Planet Of The Apes [2023] #1 - Marvel Comics

PLANET OF THE APES No. 1, June 2023

For those long enough in the tooth to be hoping “Marvel’s highly anticipated new Planet Of The Apes comic series” was going to return readers back to the days when the New York City-based publisher was printing books centred upon Franklin J. Schaffner’s “iconic” 1968 science fiction film, this thirty-page periodical is probably going to prove something of a major disappointment. Yet for those within the audience who are much more familiar with the franchise since its modern-day reboot just over a decade ago, David F. Walker’s narrative for “Devolution” should prove much more palatable.

In fact, the vast majority of the Eisner-winning writer’s script is dedicated to reminding the reader as to the silver screen exploits of the primates following the Golden Gate Ape Uprising in 2016 and the deadly effect upon Humanity by the ALZ-113 virus. These flashbacks are certainly well-penned, and nicely intermingled with the World Health Organisation’s desperate attempt to maintain a thriving simian population, as well as combat the military machinations of the Exercitus Viri – an “army of men” who appear to seek salvation in the total extermination of monkeykind and any “misguided souls who have chosen beasts over their fellow humans.”

However, the author’s insistence on persistently placing so many multiple plot-threads in disconnected time zones all over the planet arguably makes navigating them in any semblance of understandable order rather frustrating. True, this zig-zagging technique through history certainly provides the publication with a suitably chaotic atmosphere as different people are depicted attempting to do either right or wrong by the apes in San Francisco, Florida, Switzerland and even across the Atlantic Ocean. But by the time the spotlight refocuses upon peacekeeper Juliana Tobon, only the most strong-minded bibliophile won't have flipped back to a previous point in the story so as to reorientate themselves.

Similarly as spotty as Schaffner’s script is debatably Dave Wachter’s layouts, which seemingly veer from awe-inspiring double splashes featuring hordes of angry primates savagely battering those people foolish enough to confront them, to some quite stiff-looking facial profiles. Indeed, the “Aliens: Aftermath” artist’s style appears far more suited to pencilling soldiers blazing away with their firearms or simians bounding about an International Research Centre in Ghana, than it does drawing anything somewhat sedentary in nature.

The regular cover art of "PLANET OF THE APES" #1 by Joshua Cassara & Dean White