Contrary to what the show would have you believe, The
Flash’s biggest long-game tease isn’t about the murder of Barry’s parents or
time travel or Harrison Wells revealing himself as the Reverse Flash.
In the very first episode of the CW series, as the camera
pans through the wreckage of STAR Labs after the particle accelerator
explosion, we see an empty, open cage with a sign on it that says, simply,
“Grodd.” That was when I knew I was going to like that show.
Since then, we’ve seen mostly brief glimpses – a hand here,
a body cast in shadow there – until the most recent episode, when Wells sicced
Grodd on Mr. Krabs General Eiling, revealing the 800-pound telepathic,
talking gorilla in the room.
There’s a certain amount of ridiculous to the Flash’s rogues
gallery. There’s nothing edgy about names like Captain Cold or Weather Wizard
or Professor Zoom. The best thing to do is lean into it and accept them for
what they are, little slivers of the Silver Age that, for whatever reason,
stood the test of time. And it really doesn’t get more Silver Age Flash Villain
than a talking gorilla who believes himself superior to man, uses a
mind-control helmet and constantly tries to dominate the human race.
So here’s a love letter to comics’ greatest sinister simian.
The basics: Grodd was created by John Broome and Carmine
Infantino and first appeared in The Flash #106 in 1959.
1. He’s from a city of gorillas: Gorilla Grodd is from a
village in Africa called Gorilla City, which is inhabited by hyperintelligent
gorillas. They got that way after a radioactive meteor alien spacecraft
crash-landed into their village.
2. Did I mention he’s got mind-control powers? Though all the
gorillas in Gorilla City were supersmart, only two, Grodd and Solivar, are
telepathic and telekinetic. It was Solivar who alerted the Flash to Grodd’s
villainy, leading to decades of speedster-on-simian matchups.
3. The Rogues are his fault: Grodd first caused some of the
Flash’s other villains to team up, breaking them out of jail to distract the
speedster during a story in which Grodd’s brain had been transferred to that of
a zoo gorilla named Freddy.
4. “He’s made no fewer than 18 attempts to wipe humanity from
the Earth.” This fact, I confess, is from Wikipedia, and could be outdated or
completely made up. But I do like the idea that someone’s keeping count. Does
pale in comparison to the number of times Pinky and the Brain have tried to
take over the world, though.
5. He killed his father and ate his brain: According to Grodd’s
New 52 origin, when Grodd came of age, he challenged his father for control of
Gorilla City, impaled him on his horned helmet and celebrated by eating his
brain to consume all his knowledge and memories, because, y’know, that’s how that
works. He later leads an invasion of Central City and gains access to the Speed
Force.
Read this: The New 52 Flash Vol. 3: Gorilla Warfare, by
Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato
Watch that: It’s a tie. Justice
League Unlimited sees Grodd set up the Legion of Doom as a supervillain
co-op in which he gets a cut of the profits of any and all nefarious deeds and
ends up fighting with Lex Luthor for control of the operation (and tacitly is
sleeping with a human witch). For a more light-hearted take, check out Batman: The Brave and the Bold, which is
the perfect example of a show leaning in to the ridiculousness of the Silver
Age. Grodd first appears in episode 2 of the series, in which he turns Batman
into a gorilla.
Dan Grote’s new novel,
Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He has been writing
for The Matt Signal since 2014. He and Matt have been friends since the days
when making it to issue 25 guaranteed you a foil cover.
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