One of the great things about comics is that wild ideas that might not translate especially well to film can still look cool and believable. One example? The Arrowverse has now seen the introduction of Beppo the Super-Monkey, thanks to the Crisis On Infinite Earths 100-Page Giant #1, which is out today at Walmart stores and will hit the direct market in January. The character makes a cameo appearance on the final page of a backup story written by Arrow‘s Marc Guggenheim and original Crisis on Infinite Earths comic writer Marv Wolfman, with art by Tom Grummett, along with a number of alternate-universe Supermen.
That may suggest that Beppo, in the Arrowverse context, is a version of Superman from an alternate Earth where anthropomorphic animals are the height of evolution, or it could just be that he has tagged along with a friend. There is, after all, another character in the same splash page who kind of looks like the Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson Superman of the pre-Crisis Earth-1 era.
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Per the DC Wiki, “Beppo the Super-Monkey is a monkey with Kryptonian super-powers, involved with Superman and the Superman Family. Originally one of Jor-El’s testing animals for experiments on the planet Krypton, Beppo stowed away on young Kal-El’s rocket-ship to Earth.” Also a member of the Legion of Super-Pets (and so possibly a character who could show up in a movie based on that soon), Beppo was created in 1959’s Superboy #76 by Otto Binder and George Papp.
While Beppo has not appeared in the main DC continuity since Crisis on Infinite Earths wiped out Earth-1 in the comics, versions of him have popped up in alternate timeline-set titles like Tiny Titans and DC Super Friends. He has also appeared in tie-in comics for Smallville and Batman ’66, and popped up on the Krypto the Super-Dog animated series and Superman: The Animated Series.
The “Crisis” TV event brings together the heroes from multiple Earths to battle against the Anti-Monitor (LaMonica Garrett), a godlike villain who threatens to destroy all reality. In the comics, the story ended with the deaths of The Flash and Supergirl, and the destruction of DC’s multiverse, leading to a single Earth with a complex history packed with hundreds of heroes. The battle brings together together characters from all six of the current DC Comics adaptations on The CW (Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, and Black Lightning), along with characters and actors from Titans, the 1990 version of The Flash, the short-lived Birds of Prey, Smallville, Superman Returns, Tim Burton’s Batman, and the iconic 1966 Batman series.
The first three episodes are available now, for free, on The CW app and CW Seed. “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will conclude on January 14.
