A Chain Of Chimps!

Today is an excursion down one of the Dojo's patented countdowns as I take a look at my favorite comic book apes. Apes of all kinds are abundant in the comic books as they are in lots of other venues of popular culture. DC Comics famously had a love affair with apes in the 60's when the editors noted upticks in sales when apes showed up on covers. There have been giant apes, smart apes, civilized apes, ferocious apes, and even a golden ape.

So let me jiggle this barrel of monkeys and see what tumbles out. You can tell me if I have strung them together successfully or not. Let's begin.

21. The movie Planet of the Apes was a huge success in the 70's spawning sequels, toys, a TV show and a comic book. There was also a magazine, both were published by Marvel and featured some dandy talent. Whether your goal is to get beneath, escape, battle or got to conquer these blokes no list of favorite comic book apes would be complete without at least a mention of Caesar and his ape associates.

20. On Saturday mornings the spy craze of the time met up with ape craze to give us Lancelot Link Secret Chimp. I'll confess watching an episode these days might be a little tedious but back in the day I loved it as the agents of the Agency to Prevent Evil battled the never ending schemes of  the Criminal Headquarters  for the Underworld's Master Plan. Chimps aren't my favorite apes, but for Lancelot and best girl Mata Hairi I'll make an exception.

19. Spider-Man has an impressive rogues gallery, arguably the finest in all the Marvel Universe. But likely not on the A-list is The Gibbon. Martin Blank has powers and wants to be best buds with his his friendly neighborhood Spider-Man but things go wrong, he gets juiced and ends up battling Spidey as the "The Gibbon". It's a short battle, but I loved it.

18. Saturday mornings also gave us Bingo, a member in good standing with the Banana Splits. I was much too old to admit liking the Banana Splits when they were on TV, but by gosh I did enjoy their zany antics which happened between episodes of other not-that-bad cartoons and such entertainments. I hear there is a rumor they've gone rogue and have been killing folks, but surely not Bingo. Say it ain't so Bingo.

17. The Red Ghost, a spy for Mother Russia needed help when he planned to take on the Fab 4, but the Fantastic Four still got the best of him despite his trio of Super-Apes (gorilla, orangutan, and baboon) getting super powers like super-strength, super-magnestism and shape-changing respectively. I know I liked them when they popped by the Baxter Building.

16. Never read too many Golden Gorilla stories but the idea that he and Congo Bill shared a brain later in their careers was too much of a hoot. That's the kind of wack creativity that has made comics such a wonderful terrain for so many decades.

15. Rounding out the first gaggle of apes is...well...er...Ape. That's what he's called in the hilarious George of the Jungle cartoons and the comic books as well. While George is clumsy, dim, and an all-around goof, it is Ape who is the sophisticated voice of reason in the depths of the jungle. His cool head and refined manner make George a better boy. 

14. Monkeyman was an Indy hit back when the artist reigned supreme in the comics world and comic books were never "hotter". As is often the case Monkeyman was partnered with a beautiful girl, this time to form a duo against evil. Axwell Tiberius is Monkeyman's real name and he's a genius from another dimension brought to Earth when Ann O'Brien opened a portal. She got super strength and stature and he got stuck, but together they were a formidable team in all too few adventures by their creator Art Adams.

13. Cowboy Gorilla is the creation of Don Simpson and while not as successful as Megaton Man or even Yarn Man, he's a hoot. Often teamed with Phantom Jungle Girl he's a force for good alongside the other heroes of the Fiascoverse. Sadly Don Simpson, his creator has taken a step back from regular comic book production and that's hurt Cowboy's chances for the big time.

12. Who doesn't like Magilla Gorilla? While that might seem a rhetorical question it's actually one which could be asked of any of his potential owners, the folks who have tried to take Magilla home from Mr. Peebles' pet shop. Dressed like some misfit hobo Magilla is memorable if not exactly striking, but he means well. Hanna and Barbera came up with a winner with Magilla.

11. When is an ape not an ape? When that ape is the Ultra-Humanite. A super-villain from the earliest days of Superman's adventures, the Ultra-Humanite is the intellect to confront Superman's brawn. His schemes were many and varied but when he decided to become an albino ape, he found the body he'd dreamed of...in our worst nightmares.

10. And then there's Superman's other ape foe -- Titano the Super-Ape. Not unlike the Fantastic Four or the Red Ghost's own Super-Apes, Titano was once upon a time merely a chimp named Toto who was launched into space and irradiated. Returning to Earth he became an enormous gorilla armed with eye beams of sizzling Kryptonite. Take that Superman. '

9. Malevolent is the Mandrill, the sinister creation of Steve Gerber who battled against first Sheena the aptly named She-Devil and later Daredevil with the assistance of Nekra, an albino female vampire of sorts. Jerome Beacham is the Mandrill's real name and he's the mutated son of a pair of scientists once bombarded with radiation. Nekra it turns out is the daughter of a black cleaning lady also irradiated in the same accident. Together they hate the world and themselves and are extremely dangerous. 

8. Monsieur Mallah is part of DC's Brotherhood of Evil, the vile counterparts to the Doom Patrol. He's a loyal follower of The Brain who created him by experimenting on those of his kind. Along with the ductile Madame Rouge they are villains tough enough for anyone. And who doesn't love a gorilla with a gun? Oh that's right -- everyone!

7. Sam Simeon was delightful in his way as a partner with Angel O'Day. They were a dandy and entertaining pair in the relatively few issues of DC comics which featured them. Sam himself was a comic book artist as well as a detective of sorts and the fact he was a gorilla seemed of less concern to him and others as one might've thought.

6. M'Baku the Man-Ape is really an ape I know, but he made a tremendous impact on this Marvel Zombie from the very fist time he showed up to challenge the rule of T'Challa The Black Panther. The Panther had just become an Avenger and needed a villain and Man-Ape filled the bill with gusto. I guess based on the movies he's something of an ally for T'Challa these days, but it's the Man-Ape of yesteryear that makes me happy.

5. Kerchak is maybe the most important ape on this list. Without the ferocious Kerchak and his impact on the life of the one and only Tarzan of the Apes, pop culture as we know it might look quite different. In the earliest tales of Tarzan we see him grow and become a thorn in the side of Kerchak, but when he finally challenges the leader of his tribe to the right to rule he became a king of sorts in the dark territories of the mythical Africa.

4. Another bad ape is Grodd, the infamous member of the Flash's rogues gallery who seeks nothing less than the subjugation of mankind itself. While considered technically a rogue, you always knew that Grodd was something else, something  more dangerous and deadly. The Trickster wanted to make you look foolish and get booty, Mirror Master wanted to prove his mettle in battle against the most potent enemy he could locate, but Grodd just wanted to kill you.

3. Gorilla Man is a delightful character erupting from the depths of Marvel's horror past when the company was dubbed "Atlas". He was a man who was transformed into a gorilla by dint of a curse and that was his tale of morality until he was rediscovered by Roy Thomas and Don Glut and made a part of the 50's Avengers in an issue of What If?. He proved to be a fascinating character and even rated his mini-series at one time.

2. Perhaps the most successful comic book ape was Konga. Based on a British monster flick which wanted to capture a wee bit of the old King Kong magic, Konga landed at Charlton Comics where the ape fell into the hands of the late great Steve Ditko. Ditko imbued Konga with a charming personality, perhaps a bit too broad at times, but the stories have been reprinted time and again since proving that they have a lasting appeal. (More on Konga tomorrow and beyond.)

1. And finally at last we have the number one ape in comics, in fact  he's the number one ape in any list of any kind. King Kong is the well-spring of modern pop culture, a tale in which for the first time a thing which never lived demanded the empathy of the world and proved that all that hokum could be used to tell stories of lasting lingering power. While it's been many decades since Kong fell from the Empire State Building, he's never ever lost his lofty perch on top of the modern imagination.

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Reptilicus!

Once upon a time in the late 50's and early 60's, giant monsters were all the rage. Denmark feeling that it too wanted to contribute its unique flavor to the monster surge of the time initiated by Japan's Godzilla, unleashed the prehistoric might of Reptilicus on the the city of Copenhagen and film-going public has never been the same since. I've certainly never been, since I lensed the movie as part of an all-night Halloween film fest when I was youngster. The first few scenes scared me pretty well, though even as a kid I found the big monster's romp somewhat regrettable.


Sidney Pink produced this flick and thought the way to go for special effects was puppets. Puppetry was a classic approach, and one only has to look back to the very first giant monsters created by the master special effects kahunah Willis "Obie" O'Brien, to see the stop-motion mastery of that form. That's not the way they went with Reptilcus. They went with a marionettes and hand puppets. Take a look.



On another front Ib Melchior had worked on early versions of Gigantis, the Fire Monster, the Americanized Godzilla sequel and took some of the discarded concepts from that project and used them on this movie. Reptilicus does have one advantage over Godzilla and Kong, he can fly. But for some reason those scenes get cut from the American version and so his little wings seem attached to the big lizard for no good reason. Here's a look at him on the fly.


Needless to say Sidney Pink was interested in maximizing his profits from this creation, so he licensed the creature to comics, in particular Charlton Comics. They had a history with these kinds of things, having done Konga and Gorgo. But Charlton also was associated with the paperback imprint Monarch and they too adapted Reptilicus using the writer David Owens. Pink took issue with some of the scenes created for the novel version which are reputed to have a somewhat lascivious quality. I've never read it, so I cannot speak firsthand about it. But apparently it upset Pink who pulled the license from Charlton. But Charlton must've seen some good numbers from their monster book, so they just kept on publishing it under the new name "Reptisaurus". It ran for six more issues through 1962, and a 1963 summer special edition to boot. Some years ago, an independent science fiction movie was made using the "Reptisaurus" name. I've not been able to see most of this movie, but I have seen the trailer and for this kind of Indy stuff it looks typical. I'd love to see it full length.

So we are faced with the odyssey of this monster character who begins life in the cinema and then tumbles into comics only to return under his new name to the screen again. There is an irony here somewhere. For more details on this offbeat tale of monsters and comics, see this link at Stephen Bissette's rather scholarly blog.

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Gorgo!

If you don't know the general story of Gorgo either as a film or as the comics story adapted by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko for Charlton Comics way back in 1961, it's a classic tale of giant monster terror. Two likeable but tough-minded salvage divers find themselves stranded off Nara Island and after some bother about treasure and such find that a monster called "Ogra" by the little boy who attaches himself to them might make a pretty good penny for them back in civilization. They capture the critter, bigger than several elephants and haul him back to London where he's put on display for all to see. 

There's some angst about what's right and all that, but before anything really can happen, Gorgo's mother who is ten times his size shows up looking for her baby and crushes Nara Island before heading off the London to get back her boy. The British military has no chance, and she demolishes lots of landmarks like the Tower Bridge, Big Ben, and more. People die like crazy in this one as debris falls on crowd after crowd. Eventually she gets to her baby, frees him and they walk off into the sea and the movie is over just like that. It's a spectacle!

Gorgo was promoted with great vigor by the King Brothers. After securing the services of Eugene Lourie who was working on his third giant monster movie in a row after The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and The Giant Behemoth, the producers wrought more than a few changes to the story. But everyone knew a new monster was on the block with scuds of money going into the advertising, not the least of which was getting Gorgo a cover on Famous Monsters of Filmland, rendered by the great Basil Gogos. 

And then there's Waiting for Gorgo. This 2010 short film is a hoot. Imagine how the British military might have responded to the threat of giant monsters long ago. They might set up a Department of Monsters and Over-Sized Animals or DMOA for short. They might staff it well at first but over the decades, things might fall off. To learn more, check out the link below. 

Waiting for Gorgo | Award-Winning Monster Short Film

More Gorgo to come. 

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Konga!

Konga, the 1961 monster movie written and produced by Herman Cohen, is a deliriously bizarre entertainment. According to some sources the original title of the movie was I Was a Teenage Gorilla, so that should tip anyone off that this is a strange flicker. (For the record Cohen was also behind such iconic titles such as I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and I Was a Teenage Werewolf.) And as amazing as it sounds it's strange not just because it features a somewhat hokey giant ape stumbling across London, but because of the acting of one man -- Michael Gough. Whenever you look him up these days, his role as "Alfred" in those Batman flicks of moons ago get the main attention, but for me it will ever be Konga.

Gough plays a scientist named Decker who returns to London after a year lost in the depths of the African jungles with new ideas and some seeds. It seems he's learned how to make things big, but there is nothing on the planet able to outgrow this guy's ego. Gough's performance as Decker gives the screen one of the most repulsive people it has ever experienced. Nothing is more important to Decker than himself and he spends the movie proving it.

He turns on everyone around him, eventually killing his superiors, killing innocent kids, and then preying upon those left in his special care. He is a man who violates every boundary of trust given to him. He is truly "uncivilized" and that's the theme. The comic book adaptation spends more time in the jungle and shows us how Decker finds his special things, but in the movie all of that is ignored in service of showing the results. He betrays his lover and assistant, puts the moves on a stacked female student, and sends his gorilla on patrol to commit murder. He's not a nice guy. 

While not of the same kind as the werewolves of fiction, Decker and Konga are two sides of the same creature, and the latter is changed in physical shape to reflect the changes inside the heart and soul of the other. Decker's ego knows no bounds and so does Konga grow to giant size and in doing so plod to his doom. Decker imagined he was above, beyond the grip of society, but in the grip of Konga, his other self in the shadow of the clock tower which holds Big Ben, he is brought low at last.

If perchance you haven't seen Konga I recommend it and even more maybe the reading of the comic adaptation which shows greater details of the origin. But we'll get to that in due course. 

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Keep Watching The Skies!

Keep Watching the Skies - American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties by Bill Warren is a massive two-volume set of tomes which give summaries and opinions of most every movie you can think of from the relevant era between 1950 and 1962. These are not just movies which were released in America, so Toho among others gets great coverage. The three flickers featured this month -- Konga, Gorgo and Reptilicus -- are included as well. My goal this month (and perhaps a bit beyond) is to try and see as many of these movies again. It's a mammoth, but exceedingly fun task. 

These books have been published, revised and published again over the years. Above you can see the delightfully delicate artwork for the first editions. 

Here is the magnificent art by Kerry Gammill which graces both volumes in the set. Being able to identify every single creature, invader, robot, and mutation in this image is a badge of honor or arguably a sign of a too cloistered existence. I plead guilty. Take a closer look and see how you do. 

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Angry Apes 'N' Leapin' Lizards!

This month is all about giant monsters, especially those illustrated in strong style by "Sturdy" Steve Ditko. I've had the above Paragon book titled Steve Ditko -- Angry Apes 'N' Leapin' Lizards in my collection for many years. It's a dandy black and white gathering of some of Ditko's strongest monster material for Charlton in the early 1960's, produced at the same time he was cranking out mystery yarns for Stan Lee at Marvel. Ditko worked in tandem with the indefatigable Joe Gill on these monster stories. 

In addition to stories about Konga and Gorgo, look for Reptilicus as well. Ditko never drew any of that less successful series, but it's a lot of fun anyway. Other artists aside from Ditko drew Konga and Gorgo stories and I'll get into that a bit as the month rumbles along. All monsters all month. 

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Introducing Captain Atom -- Ditko At Charlton 1960!

Introducing Captain Atom - Ditko at Charlton 1960 is as the title advertises. It gathers together the work by Steve Ditko produced for Charlton during that year. All of the work here was also written by Joe Gill and he is the focus of the collection as much as Ditko himself. In this year, Ditko was working for Marvel and Charlton as well as others from time to time. 

For those who might not know, Joe Gill was a writing workhorse for Charlton Comics. When I first discovered Charlton, I saw his name so much, I assumed it was a house name like "Kenneth Robeson", a name shared by many writers. Little did I realize the fecundity of Joe Gill's mind. He wrote with precision and skill, but mostly speed, hammering out scripts for Charlton's array of artists for wages at their cheapest in 1960 since this was after the company's famous flood, an event used by the owners to slash pay to the talent. 

Beneath this wraparound cover is an essay titled "Into Outer Space" highlighting the fascination with space which marked the era and the historical events which sparked that fascination. "Introducing Joe Gill" offers up a short bio of the great writer himself. "The Life Story of Steve Ditko" offers a nifty chronology of the artist from his beginning right up to his demise and beyond. In between we are offered a bevy of stories by Gill and Ditko arranged by the titles in which they appeared. 

Below is a cover gallery of those issues involved which featured Ditko artwork on the cover. At this stage, art from interior stories was rearranged by the editors for covers. 

Much more on Captain Atom in April, but March will be for monsters. The Dojo welcomes one and all. 

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