Attar



Colonel Attar was the commander of the Ape Armies. He was the loyal lieutenant of General Thade and enjoyed the thrill of hunting humans. One key difference though was that he was a devoted follower of the ape religion based on the worship of the first ape, Semos. Attar demanded that everyone bow their heads before dinner so a prayer to Semos could be delivered. He even went into a rage after Leo deliberately set the tent where Attar kept his personal shrine of Semos on fire. Attar learned the art of fighting under his teacher Krull, whom he had to fight and kill in the ultimate battle. When the spacepod piloted by Pericles landed on the battle field, he and the other ape soldiers dropped their weapons believing it was the return of their god. He realised that Thade, Thade's father, and the elders of ape society had been misleading the population for centuries and he took the side of Leo, Ari and the humans.

Many years later, in the events of Dark Horse Comics' The Human War and Planet of the Apes comics #1-6 (a.k.a. Old Gods and Blood Lines), Attar was contacted by Seneca who questioned him concerning the events that happened about twelve years earlier at Calima (the site from where Leo Davidson departed and where Thade was imprisoned), after Fyn leaked out information about Shiva planning to conduct an expedition there. Attar was initially uninterested, thinking that Seneca came only to recruit him for the insurrection and told him to leave when asked about Calima, until the former senator further elaborated the reasons of his visit. This prompted Attar to pour some drink for the two of them, and he presumably told Seneca the details around everything that transpired there years ago. Attar later escaped from his exile of twenty years on Shame Island and went on a quest with Seneca and Esau to find and help his old friend Ari - he had been banished there by the ape authorities after he stopped short of wiping out the human rebels at the end of the movie. They were pursued by the ape army of his grandson Kharim, keen to restore the family honour after Attar's disgrace. They would have eventually found Ari on a remote island and used her help to bring real equality to the planet had the comic series continued.[1]