Episode Credits

Synopsis

Previously in Brave and the Bold Part One: Hidden in the African veldt is a city of intelligent gorillas who have lived in peace, isolated from humanity, for thousands of years. Solovar, the chief of security of “Gorilla City”, stopped an attempt by a power mad genius called Grodd to take control of the city, but Grodd fled with the City’s defence codes. Grodd made contact with a human scientist called Dr Sarah Corwin in Central City and involved her in his plans. Solovar discovered the connection between Grodd and Corwin and followed him to Central City. Green Lantern and the Flash became involved when Grodd’s mind-controlled minions attempted to steal a supply of radioactive isotopes. After some confusion they allied themselves with Solovar, but were unable to stop Grodd activating a device that appeared to erase Central City from the face of the Earth.

As Green Lantern, Solovar, and the Flash awake they find themselves still in Dr Corwin’s Riverbluffs Research Centre. Solovar puts a protective headband on the Flash, cutting Grodd’s mental control. Green Lantern tries contacting the Watchtower, but his com-link is offline. Solovar explains that Grodd has erected a force field, a Shield Wall, around Central City that is identical to the one that protects Gorilla City. It shields the interior from the outside world, nothing – light, sensors, radio, even physical force – can get in or out. Furthermore, Grodd has encased the Wall’s generator in a similar force field preventing Green Lantern from shutting it down.

Aboard the Justice League Watchtower, J’onn J’onzz alerts Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl to Central City’s disappearance. A worried Wonder Woman is unable to make radio contact with either Green Lantern or the Flash. They rush to its site in the Javelin, but they are unable see or otherwise detect is presence. The Javelin’s wing scrapes the edge of the invisible force field forcing it to crash-land in a nearby field. The damage to the Javelin’s wing is only evidence that there was something solid to hit. Wonder Woman is the first to find the edge of the Shield Wall, but J’onn is unable to phase through it and the Wall energetically resists Hawkgirl’s attempts to breach it with her mace. From the Batcave, the Batman analyses the energy signature of the force field and discovers the original field covering Gorilla City. He sends the coordinates to Wonder Woman and tells her that he’ll meet them in Africa.

The streets of Central City are deserted. The mind controlled populace have been drawn to a rally where they chant Grodd’s name. He addresses them, berating humanity attributes and proclaiming his intention to conquer Gorilla City and the rest of the world. The Flash heckles Grodd who then commands the crowd to destroy the heroes. Individually the mind control citizens of Central City are no match for Solovar, Flash, or Green Lantern, put the crowd is another matter. The heroes can’t fight back for fear of harming innocent civilians. Even the two women the Flash saved that morning are intent on destroying him. The confusion is enough for Grodd to once again escape.

Grodd uses his mind control helmet to make the staff at the local Military Base surrender control of their nuclear missiles to him. Grodd and Corwin then aim four nuclear missiles at Gorilla City. Back in Central City, the Flash hefts Solovar on to his shoulder and makes a hasty retreat as the crowd closes in. GL’s ring tracks the emissions from Grodd’s rocket bike to the Military Base and they arrive as Grodd’s missiles are launching. Green Lantern races after the missiles through a hole in the Shield Wall and leaves Solovar and the Flash to deal with Grodd.

The other heroes rendezvous with Batman in Africa, outside of the Gorilla City Shield Wall. However, Gorilla City’s guards notice their investigations. The Leaguers are stunned unconscious and then brought inside for interrogation. An angry, one-eyed Gorilla General demands to know who sent the humans. The General focuses his attention on Wonder Woman leaving Batman to work on picking his manacles. Batman surprises the General and then frees J’onn, Wonder Woman, and Hawkgirl. They break out into the city, but the Shield Wall blocks their escape. The Gorilla guards have the four heroes cornered against the Shield War when Grodd shuts it down remotely, leaving Gorilla City unprotected against his missiles.

Green Lantern eventually catches up with the rear missile and surgically disables its detonator system. Its rocket engine explodes and the nuclear warhead falls harmlessly into the Atlantic Ocean. Green Lantern repeats the procedure on the second missile, but he’s knocked unconscious by debris from its exploding engine. He wakes moments before he would have hit the ground and restarts his pursuit of the missiles, but he’s too far behind them to catch up. Coming out from of Gorilla City, J’onn J’onzz phases through one of the missiles ripping out its detonator circuit. Hawkgirl takes a swing at the last missile causing the warhead to separate from the rocket engine, but its detonator circuit is still in place. Wonder Woman places herself under the warhead and slows it descent. It ploughs a long trench in the ground and pins her underneath, but does not explode. Batman calls out “Diana” and races to the crash site. He initially fears the worst, but she is unharmed. The gorilla’s cheer their new found saviours. Wonder Woman is touched by Batman’s concern for her and rewards him with a kiss on the cheek.

Grodd lounges in the missile command room happily waiting for the missiles to reach their target, but his fun is cut short when the Corwin announces that his missiles are being deactivated one by one. The Flash and Solovar arrive. Grodd knocks Solovar down, but the Flash jumps on his back and pushes Grodd’s mind control helmet down over his eyes. The Flash uses his superspeed to dodge Grodd’s lunges. He taunts Grodd that he’ll throw away his protective headband if Grodd throws away his mind control helmet. The Flash then makes a show of removing his headband. Grodd tries to control the Flash, but his helmet sparks and crackles leaving Grodd catatonic – the Flash had rewired it at superspeed whilst he was pounding on Grodd’s head.

Corwin is horrified at Grodd’s fate and reveals that he did not need to mind control her as in love with him. The now mindless supervillain is returned to Gorilla City. The authorities lock him in a zoo like cage (complete with swinging tyre and banana). Solovar swears that Grodd will receive the best of care, but Grodd’s rage may be too strong to contain for long.

Commentary

Wonder Woman kissing Batman.

In one of the Season One DVD features the producers state that they deliberately avoided the usual cliché of Superman and Wonder Woman as a potential item and instead decided to go with the idea of the Hawkgirl and Green Lantern as their romantic subplot. There was, however, another “romantic” subplot in the show – the interplay between Wonder Woman and Batman. It never really mounts to much, but there is a definite romantic tension between the two characters that eventually gets commented upon by their team mates in later episodes (“Kid’s Stuff”). The idea of Wonder Woman and Batman as an item was picked up by Joe Kelly in his run on the JLA comic book, but that ended with them both acknowledging that any idea of a serious romantic relationship between them was destined to end hideously.

Nuclear Missiles

Your traditional fission bomb and nuclear power station produce energy because radioactive elements like plutonium and uranium split apart producing energy and a shower of particles called neutrons. Those neutrons slam into other atoms making them split apart. This produces more energy and more neutrons that go on to hit even more atoms. For small amounts of plutonium and uranium this cascade will produce a steady release of heat. Once the mass of the sample gets above a critical level, the so-called “critical mass”, the neutron cascade is so great that it accelerates exponentially releasing all the energy stored in the sample in a single instance. This is the difference between a fission power station and a nuclear bomb.

The basic science behind nuclear bombs isn’t really a secret or even a challenge to understand. The real secret is an engineering one – how to turn the theoretical physics into a working weapon. The trick is to work out a way for the bomb not to explode before you want it to. The instant you have a critical mass of material in one place it’ll explode. So a bomb will contains several sub-critical masses of material that are held separate until a conventional explosion smashes them together with enough force to create a single blob whose mass is above the critical mass – that’s when the atomic explosion occurs. If you prevent the conventional explosion you prevent the sub-critical masses coming together.

The conventional explosion can be triggered by a normal electrical detonator and command circuit. That’s the part the Justice League heroes were removing from the missiles as they raced towards Gorilla City. However, the League must undergo some very specialised training. They each knew exactly which circuit was the detonator control.

References

Flash: “Monkey boy, why don’t you go climb a sky scraper!” – An ape climbing a sky scraper is of course a reference to King Kong’s assent of the Empire State Building.

Flash: “How much do you weigh?” – I can’t help be reminded of the scene from Batman: The Movie where Batman helps Vicky Vale escape from the Joker’s Goons by send her ascending to the roof tops while he drops down into the ally.

Flash “You want a piece of me Chuckles?” – I’m not sure about any one trademarked character called Chuckles, but it does seem a rather generic name for chimpanzees. You can buy various unrelated Chuckles soft toys, theme bicycles, etc. It is also the name of the mascot of a UK based chain of theme parks.

How did they get through this story without a reference to Magilla Gorilla?

Misc

• Batman designed the Javelin
• J’onn describes the Shield Wall as “an asynchronous dimensional interface”.
• Superman does not appear in this episode

Opinion

Highlights

Green Lantern: “Flash, don’t heckle the super-villain!”

Oddities

The location of the missiles on the missile room map bears little or no relation to where those missiles are depicted when the heroes destroy them.

My Thoughts

When I started these reviews I thought about doing both parts of each story together, but as I go along I see more and more how the individual parts work on their own. This story is a particularly strong example of that. The first part is a mystery story about the Green Lantern and Flash’s investigation into Dr Corwin’s lab and the escaped gorilla (Solovar). It barely features the super-villain and is really just a straight Green Lantern and Flash team-up. By contrast the second part features all of the League (baring Superman) in wall-to-wall action. Solovar’s part is greatly reduced and Flash and Green Lantern are separated. Opening on the Watchtower really underlines that this is a second episode and not merely the second part of a single episode.

Episode Credits

Synopsis

Somewhere on the planes of Africa, a pair of western archaeologists dig for evidence that might shed some light on mankind’s origins. Behind them, the image of a distant mountain shimmers and is replaced by a towering, futuristic city. The archaeologists are so engrossed in their work that they don’t notice the change. A trio of gorillas on flying “sledges” emerge from the city. It’s a pursuit, two guards/police pursing and firing upon an escaping criminal. Upon seeing the archaeologists, the leader of the pursuers exclaims “Humans!” and flees back into the city. The illusion of the distant mountain shimmers back over the city, cloaking its presence. The surprised archaeologists are left trying to make sense of the madness.

In a Central City diner, the Flash regales a pair of disinterested young women with stories about his adventures. His anecdote is cut short by a traffic accident that sends a car crashing thought the diner’s window. The Flash plucks the two women to safety, makes his apologies, and then runs off at superspeed to find the truck that smashed the car into the diner. The Flash soon catches up with the truck as it ploughs through the traffic. To keep up with the truck he has to run over and around the cars scattered in its wake. Then, once he gets closer, he has to dodge pot shots fired by truck’s passenger until he eventually runs out of ammunition. The truck’s driver tries ramming the Flash off the City’s elevated highway, but he looses control and the truck plunges through the safety barrier. The Flash pulls the passenger and driver back on to the highway at superspeed, but the truck continues its fall.

The falling truck is caught by a green glow signalling the arrival of the Flash’s Justice League team-mate, the Green Lantern. He had been responding to a police call about stolen radioactive isotopes – the same isotopes that are in the back of the truck that had inadvertently attracted the Flash’s attention. The passenger and driver of the truck seem to snap out of some sort of hypnotism when challenged. Their papers name them as Professor Arthur Chin and Doctor Mark Stevens, workers at the Riverbluffs Research Centre (the site the isotopes were stolen from). The Centre’s director, Doctor Sarah Corwin, can’t explain the actions of her colleagues and suggests that they may have snapped under the pressure of their latest project. She refuses, however, to divulge what that project is and claims that it’s top-secret. Corwin gets angry at the Flash for waving a banana at the gorilla in her research cage and ends their conversation.

Green Lantern and Flash return to Central City to continue their investigation, but Lantern is exasperated when the Flash has to stop at a burger stand to refuel his hyper-accelerated metabolism. The Flash then runs off to investigate screams about an escaped gorilla leaving Green Lantern to pay for the burgers. Police squads have already started combing the park, but the silver gorilla evades them through a child’s play area and steals a car. The Flash forces the gorilla to crash by bursting the car’s tyres with a rake. He expects the driver to be a simple zoo creature, but is shocked when it tells him to “Get your filthy paws off me you stinking human!” Before the Flash can process his surprise he’s hit from behind by an unusal beam fired from a nearby roof top by Dr Corwin. The Flash suffers a series of nightmarish hallucinations and blacks out. When he comes around he finds himself in the police station and is accused with stealing the recovered isotopes from the police pound.

Green Lantern posts bail for the Flash, but even he has trouble believing that the Flash spoke to a talking gorilla. They return to the park to find it still cordoned off. Green Lantern’s ring is able to follow the gorilla’s distinctive footprints and he stuns it with a blast from his ring. The indignant ape then asks, “Was that really necessary?” He finally gets to introduce himself as Solovar, Chief of Security for Gorilla City. His race of super-intelligent gorillas had lived in peace, isolated from humanity, for thousands of years until a power mad genius called Grodd tried to conquer them using mind control technology. Solovar stopped Grodd’s scheme, but he escaped into the human world. Solovar followed Grodd after it was discovered that he’d also stolen the security codes to Gorilla City’s defences. His mind control technology explains the befuddled scientists and Flash’s amnesia because Grodd needs the isotopes to power his devices.

Solovar traced Grodd via an e-mail conversation with Dr Corwin. Lantern says they should call in the other Leaguers, but the Flash is dismissive and races off before Solovar can give him a head band that would have shielded him from Grodd’s mind control device. The Flash reaches the primate lab first and disarms Corwin, but he is ambushed by Grodd. When Lantern and Solovar arrive Grodd tells the mind controlled Flash to attack them. The mind controlled Flash knocks out Solovar and Green Lantern is forced to stun his team-mate in self-defence. By then Grodd and Corwin have retreated behind a force field. Their last act before fleeing is to engage a reactor that generates an expanding sphere of glowing energy. Even Green Lantern’s ring is unable to stop it expanding through the walls of the laboratory and into the city. Once the energy sphere reaches the city limits it vanishes taking the city with it. The only thing left is behind is the barren earth were Central City once stood.

Commentary

The Brave And The Bold

The Brave and the Bold is one of those phrases, like “Secret Origin” or “Year One”, that permeated DC Comics marketing. The original Brave and the Bold was a seminal DC comic-book that ran from the late 1950s into the 1980s. It was originally an anthology title and was one of the books that DC used for trialling new ideas and characters. The Justice League made their first appeared in a three issue run in Brave and the Bold #28-30. Later on, the title became a team-up book focusing on pairs of characters from across the DC universe. The particular characters rotated each week, but it was eventually fixed as Batman plus one other random character. It’s in this format, as a Batman team-up book, that Brave and the Bold became the prototype for the Batman: Brave And The Bold cartoon.

The Archeologists

In the teaser, the male archeologist exclaims “It appears to be older than the Proconsul africanus!” The fossil Proconsul africanus is from the extinct proconsul genus. Its name means before Consul (a well-known chimpanzee in Britain at the time of its discovery) – so literally “before chimpanzees”. The current status of the proconsul genus is debated, it is either an early ancestor of modern apes or a relative of our earliest ancestors from the time the apes were diverging from the monkeys. The implication for the origin of Gorilla City is that Grodd’s people are a naturally evolved species which separated from normal gorillas millions of years ago as compared to the comic book gorillas who were made intelligent recent history by exposure to alien radiation.

The first proconsul skull was discovered by an expedition run the by husband and wife archaeological team of Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey. It would seem that the archaeologists in this episode are an homage to the Leakeys as they are listed in the credits as “Dr Louis” and “Dr Mary.” They’re voiced by Catherine Cavadini and Richard Doyle. Cavadini is probably best known as Blossom from the Powerpuff Girls and has also played Adam Strange’s wife, Alanna, in Batman: The Brave And The Bold. Doyle has played a couple of minor voices in Justice League and recently played Senator Kelly in Wolverine and the X-Men.

The Flash

In the comic books, the second Flash, Barry Allen was killed off in 1985, and his costume was passed on to Wally West (his former sidekick, Kid Flash). The Flash in Justice League is based on the 1980s/90s version of Wally West, although his secret identity isn’t confirmed until the Season Two finale. Wally was less serious than his counterparts and wasn’t adverse to flirting with the ladies. He hid his feelings of inadequacy in his new role with a mask of humour.

During the late-1980′s the Flash’s superspeed was treated in a more “realistic” manner than it had been before. He was limited to loving at only around Mach one and he needed to replenish the calories he spent. Sustained use of his superspeed would leave him ravenous and would result in scenes of him downing burgers, hotdogs, or any other food stuff to keep his superfast metabolism fuelled. The scene in the diner and with the burger vendor parallels that trend.

The Flash’s comic often opened with a narration something like, “My name is Wally West, I am the Fastest Man Alive, The Flash.” The Flash is the Fastest Man Alive in the same way that Superman is The Man of Steel or the Batman is the Dark Knight.

The Flash’s Hallucinations

The distortions the Flash undergoes in his hallucinations are homages to old comic book storylines/covers. The opening hallucination shows the secret origin of the second Flash (Barry Allen) a police scientist who is caught in an electro-chemical explosion and becomes the Flash. While the personality and secret identity of this Flash is that of Wally West (as established in “Starcrossed”), it would appear that his back story and occupation are the same as Barry Allen. This is confirmed in the JLU episodes “” where we see Wally at work in the police lab. The other hallucinations are from the following covers:

Fat Flash: The Flash #115 (Sept 1960) “The Day Flash Weighed 1,000 Pounds!” The Flash fights gorilla Grodd.

Skinny Flash: Mirrors are typical manipulations of the Mirror Master, e.g. The Flash #105 (Feb-March 1959):

Brainy Flash: The Flash #177 (March 1968) – “The Swell-Headed Super-Hero” vs. Trickster:

Puppet Flash: The Flash #133 (Dec 1962) “The Plight of the Puppet Flash!” vs. Abra Kadabra:

Gorilla Flash: Flash Annual #12 (1999) – Part of the JLApe crossover – a plan by Grodd’s supporters to turn the Justice League into gorilla’s just as Gorilla City is about to join the United Nations.

Gorilla Grodd and Solovar

Gorilla Grodd, Solovar and Gorilla City were introduced during 1959, DC’s own Year of the Gorilla. Their first appearance was in the story “The Menace of the Super-Gorilla!” from The Flash 106 (May, 1959). It was written by John Broome and drawn by Carmine Infantino under the editorial supervision of Julius Schwartz. The super-intelligent gorillas of Gorilla City had been normal gorilla until they were given intelligence by exposure to a strange meteorite or by the machinations of aliens (it changes on the telling). Their utopian city existed separate from the normal world behind a special cloaking force field. The only human that knew its location were the Flashes.

In the original comics Solovar was the King of Gorilla City. He was captured by human hunters and played dumb to protect the secret of Gorilla City. It was Solovar who had the “force of mind” power and Grodd followed him to Central City to try and discover his secrets. Grodd then return to Gorilla City in order conquer it. Solovar teamed up with Barry Allen (the second Flash) to stop Grodd. That story from Flash #106 serves as the approximate basis for this episode, but it didn’t original feature Green Lantern or the rest of the Justice League.

Grodd is played by Powers Boothe, President Noah Daniels from the 24 TV series. Solovar is played by David Ogden Stiers, Major Charles Winchester from M*A*S*H. Boothe and Stiers have both played versions of characters in DC animated movies that were loosely based on the DCAU. Boothe played Lex Luthor (normally played by Corey Burton in Superman TAS) in Superman: Brainiac Attacks and Stiers played the Penguin (normally played by Paul Williams in Batman TAS) in Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. Stiers also has the dubious distinction of playing J’onn J’onzz in the 1997 JLA TV pilot.

Misc

• This episode only features the Flash and Green Lantern, the rest of the Justice League don’t appear until the second episode.
• Dr Sarah Corwin is played by Virginia Madsen. Genre fans may know her as Louise Marcus, the love interest in Highlander II. She played Wonder Woman’s mother, Hippolyta, in the 2009 Wonder Woman DVD animated movie and Raven’s mother, Arella, in the Teen Titans cartoon series. She returned as Roulette for the Justice League Unlimited episodes “The Cat and the Canary” and “Grudge Match.”
• It’s normally assumed that the city where the League’s adventures take place is Metropolis, but that’s a city with a well established port. The landscape shown at the end of this episode is decidedly land lock which, then taken with the Flash’s hallucination, would imply that it’s Central City.
• Solovar steals a parked car from somebody who resembles the comedian George Carlin. He sounds a bit like him as well.
• Solovar: “Get your filthy paws off me you stinking human!” – Solovar’s first line to the Flash. A Planet of the Apes reference. “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!” is the first line spoken by Charlton Heston’s George Taylor to one of the apes in the 1968 original. It’s become one of the most famous lines in movie history and was reprised by Michael Clarke Duncan’s Attar as “Get your stinking hands off me, you damn dirty human!” for the 2001 remake. Maybe the producers aren’t allowed to use the worn “damn.”
• The Flash: “Having fun Jojo” – Mojo Jojo is the chimpanzee enemy of the Powerpuff Girls. But this cannot be Mojo Jojo as there is only one Mojo Jojo in the world and this is not he. Two Mojo Jojos is too many and three is right out.

Opinion

Highlights

The Flash’s hallucinations whilst under Corwin’s mind control are brilliant.

Oddities

If the Flash was fast enough to pull the driver and passenger out of the falling truck why didn’t he do that first of all then they were driving through the city.

My thoughts

This episode is a considerable change of pace from the last story (the grim War World). I’d normally associate Dini with the comic book’s references and comedy, and McDuffie with the sharp dialogue. All those factors are in here in handsome measure. I really don’t know how the writing efforts for this episode broke down, but it certainly helps to have three such strong talents as Fogel, Dini, and McDuffie on the same episode. This is also Dwayne McDuffie’s first writing credit for Justice League TV series. He’d become a significant member of the production team in later seasons and would go on to write the Justice League comic book.

I like Green Lantern’s constant sense of exasperation with the Flash. It’s handled nicely with some nice animation on Lantern’s expressions. The choice to focus on Solovar for the first episode was surprising as Grodd doesn’t really get established as a threat until the closing scenes. However, he’s a strong presence and serves the comedy moments better than the villain would have.

This year, 2009, is the international Year of the Gorilla – a drive to bring peoples attention to the plight of one of our nearest and most expressive relatives. This particular year marks 50 years since the first real scientific investigation into gorillas and by co-incidence it’s also fifty years since an explosion of gorilla and ape characters at DC Comics.

Gorilla Covers

The old comics were often driven by their covers. When artist Carmine Infantino was working with Julius Schwartz he’d design a cover then challenge Schwartz to fix a story to it. Either further back, DC publisher Irwin Donenfeld kept a ledger of sales and paid attention to any blips:

“All of a sudden, I would see a spike. Why did this one go up? Well, it had  a dinosaur on the cover. From then on, every month, one of the editors had magazine with a dinosaur on it.”

Irwin Donenfeld, pg 12, Alter Ego #26 (July 2003)

The sales of Strange Adventures #8 (May 1951) caused just such a blip. It was a science fiction title that featured stories that wouldn’t have been out-of-place in the Outer Limits or Twilight Zone. One particular 10-page story, “Evolution Plus” by Gardner Fox and Bob Oksner, featured a man’s brain trapped in the body of an ape. Julius Schwartz, the editor of DC’s science fiction titles recalled:

I remember him [Irwin Donenfeld] running into my office, “What happened to Strange Adventures #8?” I said, “Well, let’s look at the cover.” We did, and it had the following scene: we see it takes place in a zoo. We see a cage, and inside the case there’s a gorilla and he’s holding in his hand a slate and prints down, “Dear Helen, please help he – I’m the victim of a horrible scientific experiment.”

We decided perhaps it was beacause the gorilla was acting like a human being. Irwin says, “Let’s do it again.” We did another cover scene – I think it was a court scene, with a gorilla testifying. And we did a third one and Irwin say, “That’s it. Gorilla covers!” We started to use gorilla covers until Irwin said in desperation, “Stop! No more than one gorilla cover a month!”

Julius Schwartz, pg 13, Alter Ego #26 (July 2003)

Thereafter, gorilla covers – and the justification behind them – became part of DC legend. It wasn’t just the science fiction titles either, gorillas started popping up across the superhero line as well.

1959 in particular

The 1959 seems to be when the explosion happened: Superman fought Titano in Superman #127 (February 1959) and befriended Beppo in Superboy #76 (October 1959). The long running strip, Congo Bill, was transformed into a gorilla strip when the adventurer learnt how to swap minds with the Congorilla in Action Comics #248 (January 1959). However, the Detective Chimp stories, which had run as a back up since Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #4 (July-August 1952),  faded away in 1959. These characters still remain popular with Congorilla now set to join the Justice League.

Some of the Detective Chimp stories had been written by John Broome and Carmine Infantino – the creative team on the The Flash comic. So when Broome, Infantino and Schwartz were looking around for new villains for the Flash it wasn’t entirely surprising that they ended up with a simian foe. Gorilla Grodd first appeared in The Flash #106 (April–May 1959) — see 1959 again!! There may be another reason 1959 was the launch point for so many gorilla characters.

This year, 2009, is the Year of the Gorilla, fifty years after the first appearance of these gorilla characters. Now I’m not suggesting the Year of the Gorilla is celebrating Gorilla Grodd, although it sounds like one of his schemes, but 1959 was also the year that scientist George Schaller spent living with gorillas in Central Africa. He later published a popular book about his experiences and called 1959 The Year of the Gorilla. It was Schaller’s study, started in the year that the greatest gorilla super villain appeared, which proved gorillas were gentle herbivores and not the monsters that popular culture assumed them to be.

The 2009 year of the Gorilla is important because gorilla populations face severe threats:

Some gorilla populations are the object of concerted conservation and restoration efforts. However, gorillas as a whole remain endangered and continue to face severe threats. All the great ape species of Africa – the bonobos, chimpanzees and gorillas- and the orangutans of Southeast Asia are in steep decline, and the rate of loss is increasing virtually everywhere. The conservation of viable wild populations of each species, necessary to prevent their extinction, represents a difficult challenge to humanity. Not only are these species humankind’s closest relatives, they also play a key role in their forest homes, which in turn regulate the global climate. A failure to save them from extinction would truly be an irreversible loss and a bad omen for humanity’s future prospects. Current conservation efforts need to be widened, as trends suggest that all great ape species could become extinct in the wild in the 21st century, and some even within a few decades. New approaches are needed to reverse this trajectory.

Year of the Gorilla Website