Planet Of The Apes!

 

Given the admittedly shameless aspect to this post's bait-and-switch title, it's understandable if those of you dropping in on the PPC today were expecting to see something like the following--a concept which is still kicking up steam long after its first film debuted in 1968 and carved a successful franchise that continued to 1973 and beyond which, as of this date, has collectively grossed $2,127.776,430 worldwide. That's a lot of bananas.

However.

Like Lucy van Pelt, who graciously balanced a football on the ground so that Charlie Brown could have the opportunity to run up and kick it--only to snatch it away the moment before his foot made contact, and consequently causing him to spectacularly crash to the ground, flat on his back--we regret to inform you that this post's title refers instead to a similar yet separate subject altogether. Namely:

Have you noticed the number of characters in comics which are based on or actually are, if only in part, simians--e.g., APES?

Yes, it's those characters who beckon us today, not some actors in furry suits who, along with their film crews, raked in over $2 billion at the box office. Who needs 'em? Today, we explore the apes who populate Marvel's Planet Earth. We bring you, instead, Marvel's own...

(With maybe a Beast or two thrown in!)

And speaking of the Beast, he would be the odd man out in this assembly--a mutant, further mutated by his own hand, yet regarded by some as simian in appearance and movement (particularly in his early days), an assessment which characters from the distant future unfortunately appear to agree with.

Of course the real thing was well represented, in comics and other mediums. In "2001: A Space Odyssey," apes received everything but billing in the first minutes of the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film (though they may have found their way into the end credits, if I recall correctly)--and in Jack Kirby's 1976 adaptation, the artist-writer gives them their due.

Kirby would strike a similar note with the Celestials, whose first host on Earth had specific plans for man's earliest form (as rendered here by artist Ron Wilson).

Fast-forward to the big city, where we find one poor soul who took his nom de guerre as the Gibbon too seriously--and whose rejection by Spider-Man would make him vulnerable to the influence of none other than Kraven the Hunter.

The Black Panther has had his battles with his share of apes--most prominently the Man-Ape, but also creatures his people had believed to be fables yet had also in their eyes taken on the stature of gods, myths that T'Challa would be forced to meet in the flesh.

And thanks to Kirby, the Panther would also clash with another creature of legend--the Yeti, whom the Silver Surfer as well as the Human Torch would cross paths with. (Well, not so much the Torch, as his Yeti turned out to be one of the Inhumans.)

No doubt one of the most prominent groupings of apes over the years have been the Red Ghost's super-apes, all having gained their abilities by exposure to cosmic rays which made them a fair threat that even George Taylor would have wanted more than a rifle to deal with.

You can find the Ghost and the Super-Apes all over the Marvel map, having logged more appearances than I can readily count.

And on the subject of super-apes, well, this five-issue series from 2008 (with No. 0 lagging behind) ranks right up there as one of the most bizarre.

A title in which our friend Martin Blank plays a part, Marvel Apes takes place in an alternate universe where Earth is populated by simian counterparts of the characters we know. (Spider-Monkey, Captain Ape-merica, the Ape-Vengers, Doctor Ooktavius... you get the idea.) Once the series runs its course, both Spider-Monkey and Speedball would be featured in their own respective issues.

Another type of super-ape was the evolved being named Gorr, who was sent to Earth by the High Evolutionary to fetch the Fantastic Four but wasn't behaving too civilized in their first meeting.

Solomon Kane also looks like he has his hands full with an attack by a gorilla, but Kane's beef is actually with a tribesman named Gulka who was out to slay him.

But Gulka is thwarted when our gorilla shows up to take its revenge on him for slaying the gorilla's mate. (And if by that you infer that we won't be seeing Gulka among the living again, you're not wrong.)

Another visible member of the ape clan over the years has been Arthur Nagan, a surgeon who used apes as organ donors but who wound up on the wrong end of the scalpel when the apes rebelled and, with newly gained human intellect, grafted Nagan's head onto one of their bodies. Turning lemons into lemonade, Nagan went on to become part of the Headmen, whose members' origins in classic tales revealed their own medical, scientific and mystical specialties and who went on to join Nagan in devious (and hopefully profitable) schemes.

Nagan's as ruthless and merciless as they come--but when he goes up against a depowered Luke Cage and hurls the man's body into an electrified fence, he receives a comeuppance when the fence's power has restored Cage's abilities and, at a crucial point in the battle, our hero is able to take advantage of Nagan's one vulnerability.

Nagan, like the other Headmen, never got around to calling himself anything other than his given name and surname (which must have made the F.B.I.'s job a little easier), even though "Gorilla Man" would have fit like a glove. But that name was awarded another character a little over seven years later:

The story of Dr. Franz Radzik, who thought to begin a criminal career by using a device he'd invented to exchange his personality with that of a gorilla, but doesn't count on the strength of the beast's own personality which refuses to transfer back, thus trapping Radzik in the gorilla's body for life.

The "Gorilla-Man" name (hyphenated or otherwise) would be claimed by other individuals, which you'll find Rip Jagger has covered in his own splendid post on the subject. And one of those characters was actually an Avenger, albeit a team from an alternate timeline, perhaps (even the Watcher leaves the question open for debate).

Then there's Joe the Gorilla (yes, word for word, that's his name), whose human form makes clear that he's a gorilla in name only--a bruiser who was part of the Split-Second Squad whose members committed bank robberies under the orders of a mysterious figure named Kronus.

Unfortunately, Joe would later go up against the Valkyrie, who was crazed at the time and treated him to a fate to which any Asgardian would have dispatched what they perceived to be a troll.

Happy landings, Joe.

Another hooded figure by the name of the Organizer forms the Ani-Men, one of whom is outfitted as... well, not Gorilla-Man, but a close second.

Thanks in part to Count Nefaria, the Ani-Men gain super-powers and are sent to attack the NORAD base at Mt. Valhalla--with the strength of Gort, our Ape-Man, being an obvious asset.

Finally, it was inevitable that DC Comics would want to get in on this action:

Parody issue covers by fellow blogger Ross Pearsall at Super-Team Family... The Lost Issues, where you can find clever guest-appearance concepts based on the Planet Of The Apes and much more. (But I gotta ask: Just how did these apes get the drop on the Avengers? With nets?)