Gorilla Warfare

[Henson-migration]

I was really young during the Vietnam war. I don't recall my parents ever talking about it to me, but I do remember seeing some 6:00 news reports. Joe Kuberts cover to Star Spangled War Stories pretty much sums up what I thought of Gorilla Warfare at the time.

 

[rob_react]

All that out of the way, that's one cool book.

 

"You can't pin a medal on a Gorilla"

 

For trivia's sake... Guerilla is the diminutive of guerra, the Spanish word for "war." It means, literally, "little war."

[Aces]

 

Nice copy too!

[PovertyRow]

I was really young during the Vietnam war. I don't recall my parents ever talking about it to me, but I do remember seeing some 6:00 news reports. Joe Kuberts cover to Star Spangled War Stories pretty much sums up what I thought of Gorilla Warfare at the time.

 

 

Sgt Gorilla? Was it a one-shot or did they feature that character in a few issues? That is pretty cool!

[joe_collector]

Oh man, check out WHERE the guy is shooting the poor Gorilla.

 

[aardvark88]

Looks like prototype to blue Beast. THANKS FOR SHARING.

[Red Hook]

DC was famous for regularly featuring a gorilla on their covers......for some unknown reason sales always jumped for those issues.

[buttock]

That's awesome. It's going on the want list!

[Metarog]

Here is a great Starlin "Guerilla Warfare" cover.

 

[Mister_Comics]

How bout that BRAVE & BOLD with the gorilla baseball players? Can't remember what number. 48? 49?

 

(side note) I actually have a old newspaper article from, 1970 CHICAGO TODAY, about gorilla baseball players, and that B&B is mentioned and shown in the article.

[CentaurMan]

"You can't pin a medal on a Gorilla"

 

To be fair, you can't pin a medal on a person either. It would be very painful. That's why you pin it on their UNIFORM. And since Sgt. Gorilla is wearing a uniform, I think he's just as medal-accessible as the next guy.

 

Silly Silver DC hyperbole...

[Red Hook]

Use this link for a nice discussion of.......

 

The Gorilla Age of Comics

[Red Hook]

From the link page.....

 

The late fifties and the sixties are thought of, by most, as the "Silver Age of Comics." Starting with the publication of Showcase #4 in September 1956, which revived the DC Comics character The Flash, superheroes dominated the comics of this era. But with a little research, you will find that something besides superheroes had a hold on comics. When DC published Strange Adventures #8 in May 1951, little did they know that they were really starting The Gorilla Age of Comics!

 

If you start looking at the covers of comics (mostly DC Comics) published in the fifties and all through the sixties, you will notice that gorillas appear on many of the covers. Les Daniels' book, DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes explains this phenomenon:

 

 

The eighth issue of Strange Adventures achieved some sort of cult status. The cover showed a gorilla in a zoo holding up a slate that read, "Please believe me! I am the victim of a terrible scientific experiment!" This "Incredible Story of an Ape with a Human Brain" had strong sales, and [DC editor, Julius] Schwartz recalls that "Irwin Donenfeld called me in and said we should try it again. Finally all the editors wanted to use gorilla covers, and he said no more than one a month."

 

 

In an interview in The Comics Journal #214, Golden and Silver Age artist, Sheldon Moldoff, when asked about DC's science fiction titles, had this to offer:

 

 

"It was a question of trying to find something that sold, and if one issue came out and it happened to sell, then immediately they would follow that type of story. Now, it didn't neccessarily follow through that they were going to sell. Now, I know Jack Schiff, when he was the editor of Batman, he followed sales very well. When he found that a gorilla on covers sold, then you could be damn sure that in an issue or two you're going to have another gorilla story."

 

 

While some believe that Julius Schwartz's story of the "one gorilla a month" and the "gorilla = sales" rules may be an urban legend, there is no doubt that there are a lot of gorillas to be found on the covers of comics published in this era.

 

Even into the seventies, possibly because of the popularity of the Planet of the Apes movies, gorillas kept showing up on covers, even though it tended to be on the covers of books like Tarzan instead of Superboy. But as you will see, even recent comics like Spawn have not been able to ignore the call of the gorilla.

[tth2]

"You can't pin a medal on a Gorilla"

 

To be fair, you can't pin a medal on a person either. It would be very painful. That's why you pin it on their UNIFORM.

 

Actually, you CAN pin a medal or a badge on a person without a uniform and yes, it is VERY painful. Back in the "old" days (1983 for me), when you got your airborne wings after graduating from the Army's jump school, certain of the jump instructors ("black hats") would pin your wings on your uniform but, before you had a chance to put the little fasteners on the sharp points, they would pound the wings HARD into your chest so that those points went right into you. We called them "blood wings".

[PovertyRow]

Sgt Gorilla? Was it a one-shot or did they feature that character in a few issues? That is pretty cool!

 

So I asked this a bit back and no replies at all. Does anyone have the answer?

[Aces]

Sgt Gorilla? Was it a one-shot or did they feature that character in a few issues? That is pretty cool!

 

So I asked this a bit back and no replies at all. Does anyone have the answer?

 

You should know better than to ask that in a forum full of Marvel Zombies.

[PovertyRow]

Sgt Gorilla? Was it a one-shot or did they feature that character in a few issues? That is pretty cool!

 

So I asked this a bit back and no replies at all. Does anyone have the answer?

 

You should know better than to ask that in a forum full of Marvel Zombies.

 

[CentaurMan]

First gorilla cover in comics, from 1936? Anyone know? I posted this in the Golden forum before realizing that there actually was a gorilla thread in Silver. What luck.

 

[PovertyRow]

And a fighting gorilla to boot!