Episode 15: Favorite Comic #1

In this episode I discuss the British comic paper Favorite Comic #1 and why it's important: because it featured "Victor Brand," a series about the Sherlock Holmes-like detective Victor Brand and his intelligent monkey chauffeur, leg-man, bodyguard, and general assistant Jacko. I discuss the history of the portrayal of apes in Western culture, from ugly and malicious in the time of Classical Greece to supernaturally evil in the Middle Ages to the "rape ape" of the 17th and 18th centuries to the Rousseauvian "Noble Savage" and finally to heroes, which began with Favorite Comic #1 and continues on to the present day. I list a number of examples from the Golden Age of comics, and then discuss DC's apes vs Marvel's apes while also dispelling the myth of Julius Schwartz's supposed "four rules" about comics' covers.