Marvel Apes #3 (of 4)

My first reaction to the Marvel Apes book was, "Who thought this was a good idea?"

Let's face it, when DC does stories with apes, it's cute. It has a little nostalgic kick for those of us who were buying comics in the '50s and '60s, when DC would regularly put a gorilla on the cover to boost sales.

That's where Gorilla Grodd came from, and Beppo the Super-Monkey, and Titano, the Giant Ape, and Congorilla, to name four. Sales figures showed that comics with monkeys on the cover sold well. (Hey, it was a simpler time and comics fans were easily distracted.) It's a time-honored tradition at DC, and they trot it out every now and then for long-time fans and the artists who just like drawing monkeys (I'm looking at you, Art Adams and Frank Cho).

But for Marvel to do a book like this, it just feels like a cheap dig at the competition. Marvel has its own traditions to draw on - teams splitting up, giant space aliens with cool names like Goo Gam or Tim Boo Bah or Zzzax attacking the Earth, heroes battling each other after a misunderstanding - these are Marvel's touchstones.

Marvel Apes is not a funny animal takeoff (see Peter Porker, Spider-Ham), but a (relatively) serious alternate universe where simians are the dominant life-form, and virtually every hero from Marvel's Earth has an ape-based counterpart.

Crossing over to this planet is former Spider-Man villain-turned-hero The Gibbon, and he finds himself in the middle of a battle between a decades-old evil and the heroes of this reality.

And it almost works, thanks to the skills of writer Karl Kesel and artist Ramon Bachs, who should both be given a better concept to tackle. More than once, I was reading along, thinking, "This is a great idea and should be used in the real Marvel Comics line." Then I realized I was reading about monkeys, and they were spouting the usual bad puns - it pulled me right out of the story.

I have nothing against animal-based stories, and I have a near-complete collection of Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew to prove it.

But I just can't get past how "off" the concept of Marvel Apes feels. Marvel made its name being "The House of Ideas" - and frankly, swiping an old shtick from your competitor just seems like a bad idea.

Grade: C-