What's This? A not so mod gorilla boss.
The facts: On the basis of Silver Age comics with apes on their covers selling better on average, John Broome and Carmine Infantino, created Gorilla Grodd to fight the Scarlet Speedster in The Flash #106 (May 1959). A super-evolved ape with mental powers, Grodd would become one of Barry Allen's most dangerous recurring foes, and then jump over to Wally West, eventually becoming a threat everyone from Angel and the Ape to the Birds of Prey to the Justice League would have to face. He was a member of the Secret Society of Super-Villains, a global threat in Flashpoint, and has put in almost 400 appearances to date.
How you could have heard of him: The older kids will remember him from Super-Friends, where he was a member of the Legion of Doom. The younger kids will have seen him in full CG glory on the Flash TV series, as well as various animated series, video games and current-day comics.
Example story: Catwoman #27 (December 1995) "Godspell" by Chuck Dickson, Jim Balent and Bob Smith
Underworld Unleashed?! Grodd is already so powerful that one wonders what he would sell his soul for. It can't be power - he's already wayyyyy over-powered to face off against Catwoman! Well, as it turns out, he asks Neron for the location of an artifact stolen from the apes in times past, which would make his reign over Gorilla City legitimate. Not the artifact simply returned to him. Just the location. Uhm... I thought this guy was super-smart? (To be fair, it's quickly covered in the dialog that the deal also includes giving him his mind back - he'd lost it in Flash v2 #70 - and rule over Gorilla City - this happened in Underworld Unleashed #1.) The deposed king wants to get the Talisman of Arok first, and that's where Selina comes in. But when she gets to the embassy holding the emerald ape statue in question, she finds an army of well-armed security personnel already shooting up the place. Not for her, but for him:
Grodd has these massive psionic powers, but he doesn't seem to use them here. Seems to me it would have been pretty easy for him to just control those guards into submission, or even to bring him the statuette. But there's another side to Grodd. He's savage and violent, like the gorillas in Planet of the Apes. Selina steals the statue, but getting out of the embassy might provoke a physical confrontation.
Oh no, he's detected her. She takes the elevator out of there, but one thing we can expect is for a super-ape to climb the cables after her!
How did she miss? My head canon wants it to be because he's deflecting the bullets with his mind. Maybe she's just not trained with assault rifles. She does better with her claws and draws first blood. That only makes him madder.
She bleeds him again and is too agile to get hit, so Grodd decides to try and make a deal, promising a share of his future empire (the African continent). But Catwoman has a kind of honor that won't let her betray her client...
No wait. She decides to keep the advance AND the statue because she thinks it's cute. So strike that comment about honor. Doesn't matter much to Solovar, though. As long as it's not in Gorilla City, it can choose rulers based on wisdom and fairness. Good point.
But it still seems to me that, unless Neron never restored his psionic powers, Chimp Dixon is cheating here to make this a fair fight. And that's kind of the problem with supervillains who have every power in the book (lookin' at you, early JLA villains), it's hard to make them work against most opponents.
Who's Next? The worst Miss Hannigan.
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