This month, listener and first-time (sort of) podcaster John Steib joins Paul to discuss the 1976 one-shot, Super-Heroes vs. Super Gorillas! Our heroes battle the Gorilla Boss of Gotham City, King Krypton, and of course, Gorilla Grodd! Plus, we have the final installment of “Catch Ya Later, Calculator” with Shawn M. Myers! Grab some bananas off the tree and join in the fun!
This month’s instocktrades.com selections:
https://www.instocktrades.com/products/dec237191/jlape-the-complete-collection-tp
https://www.instocktrades.com/products/mar257222/dc-finest-science-fiction-the-gorilla-world-tp
All about gorillas and comics:
https://comicsalliance.com/history-gorillas-comic-books/
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“Cloud Dancer ” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Here’s my secret question if you did a volume
Two of this with tag line you’ll go ape for this issue
Call it dc special mighty Gorillas who would your cover star and what stories would be in it and bonus ?
My cover stars would Kongo rilla and Tarzan back to fighting bad guys .
1. Have a Conville story one of the later stories where he can become con gorilla.
2. A Tarzan story .
3. I get commissioned a brave in the bold style team up with Tarzan and Congo bill where has his magic ring . Ana Tarzan knows he can become a gorilla.
4. A Tarzan puzzle and jungle word search and bonus comic of Congo bill. His first strip
John was a great guest! My guess is after he records with Shag he won’t want to podcast ever again, so we’ll just have to savor this episode.
Very odd that the Super Gorillas was a one shot! With postal regs being what they were back in, you can bet DC hoped to do more issues of the series–maybe they did under different titles?
I profiled this issue of DETECTIVE on my Aquaman Shrine blog because of the Sea King’s cameo. Since the JLA were drawn by exactly *one* artist during the ENTIRE 1970s, getting to see the team rendered by someone else was a nice treat. Jim Aparo, Nick Cardy, and now Marshall Rogers all got a brief shot. Maybe the JLA as a group made other appearances, too…
Always a fun listen!
I haven’t finished this episode yet, but I have a quick comical comment. I only owned three or four issues of DC Special. So last month when you announced that you were covering Super-Heroes Battle Super-Gorillas, I was excited because that was one of the few DC Specials I owned. Plus, I owned the finale of the Calculator saga.
So image my surprise when the episode began and the issue you’re covering isn’t the special I owned. Turns out there are two Super-Heroes Battle Super-Gorillas specials. The other one is DC Special #16 and features Superman, Batman, Flash, Wonder Woman, Gorilla Grodd and Titano.
It was mentioned in this very show, and Paul said it’s on the docket, so HURRAH!
Another fun episode! The plot in the Batman story dealing with $1,000 bills caught my interest, since I like unusual coins and currency. Large denomination bills for the public ($500/$1,000/$5,000/$10,000) were last printed in 1945, and officially withdrawn from circulation in 1969. But realistically they were already out of circulation due to collectors holding onto them. This story was originally published in 1952, so it was quite possible for rich people to handle $1,000 bills.
I’m reminded of reading the Raymond Chandler classic, The Long Goodbye, which was published in 1953, and featured a $5000 bill quite prominently. Without getting into spoilers, it was obviously rare enough even by that time that Philip Marlowe made a pretty big deal about it, well beyond the impressive face value of the bill itself (which research I’d conducted at the time… I read the book in 2012… determined to be worth about $40,000 after adjusting for inflation).
(My own research on the topic was published at https://transformingseminarian.blogspot.com/2012/05/funny-yet-authentic-money.html)
I’ve been waiting for this one. I vividly remember being seven years old, reading this while eating McDonald’s in the back seat of my dad’s car and being very disturbed by the casual brain surgery in the Batman story.
Question – Do the Giant sized Super-Team Family books fall under the umbrella of this podcast? I’d love to hear the Challengers of the Unknown issues get the DC Specialcast treatment.
Great episode and great guests Paul.
I have to say I have never heard of the King Krypton story. What a classic Silver Age story. The devolving gorilla Kryptonian wasn’t enough. Let’s throw in some displaced Romans! Amazing.
I have to say the Batman story did sound familiar! Wasn’t the gorilla story in Batman Family #482 with someone’s mind in a gorilla hoping to then be transplanted into Bruce’s to enjoy the life of a playboy billionaire? Sort of close?
And good recap of all the monkey/ape books!
Great episode guys. Even if you did make a monkey out of me! I fully expected the episode to be about DC Special #16! It was about Super-Heroes and Dupergorillas and it was even the shows 16th episode! Nope! It was the OTHER DC special about superheroes battling super gorillas. I knew there was a lot of monkey business going on at DC in the Silver Age. They knew gorillas on the cover would increase sales, but I didn’t know Suoerman fought two different giant gorillas! This is like finding out there’s two separate movies starring both Wings Hauser and Bo Hopkins teaming up and battling zombified citizens in isolated towns with contaminated water supplies.
Excellent show – I guess it’s true what they say about everything being better with gorillas in it.
And I now forget which of you two came up with it, but Krypton Kong is truly a better name than King Krypton. In fact, I think you should make a claim to it in case it ever gets used…
Otherwise, John is a great guest, and besides being the same age, I have to say note that I can also really relate to his story about getting the Tomb of Dracula issue and not really liking it. I had a similar experience – although not my first comic, another kid in school gave me an issue of Swamp Thing (can’t remember which but I’m pretty sure it was one of the Wrightson-drawn ones) and I just did not like it: it scared me a bit (I was very much not a horror kid) and also kind of grossed me out. It didn’t keep me from reading other comics, but it would be years before I would pick up anything with Swamp Thing in it.
p.s. Agents of Atlas is indeed awesome.
And it’s another great show. I really enjoyed the discussion of the stories, and well done to John on his double debut
Loved the gorillas in comics history segment, Paul. Is the Gorilla Boss of Gotham City related to the Mod Gorilla Boss from Animal Man?
One nice aspect of DC reprints back then was the difference in paper size between the Golden and Bronze Age giving us the cool extra bits of art at the top of the page, eg ‘Superman Vs King Krypton’.
And so it is truly ‘see you later, Calculator’. I have a lot of good nostalgic feelings about this serial but not for the villain himself, he was a gimmick more than a character. If he’d actually been given an origin, his powers explained, maybe I’d feel differently.
Oh boy, if there is anything better than superheroes, it superheroes w/ apes! I was familiar w/ the Gorilla Boss of Gotham and, of course, Grodd, but King Krypton. The bit about Jimmy Olsen communicating w/ the “lost tribe” of Romans via Latin reminded me of Amara “Magma” Aquila’s origin in the New Mutants. She also came from a “lost Roman civilization” in the Amazon.
Also, I had to learn Latin for my graduate school program, but we only learned to read it and translate it since almost no one speaks it these days. The Metropolis school system must have some pretty specialized programs indeed.
Of course, my favorite simian character is Detective Bobo T. Chimp. Chimps aren’t technically gorillas, but they are close cousins.
A whole episode on Apes well that was… bananas. Still cool episode. I can’t wait for the next episode.
A whole episode on Appea. Not my thing still was cool to hear ya’ll go three it. And there wasn’t to much monkeying around.,
Ah, sweet gateway drug. This was the second comic I ever got. I wanted it for Batman and became Superman and Flash fans after reading. It didn’t occur to me until you compared Wayne Boring and Curt Swan that I was lured in by “old” versions of the characters. During that first year of my Batman fandom from Fall 1976 to Fall 1977, I saw Batman drawn (in new stories and reprints) by Ernie Chua, Lew Sayre Schwartz, Carmine Infantino, Jim Aparo, Irv Novick, Neal Adams, Marshall Rogers and Walt Simonson, so I guess I got used to different interpretations right off the bat. Bad Pun. I know.
I was also glad to see Robin in this comic. He wasn’t in my first Batman, and I did wonder where he was. My first Batman Family let me know that Robin had gone to college.
As a grand old man of five, I couldn’t read very well but my mom has said my interest in comics helped that immensely. She said after watching the Batman TV show reruns, I was eager to learn to read so I could get Batman comics.
One other thing…I’m sure this comic was spurred by the 1976 King Kong movie. My relatives and friends all though the heroes were fighting King Kong on the cover. Kong was everywhere back then. I had view master reels, a Pocket Flix (remember those?) and a board game of him.
Very entertaining show. Please keep them coming.
This was a fun episode! John was a great guest, just as he was on his SECOND appearance on JS Presents. I enjoyed hearing his origin story!
I bought this book at a flea market sometime in the mid-80s, so my copy is a bit ragged. The cover is what always really jumps out at me on this one too. Ernie Chua/Chan was indeed the busiest cover artists at DC at the time. Despite his incredible talent, some of those…well, the aren’t great. This one is simple, but effective and well done. The stories are pure DC plot-driven nuts, but that’s why we love them.
I have the visuals of the final part of the Calculator arc memorized because…Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin! But the story is another matter. I also forgot no explanation is given for his powers. I wonder if Bob had one in mind? Someone should Ask That Answer Man! Great series Paul and Shawn. Looking forward to the Monthly Planet!
I am behind on my podcast listening, and I just realized I missed listening to the Aragones episode! I need to remedy that quickly!
I just
Great episode, Paul. It was nice hearing John Steib on the show. I’ll have to see if he’d like to pull up a stool at the Fantasti-Lounge sometime.
I always enjoy this period of Superman comics for the sheer insanity. Plus, Superman is the fittest man on earth but somehow has a 45-inch waist. I really hope James Gunn borrows some of this story for the Jimmy Olson HBO show.
The Flash story was fun. This is quality kinetic Infantino artwork. Grodd is my favorite rogue. Speaking of Grodd, my nine-year-old has discovered the Flash TV show and is now obsessed. When Grodd appears on the show in season one, my son turned to me with a very serious look and said, “You HAVE to stay away from gorillas. The first thing they’ll do is rip off your wiener!” I don’t remember that being covered in this issue, but beware.
Terrific finale to the Catch You Later, Calculator saga. Can’t believe this hasn’t gotten an absolute edition. No matter what you’re covering, it’s always great hearing Paul and Shawn podcasting together.
Thank you to everyone for the kind words about my debut (Sorry, Shag) podcast on the Fire and Water Network. I had so much fun recording it and even enjoyed listening to it once it was released. I don’t know if the rest of you do that when you release an episode, but I really wanted to hear how I came across. What can I say? I’m new at this. Paul is an awesome host and Shag was pretty great, too. I would love to participate in more shows if the opportunity arises. Once again, comic books give me joy as does this amazing podcasting community. Thanks again!