Phantom Ape (comic story)
The Phantom Ape is a story in the Kaza’s Mate, Gwenna web comic.
Plot
Kaza and Gwenna encounter Captain Noranga in his boat, and he tells them he is returning from delivering supplies to a movie crew filming in the jungle near the Bogana village; they discuss this interesting development.
Out at the shooting site, a mysterious white ape opens an elephant enclosure and the animal runs out. Actor Rodney MacDougall, in costume as an ape man, sees the charging elephant and flees but is trapped at a river bank.
Kaza and Gwenna arrive in the nick of time; Kaza leaps onto the elephant and turns it away harmlessly, while Gwenna checks on the actor. He has heard of them, via the superhero Dynamo, and invites them back to his trailer. There, he removes his ape man costume and explains that the production has been plagued by accidents, with reports of a phantom ape making trouble. Kaza acknowledges that there are white apes called Shodolaki in the area but thinks it unusual that one would persecute a movie crew.
The jungle couple take to the trees to look around and Kaza is quick to spot a white ape sneaking around. He leaps to the ground to confront it but it flees, only to take a flying kick from Gwenna. Kaza grabs it – and it shouts to be released! Gwenna realizes that this is merely a convincing ape costume and unmasks the culprit, Fred Gilroy.
It turns out that Gilroy had once been “the most in-demand Hollywood gorilla man” until the World of Ape-Men movies disrupted his career.
With Gilroy unmasked and arrested, Kaza and Gwenna walk off into the sunset.
Behind the Scenes
Rodney MacDougall, star of Reality Z-25 31-H’s the World of Ape-Men movies, is a transparent stand-in for Roddy McDowell, who starred in the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes and its sequels.
A single page posted on April Fools' Day teased that the ape impersonator was American actor Abe Vigoda, and made jokes about the repeated false reports of his death.
Trivia
This chapter shows similarities to the Scooby Doo series in that the nudist couple of the Naked Jungle playing the role of the Mystery Machine solving the case of an unknown monster and ends up unmasking him who turns out to be an unexpected perpetrator.
