Gone & Forgotten: Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Super-Heroes versus Super-Gorillas

I'm the FACE! Cut off your nose to spite me, that's my dare to you!

Okay, that was the worst joke I could think of right away, but get this, here's an even WORSE joke: Criminals were afraid of me! Yes, that's right, they feared me because my face was horrible and green and awful and obviously a mask, really. Rah! There, I scared you, too, didn't I? Time to give up that life of crime, if I can say so myself.

I like to think I provide an important lesson to all would-be superheroes out there, and that's that you don't need laser beam eyeballs or super strength or a belt full of fancy gadgets to be a REAL Hero ... all you really need, deep down ... is a gift certificate to Spencer's at their post-Halloween clearance sale.

Super Heroes Battle Super Gorillas

DC Super Special #16 - this thing is the BIBLE of Super-Heroes Battling Super-Gorillas! Which, I realize is a statement dependent on the bible being a book about how monkeys come from space and they conquer us or kidnap our women or solve crimes, in the best of circumstances. Maybe it is about that, like I have time to read the Bible when I've got all these super-ape comics lying around.

...much less whatever freaky bigfoot creature THIS is supposed to be "Super-Heroes Battle Super-Gorillas" is a collection of four classic struggles between the forces of justice and the forces of apes. Now, this'll help me cover a good assortment of some classic simian characters who've graced DC's roster over the last sixty years, but it's barely the tip of the huge, hairy iceberg. For instance, it leaves out that gorilla who was made an honorary Marine sergeant in one of DC's
war books. Or Detective Chimp, who was a smart monkey who'd solve crimes his idiot owner would neglect. (Every episode, hewould attribute Detective Chimp's amazing discoveries to pure chance. "By pure luck, Bobo has accidentally mixed the precise chemicals necesary to make this invisible ink visible again!" ... "Bobo's clumsy antics have caused this diary to fall open to a precise
page which describes a likely motive for the murder" ... "Bobo's comical monkeyshines have linked the DNA evidence to the accused and invalidated his alibi, and his monkey chattering sounds enough like testimony to convict the accused for a hundred years!").

And then there's Monsieur Mallah, an enemy of the Doom Patrol, and Congorilla, who was a pal of Congo Bill (Like Arctic Ice Cap Carl would hang out with Arctic Ice Capybara - used that joke before, sorry), and Beppo the super-monkey who shouldn't hold his breath expecting a revamp like Krypto got, plus SO many more. But patience, we have time, and we have more than enough to deal with here.

THERE'S THAT STUPID FUCKING TREE!! The book opens with the classic Batman tale "Batman Battles The Living Beast Bomb," which is a title that honestly makes the reader ask some important questions, right?

Scrawny scientist Walter Hewitt creates a device which gives him animal powers (animals have powers?), but it all goes wrong when a gorilla he's shooting radiation at for the purpose of gaining APE STRENGTH ends up getting Hewitt's intelligence instead, AS - WELL - AS mental powers which he uses to command Hewitt to steal things. Like ... whatever a gorilla would want to steal, I guess. Bugs. Bananas. Tricycles.

So anyway, the gorilla invents a bomb that will destroy Gotham City, but not him (they don't explain how) and he wears it like a belt ... or a fanny pack, really ... and fights Batman as the bomb ticks down, and Batman knocks out the gorilla, and then it turns out the bomb slows down the farther away from earth it is (again, don't know why or how), so Batman military presses the big gorilla until the bomb runs out.

Many many many stupid things here. Usually, it's Superman who forgets that he has super powers, Batman and Robin are always right on the spot with whatever gadget they need from their belts. This time, they forget they have belts, and spend some time being amazed that their shorts stay up.

See, Robin shows up to help Batman keep this creature up in the air, and Robin decides to help by ... lying on his back and putting his feet in the air. No, Robin, not now! There's this stupid frigging tree RIGHT IN THE SHOT during most of the fight between Batman and the evil gorilla scientist mental power genius bomb beast, and at no point do Robin or Batman figure out it'd be easier to tie one end of a Batrope to the gorilla, the other to the Batmobile, throw the rope over
a tree branch and pulley him up above the ground. I am so not the world's greatest detective, and I got that!

ALL FUCKING RIGHT ON!!! The next story is "Wonder Woman -
Gorilla," which I guess is what the liberated amazon's name would be if she married Mr.Martin Gorilla. The whole story takes place on Amazon Island, and if you don't think they're
awful concerned about men setting foot on their island home, then you just don't know amazons!

I am so fucking puzzled by this story. I'll keep it short: Space Gorillas come to Earth to get mates, but not gorilla mates! No, human mates! Human
women mates! Why? Because they're unique! So the king of the space gorillas turns Wonder Woman into a gorilla girl, changes her back because he liked her better as a human girl, then changes himself into a human guy with his changing-people ray so he can be a unique mate to Wonder Woman's unique not-being-a-girl-gorilla status, and then Wonder Woman kicks him in the nuts and yanks his underwear up his crack.

Here's a plan - try to trick him into shooting himself in the face with his gun! Of course, here's why I'm puzzled. They value uniqueness. Human girls are unique. They have a ray that changes gorillas into apes and back again. Solution: Get some damn girl gorillas and make them human. The end. I am matchmaker to space gorillas.

Onto a Flash story featuring the "Reign of the Super-Gorilla," starring probably the most succesful gorilla-character in DC's history, the Super-Gorilla Grodd
(That is, by the way, his official villain name: Super-Gorilla Grodd. Imagine how screwed the Man of Steel's secret identity would be if he was required to call himself Super-Man Clark Kent - used that joke before once as well, sorry again)

This story hinges on the fact that Grodd escapes from jail (and the human body he was stuck in - don't ask), returns to Gorilla City (a super advanced
scientific community of hyper-intelligent gorillas hidden in the depths of Africa), where he sees a beautiful young gorilla girl and falls instantly in love. Learning that she's engaged to his arch-enemy Solovar, KING of the hyper intelligent gorillas, he creates a ray that makes himself incredibly likable, thereby stealing Solovar's throne of power, his fiancee, and eventually, the wills of the people in Flash's hometown of Central City where he intends to run for Mayor in a bid to control the world.

Talk to your kids about wicked gorillas, before it's too late Look at that, not one intentional joke in the above paragraph, and see how it still ends up sounding?

Superman fights Titano, the super-ape, in a closing story they had to call "Titano, the Super-Ape," because of a bizarre policy at DC in the 1960's, where every fucking story had to have the name of the villain, the hero's hometown city, or the adjective "Super-" in it somewhere. Like, "The Mirror
Master's Two-Sided Crimes" or "The King of Gotham City" or "Lex Luthor's Super-Plot to Destroy Metropolis." And so on.

I'll spare you the specifics of the story, like how Superman once again cuts off the super-blood-pressure to his super-brain so he can super-be a super-fucking moron and cause great tragedy to befall Metropolis (in this case, by bringing Titano to modern-day Earth from the prehistoric era to which he had been banished), and instead pose this important question: How did Titano get to be a gorilla?

No artist has ever predicted he'd ever have to draw something like this The origin of Titano is that he was a famous chimpanzee who did stage shows (this was the Fifties - chimps could be famous. It's perfectly reasonable that a succesful, well-to-do businessman
could come sweeping into his gentleman's club with a pair of tickets in his hand, just beaming with glee, and when one of his fellows puts down his brandy to ask what the tickets were for, the lucky man could reply happily "I got two tcikets to see the famous Toto the performing Chimpanzee. Then all his welathy, soecity friends would congratulate him on his good luck, and quietly form a seething ball of jealousy and resentment that they'd drown in cheap alcohol and mistresses. Like I say, the Fifties...). For some reason, the government decides to rocket him into space, possibly so as to test the effects of weightlessness on celebrities, paving the way for James Garner, Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland to return to space in 2000's smash hit, Space Cowboys, now available on VHS and DVD, check your local retailers. Space Cowboys - Boys will be boys! A Warner Brothers film, directed by Clint Eastwood.

In his hapless orbit, Toto withnesses a meteor of PURE URANIUM crash into a meteor of PURE KRYPTONITE, causing a STARTLING change in him when his capsule safely returns to Earth (and by the way, did you notice that Jor-El, Superman's father from a highly advanced civilization on a futuristic world, was basically incapable of safely sending a living creature into space without its orbit going haywire, meanwhile we "backwards" humans get Toto back, never minding a near-hit collision. Jor-El so tore through his test animals, including the poor, traumatized Beppo, that he resorted to using his SON'S BELOVED PET DOG as a test animal for his rockets! Yo, Jor-El! The ex-nazis the US government smuggled to White Sands figured it out! Here's to your super-advanced technology!)

That sounds ... very plausible, Superman Anyway, Toto returns to Earth where he undergoes that aforementioned STARTLING
transformation - to wit, he grows to a King Kong size. Now, here's my question - how'd he become a gorilla? Gorillas are not just bigger versions of
chimpanzees, they're a whole different species! It's like, you know Colossal Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes? Or Black Goliath? When they grow big, they become big humans, NOT giant marmosets, or koalas, or some dopey shit.
How'd Toto's transformation hop the species barrier? Questions abound, readers,
questions abound ...

Okay, also, this very story breaks the rules of physics it established by itself: To wit, Superman, at one point, flies up in a lead suit to fight Titano (The big ape has super-eyes of kryptonite ray shooting, in case I hadn't mentioned that before). Supes flies so fast that the air friction reduces the lead suit to slag. However, earlier, they flash back to Superman throwing Titano so fast the the ape "travelled through the time barrier," which is presumably much faster than it would take to melt lead. Haha. That bit about sending Titano through time was probably just the story Superman told everybody, like how your mom probably told you that your dog went to
a nice farm while you were away at Summer camp.

Just be glad he doesn't have pockets, Lois. I have the original comic where the Titano story appeared, as an aside (all these stories in the special were reprints). Neat thing about it is a backup story where Superman dresses up in a devil costume to scare some criminals out of their nefarious plans. Personally, I'd just put my index fingers through the boss criminal's temple, boom, I bet the other crooks'd be pretty much scared out of a life of crime. Anyway, the important thing is that Superman took full advantage of his makeshift Halloween costume to create a devil motif ... i.e., skull cap, sissy Van Dyke, red leotard and cape ... Oh man. And he kept using his fantastic powers to do stuff like create smoke effects, and pretend to become invisible. This was in the stead of using his tremendous super powers to punch everyone unconcious and fly the crooks to jail.

Nothing to do with Super-Gorillas, just a weird aside ...