When the Apes Made Fire and It Was Comical

Posted on May 14, 2024May 22, 2024 by Rich Handley

Those who know me well know that I tend to go a bit ape about Planet pf the Apes, not only as a lifelong fan but also a lifelong collector and a decades-long writer. In the past fifteen years, I’ve written, co-edited, or contributed to the following books:

I was also one of the talking apes on the behind-the-scenes documentaries included with the War for the Planet of the Apes Blu-ray. And I contributed articles to the fantastic POTA fanzine Simian Scrolls. So… yeah, I have monkeyed around on the upside-down world a lot throughout the years. And one particular area of interest for me has been the comics. I am an avid collector of Apes comics and have what I believe is every POTA comic ever published, including rarities most fans have never heard of. Need proof? Here’s an index to my collection. Nerdy mic drop.

If you asked Planet of the Apes comic collectors to name the publishers that have produced Apes stories, you’d likely hear responses mentioning Marvel Comics, Malibu Graphics, Dark Horse Comics, Mr. Comics, BOOM! Studios, and the current publisher, Marvel/20th Century Studios. These fine companies have produced a variety of ongoing titles, miniseries, and one-shots. If the collectors you asked were savvy, they might also bring up Gold Key Comics and Power Records, which published film adaptations, or Brown Watson Books, which offered a trio of hardcovers containing comics based on the Planet of the Apes TV series.

If they were extremely savvy, they might mention Bessatsu Bôken’Ô, Tengoku Zôkan, and Monthly Shōnen Champion, which featured anime film adaptations. Or the Planet of the Apes Colorforms, the instructions for which were presented as a comic strip. Or Arañita Super Historias, a Mexican comic presenting a POTA/Spider-Man crossover of sorts. Or Planet Opdi Eyps, a long-running Filipino Planet of the Apes parody comic. Or the Chad Valley Picture Show, which produced comic strip-style Planet of the Apes filmstrips. Or Editorial Mo.Pa.Sa, which published Spanish-language Apes comics in Argentina. Or Youth Newspaper Company–MOKÉP’s adaptation of Pierre Boulle’s novel Monkey Planet in Hungarian. Or Maranatha, whose original Indonesian-language Apes comics are extremely hard to find. Or the Apes comic packaged with an album by punk band ANTiSEEN. Or even Seduction Cinema’s adaptation of Play-Mate of the Apes.

But, wait, there’s more…

There’s another series that a lot of fans entirely missed out on. Even the most savvy of collectors might have overlooked it, even though it was fully licensed and official: a set of five “motion comics” with accompanying sound files, created by Madefire and published at DeviantArt in 2016 as official tie-ins to the film War for the Planet of the Apes.

These were original comic tales set in the timeline of Rise, Dawn, War, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, separate from those published by BOOM! and Marvel/20th. To date, these comics have never been released in print, and the digital comics company Madefire no longer exists, having shut its doors during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. That means these comics conceivably could be lost to time, which is a shame since they were part of the official franchise and they were good.

I had kept hoping BOOM! would collect these comics in print form but it never did, and although Marvel has the license back, it’s barely done anything with it, so I don’t think there’s much hope of these comics being preserved in any official capacity. Thankfully, I downloaded the motion comics at the time and, with graphic art assistance from my late friend Paul C. Giachetti, I also converted them to static PDFs for easy reading.

For the sake of posterity, I am posting them below so that fans can continue to enjoy them despite Madefire’s shuttering, and so that they don’t end up lost to time like so many other past treasures have been. Without further ado, I present to you the Planet of the Apes Motion Book comic line. To paraphrase Star Trek‘s Balok, I hope you relish these as much as I.