There's a link in there to the art dealer's webpage where you can view the pages.

-M

Could just as easily be that his editor asked him to abandon the edgy direction he was heading in.

Or that he just wanted to make Ursus a little more of an a**hole in that first issue.


I'm disappointed and confused, but you have a level of hatred for it that I frankly don't understand.

Summary of Planet of the Apes: Ursus (Boom!)
(2018)

Overview: The story no one asked for, in which the first two Planet of the Apes films get retold from the perspective of General Ursus, intermixed with an obligatory backstory.


Worthwhile To Read?: There's some very strong artwork, as well as some fun nods that only true Apes fans will pick up on, but unless Ursus is your favorite character from the films, there's nothing truly "must read" about this massively decompressed six issue story that could have been told in one.

Key Issues/Highlights?: Chris Mooneyham's artwork on the first two issues is really something.

Worth Re-Reading?: Probably not.

This volumes includes: Planet of the Apes: Ursus #1-6

Its a comic. There's no hatred, but I've never been a fan of people who like to inject their own inapplicable ideas in a licensed property at the expense of said property. The idea of Ursus (or any movie-based ape) making racial distinctions about humans when that's nowhere to be found in the five APJAC films (or 1974 TV series) shows a level of A) ignorance about very clear messages / intent of the apes' views or B) not caring about the film series' carefully laid out character and story structure in favor of pushing a writer (or publisher's) agenda.

To me, its no different that what's happening to the current Star Wars movies, where Disney/Kathleen Kennedy are willing to shove anything into / subvert many established ideas of the original trilogy, to replace it with whatever their agenda happens to be. This is one of the most significant reasons so many comic adaptations of TV and movie properties have failed throughout the life of the medium. 

It was "muted" in POTA/BTPOTA because there was no intention (in the script, or from Schaffner or Jacobs) to have the apes judge humans by human racial prejudice constructs, instead looking at them as a single, cancerous threat. That was the only and best way to hard sell the ideas behind Zaius' specist statements in order for misanthropic Taylor to be the unlikely advocate for humans, and of course, the slap in the face he received in the end. That would not be possible if the apes were targeting individual races. POTA was one entire species vs another, which continued into Beneath the Planet of the Apes with the mutant's views of the entire ape species--the heart of that film's final conflict.




Regarding Conquest, Dehn (as mentioned earlier) used race only as a mirror of the mistreatment apes were receiving (re: the conversation between MacDonald and Caesar, which some black viewers did not appreciate in 1972, given the history of racists drawing idiotic, false "parallels" between those of African descent and apes), but not within the ape perspective on humans. Before his change of heart, Caesar--like Also in the final film--when making hateful statements about humans, spoke of the entire species, not by sub-categories, which was consistent to the way apes saw humans in POTS/BTPOTA.

This comic trying to (allegedly) disrupt the status quo was unnecessary, as POTA had already addressed a number of issues that were boiling over in the world culture of the late 1960s/early 70s in a near-perfect manner. Adding material unsupported by the movie plots comes off as an attempt to take this series in a direction it never needed to take in order to make its points.

Ultimately, we can agree to disagree, but a license holder and those who work for them can do whatever they desire, but that does not mean it will work. Its not working here. If this was some sort of Ape Expanded Universe, where some gorilla on the other side of the world held those views, that would not be an issue, as its removed from the characters, stated beliefs and situations from the films, but that's not the case here.

"Evolving" the original properties in the hands of those nowhere near the beliefs (and arguably creativity) of those who made the films also got us--in Star Wars--endless Palpatine clones, Luke clones, Boba Fett/Mandalorian stories for what was originally (on film) a single-purpose character, "Dark This," "Dark That," ancient Sith characters/wars, lightsabers galore--all of which we were once told were ever-so-important to and/or connected the film series events, but consistently misunderstand the point of the films. 

Walker is right in line with all of those SW Expanded Universe writers, where they stuck whatever their whims were into a story with a clear message, but its not in line with the creators intended/presented, hence his attempt to shoehorn human conflicts about race into the apes who never once said anything other than statements condemning the entire species.