Planet of the Apes Ad - Marvel

I'm hip-deep in projects this week, so I decided this was the perfect time to do an oft-planned week of Marvel magazine ads.

As good or bad as Marvel's general output was, their sense of showmanship was second to none, and the ads they ran in their b/w magazines made you need--not just want--their publications.

It occurs to me I haven't talked about Marvel's POTA magazine very much, I'll have to rectify that soon.

Planet of the Apes #8 - Marvel

My god...they've finally done it...they blew it up. They...

ah, you know the rest. This is Marvel's continuation of the Apes saga, one of the craziest attempts a comic company ever made to develop a licensed property.

The main story is "The Planet Inheritors!" by the omnipresent Doug Moench with nice art by Mike Ploog, whose pencils were directly reproduced instead of being inked. This story is the perfect synthesis of Apes craziness and Moench inventiveness, where in these twenty-two pages we get an ape in a Davy Crockett hat, secret vaults, and giant telepathic brains in glass bubbles.

Next are two text features called "The Remaking of Roddy McDowall, showing his step-by-step transformation into an ape, and "Knowing Your Place on The Planet of The Apes!", an analysis of the social commentary in the Apes films.

Last is "The Warhead Messiah", part two of the Beneath The Planet of the Apes adaptation by Moench and Alfredo Alcala, featuring particularly nice work by Alcala.

A fine issue, headlined by Moench and Ploog's crazy lead feature taking the Apes universe and twisting it and pushing it in ways 20th Century Fox probably came to regret.

One of the more unusual elements of the book has nothing to do with the Apes, though. The back cover features a Hostess ad starring Spider-Man, the only instance in my knowledge of one of these classic ads being run in a Marvel magazine. Ah, if only Hostess had hired Moench and Ploog to do an Apes Hostess ad, then we really would've had something!

Planet of the Apes #6 - Marvel

Marvel Comics now belongs--to the Apes!!!

Part of the mad influx of Apes-related merchandise that flooded the market in the early 70s, Marvel's Planet of the Apes magazine is a rare example of a licensor taking a property and running--no, sprinting--with it.

After opening with two pages of letters (including one that asks "do we really need a Planet of the Apes magazine?" (!)), and an editorial by Don McGregor, we have "Malaguena Beyond A Zone Forbidden", by the always-reliable Doug Moench and Mike Ploog. This is part of a multi-part story about a group of frontiersmen and frontiersapes (!!) wandering the countryside.

After confronting a giant lizard, the find a small town made up of Apes and men living together, including a beautiful gypsy woman named (you guessed it) Malaguena. After one of the visiting humans, Jason, takes an interest in Malaguena, it leads to this confrontation:













Ah, they don't make comics like this anymore.

Next up is an interview with the Apes-TV show's Urko, played by Mark "Sarek" Lenard. It's a surprisingly in-depth and long interview, running fifteen pages, and doesn't at all read like a promo-puff-piece. Lenard seems to take his interviewer, Chris Claremont (!!!) seriously. After that is "Ape For a Day" where the writer watches someone actually get transformed into an ape for the show.

Its all wraps up with the final chapter of the adaptation of the first Apes movie, by Moench again and George Tuska and Mike Esposito. It's not too bad, though Tuska draws Taylor the astronaut to resemble Tarzan (spotted loincloth and all), and the final big reveal is a little botched, but hey, at least we still got to see a man kiss an ape in a Marvel comic.