Mash it all together!
Creative Staff:
Story: Tim Seely, David Walker
Art: Fernando Dagnino
Colors: Sandra Molina
Letterer: Nate Piekos of Blambot
What They Say:
An attack on Ape City has ties to a mysterious event from Tarzan and Caesar’s childhood, and the connection reveals a battle much greater than the brothers could have imagined, not to mention new villains and heroes.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Well, with the third issue of this series it’s become apparent that it really needed to be a twelve-issue series so that it could tell the tale it wants to without feeling so compressed. I’ve enjoyed what we had with the mingling of the Planet of the Apes franchise into the late 1800’s and early 1900’s to connect Cornelius with Tarzan and all that it represents while also establish Ho-Wala as a city in the continent of Africa in order to build forward an ape society. The introduction of dinosaurs the last time was a serious bit of whiplash that left me intrigued but wary. So what do they do with this issue? They introduced Pellucidar from another Edgar Rice Burroughs property with At The Earth’s Core, which was a 1976 film that starred Peter Cushing and is based on the 1922 novel.
Hoo boy.
After reading this issue I went and talked out the whole series with my mother, who in her late 70’s has seen so many of these properties over the years, just to talk about the surreal nature of it. Tarzan and the apes fighting is interesting. Throwing dinosaurs into the mix was a weird decision at the time without the context that we get here but adds its own curiosity as we have a telepathic pterodactyl threatening Zira and helping to destroy Ho-Wala along with many other dinosaurs in an effort to eliminate those that threaten their own world. There’s a lot of chaos in the early half of this book as we get man and ape finding alliance and dealing with the dinos but also struggling with their own issues. There’s also a good bit of drama that goes on between Tarzan and Caesar about their history, though they find common cause easily enough with Zira’s death.
But really, it’s the introduction of the At The Earth’s Core storyline that just throws me for a loop because it’s introducing yet another concept into the book that kind of quashes the neat things we had early on that could be explored. I like the whole savage land idea and it’s something that could be blended into if they got the opportunity for a second series as opposed to pushing it here. But what takes the cake? Amid all of this, we discover that future-Ape Dr. Milo is alive and operating here, but he’s a Milo from a different timeline that has seen his selves die numerous times over the years and he’s intent on figuring out what’s causing all of this, believing it’s related to Pellucidar. With time travel already in the mix and now multi-dimensional material? It’s crazy and it works but it feels like too much.
In Summary:
A good part of what allows a lot of this to work is the fantastic artwork from Fernando Dagnino. Everything feels blended and connected well and there’s a great sense of world building within it all, such as with Ho-Wala and what little we get of Pellucidar that I really want a greater exploration of it all. This series is throwing a whole lot of material at the reader and I imagine a lot of it is going to be missed by many, myself included, because it’s a weirdly twisted love story towards the films and properties of so many decades gone by. I can see the love going into it from the team and that’s damn infectious as it opens me up to things I hadn’t heard about before. The fact I ended up going and talking out the whole series with people that are in my life and from very different experiences with all of this is so rare that it warrants mention and their reaction to how surreal it all sounds was wonderful.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics, BOOM Studios
Release Date: November 30th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
