Why Do Gorillas Sell Comic Books?
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- Опубліковано 24 лип 2024
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Gorillas on comic book covers. It's an actual comic trope. Today we look at when and why this became popular with the history of gorillas on and in comics. There are plenty of them out there to talk about including Gorilla Grodd, Titano, Monsieur Mallah, the Ultra-Humanite and many more. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash and various sci-fi comics all feature some bonkers gorilla covers so let's take a look. - Розваги
I showed several old comics to the kids I used to work with. It was part of a comic creation class. The kids saw the chimps, monkeys, and gorillas and said, "Monkey!" Apparently, it works. No other animal attracted so many kids.
Interesting. I thought cats and dogs sell more than other animals lmaooo
Uh oh... MONKE?!
MONKE MONKE OOOHHHHHHHHH YES CHIMP OOH OHH
In seriousness though monkeys are always good setup for comedic or absurd situations and I dont know why
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
@@primax5503 I think cat and dog are like, too normal, apes are more unusual
“Crisis on Infinite Earths” only sold because Solovar the sapient gorilla guest starred. Without Solovar, all the subsequent Crisis knockoffs were bombs. Just sayin’.
It all makes sense!
Gorillas are racist tropes, like King Kong stealing a white woman to have his way with her, per Hollywood.
Like tropes of savage blacks in concrete jungle playing knockout game for sport, hunting nieve innocent whites and killing them with one punch 👊
Comics are just a different media pushing same stereotypes. The thumbnail says it all.
😂
"Wonder Woman teaching a gorilla to play baseball" is a sentence that can only exist in comics and I love it.
Wait.. this isn’t a comic tho?.. you’re endangering the space time continuum by taking a grade that can only be in comics and reproducing it in a different medium!
Jokes aside it is a wondrous format for story telling!
Cheers friend!
i bet that if i knew something about baseball there would be a joke i could make here about a real life team, but alas i don't..
And "Marvel doesn't actually have that many gorilla characters" seems like a sentence that can only exist in this show.
I'm not sure, I could see this happening in the next Wonder Woman movie.
Where is THIS baseball movie????
I love how crazy Grant Morrison got with Doom Patrol. It was also highly transgressive to the norms of the early 90s in an amazing way. Because the fact that a brain in a jar and a French speaking intelligent Gorilla were gay was the least “taboo”(again by early 90s comic book standards) part of their relationship.
According to Morrison everything with the lodestone, alien inter-galatic planetary war and the giant Zardos heads was written on drugs. Empire of chairs might be one of the best endings to a series in anything ever.
I loved them in my adventures with superman
Not gonna lie, the Giganta thing makes a lot of things click for me. Like how in the Justice League cartoon, Giganta had a thing for Grodd. Always found that odd but now it actually makes a bit of sense
Bruce Timm did love to throw in little subtle nods to the comics.
I forgot which episode it is, but they do explain that Grodd was the one who changed her to be human in that continuity.
@@RednekGamurz it's from justice league unlimited season 3
grodd tries to convince clayface to join the legion of doom and points out he can cure him because he transformed giganta from a gorilla to a regular human being
@@ViktorKruger99 you sure about that? I think it's before Unlimited, when she is first introduced in the two-parter where the League breaks appart. One of the male characters (maybe Shade?) hits on her or something, then Grodd either implies or straight up tells that she was a former gorilla
Whoa, I can never unsee that now.
"Titano tries to shave Jimmy Olsen with a helicopter."
- DC Comics, ca. Silver Age
I can't tell you all the gorilla encounters I've had in my life. The worst are the ones who think they're people, but are actually just super-intelligent gorillas.
I dunno how I never noticed that this was a common thing, but good call, Chris. You could do a video on the trope of disembodied brains in comics too, there are so many instances of it.
Great idea!
Only in comics can you survive as a brain in a jar.
Brainiape hits both these tropes.
@@Madbmberwhatbmbsatmidnight Yeah, Chris mentioned him in the video. That's what made me think of it.
@@hamzadawud when? I just watched it a second time and didn’t hear him mention Brainiape. He mentioned the trope of brain swap in ape stories. That’s all I saw.
Six Gun Gorilla is a forgotten public domain Wild West comic where the O’Neil (that’s the gorilla’s name) hunts down the Strawhan gang who shot the prospector who taught him how to use guns and raised him like a son.
The Eponymous Ape has been popping up in popularity lately in the indie comics radar.
If you didn't know, there was a Six Gun Gorilla 2013 6-issue mini from Boom. I bought it as it came out since it seemed so wacky and fun.
'Why Do Gorillas Sell Comic Books?' That's a heckuva way to talk about my LCS owner, but I can't disagree.
At last, the return of the famed Gorilla Mask. That's what I call a Throwback.
I have a gorilla mask and horse mask for Halloween.
I was a little surprised you didn't mention 'Angel and the Ape' from DC...although to be fair you really did pack a huge amount information into a short amount time, while entertaining at the same time.
Looking into american comics as a kid, and seeing constantly gorillas, this really boggled me. It still does.
Because though my experience is limited, I do not recall many italian/belgian/french/uk/japanese/etc comics where a big point of them would have been that there's an ape (maybe Cromartie High), while it's something that still seems to happen in american comics.
Holy shit somebody else knows about cromartie high lmaoo
We love our gorillas
Tarzan was popular and raised by apes in the story how popular was he in Italy, France, Belgium and Japan?
@@hydrolito he's well known as any other fairy tale and similar characters are, but I don't know if I'd attribute all the gorillas in american comics to Tarzan, tho it's possible that there was maybe a movie adaptation that made everyone insert apes in other media, I dunno.
UK strip "our sheriffs an ape", about an ape called Charlie who was the sheriff of a wild west town. Ran in Valiant and Hotspur. He invented lacrosse at one point.
That's all I can think of off hand though.
I totally get it. Gorillas are awesome XD
But my favorite has to be Mike from "Motor Girl" drawn and written by Terry Moore. If you want a comic about a female Veteran, who lives on a junkyard with a talking Gorilla, dealing with Aliens and PTSD, that is funny, clever and heartbreaking (and so beautiful), this is the comic for you.
Afterwards, you will love Mike as much as I do. Promise.
Terry Moore is such a fantastic writer/artist. I can second the Motor Girl recommendation.
@@RarebitFiends I can third it
YES! I searched the comments hoping someone would mention this book. #1 must-read gorilla comic! It is such a good story.
The Fantastic Four battled the soviet super villain The red ghost with the power to become intangible and can pass through solid objects he had 3 super apes a gorilla with super strength, a orangutan with magnetic powers which can make guns and other metal objects float into the air, and a shape shifting baboon all of which were highly intelligent.
"DC went crazy with their gorilla covers." Darn, ya missed the perfect opportunity to say "DC went APE with their gorilla covers." 😆 Cool presentation BTW. Funny how we sometimes don't notice the obvious until it is pointed out to us.
He actually did take the shot at 1:43, lmao
The Congorilla was the best use of a gorilla in a comic with Grodd coming second. They were fun to read about. As a kid fun was what I wanted and these two gorillas gave that.
Remember how Congo Bill used to change places with that golden gorilla?
Whilst Bill was off doing whatever he did in the super strong gorilla's body he would lock his own body (With the gorilla's mind) in a cave so no harm came to Bill's body.
But if the gorilla shat itself Bill would have had one heck of a problem when they reverted back, eh?
I've really missed the "Oh, hi! You caught me..." openings, so it was great to see you pull it back out for this episode!
It's like how zombies are popular now.
There was a similar gorilla craze in the early days of film: Bela Lugosi and Raymond Burr turned into them, endless movies featured gorillas as the (not much of a) surprise "villain" at the end.
Funny that after I remembered Marvel Apes, right after came to mind Marvel Zombies. Gorillas and zombies are both fascinating because they are similar to us, but at the same time it's clearly different, although by very different reasons
Seriously I’ve been asking This question for the past 6 years, like I’ve always wondered why there are so many gorilla characters in the comic industry, especially DC
Of course, there's also the things like Marvel Apes and JLApes.
And of course there's the Golden Age characters, which are mainly one-off enemies, but you occasionally get characters like Six-Gun Gorilla, a protagonist gorilla who carries a revolver.
I heard Julius Schwartz had a strict 1 gorilla cover per month rule. This was a limit not a requirement. Gorilla covers sold so well every DC title would have had one for every issue. Nothing but gorilla covers from DC, except Schwartz didn’t want to kill it with overexposure. Creative teams would beg him to give them the gorilla that month and he would refuse, only allowing it for whichever ever titles turn it was.
"It's not rocket surgery!"
Chris, I have to say, there's no greater joy than when someone who's creative work you appreciate can surprise you with an unexpected move to an even higher level of entertainment. I would say this line pleased me in a way similar to when Kurt Busiak revealed [SPOILER] that Hank Pym had anguished for years with the shame that he had used his own brain patterns to create Ultron.
Well done sir!!
I'm a huge Nick Cardy fan. He got in on DC's silver and bronze monkey craze big time. Please consider a Cardy spotlight. He is an unsung comics hero. I wish the stories inside lived up to the fantastic covers...
Seconded Chris! Nick Cardy is an oft forgotten great of DC comics!
Rightio! And pay especial attention to Nick's work on the Teen Titan's and most particularly Princess Ponytail!
This is one of my favorite things in comics history. The idea that gorillas being so prominant that there was a whole movement. Being a reader of DC you get so used to the idea of intellegent gorillas just existing, you forget how absurd it is.
. . . And of course, in the early 2000s, a small group of DC alumni helped establish *GORILLA COMICS* as a short-lived IMAGE imprint. It oversaw the publication of CRIMSON PLAGUE (George Perez), EMPIRE (Mark Waid & Barry Kitson), SECTION ZERO (Karl Kesel & Tom Grummet), and SHOCKROCKETS (Kurt Busiek & Stuart Immonen). It also demonstrated that you could free the creator from the Densely Congested "gorilla sanctuary," but not the gorilla from the creator's imagination. Or something like that. ;)
Chris, how could you forget The Red Ghost’s gorilla?!?
Ape-X of the Squadron Supreme too.
Probably because the Red Ghost's gorilla was never on the cover of his early Fantastic Four appearances. But he did appear on the cover in some of his later appearances (like 1970s Invincible Iron-Man and 1980s Amazing Spider-Man).
Yes! I love this topic. I've always noticed how gorillas tend to be over-represented in pulp magazines and old comics and movies
There was an issue of DC's series SECRET ORIGINS, issue #40, that handled this trope. The cover for that issue featured a number of apes, dinosaurs, motorcycles, the color purple and a fire in the background - an interior essay discussed how in the "old days" all of these things were stuff editors wanted on covers because it sold better.
I screamed when you said "It's not rocket surgery," Thought I was the only person who used that phrase.
Also, I know it's not comics, but my favorite talking gorilla is King Gorilla from Venture Bros. "They wanted the Surreal Life, KG gave em the surreal life!"
I say rocket science or brain surgery.
You didn't scream. You at most passed some air through your nose.
Tarzan was popular both in comics and movies and he was raised by an ape. They often had reruns of his movies mostly with Johnny Weissmuller and had a TV series Starring Ron Ely when I was a child.
I never noticed how gorillas were a specific DC trope. Someone went through a "monkee is gud" phase
"You think of speed's natural enemy: gorillas." lol
I feel like a lot of 90s and early 2000s cartoon animators we're inspired by this Gorilla crazy with a lot of characters lol, Mojo Jojo is obvious but i swear there was like a few scenes in spongebob, deksters labs, and many others that feel referential to these comics lol
I guess you could say they were going apeshit for Gorillas in the silver age(pelted with tomatoes).
Stan Lee mentioned a few times that DC would often copy things Marvel did, like for example if lots of Marvel covers had red backgrounds then all of a sudden DC covers would get red backgrounds, and he would even use this fact to mess with them sometimes. So it seems like Silver Age DC had no idea what they were doing, and none of the sources really suggest that there was more than one gorilla cover comic that sold, it just seems like that experiment with the parrot who gets food at totally random times, and then one time it coincidentally gets food while shaking its head, so now it can't stop shaking its head over and over.
LMAO I can't overstate how much I enjoy your intros in every video
Immediately Gorilla Grodd came to mind. Completely forgot about Monsieur Mallah though. That whole scene in Doom Patrol was so ..surreal and very Morrison. It's weird I remember watching the Justice League cartoon as a kid thinking Grodd and Ultra Humanite were the same character, due to that similarity.
What's the coolest species on Earth? Gorillaz
Nuff said!
That opening will haunt my dreams for weeks to come... Excellent work.
Congorilla was my favorite. Congo Bill switched bodies with the big golden gorilla! Great stuff! Thanks for posting!
I always question whether the gorilla thing was a real trend, or just something the higher ups assumed was the common thread that increased sales. Then again, I do immediately watch any comic book video I see that's about gorillas.
As ever, that was superb.
There's actually a hell of a lot of other cultural concepts that arise from this episode. I don't understand them, yet, but there was some kind of thing going on in the West generally that moved children's attention from gorillas in the '60s towards dinosaurs in the '80s.
Sorry for appearing patronising, but you've *really* earned the 'tropes' aspects of the channel's name with this vid. You've identified a trope I've not understood before. And now I want to know why it exists!
Man, you're a master of your craft. Thank you.
Greetings from Brazil! 🇧🇷
We have a strong tradition of national comics, but we had a lot of influence from American hero comics, which, to this day, are one of the most popular genres around here. It's always a joy to discuss the follies of the Silver Age.
What a beautiful channel!
Congratulations!
DC should give hire you to collect these issues in a trade and write the intros. my guess is no small number of comictropes fans would buy it and spread the word. your humor is great and matched by your enthusiasm. keep it up!
Lovely work, Chris. Really takes me back, and reminds me of why I was a DC kid all those years ago. So nice to see M. Mallah getting some recognition, and The Ultra-Humanite, who I hadn't thought about in decades.
The first time the Ultra Humanite changed bodies was in his LAST golden age appearance. He transferred his brain to a Hollywood actress....
@@brianthomas2434 He was in the All-star Squadron comic of the Eighties by Roy & Thomas, drawn by Rich Buckler and Jerry Ordway for a time and was one of my favourite books until they changed it because of Crisis, then relaunched as Young All-Stars.
He appeared in many other JSA related books over the decades since, so no, Deloris Winters was not his final body-swap.
@@simonbarnett8668 you apparently didn't spot that I said last GOLDEN AGE appearance. UH probably had more appearances AFTER 1939 (the only times he showed up in the Golden Age; after 1940 Luthor served as Superman's go-to mad scientist). E. Nelson Bridwell, I believe, was the first to bring him back, still in the actress body in the seventies. Then Thomas (no relation!) in ASS, then the "Golden Age" miniseries and stuff I've forgotten or never knew about, as I stopped being a regular reader of comics in 1990.
the greatest ape story of all time is, Monkey Business in the Charles Darwin Block, a Judge Dredd story and is well worth checking out!
This is the first video you’ve made that i watched, and that intro is so impressive I already like your vids man keel it up 👍
You missed the great pulp character Six-gun Gorilla. Which had a small revival with Six-Gun Gorilla: Long Days of Vengeance, as well as a 6 issue run at BOOM! Studios
This demonstrates a third common trope regarding apes; which has been seen through this video as well; teaching a normal gorilla to act like a human
The selfie-taking, drumming gorilla on issues #23 and #24 of Astro City vol#3 was a recent classic of the trope.
Surprised you didn't mention Alan Moore's Promethea and his Weeping Gorilla Comix, which combines the gorilla trope with the color purple, also a sales trigger.
Never thought this would be a Comic Tropes topic for a video - and I love it!
It was the Marvel movies that got me looking at comics for the first time. Gotta say, I love this “anything goes” era!
Thank you for this great video. I love this history big dives in this type of tropes and quirks of comics. Great work!
Thanks so much for this one! I love hearing the background to the zany stories of the past explored!
I really appreciate how high quality your content is.
The Ultra humanite from Justice League 2001 is one of my favorite Gorillas/Human I gess.
When I was a kid, a couple friends of mine and I wrote in to Marvel Team Up to try to get them to use the Red Ghost and his Super Apes. We wanted Spider Man and apes
Amazing how you can keep coming up with such high quality content. Love seeing new videos each week just don’t know how you do it.
A great episode about a fun topic! It's clear you really enjoyed do this one!
...The Brain in a robot body asking Monsieur Mallah to kiss him wasn't something I was mentally prepared for.
This episode was very fun, and a nice return to analyzing tropes.
What an episode!!! Thats why I love Comic Tropes, serious research on crazy subjects! Thank you Chris, amazing job as always!!!
Love it, Chris. Your personality is so strong & your work so thorough that I could listen to you about any subject. Thank you!
Reading back at Martin Pasko's Superman run, a personal favorite of mine sue to his fleshing out of the Superman rogues gallery, particularly Metallo there was that odd chapter he tried to revive Titano. One of the mails he was sent said that Titano was better left forgotten. I disagree. He's a GIANT GORILLA WITH KRYPTONITE VISION, it's the closest thing we can get to Superman vs Kaijuu.
As a primate myself this episode got me really hyped!
The folks over at EC Comics, always happy to borrow ideas, published a story called "Gorilla My Dreams!" in The Haunt of Fear issue 17, cover-dated February 1953. In it, a surgeon transplants a man's brain into a gorilla's body, with tragic results.
At Marvel, Rawhide Kid faced off against a gorilla known as "The Ape" in issue 39, cover-dated April 1964.
Also, regarding the comment at 17:57 about the Marvel story "I Am the Gorilla-Man" from Tales to Astonish issue 28 (Feb. 1962 cover date), the phrase "one-off sci-fi story" made me chuckle because the Gorilla-Man was actually one of the few Marvel monsters that made a second appearance in those pre-hero days. :) In this case it was just two issues later with the imaginatively titled "Return of the Gorilla-Man" in TTA #30 (cover-dated April '62) -- coming back "by popular demand," or so the cover says. Both stories were reprinted in issue 5 of the Marvel giant-size monster book Fear, cover-dated November 1971, offering a relatively low-cost way to enjoy these Kirby/Ayers classics.
Great video! So fun!
One of the best yet!
My comic book guy loves Julius Schwartz, and once told me that he had a list of 7 things DC found could be put on a cover to make that book sell better. They were gorillas, fire, dinosaurs, motorcycles, a hero crying, the color purple, and a question being asked. This leads to my favorite comic cover ever, Secret Origins #40, which features all 7 and yet sold horribly.
Disproportionate number of primates in comics when compared to number of wolverines.
There is also the all gorilla themed issue Swamp Thing Annual 3 which features tons of gorilla heroes and villains being mind controlled by grodd
When this poped up in my YT feed I thought "eh i don't care about this subject but I'll watch it because this channel is great". I am really glad I watched this because this was hilarious i love this video
"...You think of speed's natural enemy -- the gorilla!"😂😂
DC also did a fair amount of reprints in the 1970s, including DC Special #16, Super-Heroes Battle Super-Gorillas. It reprints gorilla stories against Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash.
Thank you so much for this wonderful video! I really enjoyed it.
Few things in life are perfect, but comic books with gorilla covers are about as close as we've ever come.
1:56 "Helped create" is a very VERY generous way of putting it.
This was your funniest intro yet hahaha
Love this subject so much, it perfectly exemplifies the best aspect of comic book storytelling; that pulpy fun that I feel so many adaptions kinda miss!
I've had ideological differences with you in the past, but I love your channel. Hope it continues to do well.
Love seeing the u caught me intro is back.
Great topic! Let’s not forget Ape X from Squadron Supreme Ltd series donned the cover of #6 & 9, although not predominantly.. Great job & love the off the beaten path topics! 👍🏼
Sleeper episode, didn’t know what to expect but I really enjoyed this one, great job!!!
What a great video! You really made a documentary!
Finally! the episode I've always been waiting for
goated intro as always. you always get right down to monkey business
Awesome episode! I have a subsection in my comic collection, outside of title, date and creator, just for go-go checks and purple apes.
Marvel did have the PoTA license in the 70s., and those magazines had some pretty great covers and ape-forward stories by Alfredo Alcala and Mike Ploog.
I think I had that Strange Adventures with the lie detector cover when I was a kid. My grandfather stored a couple of stacks of my comics in a work storage place that he allowed a tenant that ran a thrift store to have access to. A lot of stuff ended up missing, including my comics. This crook ended up going to jail for molesting a little girl, so stealing comics was the least of his crimes.
A very entertaining video. Gorillas are magnificent creatures. I think you may've missed Kamandi, which had a bunch of talking gorillas.
It’s utterly fantastic
how you come up with these obscure topics chris ..
some ( but not I ) would say
you’ve gone bananas 🍌
I would love you to do a video on the history of Beano and Dandy. Great video as per.
Just the day before this video came out I read Titano's debut issue, purely mystified by the cover, and then you upload this!
What a fun topic to talk about
You should talk about why writers like writing about evil Superman like villains
Wow, that opening was ape-$&## crazy, ha! That might be one of your best openings yet, and that's saying something. Great episode, Chris. I truly went bananas for it!
Awesome video! Was kinda hoping you’d touch on DC’s Angel and the Ape, though! Maybe next time
Oh! That reminds me! I forgot to turn off my evolution ray in the other room! Thanks, Chris!
this intro is awesome!
Less than 30 seconds in and I'm laughing. Why?!? Love the channel, man!
I wonder if this is related to how in a lot of vintage sci-fi and horror movies the monster is someone wearing a gorilla suit.
I was thinking the same thing. Apart from gorillas, there aren't many large, dangerous animals that can be portrayed halfway credibly by a man in a suit (mountain lion? crocodile? ostrich?) and there must be 1,001 old feature films, shorts and television episodes that involve a "gorilla at large."
I love all of these videos but I really love the og tropes.