The Stop Button

I think Marshall’s trying to combine Ripley from Aliens with Charlton Heston for his female protagonist.

But he does get one big point of originality in this issue of Apes. He has his humans on the run and they’re traveling cross country. And none of the apes speak. So it becomes akin to a cross country zombie movie. The protagonists keep moving, one of them goes crazy, there’s some romance and some jealousy. It’s all the standards.

Marshall is doing this approach years before any of those zombie movies. Unless maybe the Italians made one.

Unfortunately, that innovation aside, it’s not a good issue. The art’s dropping. It’s still serviceable, but Wyman and Pallot were doing a lot better when they started. Maybe the settings are just boring, but post-apocalypse Americana shouldn’t be boring.

Plus, Marshall addresses the pet apes. The narrator apparently just forgot about them last issue.