Detective Chimp

30 years ago - Bobo, a chimpanzee, is born in the jungles of Senegal.

25 years ago - 5-year-old Bobo is separated from his mother. He wanders deep into the jungle, lost and hungry and finds a hidden grotto that leads him into the land of Myrra, a world of stories. A pair of microscopic Abatwa, Ynad & Krim, enter his body, riding his bloodstream to his brain, unlocking it to the magic of stories.

23 years ago - 7-year-old Bobo's connections to stories allows him to learn to speak.

19 years ago - 11-year-old Bobo befriends Jim Rook, an adventurer from his homeland. They travel together, leading a revolt against the Warlock Overlords, freeing Jim's partner Janet Jones. Jim chooses to remain behind in Myrra so that Janet can escape.

14 years ago - 16-year-old Bobo and Jim Rook are summoned by Queen Maureen as she sacrifices herself to save her daughter Eve as the House of Nightshade is usurped by Karkull. Jim adopts her, and she joins them on their quest to free Myrra from the threat of Karkull.

13 years ago - 17-year-old Bobo, Jim Rook, and Eve attempt to infiltrate Karkull's castle, but are captured. They discover that Eve’s brother Liam was taken as the host for a dark magic entity called Incubus. Eve is corrupted by Karkull's dark magic, and gains the ability to manipulate shadows, allowing them to escape.

11 years ago - 19-year-old Bobo, Jim Rook, and Eve defeat Karkull, freeing Myrra. They follow Incubus through a portal to stop him from entering the real world. Boba settles into the Oblivion, Jim's bookstore. He gets his Private Investigator license and opens his agency, Detective Chimp.

10 years ago - 20-year-old Bobo explores a series of magical deaths, tracing them back to a realm of nightmare magic ruled by Hecate, the ancient goddess of magic previously of the Green Pantheon. With the help of Diana Prince, he makes his way through the Otherkind, Hecate's minions, to disconnect the realms.

8 years ago - 22-year-old Bobo explores the connections from Oblivion to other Paths Beyond. He discovers the House of Mystery, exploring its infinite narrative pathways.

3 years ago - 27-year-old Bobo and a group of heroes stop Felix Faust from manipulating the spells binding Siobhan McDougal & Valerie Beaudry, using them to attempt to rewrite the rules of magic. They take the name the Shadowpact, but don't yet understand why.

1 year ago - 29-year-old Bobo and the Shadowpact cast their spell, drawing Mageddon into our reality. Jim Rook returns to Myrra, and Bobo agrees to watch over the Oblivion.

We all already know that comics underwent a long period after World War 2 when superheroes were out of fashion, when lots of other genres took over the medium for a while. One of those genres was animal comics. DC had a few of these, and these character actually did stick around in DC continuity long into the resurgence of superheroes, which means that they often have undergone some pretty spectacular narrative backflips along the way. The most successful of these fun relics of DC history is unarguably Detective Chimp, and since he actually does have a pretty well established role in the modern DC mythology, We get to find a way to integrate him into out project.

Detective Chimp's Comic History

Detective Chimp was a backup story by absolute legends John Broome and Carmine Infantino in Rex the Wonder Dog #4 from 1952. Rex the Wonder Dog was a long running comic by Robert Kanigher that really set the standard for animal comics, and Detective Chimp quickly became a recurring feature in the book. Bobo was a normal, if very intelligent, chimp. He basically witnessed the murder of his owner, and then had to work out how to convey that info to the sherif, who he would go on to help solve lots of other murders. As the appearances went on, he would be depicted as having an complex internal monologue, but could only speak in standard chimp noises. He would get into all sorts of shenanigans, driving a racecar, skiing, or playing baseball, and in the process would encounter crimes to solve. The forty issues of Rex the Wonder Dog are in fact the bulk of his appearances. He shows up basically unchanged in a 1986 miniseries called DC Challenge, basically mystery series contained in the DC Superhero mythology, and then again in a few issues of Green Lantern in 1992, where he is shown as a member of the "Bureau of Amplified Animals", now able to talk telepathically right alongside Rex. This was never brought up again.

We can actually skip ahead at this point to 2006, in the leadup to Infinite Crisis. One of the tie-in books was Day of Vengeance, in which a group of magic-wielding heroes band together to save the world from a rampaging Spectre. This book is written by Bill Williamson, the creator of the series Fables, a book that feels like it has a lot of the same DNA as this one. Williamson gives us an entirely new spin on Detective Chimp here, making him a sardonic talking animal, the sort of which would have felt right at home in Fables. Bobo has a fantastic curmudgeonly personality, the sort of character that would feel right at home on tv shows like Sherlock or House. The fact that all that grumpy snark is coming out of a chimp is just part of the fun.

The characters assembled in this book went in to star in their own series, Shadowpact, which ran for a number of years, but more importantly the team became heavily featured all across other DC publications as they became the premiere magic-centric characters. After the New 52, Bobo would actually see a return in the pages of Justice League Dark, where he was now the owner of the Olbivion Bar, and the owner of the Night Sword, willed to him from his deceased friend, Jim Rook.

Our Detective Chimp Story

We actually fought this idea for a while, because taken entirely from a top down perspective, you'd think that characters from the old animal comics could be pretty easily skipped over. The reality, however, is that the characterization for Bobo introduced by Bill Williamson has really pushed him into a well loved and very necessary part of the larger DC mythology. We could absolutely have just transposed him as-is and just allowed him to be a silly idea, but we decided to updates his story a little bit just so he felt more comfortably in-world for us.

We built on the relationship between Bobo and Jim Rook, the owner of the Oblivion Bar and fellow member of the Shadowpact. We kept Bobo's origin mostly how it is; later stories talk about him being enhanced by the fountain of youth, but if you read the incredibly fun updated origin story from Secret Origins #40, he's actually empowered by some teeny aliens (surfers on the waves of thought) that fly into his body fantastic voyage style and update his brain. We thought we could use something similar, referencing the Abatwa of Zulu folklore... and what's more, we had that all happen inside the magical realm of Myrra. We connected Bobo's history to Jim Rook, making them adventurers together for some time, giving them a deep bond that is secure long before they become members of the Shadowpact together.

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