ApePreview

The other day I was asked by Rachelle, a fellow member of my neighborhood athletic club who knows that I write for a living, about the subject of my next book. I told her it’s about apes in comic books, tossing out trivia about Planet of the Apes and Beppo... More

The other day I was asked by Rachelle, a fellow member of my neighborhood athletic club who knows that I write for a living, about the subject of my next book. I told her it’s about apes in comic books, tossing out trivia about Planet of the Apes and Beppo the Super-Monkey. She smiled and nodded, “That sounds fun,” but had a slightly vacant stare that suggested she was thinking, “Please, God, let my cell ring…” I’ve encountered this type of reaction a lot when telling “normal” people about Comics Gone Ape! If you’ve bought this book, you’re not like them—you “get it. ” You understand that there is something beguiling about a jungle princess scrapping with a mandrill… or a chimpanzee sleuth in a deerstalker’s cap… or a super-intelligent talking gorilla mindblasting a fleet-footed super-hero. The idea for Comics Gone Ape! came to me in December 2005, when I was bored out of my gourd during the earliest scenes in Peter Jackson’s King Kong—good heavens, man, I paid to see a giant ape, n Less