In the front matter, Cunningham seems to dare the reader to put Forbidden Zone in continuity. A few pages later, Cunningham has an inexplicable gaff. For a bit, I hoped I could just attribute it to playing with the reader. But as the issue ended, I could not.

It’s a slight blight on the otherwise well-crafted series. I wish Kirk had worked harder though. He’s even lazier than usual in this issue, with every one of his human faces bad (instead of just most of them).

Cunningham’s big twist this issue, literally bringing every plot point together, is sort of predictable. But it makes sense in the context of the narrative and characters and it shows Cunningham’s quality.

He knows how to put together a narrative. It’s just Planet of the Apes, he can’t work wonders, but he does create a well-told, well-written four issue limited series.

Kirk appears just to have concentrated his attention on drawing good ape faces, not human. The issue is full of these exquisite ape faces and these terrible human ones. While one can appreciate the former, it’s too bad about the latter.

Cunningham continues to impress with his plotting. The most compelling part of Forbidden Zone is seeing how Cunningham weaves it. He brings three of the plots together, with the final one basically staying on its own.

Forbidden Zone is a war comic, something like a Civil War comic, and it’s a lot better than it should be.

The issue is a fine example of a good third of four. Most limited series have problems with the third issue… not Cunningham. He uses the issue’s place in the series–and the action ramping up for the finale–to stoke the tension.

Cunningham’s Forbidden Zone continues to pleasantly surprise and engage.

Cunningham has four plots this issue (and presumably through the entire series, until the last one). He’s got the peaceful humans and apes, the not peaceful apes, the mutants and then this expedition team. In some ways, it’s like he’s doing a good version of the second Apes movie—without the expectation of a Charlton Heston cameo.

With these four plots–a couple are definitely subplots, but assigning them catagories means deciding between the two remaining plots and it seems impossible to give either of them primacy. Anyway, with these four plots, Cunningham is juggling a big cast. Around twenty speaking parts. And he does a great job.

Forbidden Zone still isn’t remaking the wheel–it’s “just” a licensed property–but Cunningham’s execution is so masterful, it’s a joy to read.

Unfortunately, Kirk’s art is nowhere near as impressive as Cunningham’s writing. The art is decent, but Kirk’s completely unenthusiastic.

Forbidden Zone is quite a surprise, and not just because a young Leonard Kirk is on the art. It’s surprising because writer Lowell Cunningham takes a departure from the regular Adventure approach (even of their good entries) and goes it alone.

This story is set after the regular series and before the movies. It seems to feature an aged version of John Huston’s Lawgiver character (breaking the internal continuity of Adventure’s Apes comics) and deals reasonably with the character.

The bad guys are the mutants from the second Apes movie and Cunningham comes up with a nice way to involve them. He also creates the first intellectually curious gorilla, which is long overdue.

Cunningham’s future manages to be interesting not just as an Apes tie-in, but also as a look at the “apes as slaves” period, which has never really been covered.

It’s not great, but it’s reasonably compelling.