Planet of the Apes was a monthly comic series published by Boom! Studios set in the continuity of the classic Planet of the Apes series. Writing was done by Daryl Gregory with art duties by Carlos Magnos and others.
Set 600 years after the events of Battle for the Planet of the Apes but 1300 years before the time of the first film, Ape and Human societies live in an age of uneasy peace. Ripples of dissent are spreading in both species and when a mysterious assassin guns down the beloved Lawgiver, tensions will reach a boiling point!
With the two adopted sisters, Ayala the chimpanzee and Sully the human finding themselves on opposite sides of a coming war. Can one human solve the mystery of the Lawgiver’s murder before war engulfs all of society? Or is this the beginning of the end for Apes and Humans alike?
The series ran for 16 issues before being cancelled, with it's storyline continued in various subsequent specials.
This series contains examples of;
- Adaptational Ugliness: The Apes are drawn to more physically resemble their Real Life counterparts than the makeup effects of the classic series would have allowed.
- Advanced Ancient Acropolis: Mak is this when compared to Ape City from the first film. Where as Ape City was largely agricultural, Mak has an entire industrial zone composed of factories that wouldn't be out of place in the late-1800s. In addition, blimps are a common feature being used for both military and civilian purposes while 1300 years later, the apes considered the concept of flying to be a scientific impossibility.
- Arc Words: "Thus to tyrants".
- Bitter Sweet Ending: Sully, Alaya, and Nix all die in a final stand against the Khan's soldiers though his victory is short lived when the surviving members of Brother Kale's splinter movement detonate a nuclear bomb they brought with them. Destroying city of Mak, the Khan's army, and any characters still alive in the city when it went off. Still though, Julian and Hulss managed to escape the city unharmed and both are shown to live into old age with families of their own.
- Call-Forward: An ongoing development amongst new generations of humans are "The Silents", healthy and cognitive humans who otherwise can't speak. Foreshadowing the eventual status of humans by the first film as little more than mute animals.
- Conspicuously Public Assassination: The Lawgiver is assassinated while teaching the history of Caesar to a group of young ape and human children.
- Cycle of Revenge:
- Distant Epilogue: The book ends showing an adult Julian traversing across the wasteland and ending with him re-uniting with his family.
- Elite Mooks: The White Troop, Nix's handpicked unit of soldiers.
- Expansion Pack World: Being set over a millennium before the events of the first film, the series does a lot to expand on the world of the Apes beyond just the city seen in the first two films. The city the story primarily takes place in, Mak, isn't the same city as one from the first film.
- Evil Counterpart: The Golden Khan to The Lawgiver. Sully even notes they both believe in equality between apes and humans, the Khan just thinks they're equal as his subjects.
- Fictional Holiday: Caesar's Day (and Caesar's Day Eve) a Christmas stand-in, presumably celebrating either when Caesar was born or the start of the Ape Revolution.
- Formerly Sapient Species: Slowly beginning to happen to the human population. Many newborn humans are born without the ability to speak, hinting at the eventual status of humans by the time of the first film.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: An overarching theme of the book, and one the young child Julian takes to heart in the final arc of the book. Various ape and human characters on both sides commit various crimes or other dubious actions against one another.
- Killer Gorilla:
- Nix is a feared albino white gorilla who acts as the head of armed forces of Mak throughout the story. He's called the "Butcher of the East" by humans for his destruction of the human city state of New Delphi.
- The Golden Khan is a shaved (save for a mustache) gorilla who leads a vast army of apes and humans.
- Mythology Gag:
- The city of Mak is shown to have their own duplicates of the Eiffel Tower. Likely an allusion to Pierre Boulle, the French author of the original Planet of the Apes novel.
- Mak is stated to have been founded by a "MacDonald", likely referring to Bruce or Malcom MacDonald from the classic films who were human allies of Caesar.
- As with most Apes media, there's various allusions or variations of famous lines from the first film ("keep your stinking paws/hands off me...", "damn them...")
- Nix wears a stylized military helmet modeled after the one Ursus would wear.
- Noble Bigot: Alaya, the granddaughter of the Lawgiver, and leader of the city of Mak. She has a much harsher view of humans than her grandfather did and while she doesn't want to exterminate them like most other apes, she thinks they can only be trusted as a subservient underclass.
- Prequel: The series takes place 1300 years before the first film.
- Shout-Out: The history of the founding of the Golden Khan (a gorilla who loved a human woman and was killed atop a building by airplanes) is clear pastiche of King Kong. A character even suspects the story is likely taken from elsewhere rather than real history.
- Sinister Minister: Brother Kale, a member of splinter movement within the Alpha-Omega Mutant church from Beneath. He's the one responsible for the assassination of the Lawgiver and manipulating the humans and apes of Mak into war with one another.
- Steampunk: The general aesthetic of Mak, complete with even militarized blimps.
