Tarzan On The Planet Of The Apes #1 Review

"Tarzan On The Planet Of The Apes" #1 from BOOM! Studios - 

     A horrible new threat loomed over Earth at the time of the dominion of the apes. The Doomsday Weapon threatened to do again what the humans had done so long before: wipe out nearly every living thing on the planet. But Dr. Milo had a plan. He salvaged the ship of the human astronaut, Taylor, the man from Earth's past, and Milo planned his exodus along with the kind-hearted Zira, and her loving mate, Cornelius. Escaping the planet in the nick of time, and slipping through a blazing white rip in the fabric of space/time, the refugees arrived more than two thousand years in the past to the late 19th century. There, they became the leaders of the Mangani, a troop of apes living Equatorial West Africa. Lost in time, they raise their young son, Milo, and Tarzan, a human boy who was shipwrecked and found by the Mangani. They had peace for a time, but now it seems that fate is about to test them once more. The white rip in time is appearing once more, bringing with it strange species of animals lost long ago in the pages of Earth's history. And there are the hunters - white men come to take the lives of the denizens of the jungle for the thrill of the hunt, and for the pride of a trophy. What does fate hold for Zira, Cornelius, Milo, the Mangani and Tarzan? Adventure, heartache...and rage...The rage of the future Lord of Greystoke...The rage of the future King of the Jungle!

   Writers Tim Seeley and David F. Walker collab on this new twist on the adventures of Edgar Rice Burrough's beloved classic creation, Tarzan. Seeley and Walker construct a very interesting alternate Earth timeline, a timeline quite different from the alternate timeline we have come to know with "Planet of the Apes" properties. Raw jungle adventure meets science-fiction in this genre-bending mash-up, and for the most part, it works pretty well. Seeley and Walker do an adequate job of reintroducing familiar characters in a wild new timeline. The backstory is both shown and told by Zira in a quick and dirty series of pretty panels on one page. The tension begins to build around page three or four, the point in which all of the players appear and begin their obvious collision course. As a fan of both Tarzan and PoTA, this was definitely a fun read for me - a little bit of a dream come true actually. However, if you aren't really super-familiar with both properties, you are surely going to be lost, and probably disenchanted with this issue. The writers just assume that the reader knows so much already that it really just doesn't give enough backstory to help anyone along who is new to the worlds of PoTA and Tarzan. With that said, Fernando Dagnino's pencils are absolutely phenomenal from start to finish in this book - from expressive faces to wild, bloody action, Dagnino's pencils make this book GORGEOUS to behold. This man can do it all - his pencils display shades of Russ Heath - clean and realistic but highly dramatic. "Tarzan On The Planet Of The Apes" #1 is a really good first outing for this series, but something special is missing from the book that stops it well short of great - but the potential is there. I'll pick up issue #2. I'm holding onto hope for that old PoTA and Tarzan magic.

RATING: 8 out of 10. 

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