'Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes' or 'Everything’s Better with Tarzan'

In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs, an American former cavalryman turned author, wrote a story that would capture the imagination of the public for generations to come. Tarzan of the Apes is a fish out of water tale about the orphaned child of British aristocrats raised by great apes. This tale of victory over the odds was a roaring success and soon more Tarzan stories appeared in print. In 1918, the Lord of the Jungle leapt on to the silver screen and a film series began that has continued to this day. In France, 51 years later, Pierre Boulle, a former spy turned author wrote another fish out of water tale. He considered this satirical sci-fi novel one of his minor works. La planete des singes, known in English as Monkey Planet or Planet of the Apes, tells the story of a French astronaut who finds himself marooned on a distant planet where humans are animals and intelligent apes are the dominant species. In 1968, as the 43rd English-language Tarzan movie appeared in cinemas, 20th Century Fox's Planet of the Apes was a financial and critical success. Like Tarzan of the Apes before it, Planet of the Apes became a film franchise that continues to the present day. Following their cinematic success, both Tarzan and P.O.T.A appeared in other media and spawned merchandising phenomena. Yet, it took another 48 years for someone to bring the two concepts together. Synopsis

In Tarzan on the POTA, three intelligent chimpanzees, Cornelius, Zira and Dr Milo, escape Earth's future destruction in the 40th century. Instead of landing on 20th-century earth, as they do in the POTA film series, they arrive in late 1800's West Africa. Before long Doctor Milo is dead and Zira becomes the leader of Burroughs' great apes, the Mangani. In this version of the story, it is Zira and not Kala, who becomes the foster mother of the orphaned Tarzan. Here Kala is absent and his foster father Tublat makes an appearance as a minor character. Tarzan is at home in the realm of the intelligent apes and the Mangani. He grows up alongside Cornelius and Zira's son, Milo, as a brother and enjoys arguing with the cantankerous ape, Kerchak. As the story unfolds, Tarzan is taken from his jungle home by his cousin William Clayton, the future Lord Greystoke, who has arrived in Africa on a hunting expedition. William realizes the value of the intelligent, talking Mangani and sees their potential as servants of humanity. Soon Tarzan is living in England under the care of his cousin, who has founded a successful Mangani slave trade through his Greystoke Trading and Import Company. Yet, things aren't going so well at the African end and William convinces Tarzan to return with him to try and broker peace. Upon arriving in Africa, he finds his foster brother Milo, now calling himself Caesar. The young ape is now leading the Mangani in violent resistance against William's slave traders. Soon the foster brothers reunited and together they fight to free the Mangani from the grip of slavery. It is at this point in the story that things begin to shift once again. Two new elements arrive to take the narrative in a new direction. Characters from Burroughs' Pellucidar stories appear in the jungle, as well as a version of the late Dr Milo from an alternate reality. The time portal through which the astronauts and apes had travelled forwards and backwards through time has been affected by the unusual gravitational qualities of Pellucidar's subterranean sun. Throughout Pellucidar, smaller portals have opened, allowing the Mahars, a race of intelligent Rhamphorhynchus, to venture into other realities to colonize them. The story now becomes an attempt by Tarzan, Caesar, Dr Milo, explorer David Innes and their allies to destroy the portals and stop the Mahar colonization of the wider Burroughs/Apesverse. After the quest to destroy the portals comes to a bloody conclusion, Tarzan and Caesar find themselves trapped on the other side of a portal in one of many the alternate futures. The setting, though set in 2016, resembles scenarios from the movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes. In this version of reality Tarzan, aka John Clayton replaces the character of astronaut John Brent. Adding to the drama is the arrival of Doctor Milo, who has followed them from Pellucidar through the time portal. He has come to believe, after visiting many versions of the earth future, that the destruction of Earth is inevitable. Ape will always fight human and the destruction of the world will always be the outcome. Fleeing from that destruction there would always be three chimpanzees who climb aboard a spaceship and return to Earth's past. These chimps would trigger the events that lead to Earth’s future destruction and the cycle would begin again. It's at this juncture that Dr Milo decides to end the cycle. Upon meeting an alternate version of himself in that time zone, Dr Milo he murders him. Now no one will repair the astronauts' spacecraft and the three chimpanzees will perish in the destruction of the planet. The cycle will end once and for all. Yet, this time things are different. Caesar and Tarzan, with the help of the future Cornelius and Zira, have managed to foil the ape invasion of the Forbidden Zone that always leads to the end of the world. Here we are left with a question. Will this version of the Planet of the Apes end in atomic destruction as all the version have? Or will the presence of Caesar and Tarzan of the Apes, ape and human brothers, be the ingredient that changes the destiny of the Planet of the Apes once and for all? For a fan of ERB and the mighty Tarzan, the answer is a resounding, ‘Of Course!'

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Lord of the Apes had finally become a resident of Pierre Boulle's Monkey Planet in the Darkhorse/Boom Studios comic series, Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes. With both bearing similar names and loin clothed heroes, several creators in the past have flirted with the obvious links between the two concepts. Even before Boulles' story, Burroughs himself had created a civilization of scientifically enhanced apes in the book, Tarzan and the Lion Man (1934). In the movie Planet of the Apes (1968), the astronaut George Taylor utters the classic movie misquote 'Me Tarzan you Jane' while trying to communicate with the primitive woman, Nova. In the three 1976 novelizations of the POTA animated television series, Return to the Planet of the Apes by William Arrow, there are several allusions to the Tarzan stories. The name of Tarzan's ape leader Kerchak features in oaths and curses spoken by the apes, suggesting it's the name of an ape deity. In the first book, Visions From Nowhere, it mentions that the burgeoning ape film industry is about to produce a screen adaption of the book Zantar of the Humanoids. This is a story about an orphaned ape raised by primitive humans to become the greatest of their tribe. In 1991 Malibu comics released a 4-part POTA comic series by Australian writer/artist Gary Chaloner entitled Urchak's Folly. The name Urchak was inspired by Tarzan's ape nemesis, Kerchak, a fact confirmed in correspondence with the illustrator/writer. If truth be told, back in 1984 a certain 12-year-old schoolboy also saw the natural coupling of the ape-man and the planet of intelligent apes. Evidence of this could be seen in the large picture drawn on A3 paper in an art lesson and pinned up on the classroom wall.

Yet, it wasn't until 2016 that the first true coupling of these two phenomena came together. Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes is a five-part comic series that takes the two concepts and grafts them together. What writers David Walker (Luke Cage, Cyborg) and Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash, G.I. Joe vs. Transformers) do is create a scenario drawn from the Planet of the Apes film series and expand it to envelop the world of Tarzan and the wider Burroughsverse. Unlike the original book, which takes place on an alien planet, the movie version of P.O.T.A. features a time travel element. Astronauts on an interstellar mission find themselves transported into Earth's future where the world is ruled by intelligent apes. In the third film of the series, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Boulles' human loving chimps, Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) and Zira (Kim Hunter) are recruited by chimp scientist, Dr Milo, to pilot the repaired human spacecraft to escape the aftermath of the impending ape mutant confrontation. In the movie version, they arrive on 1970's earth and are welcomed by the incredulous human population. Yet, when Dr Milo is killed by a primitive gorilla while in quarantine, things begin to sour. By the end of the movie, Cornelius and Zira are dead and their newborn son, Milo, is smuggled off to be raised by the sympathetic circus owner Armando (Ricardo Montalban). This child grows up to be Caesar, the leader of the ape rebellion and founder of the intelligent ape society (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1973), Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). In Boulles' original story the time travel component is absent. Cornelius, Zira and Zaius, all characters featured in Tarzan on the POTA, are denizens of Soror, an earth-like planet orbiting Betelgeuse. It is the POTA film series that shifts the action to future earth, introducing the characters of Doctor Milo, Milo/Caesar and General Ursus. Interestingly, in the period between Caesar’s last appearance in the original film series and that in Tarzan on the POTA, another version of the character was featured as the main protagonist in a new series of POTA films beginning with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). In this successful prequel series to the original movie, Caesar is not the child of intelligent apes from the future, but of a laboratory chimpanzee with scientifically enhanced intelligence. Like the original version, he is raised by humans and goes on to lead his fellow apes to victory over their human oppressors.

The epic storyline of Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes draws from various incarnations of the two source materials. Tarzan's first dealings with Europeans and his cousin, Sir William Clayton, ends with Tarzan being taken back to England and the Mangani becoming the centre of a new slave trade. There is no Jane or D'Arnot in this scenario. This is not the story of Tarzan finding love and his human identity. This is about Tarzan and Caesar saving a multiverse from the tyranny of the Mahar's and the Earth from nuclear oblivion. Like Greystoke, The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), the Europeans are present in Tarzan's jungle on an exhibition of hunting and adventure. In scenes also reminiscent of that movie, we see John Clayton scaling trees in London and being pursued by the local constabulary. We also find members of Tarzan's tribe kept captive in London. Instead of his ape foster father caged in the back of the Natural History Museum, it is the enslaved Mangani, represented by Sir William's ape servant, Happy. Here we slip into territory covered in the movie Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972). In this instalment, humanity has domesticated and enslaved great apes. The enslavement of the apes, in this case, the Mangani, is the set up for the future ape revolution.

Yet, it's not just Burroughs' Tarzan stories that Tarzan on the POTA draws upon. The subterranean world of Pellucidar first appeared in ERB's At the Earth's Core (1914). This tells the story of mining heir David Innes and inventor Abner Perry as they drilled through the Earth's crust and into the subterranean world of Pellucidar. Pellucidar is a world filled with prehistoric creatures, and several species of humans, from the primitive to the advanced. Burroughs would go onto write six sequels, the fourth in the series being Tarzan at the Earth Core (1930). Here Tarzan first meets David Innes and fights the Mahars. In Tarzan on the POTA, David Innes' journey to Pellucidar is introduced into the story via a newspaper article William Clayton shows Tarzan while in London. Yet, in the original novel, David Innes and Abner Perry's journey to Pellucidar is the result of an accident when testing the Iron Mole. It is in the 1976 motion picture At the Earth's Core that the start of their expedition is a public event, complete with cheering crowds, press and a marching band. By choosing to use this version of the David Innes story, a publicly acknowledged event, the creators can introduce it to the new narrative via the shorthand of a newspaper headline.

Another influence on the story is the time portal which interacts with the gravity within Pellucidar to open further portals. Although not featured on Boulles' original book, the idea of a time portal is alluded to in the narratives of the first three ape movies, Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and the TV series Planet of the Apes (1975) and Return to the Planet of the Apes (1976). These feature spaceships travelling forward and backwards in time when following the same trajectory after take-off. In Tim Burton's 2001 remake of the Planet of the Apes, such a portal in the form of an electromagnetic space storm is not just the cause of the plots time travel to and from the future, but the cause of the entire Planet of the Apes scenario within the narrative.

Similarly, the idea of a portal entrance to the land of Pellucidar was a feature in Tarzan's Return, the pilot episode of the television series Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (1996-1997) and the authorized novel adaption by R.A. Salvatore. Unlike the Burroughs' stories, where Pellucidar is accessed through holes in the earth's crust, access is gained to the subterranean world through a portal opened by a mystical gem. As in Tarzan on the POTA, this story sees the Mahars interested in the portal as a way of conquering the surface world. What Tarzan on the POTA cleverly does is bring these two elements together, providing a means for Tarzan and Caesar to not only enter Pellucidar and other realms of space but through time itself.

Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes is an ouroboros-like tale that takes two beloved icons of imaginative fiction and threads them together into a cleverly woven narrative. Two heroes of popular culture, Tarzan and Caesar are brought together to effectively prevent the Burroughsverse from the domination of the Mahars and finally the Apesverse from its nuclear destruction in a human/ape conflict. The new story treats its subject material lovingly and creates a saga that holds up on its own. Drawing elements from various incarnations of the source materials, Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes demonstrates something that all Tarzan fans instinctively know. Whether it’s jungle adventure, period drama, the threat of world domination by intelligent pterosaurs or a future dominated by intelligent apes, everything is better with Tarzan.