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Monday, July 28, 2014

Number 1610: Flying gorillas from outer space!

Last week I showed some gorilla horror stories, and now a gorilla science fiction tale from DC. Flying monkeys have been around since the Wizard of Oz, but flying King Kong-sized gorillas, well, that's new.

Not only are they flying giant gorillas, they come from a planetoid which has parked itself in Earth’s sky so the flying giant gorillas can steal our atmosphere. Atom bombs can’t stop them, so our scientists use fear gas* on them. What a crazy plot.

Script is by Gardner Fox. Fox wrote it for editor Julius Schwartz, who used high concepts when planning out stories for his magazines. It’s drawn by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson, and it appeared originally in Strange Adventures #125 (1961). The striking cover is by Sid Greene.









I bought this issue of Strange Adventures when it came out. As goofy as the story is, and despite my love for gorilla-fiction, what I remember most about the comic were the full page ads that heralded Joe Kubert’s Hawkman and the first full-length Aquaman comic.


*There really is such a thing as fear gas, although that name implies that is the gas’s sole effect. It does a lot more damage than that. You can read about it here.

UPDATE: I found this incredible Chinese fireworks package  on the Design/Destroy website a few days after posting the story. I love a coincidence.



5 comments:

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

There are some stories in which the danger is so imminent that the person who discovers it must be the person who overcomes it, if it is to be overcome at all. But it's quite another thing to write the story — as so often was done — such that, even when the problem extends though time and many people are involved, the discoverer takes the lead at every point.

Jim Bryant is the astronomer who spots the planetoid. He takes delivers the explanation of what the wingèd apes are doing to the air. He arrives as the solution (in a dubious manner). He commands the crew that effects the solution. It's only right that he should get the TAB (Telepathic Alien Babe).

As to why the gorillas didn't take evasive action in the Earth's atmosphere, well, uh….

Infantino had a signature way of drawing people running, and we see that especially in 7:2.

libraryguy said...

I will never trust a giant flying ape again.

Alicia American said...

My sis wants 2 D8 tha flyering munky <3

Pappy said...

Dan'l, seems that most science fiction stories I read from the thirties had the main character (a scientist, of course) take the lead, saving the world from whatever was threatening it. Schwartz came from that era.

Pappy said...

Alicia, you could turn that into a song.