Issue: Exile on the Planet of the Apes #1
Release Date: March 14, 2012
Writer: Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman
Artist: Marc Laming
Colors: Jordie Bellaire
Letters: Ed Dukeshire
Cover A: Gabriel Hardman with Jordie Bellaire
Cover B: Declan Shalvey with Jordie Bellaire
Cover C: Gabriel Hardman
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Set 18 years before Charlton Heston arrived, these are the damn dirty apes that set the stage for the whole franchise. Immersed in self importance, reveling in self-righteousness, these are the Apes that will beat you senseless if you question their commitment to peace (or if you call them monkeys).
The humans are interesting, too, assuming you’re the creepy Charlton Heston type: the women are half-naked, mute, and hot. The men are half-naked, mute, and hairy. Just the way Heston liked it. But there’s a twist to these humans, who ride horses and communicate through sign language. Hopefully, we’ll find there’s more to these savages than we’ve been lead to believe in the original movie.
Of course, the Apes don’t believe that last part. The mere thought of humans doing something as basic as riding a horse seems ridiculous. But we witness that very thing in the opening pages: humans committing what amounts to an armed robbery, knocking a chimp on the back of the head and riding off with supplies that no group of mute, half-naked humans with brains the size of a walnut could make use of.
True to form, this proves to the wise and learned Council that the humans must have been trained by some criminal Ape to do his nefarious bidding. That leads us to Prisca, a primatologist who had attempted to teach humans to communicate through sign language. It also leads to another classic POTA technique: a Kafka-esque tribunal where the council proclaims Ape superiority, Human inferiority, and the more the defendant proves her innocence, the more guilty she looks to the Counsel.
This is a great start. The closer we get to Taylor-hour, the more true POTA fans will find themselves engrossed in this story. The art is pretty damn good, too. So there’s that to think about. I, for one, can’t take my stinking paws off of it.
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
