Welcome to Mogo, the Bat-Ape. Yep. For an issue, Batman and Robin had an ape sidekick. Why? I couldn’t really tell you. I mean the story worked out like this, in brief:

BATMAN and ROBIN have seldom had any comrade to help them in their war on lawbreakers…but now, the Dynamic Detective Duo acquires a partner who makes a mighty ally, indeed! For this new “lawman” isn’t a man at all, but that strange and awesome figure known as…THE BAT-APE

So they go to a circus and meet a super smart ape and then the ape helps them and Batman is all “That’s a smart ape, yo.” So the ape decides he misses Batman, breaks out of the circus and somehow follows them back to the Batcave. Let me share the actual dialogue from that gem of a moment:

Robin: BATMAN, LOOK! Look! MOGO! He broke out and followed you, because you befriended him! I didn’t think we could be trailed here!

Batman: No ordinary ape could – but Mogo is super-intelligent!

Wait. Huh? So a super-intelligent ape can track Batman? Shouldn’t humans have no damned problem? What the hell ever. So the ape starts to put on a Batman cowl and cape, and Alfred gets all pissy. Yeah he does. He doesn’t want a damn dirty ape in the Batcave. And who can blame him? You start oiff with an ape in the Batcave but pretty soon it’s all Butlers in the Mist and shit, and they come back to Alfred picking nits off of Bat-Ape and … poor Aunt Harriet.

So Batman decides to just take the ape with them. You have to love that logic. Anyway, Bat-Ape helps save the day and his trainer returns him to Africa to set him free and we never hear from him again.

Which is sad.

Now for the record, Mogo is not the hairy fellow featured on this other cover:

Though that would be cool as hell, no? If Mogo returned but as evil, bomb-strapped Mogo. But it was not to be.

Also, to be fair, neither of these is the time we had a Bat Creature, A Gorilla crime boss with a machine-gun shooting at Batman and Catwoman, or The Gorilla Boss of Gotham City.