| abstract
| - The city where Caesar's rebellion took place in 1991. Governor Breck ruled the area with an iron fist; his security personnel ruthlessly enforcing a rigid and colourless regime. Protests were tolerated, but only with strict limits. The humans, however, generally lived quite comfortably, as the manual work and menial tasks were carried out by a relatively new class of ape servants/slaves, who felt the oppression of the police more than others. The imported apes were conditioned in the brutal 'Ape Management' complex to ensure obedience to their human masters. The city itself was a modern, sterile glass-and-steel construction, while the human population adhered to a drab monochrome dress code. It was into this city that Señor Armando arrived by helicopter with his orphaned charge, Caesar (formerly known as Milo), the child of the time-travelling chimps from the future, Zira and Cornelius. He had raised the speaking chimp since his parents' murder at the hands of Dr. Hasslein, but the financial troubles of his circus forced him to take Caesar to the potentially very dangerous city in order to raise publicity. It proved a tragic mistake as Caesar was unable to contain his horror at the situation. While Armando was arrested and died in police custody, Caesar managed to conceal his true identity and plot his revenge against the Governor and his supporters. One script outline of Battle for the Planet of the Apes depicts a flashback of Caesar leading an exodus of apes and humans from 'Modern City' in 1991, in the aftermath of his successful revolt. Ape uprisings and general world tensions lead to nuclear devastation (including Modern City) which Caesar's band narrowly escaped. London, Rome, Athens, Rio, Moscow, Tokyo and Peking were all destroyed much the same, and Caesar points out that "the city was flattened. The bomb left nothing". His followers established an 'Ape City' to the north of Modern City. According to Marvel Comics' Quest for the Planet of the Apes, former Governor Breck, Alma and Mendez had been taken prisoner along with other volatile humans, whom the apes kept alive as a work detail after the rebellion. Two years on, the apes hadn't visited the city since before it was destroyed, but knew it to be 'dead' (it was by then surrounded by a desert wasteland), although MacDonald believed that "many sections of the underground city were designed to survive the impact of a ten megaton overblast", among them the 'Archives' section, near the old 'Command Post' where Breck made his final stand. Aldo challenged Caesar to a quest to determine ape leadership: he and Caesar must return to the old city and each bring something back; whoever found the 'best thing' would rule. Caesar accepted, though MacDonald, knowing the dangers of entering a city only a year after a nuclear war, urged him not to go. The city was a scene of horror, and Caesar knew immediately what to bring back: the knowledge and vision of what strife can cause, and what peace can avoid. He declared the area The Forbidden City and that apes should avoid the area completely. Aldo, meanwhile, found a stocked armory and filled a cart with rifles. Back in Ape City, Breck and other humans revolted and seized Aldo's cart of weapons. The apes killed most escaping humans, but a few, including Breck, Mendez and Alma, fled into the Forbidden Zone. It was many years later, when Caesar, Virgil and MacDonald (somewhat recklessly) decided to search the bomb-proof Archive section of the Forbidden City for tapes of Caesar's parents, that either the apes or the local mutants were aware of the other's survival. Governor Kolp had been the leader of the mutants since Breck's death, and ruled from the 'Control Center' - the former 'Ape Management Center' used by Breck. Kolp was assisted by Alma, his communications officer, and Mendez, his first lieutenant. The radiation in the destroyed city made them physically damaged and mentally unbalanced. Kolp and the more able-bodied and aggressive members of the community were mostly wiped out during their failed invasion of Caesar's Ape City, with only a few escaping and another group taken as prisoners. Mendez became leader of the remaining mutants, and the danger associated with the Forbidden City ensured the apes continued to keep it in isolation. Two generations on, in Malibu Graphics' Planet of the Apes comic, Caesar's grandson and heir, Alexander, struggled to stop the city he had inherited from falling into chaos, aided by Jacob, son of Virgil. Alexander went on a special expedition into the Forbidden Zone and visited the Forbidden City, where he was attacked by a throng of mutants. There, he freed a group of mutated 'Forgotten Apes' held captive since Caesar's revolution. Alexander's rival, General Ollo, allied with the Forgotten Apes and provoked a war between them and their Swamp Ape neighbours in the Forbidden Zone, but with little success. Ollo met his death at the hands of the spirit of Governor Breck, resurrected through occult rituals by a group of Forbidden City mutant humans, whom he immediately massacred because of their 'impurity'. After Breck had annihilated all of the communities outside of the Ape City, the ghost of Caesar finally overcame him. In Malibu Graphics' Planet of the Apes: The Forbidden Zone, the mutant Mendez Ten was condemned for his independent thinking and heresy against the worship of the Alpha-Omega Bomb. He escaped across the Forbidden Zone and found himself at the mercy of a community known as the Primacy, who maintained and developed the ideas of human integration that Ape City had since turned its back on. The armies of the mutants and of Ape City invaded Primacy but, using the advice of Mendez, they were able to maneuver the two armies into wiping each other out.
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