Cover Cavalcade

 MAY IS POST-APOCALYPTIC FUTURE MONTH!!!!

Bob Larkin painted this 1973 cover.

Terror on the Planet of the Apes, Part 3

 

cover art by Bob Larkin

Planet of the Apes #3 (December 1974) continued the "Terror on the Planet of the Apes" adventure with the art (by Mike Ploog) still superb and the pacing of the story (written by Doug Moench) still fast.

This issue is almost non-stop action, which makes me appreciate how effectively expository information is given to us. We learn more about the Forbidden Zone along with Jason and Alexander, with that information often being imparted in the midst of a fight scene. It is an example of expert script construction.

Last issue ended with the two protagonists trapped between Forbidden Zone robots and anti-human gorilla terrorists. (And I still love that I get to write sentences like that.) They merely step aside and let the two factions start killing each other, though the ray guns give the robots a definite example. Jason snatches one off a fallen robot before he and Alexander make a break for it.

Jason may not understand advanced technology, but as the saying in another Planet of the Apes universe goes: "Human see, Human do." He figures out the point-and-shoot part pretty quickly.

Alexander gets himself a ray gun as well. In the process, they discover the robots are only part machine. They are part biological as well. It's another item in the "We have no idea what's going on column" for our two heroes.

They steal a rail car, which has simple enough controls for them to figure out. But this doesn't end well and they are captured.

This is my favorite part. They are brought to the leaders of the living robots--the Inheritors. These guys are three oversized brains kept in large globes, each with its own bizarre personality. One talks in rhymes, another uses 1930s gangster slang and the third speaks in a refined, multi-syllabic manner. There's no information on their origin or what the exact purpose of their society is, but it's okay to leave all that stuff a mystery for now. In any POTA universe, the Forbidden Zone SHOULD be full of bizarre stuff. In the movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes, it was telepathic mutants worshipping a doomsday bomb. This story just might edge out the movie in pure bizarre-ness.

The two heroes and a surviving gorilla terrorist are tossed into an arena, their execution taking the form of fights against a series of mutated monsters until they are killed. (I loved writing that sentence as well.) But they manage to kill the first monster, then find a way to escape the arena. They also find the Lawgiver a prisoner in a nearby cell. They spring him and find an aircraft, which they THINK they can fly because the controls are similar to the rail car they stole earlier.

The issue ends with them taking off in a flying vehicle they don't know if they can fly properly, with the gorilla taking the Lawgiver hostage and telling them they have to fly to the gorilla terrorist encampment. And, yes, I loved writing that sentence as well.

Ploog's art, especially the design of the Inheritors and the arena monsters, is fantastic. The first two issues were excellent, but with this issue, the story really takes off into wonderful and exciting science fiction territory. 

We'll return to POTA before long, but for next week, we'll visit with Shang-Chi as he discovers he can't even eat a quiet dinner without someone trying to kill him.

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.

Terror on the Planet of the Apes, part 1

 

cover art by Bob Larkin

In the early 1970s, Marvel Comics got the rights for Planet of the Apes. In 1975, they would publish an 11 issue series that adapted the first two movies into comic book form. (This, by the way, would be the second time Beneath the Planet of the Apes would be adapted. Gold Key did a one-shot adaptation in 1970.)

Before that 11-issue series, though, Marvel began a Planet of the Apes magazine, featuring original stories presented in black-and-white. The first issue was cover dated August 1974.

This was part of an explosion that expanded the original POTA universe. In addition to what Marvel was doing, the short-lived Planet of the Apes TV series began in September 1974. The animated Return to the Planet of the Apes (my personal favorite POTA universe) appeared on Saturday mornings beginning in September 1975.

It is, of course, geeky fun to try to place these stories in the original POTA movie timeline or decide that they are a seperate continuity entirely. The animated series is clearly set in a different universe. The TV series could be in the movie universe, some centuries before the first movie takes place, but could also be said to be in another continuity.

The Marvel comic series is in the same grey area as the TV series. It could be set somewhere in that 2000-year period between nuclear war and the first movie. Or it could be another reality. We find out in the second issue that the human/ape society in the comic stories has no knowledge of firearms. Since the apes kept knowledge of guns even after humans devolved into near-animals again, that might be seen as a reason for dropping it into another universe. On the other hand, we have 2000 years to play with and it is probable that the Ape society Taylor (Charlton Heston) ran into in the first movie isn't the only ape civilization on the planet. So perhaps we can drop the Marvel stories into the same continuity.

It really doesn't matter as long as the stories are good. But we wouldn't be true geeks if we didn't debate it, would we?

Anyway, the Marvel story is written by Doug Moench (building off an idea provided by Gerry Conway) and initially features superb art by Mike Ploog.

In the first issue, we meet two teenagers. Hot-headed Jason is a human whose best friend is a more level-headed chimpanzee named Alexander. Some initial dialogue established their character traits and hints at tensions between humans and apes, who live as supposed equals in their village. Then the two attend a speech by the Lawgiver.

As it usual in any POTA universe, the Lawgiver is an orangutan. His speech is basically a "be nice to everyone while I'm gone" talk, because he's leaving for a time without explaining why. He leaves another orangutan named Xavier in charge. But Xavier, it seems, is a spineless wimp. The two friends aren't happy with this and secretly follow the Lawgiver, but lose his trail near the Forbidden Zone.

Things begin to go sour almost immediately. Alexander's dad is beaten up by masked gorillas for being a "human lover," while Jason's parents are murdered by those same gorillas.

We soon learn that the marauding gorillas have a secret base outside the village and that their leader is Brutus, the village's "peace officer."

Jason is wild for revenge and Alexander joins him, as much to try to keep Jason's temper in check as to see justice is done. They trail the gorillas, but get captured. Brutus, in the meantime, is also tracked down by his wife. When she decides to expose him, he loses some Husband Points by immediately murdering her.

Brutus frames Jason for the killing. Alexander, who has gotten loose, springs Jason from prison. The issue ends with the two on the run together.

It's a good story. As I said, Ploog's art is fantastic. The character dynamic between the two friends is strong and the story is full of action while still efficiently establishing the universe and telling a powerful tale. 

Next week, we'll visit Spider Man and the Human Torch once again. That's a two parter, so it'll be three weeks before we find out what Jason and Alexander have been up to after busting out of prison.

My Favorite Planet of the Apes universe

The first of the original Planet of the Apes movie I saw was the last in that cycle, when I watched Battle for the Planet of the Apes in the theater. I was young enough to overlook or simply not recognize its faults and I still remember how much I enjoyed the setting and the action. I liked Roddy McDowell as Caesar and really enjoyed Lew Ayers' cameo as the super-cool Keeper of the Armory. I saw the rest of the films on TV at various times over the next few years ago. I have since been a fan of the original movie cycle and I'm really looking forward to watching the original POTA film on the big screen this July when it plays as part of TCM's classic movie revival series.

I never did see either the Tim Burton remake or either of the films in the current reboot, so I can't pass judgement on them. But I do enjoy other POTA universes. In fact, there's one particular Apes universe that (if I might be permitted a blasphemy) I like a little better than the original film cycle.

This was the Saturday morning cartoon Return to the Planet of the Apes, that aired on NBC in 1975. It only ran 13 episodes, but intelligent writing and a real concern for internal continuity made it a rich and entertaining show.

Return has several important points in its favor. First, the design work overseen by Doug Wildey is excellent and imaginative, doing wonders to make up for the limited animation. In fact, the show was designed to take advantage of the animation technique--many individual shots were still frames that looked like well-designed comic book panels. Details such as the design of Ape City and General Urko's military equipment all added to the visual appeal and the overall verisimilitude of the show.




Wildey was also involved in plotting out the show's overall story arc. Here's a quote from him:

"When I first mapped out the show, I took the astronauts and kept them as separate as I could from the other humans for the first three or four episodes. And then I got them involved with other humans up to a point. So the original idea was that they were astronauts arriving on the planet of the apes, they're fugitives, and mainly they keep hiding to figure out what the [heck] they're going to do. I put the stories together from one to 13 in the sense that at the end of 13, the humans are almost as powerful as the apes. At the beginning, though, they're like mice running around hoping not to get trapped. That's the simplified philosophy behind it. My idea was that they would be animals at the beginning and slowly evolve into a crude civilized bunch of people from the standpoint that they might be more organised."

It's this story arc and the writing in the individual episodes that really make this a great series. Three astronauts (Bill, Jeff and Judy) are trapped in a time vortex and land on Earth in the future. As is typical in pretty much an version of POTA, they don't initially realize that they are on Earth. At first, they are simply trying to survive, with Bill getting captured by the apes, befriending Cornelius and Zira and managing an escape. They team up with Nova and the other primitive humans. Judy is captured by the Underdwellers--psychic mutants based on those from Beneath the Planet of the Apes, but slightly less murderously fanatical. 

The series is grabbing elements from several sources. The ape civilization is keyed off the technologically advanced one from the original novel--though they have no idea about air travel (a plot point in later episodes). Various ape characters (Cornelius, Zira, Zaius, General Urko) are taken from the first two movies. Brent--the main human character from Beneath--shows up re-imagined as an astronaut from 150 years in the future of the original astronauts, but who arrived in the ape-dominated world years before them. I've already mentioned the Underdwellers as based on the mutants from Beneath.  

All these elements were mixed into something that is still POTA, but new in its own way. Then it is anchored onto an overarching story arc that runs through the entire series. Plot elements are never forgotten and pop up in the story at logical moments--a laser drill recovered from the wrecked space ship; a particular mutant monster that makes a return visit in a later episode; a restored World War II airplane that Judy knows how to fly (which includes an episode dealing with the need to acquire more fuel for it).

I particularly like Doctor Zaius in this version of POTA. Actually, we always kind of like him, don't we? In the original films, he can be cruel, self-righteous and dishonest, but Maurice Evans' performance always reminds us that he's desperately trying to keep his own civilization from destruction. In the cartoon, his negative traits are downplayed. He still sees humans as a threat and is terrified at the thought of intelligent humans, but he's portrayed as much more honestly straightforward. 

The voice work has sometimes been criticized as too unemotional. I think this is valid. In fact, Cornelius and Zira occasionally sound like they've been popping quaaludes. But Henry Corden really goes to town as the power-mad General Urko, voicing him in an appropriately over-the-top manner as Urko descends farther into paranoia over the course of the series.

The last episode in a cliffhanger of sorts, with Bill and Cornelius acquiring proof that humans once ruled the Earth and hatching a plan to approach the Ape City rulers with this. Sadly, the show was cancelled, so a second season dealing with this never materialized. All the same, the various other elements of the story arc are wrapped up well enough to give keep a viewer satisfied.

I actually had an idea for a plot element that I think would have added a lot of emotion to the series. Throughout the 13 episodes, various characters are in danger, but there are never any actual fatalities. This was because it was a children's show. Explosives and artillery are occasionally used, but I don't think a single round of small arms fire is capped off at any time. 

I appreciate standards in entertainment aimed at children. I think that as a culture, we sometimes don't

pay enough attention to this. But I simply disagree with some of the decisions made regarding violence on Saturday mornings during the 1970s. Violence is an essential part of storytelling and a level of violence in a children's story (including deadly violence) is appropriate. A discussion of where the line should be drawn would be a fascinating one to have, though in the end this is a decision that parents should make for their own children.

But I think Return to the Planet of the Apes. as good as it was, would have been even more effective if it had allowed a few deaths. For instance, there's an episode in which the astronauts lead the primitive humans on a dangerous journey to find a safe haven where the apes can't get to them. Losing a few of the humans to the various threats along the way would have been an effective way of  adding tension and opened discussions as to whether what they were doing was worth the cost. 

Also, lets say the astronauts got hold of a few rifles. Would they have been justified in using them in self-defense? What would this have done to their friendship (and very helpful alliance) with Cornelius and Zira--who are portrayed as peaceful and compassionate throughout the series? Would the two chimpanzees have been torn between continuing to protect the humans from genocide with loyalty to their own people? But none of that could be dealt with unless Bill or Jeff puts a bullet in a gorilla soldier. 

It is a show marketed towards children, so the discussion about how much violence should be in it is worthwhile. Though I think a few fatalities would have helped the show, someone else might legitimately think it was perfect just the way it was.

Anyway, the series is available on Hulu, so if you are in the U.S., you can watch it there and decide for yourself. It's also on YouTube, as least at the moment I'm writing this--though I'm unsure of the copyright situation, so I don't know if the video I'm embedding below will remain active.

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Cover Cavalcade

In the early 1970s, Marvel Comics got the rights to adapt Planet of the Apes into a comic book. They started with this black-and-white magazine. Each issue contained two stories. One story was an ongoing adaptation of the movie series. The other was an original story set either at some point before the movies or in an alternate version of the POTA universe. I'm not sure which. I wouldn't mind seeing this alternate/prequel story arc reprinted one day--I have fond (if vague) memories of it.

The Woes of Suspended Animation

The April 21, 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone was “The Rip Van Winkle Caper.” Written by Rod Serling, it’s a very good entry in the series. Not one of the classics, but still a solid story.

Actually, if you get to know Serling’s style as a writer, you can start to identify the Zone episodes he wrote by listening to the rhythms and word choices in the dialogue.  Dialogue was one of his real strengths as a writer, maybe coming from the fact that he starting his career doing radio scripts, having been influenced by skilled writers such as Arch Oboler and Norman Corwin.  Serling developed a knack for using just the right word choices and sentence structures needed to advance both characterizations and stories.

On The Twilight Zone, his sharp dialogue was helped along by the many excellent character actors who appeared on the show. In “The Rip Van Winkle Caper,” Simon Oakland and Oscar Beregi, Jr. bring solid credibility to the lead roles.

Anyway, the point of this post is to point out an instance where Serling may have re-used an incident from this episode in a later screenplay.  “The Rip Van Winkle Caper” is about four guys who rob a gold shipment. One of them is a scientist. They hide out in a cave in the desert, where the scientist will put them all into suspended animation for 100 years. When they wake up, the heat will be off and they can freely spend their ill-gotten gains.

Well, when only three of them wake up. A falling rock cracked open the suspension chamber of the fourth guy—all that’s left of him is a decayed skeleton.

It’s an effective scene visually and also helps advance the plot by confirming to the other characters (and to us) that they actually have been asleep for a century.

Now let’s jump ahead about seven years. Serling is co-writer of the screenplay for the original Planet of the Apes, staring Charlton Heston. 

As this movie begins, four astronauts are in suspended animation during a long space voyage. When they crash land on a planet, three of them wake up. The fourth, though, is a mummified corpse. Her suspension chamber cracked open during the flight. 

That makes me think that maybe Serling consciously re-used the same idea to convey the same information to us—that the characters had been in suspended animation for a very long time. 

I’m not familiar enough with the production history of Apes to know this for sure. I know other writers worked on the script after Serling did a first draft, so I don’t even know for sure if he put that incident into the story.

But if he did, and if it was deliberately lifted from his previous script, then it’s to his credit as a writer.  Serling was a great writer—he understood story construction and good characterizations. Recognizing that he could re-use a small detail that helped one story along for the same purpose in another story (but still keep both stories original) is something I could see him doing. He was talented enough to know when he could "steal" from himself without hurting the quality of his work.

I wish Serling had stuck around longer—he died in 1975 at the age of 50. There have been few television shows that have matched the best Twlight Zone episodes in terms of great stories and sharp dialogue. The Vast Wasteland that is network TV has always needed more of that quality.