(Blue Beetle Comics 009-010, 1941)
The Gorilla is actually Jack Castle, a drunken lout who happens to be the lab assistant to the unhinged Dr Brock. Castle pushes his employer a bit too far and ends up on the wrong end of an ape brain transplant. Dr Brock meanwhile has forgotten one of the major things about brains and so ends up like so many other mad scientists do after transplanting an unwilling one: murdered by his own creation.
Castle was a creep as a human and he's no better as a gorilla, so he ends up vowing revenge on all humanity.
But it's a tricky prospect, taking on the world with a gorilla body and no people skills. The Gorilla's only adventure post-origin involves his trying to take over the underworld based solely on physical prowess and it goes poorly - in fact, both of his adventures end with him crawling off to nurse a gunshot wound.
It's all okay stuff, but the most interesting part of it is that the Gorilla is an antagonist without a protagonist. In storytelling terms I suppose that the Gorilla is the protagonist and the world is the antagonist? The point it that this is an early experiment in having the villain headline the story and I appreciate it.
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