Terror on the Planet of the Apes, Part 2

 

cover art by Bob Layton

The second part of "Terror on the Planet of the Apes,"--an ongoing serial written by Doug Moench and superbly illustrated by Mike Ploog--appeared in Planet of the Apes #2 (October 1974).

In the last issue, hot-tempered human Jason and his more thoughtful friend Alexander (a chimpanzee) were framed for murder by an anti-human organization of gorillas. (By the way, I love being able to write a sentence like that and know it actually makes sense.) This issue picks up right where the last one left off, with Alexander busting Jason out of jail.

The two make it to the jungle and lose their pursuers. Alexander wants to trust in the law. But the Lawgiver recently left on a journey and Jason doesn't trust his weak-willed replacement (named Xavier) to enforce anything resembling true justice. 

Alexander comes up with a plan to lead Xavier to the gorilla camp and  Jason reluctantly agrees. They sneak back into the city, but when they see Brutus--the leader of the gorillas--using his wife's funeral to give an anti-human speech, Jason loses his temper and gives himself away.

They manage to grab some horses and improvise a plan to lead the police chasing them to the gorilla camp. But that plan backfires--the gorillas in the camp simply kill the cops.

Their new plan is to find the Lawgiver. This plan has its own dangers, since the Lawgiver apparently traveled to the Forbidden Zone. 

Once there, they find the ruins of what we would consider modern human civilization. This includes a pistol. Here, the story introduces an interesting bit of information. The characters have been using melee weapons and crossbows. When Jason finds a pistol, though, he has no idea what it is. So we learn that the denizens of this particular human/ape civilization have lost knowledge of firearms.

Soon after, they find some half-human ape creatures that apparently have limited intelligence, and then witness a "monster" appear to capture one of them. The monster, of course, is a vehicle, so we once again see that our protagonists have no experience with advanced technology.

And soon after THAT, they find a factory where robots are using the ape creatures as slave labor. They also see a robot killing a fleeing slave with a ray gun.

Poor Jason and Alexander haven't the faintest idea what's going on. Soon, they are spotted by one of the robots. Jason disables it with a sword stroke, but the two young heroes find themselves trapped between a posse of robots and a posse of gorillas who have pursued them into the Forbidden Zone. This is the cliffhanger that brings this issue to its conclusion.

I love this story. The two heroes compliment each other nicely. The pacing is fast--the story moves at a gallop and never pauses, introducing expository information without ever slowing it down. And the story takes bizarre twists when they reach the Forbidden Zone. And in a Planet of the Apes story, things SHOULD get bizarre in the Forbidden Zone. Next issue, which we'll look at in a few weeks, will see the situation get even weirder.

Next week--well, hey, we haven't seen dinosaurs in awhile. Let's visit the War That Time Forgot.