Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Wednesday Comics: Marvel's Planet of the Apes

The Planet of the Apes film series ended with a whimper rather than a bang with 1973's Battle for the Planet of the Apes, but it was followed by a 1974 TV series that was likely the catalyst for Marvel Comics licensed adventures. The color series, Adventures on the Planet of the Apes only lasted 11 issues. It began with a colorized adaptation of the first film, reprinted from the more successful series the black and white Curtis Magazine title, Planet of the Apes.

Doug Moench was the only writer, working with a rotating cadre of artists, including Mike Ploog and Tom Sutton. The entire film series was adapted with varying degrees of fidelity, but what was more interesting was the new content where Moench's imagination was given freer rein to add to the Apes mythos. There were brains in jars and Middle Ages style jousting apes, coonskin cap wearing frontier apes, and ape mutants riding giant-frogs called Her Majesty's Cannibal Corps.


Boom! Studios has collected the entire run of the magazine series in four hard cover archives, but unfortunately the first volume (at least) is out of print, and tends to be sort of pricey on ebay.

Luckily, the internet comes to your rescue! If you interested in the magazine series, this site will be useful.

3 comments:

JB said...

Damn. This is the kind of comic series that would have held endless fascination for me in my youth. They just don't make comics like this anymore...look at that cover art!

I get the feeling that whoever developed Terra Primate had a pretty extensive collection of this series back in the day...

Brutorz Bill said...

Great series!!!

Dr. Theda said...

we have one of the early issues (cover long gone) was a fan back then saw all but first film at theater (old drive-in) as a kid....