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| Cover art by Bob Larkin |
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Black and White Wednesday: "A Riverboat Named Simian!" by Moench, Ploog, and Chiarmonte
Welcome back, Groove-ophiles! Time to travel to an alternate future in which Apes rule the earth and mankind are but animals! Yep, more of Doug Moench and Mike Ploog's "Terror On the Planet of the Apes"! "A Riverboat Named Simian!" comes from Planet of the Apes #4 (October 1974) and is inked by Frank Chiarmonte. It's a doozy of an action-packed thrill-ride, baby, so you'd better prepare yourself for this trip!
Poor Shaggy, we hardly knew you.
ReplyDeleteI always got the feeling with that story that they were making it up as they went along.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! This was simply the very best recurring story in the black and white Marvel mags of the 70s. It is endlessly inventive, effortlessly fun, and wonderfully compelling. And this installment, and the next, were my faves!
ReplyDeleteThis was the first issue of this mag that I'd ever seen when it first came out, and I snapped it up in a flash. Still have it, too, although it's gotten a bit dog-eared from 40-plus years or re-reading. Loved it then, love it now. This series, for me, remains the best of the POTA comics.
ReplyDeleteGiant evil talking brains, ape-human hybrids and gorillas in Davy Crockett hats - you'd never see that on the films or TV show. Marvel UK's POTA weekly sometimes borrowed covers from the U.S. magazine but this cover was completely redrawn for the UK weekly (#18 which was on sale exactly 40 years ago this week).
ReplyDeleteFellow hipsters... I don't know where to post this, but Planet of the Apes = post-apocalyptic literature and Killraven = Post apocalyptic literature. Marvel Invaders = 1970 and Killraven = 1970. Killraven is in the latest issue of Invaders. Excelsior.
ReplyDeleteYep, loved these stories when they were featured in the Marvel UK weekly. I now have a few of the US mags with some of this epic in but it was still a great read with awesome art by Mr Ploog!
ReplyDeleteAs CJ says, the British POTA weeklies used an occasional American cover, but the newly-drawn ones were nowhere near as good as the ones used on the U.S. monthly.
ReplyDeleteThey were fantastic issues. I saw on Amazon.com they were collected in book form from another publisher. However the collection (formerly published in the Marvel Magazines) was so outrageously expensive that I couldn't afford it. My favorite Planet of the Apes artist, Mike Ploog, also drew Man-Thing ,Warewolf by Night, Frankenstein and many more horror titles at Marvel during the 1970's. Mike went on to become a storyboard artist, however I wish he had stayed at Marvel. But Hollywood must pay much more than the comics ever could.
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