Things I Love 3: Monkeys and Robots (but mostly monkeys)

Like many comic bloggers, I have an inexplicable love of monkeys in comics. Part of it may be from growing up in the 1970s--a time when DC Comics still had an editorial policy carried over from the 60s to feature monkeys on their comics' covers frequently, because comics with monkeys on the cover experienced a sales spike. Blogger Chad Bowers has named his blog after his appreciation of monkeys, and Chris Sims had one of his greatest hits with a post about a gorilla fighting Nazis (from a comic that I loaned him).

Here is my favorite gorilla-related cover, which also explains the value of taking my English classes and adorns my office door:

It's hard to argue with a gun-wielding gorilla. Although I do have to say that I've read these three books, and I am no closer to conquering the world.

Also, Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang hit the trifecta with the Nazi vampire gorillas in the fantastic Dr. Thirteen story from the recent Tales of the Unexpected series, now collected in Dr. Thirteen: Architecture and Morality (a book that I cannot recommend enough, beyond the mere awesomeness of a Nazi vampire gorilla).

This picture also adorns my office wall, as a nice framed, signed print.

However, I never knew how pleasurable the combination of monkeys and robots would be until I saw this image, from Agents of Atlas 1 by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk:

In this picture, M-11: the Human Robot is carrying Gorilla Man so that Gorilla Man can fire four guns simultaneously (and for the kids out there, Gorilla Man is firing rubber bullets, so no one is getting killed).

When I talked to Jeff Parker and inker Kris Justice at HeroesCon in Charlotte this year, I told them that very little in the world has made me as happy as that picture. It is as if someone took the contents of my brain, downloaded them into a computer, and then asked the computer, "What does he want most in the world?" The answer: a robot, carrying a gorilla while the gorilla fires four guns.

The reason for my love of monkeys and robots may be best described by James Kochalka, from his fantastic multimedia work in Monkey vs. Robot: "Why can't we all love each other, monkey and the robot brother?" Though I'm okay with it if monkeys fight robots, too.