An offbeat twist turned a tired jungle adventure feature into a science fiction/superhero story.
“(W)ith rainforests disappearing all over the world, the jungle hero genre was starting to look like an anachronism,” observed comics historian Don Markstein.
DC’s 18-year-old feature Congo Bill was ripe for a revamp. Superheroes were clearly the coming thing in 1959, and gorillas were a proven seller for DC Comics.
“In Action Comics 248 (Jan. 1959), Congo Bill’s old friend, Chief Kawolo, was killed in a fall from a cliff, despite Bill’s best effort to save him. As he lay dying, Kawolo, who also functioned as his tribe’s witch doctor, gave Bill his most precious possession — a ring with an image of a gorilla carved on it,” Markstein noted.
“By rubbing the ring, Kawolo told Bill, the wearer could switch minds with a gorilla who lived in the neighborhood, and who wore a similar ring, for one hour. The gorilla was distinguishable from others of his species by a unique gold-colored pelt.”
A few issues later, the jungle adventurer is drugged and jailed by criminals who’ve seized a desert fort.
“If a situation ever called for Congorilla, this is it!” Congo Bill thinks. “I only hope the golden ape isn’t too far away!”
He isn’t.
As the ape-brained body of Congo Bill rages in his cage, the huge and newly shrewd gorilla wages war against the crooks, breaking their rifles in half and battering them with a barrage of coconut “cannonballs.”
But the notable thing about this episode of Congorilla had nothing to do with the feature itself.
In Action Comics 252 (May 1959), the Golden Gorilla was sandwiched between two landmark stories — the introduction of the cyborg supervillain Metallo and the arrival on Earth of Supergirl, whose new feature would replace Tommy Tomorrow. Tommy next appeared in World’s Finest 102 (June 1959), where his feature would replace Tomahawk.
Readers certainly got their dime’s worth with this issue of Action Comics.
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