Detective Chimp and Rex the Wonder Dog re-team in 1992's Green Lantern/Flash crossover "Gorilla Warfare"

While The Flash is technically Gorilla Grodd's archenemy, a couple of DC writers must have so enjoyed the match-up between the psychic super-gorilla and Rex the Wonder Dog during William Messner-Loeb's Flash run that they decided to stage a rematch a few years later. Of course, the story would unfold in a pair of issues of 1992's The Flash and Green Lantern, and so the title heroes of those books are the real stars of the story "Gorilla Warfare."

I, of course, am more interested in a pair of guest-stars, however: Rex the Wonder Dog and Bobo, the Detective Chimp. Here the pair of old animal heroes both have new jobs, working for a new top-secret government agency, one that would never actually appear again.

The story arc was collected in 2017's The Flash by Mark Waid: Book Two. Waid wrote the two Flash issues participating in the crossover, which were both pencilled by Greg Laroque and inked by Roy Richardson. As for the Green Lantern issue, these were written by Gerard Jones, pencilled by M.D. Bright and inked by Romeo Tanghal. 

Yeah, this is a Gerard Jones story. As you likely already know, Jones was a prolific and talented writer who produced plenty of Green Lantern and Justice League stories for DC Comics and co-created Prime for Malibu Comics...and then, in 2018, plead guilty to possession of child pornography and served a prison sentence. 

That fact thus complicates the reading of his past work, and it makes it hard to enjoy a fun superhero comic about gorillas and animal heroes, knowing what one knows about the darkness of the writer and his appalling crimes. He's one of the comics creators I have struggled with whether or not it was even worth engaging with his work at all at this point. I've decided to do so here in order to be complete in my following of the history of particular comic book characters, but I also wanted to make sure I noted this aspect of Jones' biography while doing so.

I certainly wouldn't buy any work from him, and I don't think DC will give anyone the opportunity to do so. This collection, which I borrowed from the library, was published between the time Jones was first arrested and when he plead guilty. I'm not sure if DC will republish it in the future or not; I just noticed the other day that 1990's Secret Origins #48, which contains an eight-page Rex the Wonder Dog origin by Jones and pencil artist Paris Cullins, is one of the few issues of that series not available on Amazon's Comixology. 

Oddly though, Rex's entry in the timeline in New History of the DC Universe is illustrated by the title panel from that comic, including Jones' writing credit:

One imagines that was a mistake that was overlooked in the editing process. 

With Jones' crimes thus acknowledged, let's try to focus on the story he and Waid told for a bit.

The first two chapters, Green Lantern #30 and Flash #69 are interesting in that they run parallel to one another, rather than occurring in strict consecutive order. 

Both open with the same scene, Justice League Europe moving into their new headquarters in an English castle, the team's new leader Green Lantern Hal Jordan spotting Flash Wally West from the air and calling out "Hey! Twinkletoes!" The pair then chat a bit, their teammates Power Girl, Crimson Fox, Elongated Man and Sue Dibny all putting in brief appearances (In the GL issue, Jones has Sue scolding Ralph, "If you paid as much attention to your step as you do to Power Girl's chest-- we might survive this experience!")

And both issues end with Flash and Green Lantern unexpectedly running into one another in an African jungle near the cloaked Gorilla City, shouting simultaneously, "What are you doing here?!"

In between those scenes, each of these issues show what their respective heroes are up to...as well as what's going on in Gorilla City.

In Green Lantern #30, the first part of the crossover, we see the young super-gorillas of Gorilla City talking politics at a cafe. Some of these are loyal to the worldview of the imprisoned criminal Grodd. And in n his cell, Gorilla Grodd receives a message from big-headed Green Lantern villain Hector Hammond and he then psychically informs his young gorilla followers, "The time is now!"

They break him out of jail, and all flee the city for the jungle. Grodd's plan, he tells his followers, is to find a nearby third chunk of a special meteorite that fell to earth; the rays of one such chunk had gifted their tribe with the brain power they now enjoyed, turning them into super-gorillas, while Hammond had long ago found the second chunk, the rays of which evolved his mind and gave him his powers...and unfortunate appearance. (Jones here seems to be ignoring the new, post-Crisis origin of Gorilla City from Secret Origins #40, in which it was a crystal aboard a crashland-ing alien spaceship that gave the gorillas their smarts; ironically, that comic was edited by Jones' co-writer here, Mark Waid.)

King Solovar immediately calls his old ally Barry Allen for help, his distress call coming through a special radio that is now housed in The Flash Museum. When the museum calls the JLE HQ looking for current Flash, he's MIA, but Hal goes to the museum in his stead.

There he's met by a mysterious blonde man with a receding hairline I did not recognize (and I imagine you won't either, if we've been reading the same old comics lately), probably because his hair is blonde instead of red. The man offers to explain everything if GL accompanies to a place in Washington D.C. where "few...people...have ever been."

Jones draws the scene out and layers on suspense. 

They go to the zoo, where this happens:

Then they take an elevator down, pass by some guard dogs and enter a room filled with desks at which sit chimpanzees working on computers. 

The man, who is psychically referred to by one of those dogs as "Sheriff", tells Green Lantern:

I don't blame you for being a little boggled, GL. I've been an aide here for years, and it still throws me. 

Welcome to the Bureau of Amplified Animals.

Where animals who've been given unnaturally high intellects--either through sports of nature or scientific experiments--have been gathered to help mankind!

This is, of course, Sheriff Chase, formerly of Oscaloosa County, Florida. And who is he an aide to,exactly? 

Who else? 

Bobo doesn't seem to have started using his middle initial or last name just yet. He's also going without his signature hat, but instead wears a vest and, perhaps most surprisingly, seems to be capable of psychic speech now. 

Like the guard dogs, he "speaks" out loud, but his dialogue bubbles lack tails, and have those little lines about them, indicating that he is communicating telepathically. How? Well, this story never offers an explanation, but as this follows "Whatever Happened to Rex the Wonder Dog?" and Secret Origins #40, we can assume it is either due to his having drank from the magical fountain of youth or because microscopic aliens had meddled with his brain back in Africa all those years ago.

Bobo and the sheriff explain that while some "amplified" animals want to work with humans, others work against them, animals like Grodd. Bobo refers to the events of Keystone City we recently read about as the first time the Bureau took on Grodd—a bit of a retcon, as it wasn't clear how or why Rex appeared then; at the time, it seemed as if Rex was working with the United States army—and so Bobo assigns GL a partner, "the one agent who's gone head to head with Grodd." 

Rex the Wonder Dog, of course. 

On their flight to Africa, Rex communicates with Hal in the same psychic fashion that Bobo had earlier, although he notes "without Major Dennis as my 'familiar' you'd never be able to pick up my thoughts." So, having Dennis—presumably Daniel Dennis, although here he is a major instead of the lieutenant colonel he was in DC Comics Presents, which I think is a demotion, isn't it?—seems to allow Rex to communicate with humans. I wonder if it is the same with Bobo, and the sheriff is his human familiar? 

And what has Flash been up to while King Solovar and Green Lantern were looking for him? (Don't they have communicators for these purposes? Or, this being 1992, beepers?) For that we check out Flash #69.

There we see that, after ogling Laroque's Power Girl, who then had a triangular cut-out in the chest of her costume rather than a circular one, and chatting with Hal, The Flash heads back to his home in the states and spends a few pages getting ready for a TV interview with Linda Park at super-speed.

On his jog over to the meet her, however, he sees Hector Hammond sitting in his flying chair and using his telekinesis to attack a bus. They fight a bit, but Hammond eventually overcomes Flash mentally, and then uses him as transportation. Using psychic reins of pink energy, Hammond forces Wally to pull him to Africa, where he's to meet Grodd and join him in harnessing the power of the third chunk of meteorite. 

That brings us to Green Lantern #31, where the heroes Flash and GL finally literally get on the same page again. The two heroes make short work of Grodd's gorillas, but Hammond takes out Hal in an amusingly brutal and embarrassing way...

...and then uses his powers to extract Grodd from his grudge match against Rex, escaping their fight with the heroes so they can instead seek out the meteorite. 

They soon find it, having essentially followined the trail of wildly mutated animals affected by the special rays. 

When the heroes catch up with them, Hammond tries to betray Grodd, as Grodd knew he would, and Grodd takes the power for himself, producing an interesting new look for himself in the process: 

Grodd then uses his new amplified powers to mutate the title heroes. Flash gets a preposterously big head, one so big he can't balance well enough to get up and run (this is likely an homage to the cover of 1968's Flash #177), while we're told that Hal has been transformed into a caveman...but he basically just looks like he now has big, weird hair and needs a shave. 

Oh, and Grodd has also turned Hammond into a bestial caveman, albeit one with a normal-sized head. 

While the now wild Hal seeks to destroy the big-headed Flash, Wally is able to defeat him through a well-aimed toss of his yellow boot—this was back when GL was powerless against the color yellow, remember—and then, using his big old brain, he is able to harness the power of the meteorite to restores himself and Hal to normal.

Not everything is normal, though. Rex can now talk out loud,  just like a human being:

To make a long story short, the trio then manages to find Gorilla City, break through its forcefield and battle the big-headed Grodd and his army of armed super-gorillas. Bobo literally parachutes in, first saving Major Dennis from the caveman-ized Hammond and then leaping on Grodd's back at a pivotal moment to save Rex who, given the respite, is then able to use the"force of mind" abilities of Grodd's that the new meteorite gave him to defeat the evil gorilla, reducing him to the intelligence of a normal gorilla.

Solovar and his people imprison the villains—Hammond still having the mind and body of a caveman with an appropriately-sized head, and Grodd with an oversized but not gigantic head, Laroque drawing him with smaller head than Bright did—and our heroes head home, Rex retaining the power of speech, but not sure how long it will last.

Well, not all of the heroes head home. Bobo, last seen being fed peeled fruit by a pair of gorilla women, says he intends to take his eight weeks of comp time in Gorilla City, among similarly intelligent apes.

And that seems to be where DC would leave Rex and Detective Chimp for a while. 

Rex wouldn't reappear until 1996's Superboy and The Ravers #1, after which point he would join the team and appear in most issues of the short-lived series (Unless, of course, you want to count Rex's one-panel cameo among the crowd of heroes in 1995's Guy Gardner: Warrior #29). 

Bobo would next appear in a one-page scene in 1998's Martian Manhunter Annual #2, part of that summer's JLApe annual event story (Which I plan on revisiting in the near-ish future). (That is, unless you want to count Bobo's cameos among crowds of heroes in the just-mentioned Warrior #29 or the new "Afterschock" story in 1998's Crisis on Infinite Earths collection).

And the Bureau of Amplified Animals? Well, apparently "Gorilla Warfare" was the sole arc in which it appeared. 

Perhaps after Bobo and Rex left the government decided to shut it down...