December 14th was Monkey Day (who knew, right?), the “annual celebration of all things simian” and two things ran through my mind when I realized this day existed: How the hell did I not know about this before now? And that there are quite a few simians in pop culture that hold a spot in my heart. So with that in mind click onward for my list of favorite pop culture simians!

1. Mojo Jojo (The PowerPuff Girls)

Mojo Jojo is a megalomaniacal genius chimpanzee bent on world domination and is the arch-nemesis of the PowerPuff Girls. Jojo started out as the lab assistant to Professor Utonium but exposure to Chemical X turned Jojo’s skin green, increased his intelligence and made him a wee bit nutty. The little fella spends all of his free time now trying to destroy the PowerPuff Girls, flatten Townsville and conquer the world (in that order).
So I have a deep abiding love of evil simians but add in a turban and a speech pattern reminiscent of a badly dubbed Godzilla movie and you have the ingredients for my absolute favorite monkey.

2. Dr. Zaius (Planet of The Apes)

Dr. Zaius was a monkey of science who was all for castrating humans to keep them from reproducing all willy nilly and also lobotomizing Charlton Heston to keep him from spreading the word that humans were not always a bunch of horny savages. The good doctor wasn’t all bad though; he ended up not wanting to chop of Heston’s peen after awhile but I don’t care if he committed every atrocity known to future apes…Zaius is a great ape in my estimation.

3. King Kong (King Kong)

Kong was from a different time and society where things like kidnapping a woman and holding her against her will in a misguided attempt to have a relationship with her were considered normal behavior. The big lug wasn’t used to all the hoops that these American women make fellas jump through.

4. Clyde (Every Which Way But Loose)

An orangutan with a predilection for bar brawls and indiscriminately flipping the bird to biker gangs? What’s not to like? The fact that he was cool enough to be the BFF of a young Clint Eastwood.

5. Prince Kassim (Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger)

Its a tale as old as time…boy’s mother dies, boy’s father meets and marries a witch, witchy stepmother uses her dark magic to transform the boy into a baboon. Prince Kassim is the most erudite simian on the list but that didn’t stop him from being a kick-ass sidekick to Sinbad as he sailed the 7 Seas in a bid to find the cure for Kassim’s transformation. I think it was more about Sinbad wanting to do the beasts with two backs with Kassim’s sister (portrayed in the movie by the lovely Jane Seymour) than with any desire to hep out poor Kassim.

6. Monsieur Mallah (DC Comics)

Once upon a time Mallah was just your run of-the-mill gorilla who was experimented on by an evil French mastermind, The Brain, to become his beret wearing, Inspector Clouseu accented, gun-wielding life mate  And if the inter-species love wasn’t freaky enough for ya the evil scientist was a disembodied brain housed in a fish bowl. But don’t cry for these two star-crossed lovers…they have had more than a few moments of physical connection where The Brain found a body to use as a vehicle for making sweet, sweet love to Mallah.

7. Mighty Joe Young (Mighty Joe Young)

It’s not easy being the no-frills version of King Kong but Joe didn’t let that keep him down. He was a plucky gorilla who didn’t have any of those pesky stalkerish tendencies that a certain self-proclaimed king seemed to think were perfectly fine.

8. King Louie (The Jungle Book)

Louie’s laissez-faire attitude to life and deep abiding love of swinging tunes makes him the coolest ape on my list. He’s also a curious soul who, in his quest to understanding fire, had no problems kidnapping a small child. Ya gotta break some eggs when making an omelet, ya dig? Plus he was voiced by the always cool as ice Louis Prima. I tend to ignore the sad time of Louie’s life where he lost his crown and had to run a nightclub in the Tail Spin TV show. As far as I am concerned Louie was able to avoid prosecution for crimes against humanity and lived out the rest of his days under an assumed identity in Argentina.

9. Gorilla Grodd (DC Comics)

Grodd is a super-intelligent, talking gorilla with telepathic/telekinetic powers who hails from a civilization of scientifically advanced gorillas (in a place called Gorilla City, natch). Grodd’s fondest wish was to become the ruler of Gorilla City but he was always passed over for the gig so he did what any genius level, super-powered talking ape would do…he packed his bags, headed to the US of A and started picking fights with The Flash. Maybe Grodd slipped on a few too many banana peels and bonked his head because that does not seem like the smartest thing to do. But Grodd was not the most evolved of his race; his favorite meal wasn’t bananas but rather people. Yep, he was a super-intelligent, super-powered, talking, man-eating gorilla super-villain who thought that picking fights with the fastest man alive was a better idea than say deciding to become the arch-nemesis of Hawkman or The Atom.

10. Monkey (Dial M for Monkey)

Dial M for Monkey was a backup feature that aired alongside Dexter’s Laboratory on the Cartoon Network. In it, we were shown the super-heroic exploits of Dexter’s lab monkey (named Monkey) as he donned a costume and went to work for a super secret global agency to protect the world from villains and monsters. Monkey had all of Superman’s powers and a hot human super spy girlfriend and all he has to do is let a little kid with a German accent experiment on him every once and a while. Not a bad trade off.