Comics Rainbow - Apes

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2017 seems to truly be the Age of the Ape.  Apes and Monkeys have always occupied a pretty unique place in the nerd culture pantheon.  They’re not like ninjas or zombies who defined an era before fading away into the collective nerd background noise, and they’re not like superheroes, which just sit atop the pop culture soil like permafrost.  Instead, apes tend to pop up sporadically as pop cultural touchstones that just stand as enduring monuments, like King Kong or Mighty Joe Young or the Planet of the Apes.  

The truth extends to comics as well as everything else, a medium that was once editorially mandated to feature a certain number of gorillas a month.  Given that love of ape characters the annals of comic history are flush with some fan favorites, underappreciated gems, and complete misfire ape characters and today I give you the full spectrum on all of them. 

Panel Vision - JLApe: Gorilla Warfare

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that apes on comics sell comics.  This is a fundamental cornerstone of comics going all the way back to the ‘50s.  It first emerged under one of the colossal giants of the medium Julius Schwartz, the man who served as editor of DC Comics during its Silver age through the ‘50s and ‘60s.  Schwartz claimed to have data showing a bump in sales of comics when a gorilla was featured on the cover, data that was so convincing it actually shaped all of DC’s output for a time.  

There were legitimately strict rules and limits on the whole idea of putting apes on comics, treating the phenomena as a finite resource to be carefully exploited to avoid oversaturation of the ape-based marketplace.  Given that those 2 decades have defined the shape of comics to this very day, apes on comics remains a popular tradition to this day.  With The Flash finally bringing Gorilla City to the small screen I figured now would be a perfect time to dive into the great legacy of apes on comics in possibly their finest moment: JLApe.

Panel Vision - Flash Rogues Guide

So, this latest Flash episode featured the first major super villain team-up of the show.  This is something that’s been building for Flash for a long time, mainly because in the comics Flash’s bad guys work together all the time.  Villain team-ups have always been a special event within comics but the Flash’s foes, nicknamed the Rogues, have always been unique amongst them.  Part of this comes from most of the Rogues having low level powers, compared to how indomitable Flash’s super speed powers are.  Really though, what binds the Rogues together is that they’re unique amongst comic book villains.  Most bad guys are psychotic killers like Batman fights or megalomaniacs like Superman battles, the Rogues are all just common criminals, crooks trying to get by.  Given that Flash is dedicated to slowly introducing more and more of the Rogues, I figured now would be a good time to do a Guide to the Flash’s Rogues.