Captain America #135 - More Monster Than Man!

There was once a long-standing belief in the American comic book industry that the sure-fire way to sell any book was to put a gorilla on the front of it.

Whether that theory was correct or not, I can neither confirm nor deny, being bereft, as I am, of a doctorate in psychology but, in retrospect, perhaps the industry had a point.

My reading of American comics began in earnest in that hot summer holiday of 1972 when green flies, black flies and ladybirds seemed to be waging a vast war against each other wherever you looked. I'd read one Spider-Man comic before that and one Superman comic but it was during that holiday that my super-hero reading truly became a, "thing."

And one of that very first batch of American comics I read was Captain America #135, which did indeed have something that vaguely resembled a gorilla on the front of it.

Had the presence of the sinister simian led me to buy it from that Blackpool indoor market stall? Or was it some other quality that had piqued my interest?

I don't know but I do know that, once I got it open, the thing that most gripped me about the story was Captain America's costume. That collision of colour and shapes was like taking LSD, opening up a whole new way of viewing the world, for me. Once you'd seen a thing like that, how could you ever go back to drab reality?

Well, that's all well and good but that was then. What of now? Reading that tale again, for the first time in decades, what do I make of it?

I make of it that it's great. Facially challenged SHIELD boffin Doctor Gorbo dreams of wooing his youthful assistant Julia who only joined SHIELD in the hope of finding a boyfriend. I assume she didn't tell Nick Fury that at the job interview or I suspect another candidate might have got the position.

Sadly, Julia might be desperate for a man but she's not so desperate that she'd settle for Dr Gorbo. In response, Gorbo reacts as the lovelorn have always done throughout the centuries, and makes himself a serum from ape blood and then swallows it.

No, it's not some kind of weird suicide attempt. It's an attempt to become a Captain America style he-man who can sweep Julia off her feet.

Unfortunately, he instead becomes a King Kong style gorilla who could sweep anyone off their feet, by sheer brute force alone.

However, he's not just any ape. He's a criminal ape. Armed with genius intelligence, super-strength and the power to mentally control dogs (No, I'm not sure how the last bit ties in thematically with him being a super-ape) he goes on a crime spree.

Needless to say, it's not long before Cap and Falc are on his tail and failing to stop him.

But, in between all this, there's the small matter of a huge drill that's going to dig a hole deep enough for the world's nuclear waste to be buried in.

And wouldn't you know it? No sooner do Cap and the gorilla start fighting but they manage to inadvertently fall down it.

Are they doomed?

Are they about to go splat when they hit the bottom?

We'll have to wait for next month's issue, to find out.

Actually, I had to wait five or six years to find out, when Part Two of the tale was finally reprinted in Marvel UK's Super Spider-Man comic.

In all honesty, a number of the very earliest comics I read as a child have turned out to be less than special when I've re-read them as a grown-up but this one is a definite exception. We get to see the Falcon meet Nick Fury for the first time and prove his fighting skills by grappling with Dum Dum Dugan. We get some trademark Stan Lee soap opera, as Cap tries to patch things up with Sharon Carter after their latest bust-up. We get a super-intelligent gorilla, a big machine that's drilling down into the depths of the Earth and we get a dramatic ending. What more could you ask to be crammed into a twenty page story? And there really is something strangely compelling about the sight of Cap and his opponent plunging down into a bottomless pit.

Most of all, there's Gene Colan's art which is amongst the most appealing I've ever seen from him, aided considerably by Tom Palmer who is, surely, indisputably the best inker Colan ever had or ever could have had.

So, maybe I did buy the thing purely because it had an ape on the cover.

Or maybe I didn't.

But I can safely say that, in convincing me to get, it, the comic certainly didn't make a monkey out of me.