Book Review: Planet of the Apes Adventures

The simian sci-fi staple, in the mighty Marvel manner! Relive the classic films Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes as Marvel's 1970s color comic adaptations are collected in one action-packed volume! When a crew of astronauts crash-lands on a strange and desolate world, they discover a society of apes with heightened intelligence and speech! And here, a race of mute humans are their slaves! Can the mission's leader, Taylor, fight his way free and hold onto his humanity? What is the shocking secret of this Planet of the Apes? And what unfathomable danger lies beneath the surface? Find out when a second spaceship makes its way to this uncanny world and another astronaut faces a battle for survival, with the fate of the entire planet at stake!

Planet of the Apes Adventures: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus was published April 18th, 2023. It collects the full run of Adventures on the Planet of the Apes comics issues #1-11.

In 1968, 20th Century Fox released a film loosely based on the 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle. In 1970, the sequel film followed. In 1974, Marvel Comics (under the Curtis imprint) began producing a black and white magazine with both all-new tales set in this world along with the start of adaptation of the first films. In 1975, Marvel took those black and white adaptations, colorized them and released them as a newsstand comic. Forty-eight years later, we get a new hardcover collection of those color comics.

If you're an Apes-addict like myself (it is a favorite franchise right up there with the best of them), this release brings a welcoming smile. Since the adaptation was done years after each of the films, these comics are a shot-for-shot, line-by-line recreation of the celluloid source material. Nothing is left off the table, and nothing that hit the cutting room floor gets slipped in. The story has no real surprises and no major flubs. The covers are pretty decent though with a variety of artists from the Marvel Bullpen taking their turns at rendering ape-antics.

The real downside of this new release though, is the price. $100 for eleven issues and no extra features is a bit steep. Sure, trying to find the individual back issues is going to cost one a good bit of change (both the comics and the black and white magazines are hard to find), but this new collection might be hard to justify for that price. Glad the individual issues are up on the Marvel Unlimited service for reading (for now).