Comic readers love apes. And chimpanzees. DC has known this for decades, relying on gorillas on covers to give individual issues a sales boost during the Silver Age of Comics.
So here’s the latest example of gorillas amidst the comic shop shelves, an Ape-Ril Special that is, appropriately enough, bananas. I was expecting an 80pp or, God help us, 96pp giant consisting of 8-10 tales centred on the hairiest denizens of the DC Universe, of wildly varying quality. Instead I got three stories totalling 36pp, two of them directly linked, the other tenuously connected to the first tale. The only thing that matters really is that all three are throughly entertaining.
The Ben Meares-edited issue opens with ‘Plan of the Apes’, in which Monsieur Mallah bids to fill the power vacuum created by Gorilla Grodd’s recent antics in The Flash. He’s willing to share the glory with some other menacing monkeys.
But don’t worry, where there are villains, you can bet there’ll be heroes.
So that’s Monsieur Mallah, Titano the Super-Ape, Ultra-Humanite, Jackanapes and Silverback vs Sam Simeon, Monkey Prince, Detective Chimp, Gleek and Beppo the Super Monkey. Who wins? The reader, as writer John Layman, artist Karl Mostert, colourist David Baron and letterer Tom Napolitano combine talents to create an amusingly written, good-looking narrative.
If nothing else, this story should be remembered for the debut of Mallah’s ‘Monkey in the Chair,’ Eek-Gor, a fellow for whom precision is everything.
The various primate heroes are mostly well served, with good character interaction and action. The exception is Beppo, who doesn’t get so much as an intelligible line of dialogue; instead the traditionally cute Super-Monkey is a little savage, red eyes blazing with anger.
The overall story continues in ‘Call to Arms’, starring Monkey Prince, whose shortlived series you really should have caught. There we learned his grandfather was none other than Ultra-Humanite, a super-genius career criminal since Superman’s earliest days. That fact factors into this story, ‘Call to Arms’, which hangs on the creepiest aspect of the story starting Mallah and his massed monkeys – ape arms being torn off and used in spells from the Monkeynomicon…
With the entire Monkey Prince creative team back – writer Gene Luen Yang, artist Bernard Chang, letterer Janice Chiang and colourist Marcelo Maiolo – this is guaranteed goodness. And if you like primate puns, you’ll be in hairy Heaven.
In between these two stories is something very different in tone, as Detective Chimp does a spot of hitchhiking.
Writer Joshua Hale Fialkov, penciller Phil Hester, inker Eric Gapstur, colourist Dee Cunniffe and letterer Clayton Cowles produce a cracking short story. For the first time in years we see Bobo do actual detecting with his chimp senses, rather than have him just know everything due to his tenuous connection to magic. Fialkov’s script is full of humanity, while Hester and Gapstur’s illustrations help ensure a ‘quiet’ story is as compelling as this month’s apocalyptic crossover. Well, more so, actually. ‘Detour’ goes straight into my imaginary Year’s Best Comic Stories 2024 digest.
Add in a gallery reprinting some of DC’s greatest gorilla moments, and a rather splendid cover by Dan Mora (well, if you ignore uber-angry Beppo) and you have a special that’s actually rather special. Five stars! Banana-shaped ones.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 