You did a Planet of the Apes takeoff on the cover of Small Press Expo 97. That was awhile ago. Are you equally fascinated with Planet of the Apes the way you were with King Kong? Yes, the original Planet of the Apes with Chuck Heston. And yeah, it was one of the movies you see as a kid where it really disturbs you. It disturbs adults, too. Yeah, it kinda creeped me out, you know? I like the first one, and I also liked the third one, where the two monkey characters go into our time and have the baby. The female switched her baby with the circus chimp and threw chimp’s baby into the water, and the real baby is in the care of the circus performer. I thought that movie was heart-wrenching. I know you’ve been fascinated with and have drawn a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ characters. What sparked that interest?
Oddly enough, I discovered the movies first. My intro to Tarzan was through Johnny Weissmuller. Again, when I was a kid, I was a TV and movie junkie. Every Saturday at noon there was a Tarzan movie on in Frank’s model sheets for Level 5’s 2007 Monkey Boy statue. Maryland. Me and Art © 2007 Frank Cho. Courtesy of Frank Cho. my brothers would watch all the Tarzan really like the books until college, and I movies. It was one of the coolest things reread the books and then something I’d seen. [Tarzan’s] treehouse started it all. clicked—I went through half the Tarzan He had a waterfall for a refrigerator and series. After a while, it started repeating cool wooden elevators. itself. And then I went through the [John Carter of] Mars series, which, oddly Did you build a treehouse after that? enough, I liked better. That was my introI tried to! That kinda started it all. Then I duction to the world of Burroughs. went through all the Tarzan movies and saw Gordon Scott, one of the better Let’s talk about the Tarzan vs. King Tarzans. Better than Johnny. Each of Kong comic that you pitched to Dark them had a different charm. After Horse. When did you pitch it and why [seeing] the movies, I read the books, and didn’t it go anywhere? they were completely different! I didn’t
Oh. Wow. From Frank Cho’s Bride of the Beastman, written by Allan Gross. Art © 2007 Frank Cho. Bride of the Beastman TM & © 2007 Allan Gross and Frank Cho. Courtesy of Ray Cuthbert.