In reality, this would actually make life super easy for the suspect's defense attorney, but we digress. Riding high on Detective Chimp's success, the company then rolled out Angel and the Ape, a comedic story about a talking gorilla who was -- wait for it -- a private detective (which is completely different, you guys). DC also revised some of their old pulp heroes to better fit their new "all apes" vision, taking their jungle-trekking adventurer Congo Bill and making him a superhero that could take mental control of a giant golden ape named Congorilla.

DC Comics
"Yes! I could NEVER have done this as a human being!"

And as we mentioned, somehow Superman's friend Jimmy Olsen wound up in the body of a gorilla on two separate occasions:

DC Comics
"Superman, do you honestly not remember the last time this happened?"

Presumably there was then a late-night session with the creative team, who decided that it was time to really take a risk and start adding ape villains to their stories. Thus we wound up with the Flash's enemy Gorilla Grodd, a superintelligent gorilla that can also use telepathy (because of course he can), and the Ultra-Humanite, a mad scientist villain whose brain is placed in the body of a giant albino ape. But perhaps the most ludicrous DC Comics gorilla baddy was Titano, an ape sent into space and bombarded with cosmic radiation, which increased his size and bestowed upon him the superpowers of convenience, like his sudden ability to shoot Kryptonite beams out of his eyes:

DC Comics
"Knock it off, Jimmy!"

Nowadays, DC Comics has largely kicked their strange ape habit, but they do have the occasional callback to the company's gorilla-obsessed past. In 1999, the whole thing culminated in the furry insanity that was JLApe: Gorilla Warfare! a story where the entire Justice League was turned into gorillas.

DC Comics
Green Lantern is about to get bombarded with thrown turds.

Say anything you want about Marvel, but at least they never pulled any of this shi-

Marvel Comics
God dammit.

That's right -- the animals formed their own Legion of Super-Pets, which was maybe the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to comic books. The legion continued to show up semi-regularly until the 1970s, once even turning on their owners, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes of the 30th Century, in a comic full of animal-on-human violence worthy of America's Funniest Home Videos.

DC Comics
Please notice Streaky the Supercat doing his best to help out the team.

Decades later, Marvel Comics tried to create their own team of superpowered pets, led by Lockjaw, a sort of future-seeing bulldog thing and founder of the Pet Avengers, which also included a dragon. It's no surprise then that over the course of four issues, the Pet Avengers managed to outdo the entire regular Avengers by collecting all the Infinity Gems and kicking the shit out of Thanos.

Marvel Comics
Suddenly, Hawkeye isn't the dumbest thing to ever be associated with the Avengers.

By the way, the frog in that picture dressed as Thor is from an older Thor story where Loki transforms his brother into a frog in Central Park. Frog Thor then comes across another guy-turned-into-a-frog, put into this predicament by a fortuneteller he owed money to. By the end of the story, the man-frog, Simon Walterson, finds a small piece of Thor's magical hammer, creating his own mini-Mjolnir (henceforth known as Frogjolnir) and being bestowed a fraction of the power of the god of thunder as the mighty Throg.

Marvel Comics

Iron Man is now Tony Stark's sister, Antoinette, more commonly known as Toni (which must make family gatherings confusing). Another big change in the Mangaverse is the Punisher, a young woman who loses her parents to a tragic pogo stick accident and fights crime with the powers of BDSM by whipping, tickling, and spanking Korean mafia members. It's at this point that we must point out that absolutely none of the above is a joke.

And because every good Japanese-influenced story needs a Godzilla analogue, the Mangaverse Bruce Banner is a scientist working for Stark Industries who ends up summoning a bunch of gods from another dimension, including a kaiju-size Incredible Hulk.

Marvel Comics
If you're not fantasizing about an Iron Man vs. Kaiju Hulk story right now, what are you doing with your life?

Several years after the Marvel Mangaverse ended, DC Comics tried their hand at anime-influenced comics with their Ame-Comi Girls line that took popular characters from the DC Universe and made them a team of Sailor Moon ripoffs. Ame-Comi Girls didn't exactly light up the sales charts, though, and was cancelled within a year, ending the American comic book's fixation on anime and manga when superheroine costumes became even more ridiculous than they already were.

DC Comics
"Isn't Supergirl a teenager?"
"Yes. Yesssss she is ..."

Take a moment to appreciate the fact that there was a comic about one-hit wonder and shitty dad Billy Ray Cyrus taking on Cherokee ghosts and time traveling with Merlin to the Dark Ages to slay a dragon:

Marvel Comics
So is it like a rule of music comics that everyone in them must sport ridiculous hair?

In 1994, Marvel turned their attention to popular music with the launch of their Marvel Music imprint, intended to turn musicians into comic heroes. Sounds good! So what '90s rockers turned up to have superpowered adventures? Why, that would be artists like Bob Marley (who had been dead for over a decade at that point) and the over-the-hill Rolling Stones. The Marvel Music line even tried to include actual music with their books by publishing a comic titled Break the Chain featuring rapper KRS-One. The comic came complete with an audio cassette to accompany the story with KRS-One's hip-hop stylings and a hefty (for a single, new comic) price tag of $7.

Marvel Comics
EVERYONE STOP SCREAMING.

Marvel then tried to expand their hip-hop appeal by featuring the blink-and-you-miss-them 1990s rap group Onyx. Although published in 1995, the comic takes place in 1999, where New York City has since been reduced to an Escape from New York-level wasteland and Onyx still performs sold-out shows despite everything being in short supply:

Marvel Comics
It ends with them all dying and going to hell.