Two of My Favorite Things

I've always had a fondness for the simian world. It must have begun when I saw Planet of the Apes when I was a wee lad. I also have a memory, dim and possibly false, of a chimp in a pet shop window on Rockaway Parkway in Brooklyn, near where I got my first pair of glasses. All of this led me to a fervent, but unrequited, desire to have a chimpanzee as a pet. I could just see the hairy little fella, most likely named Bimbo or Bongo or anything ending in a -o (a -y name like Zippy would also do nicely) riding his trike around and around in circles for my amusement. The thought of the diapering process and possible feces flinging put that fantasy in its proper place. Still, the monkey obsession lives.

I also have had a healthy, but not devoted, interest in comics, especially Marvel heroes. Read some comic books as a kid, saw the movies as they came out, nothing more. All of my sons have various comic favorites, so comic shops have been added to record stores as things to be on the look out for in any city we may visit, from New York to Vancouver. So, how excited was I to see a new comic, the second in a four part series entitled Marvel Apes? Well, you can imagine the giggles.

Marvel Apes is the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of the comic world. These two great tastes are deliciously combined in the first three issues. If you can just imagine a silver back in a Captain America costume, Spider-Monkey or Thor-angutan, well, you'll begin to howl also. And you don't have to imagine it all! Just pop over to your neighborhood graphic novel emporium and pick one up yourself. You'll be glad you did.

As for my discovery, it was, as Dr. Zaius would say, "my destiny."