumby, Fantastic Four, Godzilla, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Jonni Future in Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales

Do you remember your very first ape drawing? No. [laughter] One of two answers you could have given me. Sadly, it’s true. As a kid, which did you see first: the King Kong movie in reruns or the King Kong Saturday morning cartoon? The King Kong movie first. Really? It must have been early on, because it had such a big influence on the rest of my life. I’m guessing I must have been three or four or five… I don’t have a clear memory of when, I’ve just seen it many, many times, for as long as I can remember. When they put back in some of the scenes cut out of King Kong, in the early ’70s, one of our local horror-show hosts [showed it]. I must’ve been nine or ten. That’s my most clear memory of seeing the repaired King Kong. Not to mention King Kong vs. Godzilla! I’m sure, as a small child, you saw the Saturday morning King Kong cartoon. Of course! Kong was a little sanitized there. But he was “ten times as big as a man”! [laughter] Did they ever measure him? I don’t think he was ten times taller, but ten times heavier. [laughter] With the average American gaining weight, I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Ouch! Which of the King Kong movie remakes do you think is most watchable? Or is it blasphemy to even pose such a question? I think the Peter Jackson one; I haven’t re-watched it since seeing it in the theater. I thought it was too long; it’s interesting because they’re putting out an extended version now! [laughs] If you have a weekend available…. I like to think that I liked the Dino DeLaurentis remake, but really the only good thing that came out of that was two Frank Frazetta paintings! Well, Jeff Bridges had cool hair… and it introduced Jessica Lange!

The last page of the Monkeyman and O’Brien adventure “Trapped in the Lair of the Shrewmanoid,” originally published in a 1994 Dark Horse Insider promo ’zine. © 2007 Arthur Adams. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

Yeah… I’ll go with that, sure! I’m trying to think of who the artists were for those poster for that movie. They were iconic illustrations. [Editor’s note: The 1976 King Kong teaser poster, with Kong perched atop the two World Trade Center towers, was illustrated by John Berkey.] You did Godzilla and Creature from the Black Lagoon comics for Dark Horse. Why wasn’t there a King Kong?

Well, we talked about that. For the latest remake, the rights were a horrible mess. Dark Horse couldn’t find a way to get the rights to do it. Someone held rights for music, someone for the movie, someone for the story, and were ready to sue each other whenever anyone wanted to do anything with it. “People, can’t we just get along?” It was funny, because both Frank Cho and

Walking Tall!

SPOTTED AMONG THE APES IN:

frank cho with

Conducted by telephone on October 31, 2006

“Monkey Boy” self-caricatures, “Bride of the Beastman” in Titanic Tales (Insight Studios), apes sketches and covers for Edgar Rice Burroughs, fanzines and sketchbooks

OTHER CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Liberty Meadows, Shanna, the She-Devil, New Avengers, Mighty Avengers

Do you remember your very first ape drawing? No… actually, I don’t. I remember watching King Kong, the original [Willis] O’Brien King Kong, when I was little. It was around first grade.

Where did your nickname “Monkey Boy” come from? From Buckaroo Banzai. That’s what I thought—The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984). It was John Lithgow’s character: “Laugh all you want, monkey boy! Your overthruster’s sh*t!” [laughter]

Were you disappointed in the 2005 King Kong remake, the Peter Jackson one? I wasn’t. I’m one of the few people who liked it. I’ve talked with a lot of hardcore King Kong fans, and a lot of them were disappointed. But I wasn’t one of them. I liked it. I thought the whole Ann Darrow character being a stage actress, and performing slapsticks to gain Kong’s affections, were the missing pieces from the original O’Brien Kong. Ever see the 1976 King Kong, the one with Rick Baker in the gorilla suit? I think I saw it roughly around the same time as the original. Me being a kid, I liked both of them! But it was pretty bad. I don’t know why I enjoyed that as a kid… there was a certain charm to it, but it was basically a guy in a gorilla suit, you know? But as a kid, I thought it was a really cool movie. Whattaya know, you’re a little kid in the first grade?

Comics Gone Ape!

How old were you when that movie came out in 1984? I was in middle school.

So, when you were a gullible little kid, were you disappointed to discover that spider monkeys couldn’t shoot webs out of their hands? [laughs]

Did you call yourself “Monkey Boy,” or did someone else call you that? You know that age—you and your friends insult each other constantly, and “Monkey Boy” was one of them. It didn’t really catch on until I was in college. It’s the same thing in college, where you insult each other like crazy, and “Monkey Boy” made us all laugh! [laughs] So I just put it into the strip. In Liberty Meadows you draw yourself as Monkey Boy Cho, a chimp, but there aren’t any apes in the regular cast. Why not? Because I was the monkey? [laughs] So one monkey is enough… I didn’t want to be redundant.

You did a Planet of the Apes takeoff on the cover of Small Press Expo 97. That was awhile ago. Are you equally fascinated with Planet of the Apes the way you were with King Kong? Yes, the original Planet of the Apes with Chuck Heston. And yeah, it was one of the movies you see as a kid where it really disturbs you. It disturbs adults, too. Yeah, it kinda creeped me out, you know? I like the first one, and I also liked the third one, where the two monkey characters go into our time and have the baby. The female switched her baby with the circus chimp and threw chimp’s baby into the water, and the real baby is in the care of the circus performer. I thought that movie was heart-wrenching. I know you’ve been fascinated with and have drawn a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ characters. What sparked that interest?

Oddly enough, I discovered the movies first. My intro to Tarzan was through Johnny Weissmuller. Again, when I was a kid, I was a TV and movie junkie. Every Saturday at noon there was a Tarzan movie on in Frank’s model sheets for Level 5’s 2007 Monkey Boy statue. Maryland. Me and Art © 2007 Frank Cho. Courtesy of Frank Cho. my brothers would watch all the Tarzan really like the books until college, and I movies. It was one of the coolest things reread the books and then something I’d seen. [Tarzan’s] treehouse started it all. clicked—I went through half the Tarzan He had a waterfall for a refrigerator and series. After a while, it started repeating cool wooden elevators. itself. And then I went through the [John Carter of] Mars series, which, oddly Did you build a treehouse after that? enough, I liked better. That was my introI tried to! That kinda started it all. Then I duction to the world of Burroughs. went through all the Tarzan movies and saw Gordon Scott, one of the better Let’s talk about the Tarzan vs. King Tarzans. Better than Johnny. Each of Kong comic that you pitched to Dark them had a different charm. After Horse. When did you pitch it and why [seeing] the movies, I read the books, and didn’t it go anywhere? they were completely different! I didn’t

YOUR HANDY-DANDY, A-to-Z

Barrel of Monkeys! AMPERSAND Everybody wants a piece of Ampersand, the crotchety Capuchin monkey, and his owner, Yorick Brown, in Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s DC/Vertigo series Y: The Last Man. Yorick and Ampersand are Earth’s two remaining mammals possessing a Y chromosome after a plague (a “gendercide”) has eradicated all other males. Every man’s fantasy? Not by a long shot, as scientists, radical feminists, and sinister sisters keep the boys on the run. While often merely along for the ride © 2007 Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. (on Yorick’s shoulder), the feisty Ampersand was the catalyst for the “Girl on Girl” story arc in issues #32–36 when his abduction led Yorick and his allies on a rescue mission. Since its launch in 2002, Y has been frequently graced by painted covers spotlighting Ampersand, by artists including J. G. Jones and Massimo Carnevale. © 2007 Root Nibot and Colleen Coover.

BANANA SUNDAY Chuck, an erudite orangutan; Knobby, a romanticizing spider monkey; and Go-Go, a lovable but ravenous pint-sized gorilla; are the talking apes in Banana Sunday, a four-issue black-and-white miniseries published in 2005 by Oni Press. Written by Root Nibot (actually, Paul Tobin) and drawn by his wife Colleen Coover, the series centers around a teenage girl named Kirby Steinberg (examine that name closely, comics buffs!), whose father, a primatologist, bestowed upon the trio of monkeys “accelerated learning abilities.” Part coming-ofage story and part subtle homage to the world of comics, Banana Sunday follows Kirby’s and the apes’ struggles through high school, as Kirby enrolls the monkeys there to further their education. Tobin’s scripts are smartly paced and explore a range of issues from peer acceptance to sexual identity, and Coover’s charming middle-of-the-road cartooning style is accessible to both the manga and Archie Comics crowds. BEPPO THE SUPER-MONKEY “Monkey see, monkey do”? Imagine the wackiness that ensued when a monkey with the powers of Superbaby (and a miniature Super-suit, to boot) imitated the Babe of Steel’s super-feats! Writer Otto Binder, artist George Papp, and editor Mort Weisinger imagined just that in “The Super-Monkey from Krypton!” in Superboy #76 (Oct. 1959). Beppo, a Kryptonian ape, was one of Jor-El’s guinea pigs as the scientist toiled to perfect a spaceship to escape Krypton’s tick-tock toward obliteration. The rascally monkey ended up on Earth by stowing away in baby Kal-El’s rocket, and made a handful of appearances in Superman-related titles throughout the 1960s. Barrel of Monkeys TM & © 2007 Milton-Bradley.

Comics Gone Ape!

Most Silver Age readers best remember Beppo as one of the Legion of Super-Pets (along with Krypto the SuperDog, Streaky the Super-Cat, Comet the Super-Horse, and later, the shapeshifting splotch of goo named Proty). Though long retired from the pages of comics, in the mid2000s the Silver Age Beppo the Super-Monkey was immortalized as a plush doll and an action figure by DC’s toy-manufacturing wing, DC © 2007 DC Comics. Direct. Beppo has a counterpart in contemporary DC continuity: Beppo the SuperChimp, the non-Kryptonian cohort of Metropolis performer Crackers the Clown; this Beppo debuted in Action Comics #668 (Aug. 1991). Some readers who saw Superboy #76’s cover might’ve felt a twinge of déjà vu, and understandably so: Beppo was a retread of Bongo, a red-caped, red-briefed (or was that a diaper?) chimp that appeared in the title almost five years earlier in the story “Public Chimp Number One!” in Superboy #38 (Jan. 1955). In that tale, Bongo was a Zippy-like (keep reading) TV star-turnedSuperboy buffoon. Writer Grant Morrison and artist © 2007 DC Comics. Frank Quietly kept alive the tradition of apes in capes in All Star Superman #5 (Sept. 2006) by introducing Leopold, Lex Luthor’s pet baboon (in a Superman costume). BLIP Second banana? Try third in Blip’s case, since this monkey is the sidekick to two sidekicks. When TV toon-titans Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera introduced Space Ghost in during the super-hero-frenzied year of 1966 (on the CBS show Space Ghost and Dino Boy, featuring character designs by the awesome Alex Toth), Blip, the pet to teen sidekicks Jan and Jace, was there to provide the impish-butadorable factor crucial to so many H-B cartoons. He also pulled Space Ghost’s and the kids’ fannies out of the fire—many times—by sneaking, while invisible (via his inviso-power belt), past the villain of the episode and either freeing the heroes or retrieving Space Ghost’s stolen power bands. Plus, he was a cute little monkey wearing a cute little super-hero costume— including a mask! There weren’t many masked monkeys running around in 1966! Blip was window dressing in the few Space Ghost comic-

book appearances that followed the show’s launch, starting with Gold Key Comics’ 1967 Space Ghost one-shot drawn by Dan Spiegle. He finally made it to the cover of a comic on 1987’s Space Ghost #1, written by Mark Evanier, drawn by Steve Rude and Willie Blyberg, and published by Comico. Evanier and Rude’s oneshot recreated the feel of the animated series, with an invisible Blip adding a mostvaluable-primate assist to the heroes. Once Space Ghost became a TV talk-show host on Space Ghost This is one of only three panels featuring Blip Coast to Coast, from this 5-page Space Ghost tale by Mark poor Blip was Evanier and Alex Toth. From Marvel Comics’ forgotten… until late-1970s Hanna-Barbera line. DC Comics’ © 2007 Hanna-Barbera. Courtesy of Jerry Ordway. Cartoon Network Presents #8 (Mar. 1998), when the monkey enlisted other H-B apes (Magilla Gorilla, © 2007 DC Comics. Igoo, Dial M for Monkey, and So-So) for a Space Ghost-andcompany rescue mission. BONZO THE MARVEL MONKEY Back in the ’50s DC Comics, publisher of Superman, successfully sued Fawcett Comics, publisher of Captain Marvel, and the “copycat” Cap was forced into retirement. Once DC acquired publishing rights for Captain Marvel in the ’70s, the publisher copied its own Beppo the Super-Monkey by introducing Bonzo the Marvel Monkey in Shazam! vol. 1 #9 (Jan. 1974). “The Day Captain Marvel Went Ape!”, by Elliot S! Maggin and C. C. Beck, featured the chimpanzee Bonzo, star of his own TV show, who by a quirk of fate got super-powers (and an adorable li’l Captain Marvel suit) when Billy Batson, Cap’s youthful alter ego, said his powers-inducing magic word “Shazam!”

Are we not men? In these cases, no. At least not anymore, due to brain transferences, evolutionary experiments, and furry costumes designed to…

make a monkey out of me! guaranteeing its “victim” amplified strength without civilization’s umans and chimpanzees share nearly 99% of their DNA, restraints. reported Time magazine in an Oct. 9, 2006 cover feature. This familiar motif might be traced back to Robert Louis Despite this biological similarity, there are many who Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll refuse to believe in the kinship between and Mr. Hyde, the 1886 novella about Man and Ape. A century and a half a scientist who reverts to a misanafter Charles Darwin published his thropic state. Arthur J. Burks’ brief controversial [On] The Origin of Species series of pulp tales starring Manape in 1859, the creation vs. evolution the Mighty, a gorilla with a human debate still rocks us, joining conservabrain, helped the concept evolve in tive vs. liberal, PC vs. Mac, straight vs. 1931 in Street & Smith’s Astounding gay, and Paris vs. Nicole as some of Stories. Three of the earliest instances society’s most divisive disputes. of a man becoming an ape in comic Even those who steadfastly books took place in Fox’s Blue Beetle discredit Darwin’s evolution theory as #9 and 10 (Oct. and Dec. 1941), in a “dangerous” or dismiss it as just plain backup featuring starring Jack Castle, nutty might find an inexplicable attraca.k.a. the Gorilla, a simian with a tion to those “cute, little monkeys” human brain; Captain America Comics discussed in Chapter 3. It’s easy to #17 (Aug. 1942), in a story by Stan become entranced by the antics of apes Lee and Al Avison, where the brain of at the zoo, dwarfing the time we might bad guy Killer Kole was transplanted spend observing a tiger or a rhino. It’s into a gorilla’s body; and in issue #1 like looking in a mirror. (Jan.–Feb. 1946) of the little-known, And so it should come as no short-lived O. W. (Ogden Whitney) surprise that fiction is filled with Comics Corp. title Mad Hatter, where stories merging humans and apes. In a criminal cheated death by returning some, a man—usually by the whim of to life as a gorilla. But thanks to the a mad scientist, but sometimes by his horror and mystery comic-book craze own choice—exchanges his brain with of the 1950s, including the landmark an ape. To many this notion might be Strange Adventures #8, comics considered horrific, or even humorsnatched up this concept (like they did ous—after all, “as” a gorilla you’d be Arthur J. Burks’ Manape the Mighty, the gorilla with turned away from most four-star the human mind, on artist Hans Wessolowski’s painted so many others) and ran with it. Editor Julie Schwartz’s Strange restaurants—but this simian swap is cover to the June 1931 edition (vol. 6 #3) of Street & Adventures was home to many such also the ultimate power fantasy, Smith’s Astounding Stories. © 1931 Street & Smith.

Make A Monkey Out Of Me!

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