Every Sunday morning we showcase a classic comic cover, complete with compelling commentary, for your cordial contemplation. It’s the Classic Comic Cover Corner!
Flash #127 – March, 1962
Cover Art by Carmine Infantino
The anxiously anticipated new superhero show, The Flash, debuted last week on the CW Television Network, and it was actually a pretty darn good effort. In fact, for my money, The Flash ran circles around Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, which aired the same evening. But in an hour long show that was jam-packed with comic book Easter eggs, there was one quick shot that set my simian-sense tingling.
If you blinked you might have missed it, but while surveying the damage to S.T.A.R. Labs, after the particle accelerator explosion that gives Barry Allen his lightning-fast powers, the camera briefly passes by a broken cage with a placard on it that reads, “GRODD,” the character who fans will know as the villainous telepathic ape, Gorilla Grodd.
Flash #127 – March, 1962
Yes, that means that in the new The Flash television show Gorilla Grodd is wandering around loose in Central City, hopefully waiting for the perfect time to reveal himself to the Flash and to monkey-minded comic fans like myself, who were heard muttering under their breath, “This better be more than just a tease.”
Grodd first appeared in Flash #106, way back in 1959, although, for some insane reason, he didn’t appear on the cover of that book. Instead, the cover featured “The Pied Piper of Peril,” who is still pretty cool and is rumored to be appearing on the show later in the season, but he, alas, is no gorilla. Grodd even appeared in the follow up issue (#107), but, again, no cover appearance.
The hyper-smart gorilla would not make his first cover appearance until Flash #127, in a story called, “The Reign of the Super-Gorilla,” by writer John Broome, who co-created Grodd with legendary artist, Carmine Infantino (in the aforementioned Flash #106.) In this story, Grodd develops a special kind of radiation that makes people like him, and he uses his pseudo allure to run for governor.
Grodd is probably the most well-known ape adversary in all of comicdom, and the prospect of seeing him brought to life, even on the small screen, is very exciting – providing they don’t mess it up. I know I’m dreaming, but Grodd’s onscreen origin (preferably complete with Gorilla City and its leader, King Solovar, as well) can’t come fast enough.
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