[A series on Planet of the Apes comics by guest reviewer Zach King. Zach writes about movies at The Cinema King and about comics on Instagram at Dr. King’s Comics.]
As much as I enjoyed Star Trek/Planet of the Apes: The Primate Directive, and after a disappointing encounter with Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes, I found Planet of the Apes/Green Lantern to be exactly the crossover comic I’d been wanting to read this whole time. Lacking only a punchy subtitle (“Lantern of the Apes”? Or “The Simian Spectrum”?), this book delivers on mashing up timeless versions of both franchises. It’s a crowd-pleaser with a few strong surprises, and it’s thoughtful in a way that longtime readers will appreciate.
Even without the original series covers by Ethan Van Sciver, Apes/Lantern puts a reader in mind of the peak of the titanic Geoff Johns run, opening with a sequence in which a hooded figure slaughters one representative from each Lantern Corps - among them Bleez, Saint Walker, and (say it ain’t so!) G’nort. It’s an opener of senseless violence, clearing a few fan favorites off the board while also reminding Rebirth-era readers how expansively Johns grew the Green Lantern mythos. It may come as no surprise, that the killer turns out to be Sinestro, in search of the Universal Ring, which allows its wearer to wield the powers of the entire emotional spectrum. (As in all classic GL stories, the Guardians knew it was a bad idea but created it anyway.)
[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]
That ring is, naturally, hidden away on the Planet of the Apes, which the Guardians reveal is “a version of Earth locked in a time loop, isolating it from the rest of hypertime.” I’ve always liked the fact that the Apes series is a closed loop, straining against the inevitable cycle of history, and writers Robbie Thompson and Justin Jordan are tickling my continuity funny bone by invoking hypertime as the plot device to bind this crossover together. Given the book’s final panel, hypertime props the door open for a sequel, even if the transfer of Apes comics rights to Marvel might imply that we found the one barrier that hypertime can’t crack.
While the surviving Lanterns pursue Sinestro and Hal Jordan through hypertime, I had to flip back and make sure that Tom Taylor hadn’t written this book. Apes/Lantern has so much of the humor and self-reflexivity of Taylor’s recent slate of alt-continuity battles royale, as when Guy Gardner reminds everyone that he was “the Red Lantern” before insisting a few panels later that he nevertheless remains “the Green Lantern.” Guy also plays a head-scratching wild card when he suggests bringing Gorilla Grodd along to the planet, saying, “If we’re gonna go to a planet full of talking apes, I want someone with some expertise along.” For me, the jury is still out whether this is simply a bad idea overall or whether the writers intend it to be an idea that only Guy Gardner could find plausible, though it is useful in setting up a striking climax. (Guy might have saved himself the headache by calling Sam Simeon or even Detective Chimp instead.)
In the world of the apes proper, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief and say that Doctor Zaius is a major player in Apes/Lantern, and he’s everything you want him to be. He’s arrogant and supercilious, practically seething with resentment at his world’s invasion. Many of his scenes find him alongside Sinestro, pitting them both in a duel of outright haughtiness. “I won’t help a human,” Zaius snipes at Sinestro, and you can almost hear the sloshy voice of Maurice Evans when he leads Sinestro into the caverns where a primordial Green Lantern ring is hidden: “What I found here I should have destroyed.” Thompson and Jordan understand that Doctor Zaius is a liar and an opportunist, and the notion that he has been concealing his knowledge of the emotional spectrum is a welcome continuity from the original film’s craven statesman. In another moment, revealed through a truly wonderful page turn, Zaius turns on Sinestro, exploiting the ancient ring’s weakness to yellow and gloating, “You mentioned that your ring might still be vulnerable to yellow. I suppose that’s proved to be true.” In the hands of Doctor Zaius, knowledge is a Chekhov’s gun waiting to be fired.
On the count of the rest of the apes, Apes/Lantern uses the Universal Ring to have its crossover cake and eat it too. Rather than try to pin down which Lantern Corps might recruit Cornelius, the Universal Ring allows Cornelius to wield all the powers - rage, greed, and even love. Zira, too, ends up enlisted in the Universal Corps. Yet for all the prismatic goodness on parade, one wonders why the Black and White Lanterns are never at play here, particularly in the case of one character’s tragic demise. Were the creators saving the powers of life and death for a sequel? Might we have ever seen Nekron leading the subterranean death-worshiping mutants? Like all good crossovers, Apes/Lantern gets the synapses firing with possibility, and I’ll happily put my hand up to write the sequel, free of charge, if the licenses can be worked out.1
I should take a moment and extend a hand to Barnaby Bagenda, whose artwork in Apes/Lantern is expertly calibrated. It’s scratchy in all the right places, but his apes are distinctive while his humans (and humanoids) are expressive — especially his smug Sinestro. Between this and The Omega Men (which I’m overdue to reread), it’s a shame we haven’t seen much more of late from Bagenda. Even his barren landscapes are judiciously peppered with ruins and rubble, an almost Bushmiller-esque balance between something and nothing.
We also have one of the best slates of variant covers in recent memory. Alongside the primary covers by Van Sciver and Dan Mora, Apes/Lantern collects action figure variants by David Ryan Robinson and Rod Reis; “spectrum” variants by Felipe Massafera; movie poster mock-ups; and my personal favorite, a gallery of comic cover homages by Paul Rivoche.2 In short, this variant gallery rounds out the complete package that is Apes/Lantern, a must-read for fans of either property or for curious students of the crossover genre; books like this one prove why you can’t keep a good ape down.
Up next, the crossover suite concludes with Kong on the Planet of the Apes.
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