Friday, March 20, 2009

Reprint This! Marvel's Planet of the Apes

When I was picking up back issues of this black and white magazine series, I was mostly interested in the movie adaptations. In the end, I don't think I ever owned more than 5 or 6 issues of this series. More recently, I've been very intrigued by two series that I ignored as a youngster, but now realize are far superior to the relatively bland movie recaps. Doug Moench wrote both the 'Terror on the Planet of the Apes' and 'Future History Chronicles' strips, wonderfully drawn by Mike Ploog and Tom Sutton, respectively (although I think Trimpe got involved towards the end). These stories are much darker and more engaging than the main storylines, and must have developed a bit of a cult following, as these magazines are getting more and more expensive on the back issue market. While I'd be thrilled if Marvel or Dark Horse could get the rights to reprint the entire series, I'd settle for the reprints of these other stories put together by Moench & Co. I know that Malibu/Adventure did bits and pieces of it back in the early 90s, but I truly think that these stories deserve to be given the red carpet reprint treatment.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I never had any issues of the magazine series, only the comic series. However, I am a big fan of the movies and would love to be able to get my hands on these.

M W Gallaher said...

I've got the whole run of this series, and I love it. I never thought I had a "favorite writer" in the 70's, but in 1992, I realized that Doug Moench had written a huge percentage of my "cannot-miss" comics of that decade, and many highly-treasured comics of the following decade.

John Parker said...

I loved the series back when I was a lad. I agree about Doug Moench and the tons of good stuff he wrote that I loved.

The Mutt said...

One of these issues contains a story called Up the Nose Tube to Monkey Trash.

Do you really need to know more?