Sky Ape

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Sky Ape is is a comic-book character and black-and-white comic-book series published in the late 1990's. The series features a main character, Kirk Madge, aka Sky Ape, and his search for his origins. Kirk is a talking gorilla that fights crime with a jetpack strapped to his back, and with the aid of somewhat inept pals, including Frances Bird (a ninja/butler girl that can change into a parakeet), Paper Bob (a work-shirking lounge lizard), Mr. The Fake Lion (an out-of-work actor who always wears a lion suit, a la football team mascot), and Pirate Steve.

The humor in Sky Ape is reminiscent of the old Adam West Batman TV series, The Monkees TV series. But the major influence is Monty Python's Flying Circus, as evidenced by the onslaught of nonsequiturs in the book. The series has earned both praise and criticism for its heavy use of media references as part of its gags.^{[citation needed]} At the same time, Sky Ape has also become quoted on blog sites, with phrases like "Suck factor is high!" becoming somewhat of a minor mantra.

The writing time behind Sky Ape were boyhood chums from different neighborhoods in the Boston, MA area. Phil Amara and Michael Russo were from East Boston, while Tim McCarney was from West Roxbury. Sky Ape's origin is somewhat uneventful: the trio wanted to do a story about a gorilla with a jetpack that would rather do peoples taxes than fight crime. An artist search began, and eventually ended with Oklahoma-native Richard Jenkins. Jenkins as been the artist and co-creator on the series from the first published page to the last (with guest artists Shannon Gallant and Paul Corrigan helping Jenkins for only one stint).

The series was first published by Slave Labor Graphics and publisher Dan Vado. The series was brought to his attention by creators Phil Amara, Mike Russo, Richard Jenkins and Tim McCarney. The series lasted four issue under SLG (including a trade paperback edition), and after languishing for several months without a publisher, was picked up by Larry Young and AiT/PlanetLar publishing. AiT first re-published the original SLG series is one squarebound collection with a cover design by graphic designer Amy Arendts. The collection garnered praise from Entertainment Weekly.^{[citation needed]} Next, in 2001, AiT published a second paperback entitled Sky Ape: Waiting for Crime. In 2003, a third volume called Sky Ape: All the Heroes followed. At the point, the creators were becoming overworked with side projects and parted ways. They rejoined in 2005 for a final saddlestitched one-shot called Sky Ape: King of Girls. Each Sky Ape comic has also included guest art by comic creators such as Alex Maleev, Craig Thompson, Pop Mhan, Mark Martin, Ben Stenbeck, Jack Pollock, Mark Schultz, Guy Davis, and many others.^{[citation needed]}

The property is currently in development in Hollywood by Kickstart Entertainment as television animation.