History Behind DCUO: Gorillas A-Go-Go!

Gorillas!
I know what you're thinking. "Really? Gorillas? What, is there a history of gorillas in DC?" To which I'd say, "Of course!"

DC's history with gorillas goes back decades. Look back at DC's Silver Age output, and you'll notice a strange, recurring thing... Taro, the Gorilla Witch in Strange Adventures #186. The Mod Gorilla Boss in Strange Adventures #201, who fought Animal Man in one of his five appearances. The Living Bomb Beast and the Gorilla Mob Boss of Gotham City, who came to blows with the Caped Crusader in Detective Comics #339 and Batman #75, respectively, and Mogo the Bat-Ape, who helped the Dynamic Duo in Batman #114, and who is my favorite Silver Age one-shot Bat character.

There were even recurring characters, like Beppo the Super Monkey, Monsieur Mallah and Gorilla Grodd. The mark our primate pals left on comics is undeniable. But the question remains- why?

Surprisingly, we know. Strange Adventures was one of a number of anthology titles DC ran during the Atomic Age and the Silver Age, and ran predominently science-fiction stories. There weren't any recurring characters for quite a few years. Issue 8, May 1951, had a cover feature entitled "Evolution- Plus!" by Gardner Fox. The issue concerned a crook getting an evolution ray and causing hijinks. The contents aren't terribly important to the issue at hand, however. The cover is. Sales apparently spiked on this issue.

Julius Schwartz, a great fellow who was editor of various titles from the mid-1940s when he cut his (comic) teeth on All-Star Comics to the 1980s, when Superman tearfully bid adieu to his editor on the cover to the second half of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", kept ledgers carefully tracking sales of sales of comics. So, while I'm not 100% sure about this, I'd say Julie was the fellow who is responsible for the surge of gorillas in comics.

And once that was observed, the flood gates- or, shall we say, gorilla gates- were open. Over the course of the next twenty years, gorillas went from being something that was occasionally in comics, like anything else, to being a massive part. Superman fought at least a half dozen gorillas, and even became a gorilla. Hawkman fought flying gorillas in one very inexplicable comic, even for the Silver Age. And of course, the Flash came to blows with a certain recurring gorilla rogue multiple times throughout the ages.

Even decades later, the legacy of Gorillas marches on. Secret Origins #40, May 1989, was dedicated completely to primates, featuring the Secret Origins of Gorilla City, DC longtimer Congorilla (Ran for thirty years in Action!) and Detective Chimp. In 1999, DC had an entire summer event in the annuals called JLApe, wherein Grodd turns the heroes into gorillas. Even Alan Moore has alluded to the legendary gimmicks of the Silver Age in Promethea, with Crying Gorilla Comix, a nod to Carmine Infantino's claims that the color purple and heroes weeping sold covers.

Of amusing note, the gorilla in the pinstripe suit that you see at in, IIRC, villain clubs is likely an allusion to the aforementioned Mod Gorilla Boss.

Gorilla City
Gorilla City is a long standing feature in the DCU, dating back to Flash #106, April-May 1959. In its first appearance, Gorilla City was largely as it appears today: A brilliant, isolationist city deep in Africa, inhabited solely by hyper-intelligent gorillas.

It's a lovely, distinctly comic book concept, isn't it?

Anyways, as per the aforementioned gorilla centric Secret Origins #40, an alien spaceship crashed into the jungles of Africa. A bunch of curious gorillas then ripped open the spaceship and were briefly enamored with a shiny gem, and then cast it aside. In the original origin for Gorilla City, this was the source of their intelligence, similar to Green Lantern foe Hector Hammond. The alien inside the ship ends up worshipped as a god, and helps educate the gorillas, as well as instructing them to construct a city. When the gorillas are holding the crystal, two beams are released. One is pure and straight and strikes the gorilla that will become king: Solovar. The other, warped, hits the gorilla that will become known as Grodd.

Two explorers, Hughes and Albert Westly, find the city and learn of its origin from the alien that was in the ship, a wizened yet infant-esque creature worshipped by the gorillas. The two are welcomed by the gorillas and the Mentor, who wishes to escape with the two. However, the warped gorilla ends controlling the two as they escape, causing Hughes to kill the Mentor. While Westly is able to escape back to civilization, whereupon he is promptly stuck in a madhouse, Hughes isn't so lucky and are beaten to death. It turns out the whole thing was a gambit by Grodd to ensure isolation for Gorilla City.

The next time the City would see an outsider would be when Barry Allen, the Flash, was welcomed to the city whilst searching for the diabolical Grodd. He became friends with Solovar, helping him against Grodd time and time again, until Barry died in the Crisis on Infinite Earths. In the time following his death, Gorilla City began to open up more. In JLA Annual #3, part of the summer 1999 JLApe event, Solovar was prepared to open up Gorilla City to the United Nations before he was assassinated. More on that later.

Do note that Gorilla City has never been on an island in the comics, nor did the rocketship survive. It was explicitly destroyed by gorillas. There also isn't a volcano. I'm not entirely sure why the changes were made to DCUO, but it does help the game stand on its own, however small.

Gorilla Grodd
Arguably the most famous Gorilla in comics, Gorilla Grodd has been a thorn in the Scarlet Speedster's side since Flash #106, April-May 1959. This makes him one of Barry's oldest rogues, postdating only Captain Cold and the Turtle. In his first appearance, the psychic gorilla quests for the secret of "Force of Mind", or mind control. This story also has the frankly hilaroius Fred Pearson, a friend of Barry Allen's who starred in a popular stage show called "The Great Gorilla". The reason this is so funny is because the show apparently only has a single set, a living room, and stars a gorilla.

Anywho, the Force of Mind ends up being held within Solovar, the king of Gorilla City. Barry ends up having to help the king defeat the warped ape. Grodd ended up being a favorite of John Broome, apparenlty, appearing several other times in the next few years. For intance, he was involved in the positively memetic Flash #115, September 1960- the infamous "The Day the Flash Weighed 1000 Pounds!", wherein he fat-ifies the Flash. He was also a charter member of the Rogues in Flash #155, September 1965, though he is traditionally not on very positive terms with any of the Rogues, let alone a member.

However, the next big appearance for Grodd was in the 1970s title Secret Society of Super-Villains. While he was part of the Society from issue 1 on, it was in issue 8, August 1977 where Grodd actually became leader of the Society, pre-dating another infamous gorilla to lead the Society. This helped solidify Grodd as a "big" villain, along with appearing in the Challange of the Superfriends cartoon, though he lacked his trademark psychic abilities in that. Heck, he wasn't even the right color- he was brown.

Post-Crisis, he was a thorn in the sides of the Teen Titans, when he formed Tartarus, a super-group of villains consisting of mostly also-rans. He came to blows with the then new Flash, Wally West, and was defeated in part by Rex the Wonder Dog. And in his most ambitious, and mimicked in other media, Grodd attempted to turn the entire human species into gorillas in JLApe, an aforementioned event that makes up a big part of his arc in DCUO.

Interestingly, though he has never, to my knowledge, met the Ultra-Humanite, his hatred of "false" gorillas DOES stem from the comics. In Salvation Run #4, April 2008, he murdered Mnsr. Mallah, a gorilla artifiically made intelligent by his eventual boyfriend, a disembodied French brain, calling him a false gorilla that dares compare itself to a son of Gorilla City. Then he beat Mallah to death with the broken case of the Brain. Then the Joker kicked him off a cliff, where he was (wrongly, of course) assumed dead. Amusing aspect to keep for the game.

Gorillabomb
The amusing concept of a "Gorillabomb" that permeates the Grodd chapters is, amusingly enough, from the comics. The Gorillabomb was prominently featured in the JLApe annuals from Summer 1999. The storyline involved King Solovar being assassinated, supposedly by the "Human Supremacy Movement", but in truth by a secret cabal (Is there any other?) of evil gorillas called Simian Scarlet, being manipulated in turn by Grodd. Solovar had planned to open Gorilla City up and join the United Nations, but the perpetually scheming Grodd would have other plans.

Following the assassination, Prince Ulgo (more on him later) takes over the throne and declares war on humans at the UN. There, a Gorillabomb detonates, turning the UN Assembly into gorillas. The Flash (Wally West), Aquaman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Kyle Raynor and the Martian Manhunter are also turned. The rest of the very fun event has the various JLApes coming to blows with the Simian Scarlet, each themed after a different archetype (For instance: Grimm, the mob boss, or Admiral Tralfagor, the pirate captain) before turning their eyes on Grodd.

Of note is the way the Gorillabomb works. Rather than relying on already wonky evolution science, the Gorillabomb goes full on comic science and reconfigures your Morphogenetic Signature. The Morphogentetic Field, AKA the Red, is similar to the Green that binds all plant life in the Swamp Thing comics.

Surprisingly, the Gorillabomb has not been limited to JLApe and DCUO. It appeared as a major plot point in the last sesaon of Justice League Unlimited, wherein Lex Luthor discovered rival for leader of the Secret Society of Supervillains, Gorilla Grodd, had planned to detonate one and turn the planet's population into gorillas. Lex found the idea moronic and took over. It also appeared in Brave and the Bold episode "Terror on Dinosaur Island!", as a thematicly similar E-Ray that in and of itself may be a throwback to Evolution Plus.

Ultra-Humanite
Tip your hat, boys, for the oldest villain in DC Universe Online. Hailing from the long ago Action Comics #13, June 1939, he's just a month older than Batman and barely a year older than his first villain, Superman.

The Ultra-Humanite first appeared, as one could surmise from the above, as a Superman villain. He did not, however, appear as the albino gorilla most are familiar with. His first appearance was really strange, and involved the Ultra-Humanite masterminding a taxicab racket business in preparation for world domination. He had zero motivation. He just wanted to control the world. He even used the phrase world domination. In this story, he is an invalid confined to a wheel chair. In the end of the issue, the Humanite is assumed dead following his escape rocket exploding. He returned to trouble the early Man of Steel a handful of times as his first arch nemesis. Of note, was an appearance in Action Comics #21 that also introduced Terry Curtis who, forty years later, would become an important character in Roy Thomas' All-Star Squadron series. Action Comics #20 introduced the idea that he was capable of transplanting his brain into other bodies, namely that of Hollywood actress Delores Winters. This has became his second most used and remembered of his bodies.

Following the introduction of Luthor, and subsequent balding thereof, Jerry Siegal chose to retire the Humanite rather than have two bald mad scientists fighting against the Humanite. He lurked in limbo for decades afterwords. The Superman Family title in the 1970s had a feature entitled "Mr. and Mrs. Superman", which starred the Earth-2, or Golden Age, Superman and his wife, Lois Lane-Kent. In these backups the Ultra-Humanite was reintroduced.Once again, he used the brain-swapping gimmick. Although his gorilla form still wasn't introduced, he did switch his brain into a giant ant at one point. That earns style points, right?

His big break came in Justice League of America, vol. 1, #s 195-198,October-December 1981. In this arc, the Justice League and Earth-2's Justice Society came to blows against the aforementioned Secret Society of Supervillains and their new leader, who is revealed to the Humanite in an all new body, and the one that would be his most inconic: The albino gorilla with the elongated head. Interestingly, a story a few years earlier in Detective Comics #482, March 1979, starred a villain named Xavier Simon that also transfered his mind into an albino gorilla. Perhaps that was a "prototype" of the Humanite, similar to the Marvel Monsters that were called the Hulk.

The Humanite also meneced the All-Star Squadron and their time-traveling children in the Generation Saga that kicked off Infinity Inc., starting in March 1984. Following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Humanite's history was, understandably, tinkered with. He wasn't seen too much until Geoff Johns used him in the JSA arc "Stealing Thunder", in 2002. In that arc, he switched his brain into Johnny Thunder's body and uses the Thunderbolt to take over the world, finally realizing his goal of global domination.

Then he gets shot in the head by the Crimson Avenger.

Of course, that didn't stop him from reappearing. In Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz' Booster Gold, he was a member of the Time Stealers, a pretty cool grouping of time-traveling villains. We actually saw where his original body came from in one appearance, in Justice League of America vol. 2 #7, July 2007. The albino gorilla was Nzame, a rare gorilla born into Gorilla City with healing powers. In a way, this makes Grodd's hatered of the "false" gorilla even funnier, considering that the body he inhabits is a holy gorilla.

There have also been two other Post-Crisis Ultra-Humanites, one in Legends of the DC Universe and the other in Palmiotti and Grey's Power Girl, but they really don't have much bearing here, so we'll let them slide.

Prince Ulgo
Mindblowing to me as well as likely you, the first boss in the Containment Facility alert is, in fact, from comics. Prince Ulgo first appeared in JLA Annual #3, part of the JLApe story. As mentioned before, he was the Prince of Gorilla City, and Solovar's nephew. Following the assassination of Solovar, Ulgo took the throne and declared war on the human species.

Ulgo later takes control of a giant robotic gorilla, Groggamesh, and begins to lay waste to Metropolis in Superman Annual #11. A newly un-Apified Superman reveals to Ulgo that his uncle wasn't assassinated by humans under their own free will, but instead were being manipulated by the Simian Scarlet. Then, as giant robots in comics are apt to do, Groggamesh goes out of control and is put out of commision by Superman. With the newly revealed treachery revealed to him, Ulgo agrees to help Superman and the rest of the JLA. In Martian Manhunter Annual #2, Ulgo fully apologizes for Gorilla City's actions during JLApe, and agrees to make full reparations. He's actually pretty cool in this appearance, humble and ready to carry on the dream of his uncle, that of human and gorilla co-existance.

Yeah, he's not a villain in his only appearances. Strange, huh?