Origin
From a short lived strip starting in Blue Beetle #9, 1940 Dr. Flavius Brock, “noted brain surgeon” is pleased when his order of one fresh gorilla comes in from the Congo aboard a ship and sets about conking a dockside hobo over the head so he can transplant his brain into the gorilla because⦠well because.
At that moment who should stumble in but his assistant Castle who has just returned from making the moves on Brock’s beautiful daughter (all comic book and B movie mad doctors have beautiful daughters it’s a rule or something) those same moves being rejected so that not only is Castle late for work he’s drunk to boot.
Not happy with his assistant the doc decides to go for a brain up-grade and bashes Castle over the head and uses his brain.
Waking up Castle is none to happy about this and kills Dr. Brock, which means he has to go to another doctor to get another body, but he ends up killing him as well when the second doctor loses it on being confronted by a talking gorilla.
After that Castle does himself up invisible man style with gloves, full head mummy head wrap, trench coat and snap brim hat and turns to crime. Ironically enough he is soon known to law enforcement as The Gorilla. He is opposed mainly by the boy friend of Dr. Brock’s daughter, because he just won’t leave the girl along.
As a master criminal he’s not really very good as his henchmen keep finding out he’s a talking ape so the gang falls out as one of the crooks declares “I ain’t taken orders from no monkey!”
Like most strips with a villain as the main protagonist The Gorilla didn’t last long. One of the reasons has to be that in almost every story he appears in Castle at some point gets shot.