This POTA: Cataclysm thing is heating up, and I like it. The problem, of course, is that I don’t like that I like it. I am a critic, after all, and I should criticize something. I keep on hoping for an issue where they just phone it in, so I can totally rip into BOOM!. It’s like they have no consideration for us critics. Is it too much to ask they have just one dud?
Note: This recap may contain spoilers!
Of course, that’s way too much to ask, because shiznit gets crazy in this issue. We start with Zaius’s daughter giving birth and in the middle of a firefight. So that doesn’t go well. Then, Lucius hanging from a cliff (a cliff hanger at the beginning of the issue? That’s some comic book jiu-jitsu right there!), before getting down to serious business.
That business is Zaius trying to come to grips with the accusation from the previous installment (the one where the dying guard told Zaius that when he was guarding the bunker, a monk had fatally wounded him and entered the bunker and launched all the chaos that is currently raining down on the apes, and that the guy is standing right behind him). Zaius thinks the guard was delirious, but it’s true. Not only is it true, but the monk turns out to be one of those mutated telekenetic humans using his mutant powers to make the apes think he’s one of them.
I have to insert a thought here, which is that in the original movies I always thought those mutants were just a cheap trick to keep the sequels going. After all, it’s called Planet of the Apes (POTA), not Planet of the Mutated Humans Who Worship Nuclear Warheads and Have Telekinetic Powers (POTHWWNWAHTP). But BOOM! has found a way to organically integrate the mutants into the story (more proof that they don’t care about us critics).
Anyway, the mutants, it turns out, have a plan. It’s not just the rockets raining down from the moon that have caused all the trouble. That was pretty bad, of course. But the mutants have actively been controlling ape minds. Just before he dies (Zaius, it turns out, is good with a shotgun), the mutant gives Zaius a taste of what they have been planning, which is a taste of just how messed up their cult really is. That’s what I call a cliffhanger.
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
