Let's Talk About Equality.
For decades, comics have treated primates as second-class citizens and I, for one, am tired of it. If they're not an offshoot of an existing character (like Beppo), they're a villain or savage that requires betterment at the hand of the oligarchy that calls itself superhumanity. For every Detective Chimp (note how they have to have "Chimp" in his name like we couldn't figure it out), there's a dozen Titanos and Gorilla Grodds written by white males who remain constantly out of touch with what's really going on out there in the world.
These so-called creators have obviously never looked at the research of scientists like Jane Goodall or heard of Koko the Gorilla. Instead, they use stories of freak gorilla attacks that were most likely caused by humans goading them into action. Just like their writing about any minority group they don't understand, the writing in these stories is appallingly lazy and plays to the most hoary of clichés concerning a group they don't care about and will probably never care about.
The panel above, from a story called "Captain Marvel Battles The Apes Who Could Make Fire" that appeared in Captain Marvel Adventures #114, demonstrates that this problem has been going on for years and judging by the cover of this week's Justice League Unlimited (a comic that's supposed to appeal to children, for God's sake!), there's no sign of abating. It's a sad state that I feel needs to be addressed if we're really going to see true diversity in the comics medium.
