I have been on my Planet of the Apes kick lately since Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is coming out next Memorial Day. And next year is also the 10th anniversary of my favorite movie out of the reboot saga, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. So if I could at least spare a thought for someone at 20th Century Studios or any comic studio affiliated with them to make a comic book adaptation of tie-in prequel novel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm. This was my favorite book reading in high school around when the movie was trending. Also, this book’s fictional events were written before COVID-19 made everyone’s fear of a pandemic come true, so there’s that.
The book acted as a direct sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes since it takes place five days after Caesar and his band of apes escaped the clutches of captivity. Around the same time, the Simian Flu began to ravage humanity as various human characters try to survive this new crisis that fatally killed humans but made apes smart. All the while, this book explores the backstory of the villain in Dawn, Koba. It details his life of cruelty and abuse at the hands of humans and how it shaped his hatred to the point where it comes into conflict with Caesar’s viewpoint in the film.
That’s my proposal for them if they ever decide to make that into reality one day. I even have a cool title they could borrow: ‘Firestorm on the Planet of the Apes’. Borrowing the subtitle from the novel, it carries a double meaning in this story because there’s a pandemic occurring. Two is like how meteors killed the dinosaurs and changed the landscape of Earth forever, a change is coming in the form of a pandemic as man’s dominion on Planet Earth will flip over to the apes. It’s pretty cool food for thought. Anyway, that’s my take on it, and if this does somehow become the real thing then hooray! Not to get a little too greedy, but maybe a comic book adaptation of Andrew E.C Gaska’s expanded version novel of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Death of the Planet of the Apes would be cool too.