My Top Twelve Marvel UK Planet of the Apes covers - plus Special Bonus Feature!

Some mad fool once declared he hated every ape from Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Zee.

I refuse to listen to him.

We all know there's no finer sight in all the world than that of an ape talking and waving a rifle around whilst trying to kill you.

And so it is that I choose to inflict my twelve favourite covers from Marvel UK's 1970s Planet of the Apes comic upon humanity.

As so often with these things, being both wishy-washy and lazy, I print them in no order of preference...

It's the issue that kicked it all off in style - marred only by some less-than-stylish captioning.

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I hated this cover at the time, thinking it a massive comedown after the painted cover of issue #1.

I've since come to appreciate the beauty of its layout. Just as I came to appreciate the addition of Ka-Zar as back-up strip.

Was this this issue in which Gullivar Jones put in his first appearance?

Planet of the Apes?

Ka-Zar?

Gullivar Jones?

With all this, surely Marvel UK was spoiling us.

Is this the one where an ape and a human hate each other but then, thanks to injuries, learn to work together for their mutual good and become friends - only for them to be killed by a group of warring ape and human mutants?

Oh, the bitter irony.

I believe this was the cover to the story based on a certain Mark Twain tale involving King Arthur and a modern day time-traveller.

Despite appearances, I do know the title of that Mark Twain tale but, given its length, I can't be bothered to type it all out.

I think we can all guess which movie this was an adaptation of.

It's bad news for Cornelius, as Marvel tackle Escape From the Planet of the Apes.

And now it's bad news for Zira.

To be honest, you'd need a heart of stone to not to blub your eyes out at the end of that movie.

Now we get to Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

To be honest, Conquest is my least favourite of the original POTA movies. I did find it very sterile and a little dull, with ham-fisted racial analogies that themselves might be seen as somewhat racist.

It would appear we've got yet more Conquest, though I'm not sure how the cover fits into that.

I'm no David Attenborough but that river slug look suspiciously like a  giant toad.

Is that Jason and Alexander I spot on the cover, or is my memory playing tricks on me?

I remember once copying this cover in my sketch book - but redrawing the leading ape figure as one of the subterraneans from the legendary Doug McClure flick At The Earth's Core.

You see? I'd rather draw subterraneans than Caroline Munro, that's how Sc-Fi I am.

Potential further reading and viewing:

SPECIAL STEVE DOES COMICS BONUS FEATURE:

I can also announce I've had a request.

And it's not the usual one.

In recent days, John Pitt's contacted me to request I post the covers from Titan Books' 2002 reprints of the Dark Horse adaptation of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. I must admit to having been previously unaware of the existence of such a comic, and the covers seem to be hard to find online. So, just for John, here they are (courtesy of Graham Hill and Neil Foster @ The Forbidden Zone).