Oh, and there's another back-up feature written by Tom Peyer. Mike McKone takes up the pencils in Karl Kesel's absence and while it all looks alright, the story is even more pointless than the previous "Official History of the Marvel Apes Universe" installments. This one focusses on Iron Mandrill (...) and some of the events of Secret Wars II, which raises the question, "how do you parody self-parody?" It's pretty sad. It also prompts me to mention that, once again, the book's rating is not weighted but exclusive to the first (main) story. Except for the in-house Marvel parodies (the Insimians are Coming!) tacked on at the end, you're better off closing the book when you've finished the feature story. Then carefully open the back cover to see the latter funny bits. Careful, though. Read Full Review
Ultimately, there's silly, and then there's dumb. This book probably resides somewhere in between. To play a broken record, Marvel Apes is basically what you expected, only marginally better. Kesel has actually impressed me quite a bit with his ability to pull a serviceable story out of such a gimmicky product, but also to that end, if he would have avoided the wordplay jokes (or at least scaled them back a bit), it could've been even better. Read Full Review
But I just can't get past how "off" the concept of Marvel Apes feels. Marvel made its name being "The House of Ideas" - and frankly, swiping an old shtick from your competitor just seems like a bad idea. Read Full Review
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