Apeslayer!

Neal Adams finds his Killraven artwork, "improved upon,"
by an uncredited, "collaborator."

Somehow, no matter how hard one might try, it's the subject that can never be escaped.

It's the power and majesty of Apeslayer!

Just twelve Planet of the Apes covers posted two days ago were enough to bring out the reader demands for Apeslayer covers

Reader, I cannot let you down.

As we all know, in the 1970s, always happy to jump on a bandwagon, Marvel UK took to reprinting US Marvel's Planet of the Apes stories.

There was only one problem.

The UK Planet of the Apes came out once a week and the US ones only came out once a month.

Needless to say, this meant that, within weeks, the UK mags had run out of material to reprint.

This might have defeated lesser men, but the editorial staff of Planet of the Apes were not lesser men. Not for them the barren wasteland of despair. Instead they had an idea worthy of Peter Griffin himself. They simply got Amazing Adventures' War of the Worlds stories and redrew the Martians to look like apes.

They then renamed Killraven, "Apeslayer," called Carmilla Frost, "San Simian," and Bob's your uncle - not to mention being a monkey's uncle.

It was a brilliant plan. There was not one person who could possibly notice the trick they'd pulled.

Well, of course, everyone noticed the trick they'd pulled. It was a little difficult not to, what with there being tripods blundering around all over the place.

But no true British comic lover could care about that. Despite the basic duffness of the idea, it's hard not to look back on Apeslayer with affection - and I suppose it could be claimed he was Marvel UK's first super-hero, beating even Captain Britain to the punch.

Anyway, here are the covers to the breathless issues our hero featured in.

He's very macho, isn't he? I get the feeling he'd have got on with Bill Savage from 2000AD's Invasion strip.

A rare chance to directly compare Apeslayer to Killraven.

In fairness to Apeslayer, he might not have been what you could call original but he could at least fight bad guys without looking like he'd just blundered in from the set of Zardoz.

Hold on. Where's Apeslayer? All of a sudden, he can't even make the front cover of his own comic.

How could anyone have guessed they were really reading a War of the Worlds story? I mean, it's not like there's a load of tripods around to tip us off.

Sadly, after this issue, Apeslayer was never seen again.

What happened to him?

Who can know? But, judging by the fact that the comic carried on for years afterwards, I can only assume he failed totally in his mission to rid the Earth of the Apes' rule.

Poor old Apeslayer. All that hard work for nothing.

Killraven vs Apeslayer Poll Results.

The results of our latest poll are in - and it's an eye-opener for all detractors of simian saboteurs. According to you, the reader, when it comes to who'd win a fight between Apeslayer and Killraven, eight of you voted for Apeslayer, against a mere two for Killraven. One voted for a draw, and one (me) voted for, "I don't have a clue."

Given that Apeslayer and Killraven were exactly the same character under different names, this landslide victory for Britain's bonobo battler can only be viewed as a major turn-up. All I can assume is that people feel it's harder fighting talking apes than it is fighting Martians.

So, well done to Apeslayer. You may not have been much loved at the time but you clearly are now.

The Department of Pointless Questions: Results. Apeslayer. A Rose by any other name.

Well done to (c)The Stardust Kid 2010 on correctly remembering that, in the Marvel UK Killraven/Planet of the Apes mash-up that was Apeslayer, the unfortunate Carmilla Frost found herself renamed San Simian. Well done to me too. The question's already had just under a hundred page-views in the few hours since it was posted, making it already the site's most viewed post of the week and knocking at the door of the site's all-time Top Ten. Who'd have thought there was such love for Apeslayer out there?

Like just about everyone else on the Internet, it seems, The Stardust Kid goes joint top of our Department of Pointless Questions Leaderboard.

For those of a curious bent, the original question can be found here.

PS. Don't forget to vote in our Apeslayer v Killraven poll. You never know, with all those Martians and speaking apes around, the future survival of humanity might depend on it.

The Department of Pointless Questions: Apeslayer. A rose by any other name.

As we all know, the weekly Marvel UK Planet of the Apes comic reprinted US Marvel's Planet of the Apes material so quickly it often ended up reprinting stories before they'd even been printed in the first place.

When even that didn't work and they ran out of material altogether, they came up with the brilliant wheeze of getting the Killraven stories and having an artist redraw the bad guys' heads as ape heads, and replaced the word, "Martians," with the word, "Apes." Thus was born the legendary strip we in the UK knew as Apeslayer.

Obviously, in these tales, Killraven became Apeslayer but what was the new name bestowed upon the luvverly Carmilla Frost?