Voracious by Action Lab Entertainment (2015 onward)

Cover blurb

Haunted by the death of his sister, NYC Chef Nate Willner has lost his desire to cook. Forced to move back to his tiny hometown in Utah, Nate’s life is quickly becoming a dead end. But when he unexpectedly inherits a time travel suit that takes him to the age of dinosaurs, Nate’s passion for cooking is reignited! With a little help from his knife-wielding Grandmother Maribel, and friends Starlee and Captain Jim, Nate opens a restaurant that secretly serves dinosaur meat. Can he survive long enough to make it a success and turn his life around?

My thoughts

Most works of fiction bringing together dinosaurs and people usually have the former eating the latter. Voracious is one of the few examples of a story about people who eat dinosaurs – which, come to think of it, would probably be the more likely result if the two were to meet.

Voracious is a comic book series written by Markisan Nazo with art by Jason Muhr. It is published by Action Lab Entertainment, a small publisher that apparently specializes in offbeat comic titles. As of this post, the series just ended its first four-issue story arc, with the creators promising to launch their second story arc either later this year or early next year. Despite the presence of time travel and dinosaurs, Voracious really isn’t as much sci-fi adventure story as it is television melodrama, focusing on the lives of its attractive young protagonists.

Nate Willner is a former big-city chef of Native American descent who moved back to his hometown in Utah after his sister was killed in a restaurant fire. His life has hit the skids, but luckily he has his elderly grandmother Maribel and his life-long friend Starlee to look after him. He has also inherited $500,000 and a secret lab from his reclusive and recently deceased uncle. During a visit to his new property,  Nate finds a modified diving suit that transports him back to late Cretaceous North America. He is stomping around in the prehistoric past when he is attacked by a Quetzalcoatlus that he promptly kills with a flamethrower, leading to a surprising discovery: Dinosaurs (and pterosaurs) are delicious! Soon afterward, Nate opens a restaurant stocked with meat from dinosaurs he hunts in the Cretaceous. The restaurant is an immediate success, but how long will Nate be able to keep his secret? Can he ever get over his guilt about his sister’s death? Will he reciprocate Starlee’s obvious love for him? And won’t changing the past have consequences for the present?

The neat thing about Voracious is it doesn’t go the obvious route for stories of this type. Most comic book series would have been content with a simpler tale about a time traveler who fights dinosaurs. Nazo and Muhr want to tell a more complex narrative. That is not to say Voracious is high literature. It is soap opera, but it is entertaining soap opera, with likable protagonists and a good sense of humor. My biggest complaint so far is the first four issues are really just the opening chapter of a much larger story rather than a self-contained arc. I’m worried the series will get canceled before the creators have had a chance to finish what they started, given Voracious isn’t the type of tale that normally attracts comic book fans. (No female superheroes in tight spandex outfits or over-the-top violence.)

The art is competent if nothing to write home about. Human characters look a bit stiff, lacking the dynamism of living beings. The same is true of the dinosaur depictions. I get the sense the artist is still perfecting his craft, so it will be interesting to see how the illustrations evolve as the series continues.

Nitpicking aside, Voracious is a comic I plan to continue following. It's quirky and I appreciate that it's trying to do something different. I just hope sales are strong enough to allow the creators to finish the tale they want to tell.

Trivia

• The first four issues of Voracious will be published as a single volume on August 10. In the meantime, you can purchase them individually online through Comixology.

• The author’s website is markisan.com while the artist’s website is jasonmuhr.com. Both contain examples of artwork from the series.

• Voracious isn’t the first comic book about time travelers who harvest dinosaurs for meat. As far as I can tell, that distinction goes to Flesh, which first appeared in the British anthology comic 2000AD in 1977. If the title sounds familiar, that’s because 2000AD also gave us Judge Dredd.

Reviews

• Graphic Policy (Issue #1)

• The Broken Infinite (Issue #2)

• Comic Bastards (Issue #3)

• Graphic Policy (Issue #4)

Turok: Son of Stone by Dark Horse Comics (2010-2011)

Cover blurb

The American Southwest, 1428. Turok, a wandering warrior, rescues young Andar from death at the hands of the ruthless Maxtla and his Aztec horde. Turok and Andar seek refuge in a vast cavern, where an otherworldly force sweeps them and their pursuers to a savage, timeless land of rampaging dinosaurs and unimagined wonders. Hunted in a world of danger and death, Turok and Andar fight to survive - and to find a way home.

My thoughts

Turok, as I’ve said before, is a hard man to kill. Since the first Turok comic debuted in 1954, the character has been resurrected several times in various media. Sometimes those reincarnations differ greatly from the original concept of Turok as a pre-Columbian Native American trapped in a lost world of dinosaurs. The most recent take on the character by Dynamite Comics turned Turok into troubled youth in an alternate timeline where dinosaurs survived in Europe and had been tamed by medieval knights. That series ended with Turok becoming Robin Hood. (Yeah, that comic was pretty awful.) A few years before Dynamite gave us its version of the “dinosaur hunter,” Dark Horse Comics attempted to revive Turok with a four-issue limited series that was closer in tone to the original comic. While not a great effort, it wasn’t a train wreck either.

The story starts with a group of displaced Aztecs about to sacrifice a Native American boy. Within a couple pages Turok has rescued the child – who it turns out is the dinosaur hunter’s longtime sidekick Andar – and the two are pursued across the landscape by the angry Aztecs. The dino-manic duo are sheltering in a cave when a strange storm sweeps them and their pursuers to another dimension where dinosaurs and other beings from various time periods are dumped by the same weather phenomena. Turok and Andar are quickly captured by the Panther People and their Scandinavian, 21st century queen. Meanwhile, the Aztecs discover a lost city of their people, who quickly (and not very believably) accept the group’s leader as their long-lost god-king. The new king doesn’t waste any time ordering his subjects to capture the child sacrifice who got away.

Turok: Son of Stone suffers the same problem I see in many comics: It attempts to cram too much story into the limited space available in the average issue. The result is the characters are never fully developed. The troubles begin only a few pages in when Andar’s father is quickly killed in front of his son. Readers never get to know the character or see his relationship with Andar, so there is little emotional investment. Andar also appears to get over his father’s murder very quickly, so I’m not sure what purpose his death served in the boy’s character arc. The same lack of logic extends to other characters, who will often undergo major personality shifts simply because the plot needed to advance forward – the most egregious being when the Scandinavian queen develops romantic feelings for Turok seemingly out of nowhere.

Readers looking for dinosaurs will be disappointed as they get the short shrift. The prehistoric reptiles appear in a few panels, but for the most part they are only scenery. They also are not well drawn, although I have seen worse takes. The rest of the art was actually quite nice, with the action scenes drawn with a sort of frenetic energy sometimes lacking in other comics trying for the same thing. As for action, there is quite a lot of it throughout the series, and it is done well enough to keep your attention.

Turok: Son of Stone isn’t a complete loss but there isn’t enough there to make the series memorable. A streamlined plot that allowed more character development would have helped. It also wouldn’t have hurt to provide more dinosaurs for the “dinosaur hunter” to hunt. Dark Horse’s take on the character is better than that of the more recent Dynamite comic, but it still fails to capture the full potential of the premise.

Trivia

• Dark Horse was going to publish all four issues in a single volume, but that never happened. Still, individual issues are available for purchase as digital downloads from the company’s website.

• The first issue of the series includes Turok’s origin story from his very first comic, published roughly 60 years ago.

• I’m guessing the subplot about the leader of the renegade Aztecs being instantly accepted by the lost city as a god-king was inspired by the real-life story of Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who the Aztecs mistook for a god. (Although some historians question whether that story was a later invention.)

• Dark Horse has collected and republished the original Turok comics in 10 hardcover volumes selling for $50-$60 each. So if you have more than $500 to spare, you can own the entire series.

• Turok currently is starring in a Dynamite series bringing several older, largely forgotten superheroes together as a team – the equivalent of Marvel’s Avengers.

Reviews

• IGN (first issue)

• Crave (first issue)

• Comic Book Resources (first issue)

Thun'da by Dynamite Comics (2012)

Cover blurb

The time is now. A Military helicopter crash lands in a remote valley in Africa. A lone survivor awakens with no memory of who he is or what he was doing there, but he's wearing a uniform and is a skilled combatant. From the wreckage he learns only his name — ROGER DRUM. As he explores his new surroundings he is confronted by a bizarre lost world of dinosaurs and other strange creatures. Drum must learn to survive in this terrifying new reality while coming to terms with fragments of a past he isn't sure he wants to remember.

As a bonus, this over-sized issue also includes the original first issue with fantastic art by the one-and-only Frank Frazetta at no extra cost!

*Blurb from the first issue.

My thoughts

The year 1994. From out of space comes a runaway planet hurdling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Man's civilization is cast in ruins. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn. A strange new world rises from the old. A world of savagery, super science and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice...

Hold on... that's Thundarr the Barbarian. The comic I'm reviewing in this post is Thun'da, an even more obscure character that was the creation of legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. This isn't a review of the original comics but rather Dynamite Comics' attempt to revive the character in 2012 with a five-issue miniseries. Thun'da basically is a Tarzan knockoff living in a lost land filled with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. There is little about the character to make him stand out from the other Tarzan clones (such as Ka-Zar), and there is little about the comic to make it stand out from countless other lost world stories.

The first issue begins with Thun'da – a U.S. soldier named Roger Drum – awakening after a helicopter crash that has left him stranded somewhere in central Africa. Thanks to the selective amnesia that only occurs in fiction, he can't remember who he is but he has retained all his survival skills and military training. The sudden appearance of a T. rex assures Thun'da that he is not in Kansas anymore, so after blowing up the helicopter, he escapes into the woods to get his bearings. What follows is a series of adventures with a sabertooth cat, Neanderthals, intelligent apes, and a scantily clad native princess.

The most memorable thing about Thun'da is just how forgettable it is. I read the series twice but have trouble retaining any details about the plot. That is largely because the comic is simply one lost world genre cliché after another, with the barest thread of a narrative arc holding it all together. The same blandness extends to the art, which isn't terrible but also isn't distinguishable in any way from the art that graces thousands of other comics. Together the story and the art add up to a whole lot of “meh.”

Thun'da is a comic you can comfortably skip. It isn't the worst comic I have read, but it may be among the most boring.

Trivia

• The first three issues of Thun'da include Frazetta's original comics, which boast much better illustrations than the reboot. The one exception is in the third issue, where Frazetta's art includes racist caricatures of native Africans. The original comics were drawn in the 1950s and reflect the racial attitudes of the times.

• The original Thun'da made his big screen debut in 1952 in the Columbia Picture's film King of the Congo. He was portrayed by actor Buster Crabbe.

Reviews

• Comic Book Resources (Issue #1)

• Geeks of Doom (Issue #1)

• Unleash the Fanboy (Issue #3)

Dinosaur Rex by Jan Strnad and Henry Mayo (1987)

Summary

Dinosaur Rex is two comics in one. In the title story, Hempsted Grenville is a rich playboy living in an alternate 1920s where dinosaurs still exist. Most of his money comes from his uncle, who went missing several years ago during a hunting trip in Africa. Hempsted soon learns that the family fortune has been depleted, so his aunt charges him with finding his uncle and the treasure he allegedly found during his time in the Dark Continent. Hempsted teams up with his attractive cousin Flavia and his uncle's manservant Duubadah – actually an intelligent species of dinosaur with psychic powers – on an adventure that will lead them to a lost city and a mythical dinosaur graveyard.

The second story - “The Dragons of Summer” by William Messner-Loebs and Dennis Fujitake – is set several hundred years in the future after humanity spread to the stars and mutated into different species. However, space colonization didn't work out, so the various types of humans returned to Earth where they live in uneasy co-existence. Chester Franks is a regional director in a bureaucracy that helps former space colonists reintegrate into Earth society. Other than the paperwork, Franks' greatest challenge is battling the racism that “normal” humans feel toward their mutated cousins. Then there are the dinosaurs that start mysteriously appearing throughout the city.

My thoughts

Dinosaur Rex is a three-issue comic book series that may have the dubious distinction of being the most obscure comic I have reviewed on this site. It was published in 1987 by Upshot Graphics, a division of Fantagraphic Books, a U.S.-based publisher of alternative comics. The comic didn't sell well: After the first issue, the creators switched from color to black-and-white illustrations to save money. Don't let that dissuade you from hunting down Dinosaur Rex because it actually is pretty fun.

The title story is a satire of Victorian adventure fiction. The two lead characters couldn't be more incompetent, bumbling from one misadventure to the next. They only survive thanks to the efforts of their dinosaurian butler, who proves more capable than any human in the series. The writer, Jan Strnad, explains in an afterword that Dinosaur Rex was inspired by the works of P.G. Wodehouse, a British humorist whose most famous creation was a butler who looked after a dim-witted aristocrat. I haven't read any of Wodehouse's works so I can't say how the comic compares, but Dinosaur Rex stands on its own as a fun little adventure that packs a surprising amount of story in three issues. The art is very nice and actually looks better in black and white than it does in color. The dinosaurs look a little strange given they are often drawn with oversized cartoonish eyes - and they are of the tail-dragging variety - but Dinosaur Rex was never meant to be a comic aiming for scientific accuracy.

“The Dragons of Summer” isn't as much fun by comparison, although it still works as a nice filler story. The mystery of the dinosaurs' sudden appearance drives the plot but the terrible reptiles only play a minor role. What makes the story is notable is its sympathetic portrayal of a government bureaucrat, a job that usually doesn't get a lot of love in fiction. Franks, the main character, is a good guy just trying to do the best he can with the limited resources he has available. The writer, William Messnet-Loebs, also tries to make a point about racism, but the message comes across as heavy handed. The art by Dennis Fujitake is quite good and, like in Dinosaur Rex, looks better in black and white.

Trivia

• As far as I can tell, Dinosaur Rex was only one of three titles published under the Upshot Graphics brand. The others were Flesh and Bone and The Miracle Squad.

Reviews

• None

Rip in Time by Bruce Jones & Richard Corben (1986)

Summary

Off-duty police officer Rip Scully (hence “Rip” in Time) and his fiancé Maggie are on their way to a party when they stop at a liquor store to buy wine. As Rip is making his purchase, a street thug, Sid, and his girlfriend, Darlene, barge into the store to rob it. Sid shoots the clerk, causing Rip to draw his own gun and shoot back, but he misses. Sid runs outside, grabs Maggie as a hostage, then flees the scene with her in Rip’s car. Rip figures two can play that game: He grabs Darlene - who Sid has left behind – hotwires a car and pursues Sid. Their chase leads them to a secret military base that is conducting time travel experiments. Sid and Maggie go racing through a time portal leading to the Mesozoic, with Rip and Darlene in hot pursuit. Rip is determined to save Maggie from Sid and the dinosaurs, but the military personnel who run the base don’t want anyone coming back alive.

My thoughts

Rip in Time was a five-issue comic miniseries first released in 1986 and later published as a single volume in 1990. The artist, Richard Corben, is somewhat famous in the comic book world, mostly for his work in Heavy Metal magazine. There is no denying his talent as most of the art in Rip in Time is fantastic. It’s the writing that leaves much to be desired.

Rip in Time is an adult comic heavily influenced by 1970s-1980s action movies. These movies were far from politically correct, often featuring gratuitous violence, racial stereotypes, and the occasional rape scene. Sadly, Rip in Time has all three. The story doesn’t get off to a good start when one of the first scenes involves a male scientist sexually harassing his female boss, which includes the revelation he has been secretly filming her in the shower room. The whole thing is played for laughs as the scientist is actually one of the good guys. (Oh that lovable scamp!) The sexism doesn’t stop there. Later, when Sid kidnaps Maggie, he is constantly threatening her with rape. Fortunately when the rape comes, it isn’t shown. Unfortunately, we get to see Sid beating Maggie right before he violates her, and it is implied she enjoys it. And did I mention Sid the violent rapist is the only dark-skinned character in the story? Ugh.

The writing is terrible all around, with silly dialogue and character motivations that don’t make sense. The bright spot is the comic’s black-and-white art. Corben’s drawings are stylized yet extremely detailed. (You can see examples here, here, and here.) He sometimes tries to squish too much action into too small a space, resulting in deformed people, but for the most part the art is very atmospheric. The Mesozoic is portrayed as a Skull Island-like prehistoric wilderness that, while not scientifically accurate, sure is pretty to look at. The dinosaurs were obviously inspired by Charles R. Knight paintings, almost to the point of plagiarism: Corben’s T. rex and Triceratops come straight from this painting. That said, he nails the style so well it’s hard to hold it against him.

I love the art and Rip in Time has a few good action scenes, but I can’t recommend the comic. The horrible writing holds it back. The series is interesting only as a failed marriage between prehistoric adventure stories and violent 1980s action flicks. Call me a prude, but I like my dinosaur stories to be a little less rapey.

Trivia

• The artist’s official website is corbencomicart.com.

• Writer Bruce Jones has penned several comic book series over the years, including The Incredible Hulk.

• Rip in Time has a surprisingly detailed Wikipedia page with a blow-by-blow plot synopsis for each issue. Warning: spoilers galore.

• A cover gallery of the original five issues can be viewed here.

Reviews

• They Stole Frazier’s Brain

• Now Read This!

Dreadlands by Epic Comics (1992)

Summary

Colorado, 2033. Decades of war and environmental degradation have left the Earth’s surface a wasteland (i.e. the “Dreadlands” of the title). One of the last beacons of hope is a U.N. science facility tasked with finding a means of restoring the planet’s biosphere as well as developing clean energy sources. The scientists get more than they bargained for when an experiment with ball lightning gives them the key to traveling through time. Before they can tinker further with the technology, an army of wasteland raiders overruns the base, forcing the surviving scientists and military personnel to cram into a makeshift time machine in hopes of escaping into the future. However, an ill-timed lightning strike instead sends them hurdling back to the Jurassic Period, where giant carnivores turn out to be the least of their problems.

My thoughts

Dreadlands is a four-issue comic book series published in 1992 by Epic Comics, a now-defunct imprint of Marvel Comics. Epic was a vehicle for writers and artists to tell more adult stories than were allowed in Marvel’s mainstream titles at the time. Like most Epic titles, Dreadlands is largely forgotten today, which is a shame because the comic combines decent writing with terrific art.

Dreadlands mainly is the story of a group of castaways trying to eke out a living in the Mesozoic. I say “mainly” because the first issue is concerned with how the group became stranded in the first place, while the third issue takes a turn into more traditional comic book sci-fi fare. Upon arriving the Jurassic, the survivors quickly split into two factions: Military types led by the hot-headed Lieutenant Trask, and civilians led by the much more reasonable Lieutenant Jeff McClure. The factions go their separate ways, encounter hungry dinosaurs, and build the fabulous tree houses that pop up in nearly every story about people trapped in a prehistoric wilderness. (See Land of the Lost, The Lost World, Dinosaur Island, etc.)

I’m avoiding going into detail about the plot because there is a surprise twist in the middle that steers it in a totally different direction. Sadly, the twist actually hurts more than it helps. Before it occurs, Dreadlands is a pretty good tale about people trying to make the most out of the horrible situation they find themselves in. Afterward, the comic quickly devolves into little more than a series of gun battles and chase scenes, with the dinosaurs taking a backseat to all the other action.

That gripe aside, Dreadlands still boasts above-average characterization and a storyline that entertains despite its missteps. Helping immensely is the comic’s detailed art and the artist’s portrayal of dinosaurs as active animals with their tails held high off the ground. That may seem like faint praise these days, but Dreadlands came out a year before the first Jurassic Park movie, when most dinosaurs in the popular media were still being depicted as tail-dragging lizards. The comic’s creators also did a reasonably good job of making sure only dinosaurs appropriate to the Jurassic Period populate the setting. There are allosaurs and stegosaurs but no T. rexes or Triceratops.

Dreadlands was never collected in a single volume, so you will need to hunt down the four issues individually if you want to read the series. Fortunately for your wallet, the lack of interest in the comic means they are pretty cheap to find these days. (I purchased all four issues for $3.47, which couldn’t buy you a single comic now.)

Trivia

• A cover gallery can be viewed at the Marvel wiki.

• Dreadlands was written by Andy Lanning and Steve White, both of whom are still active in comics. White also was the series colorist.

• The penciler, Phil Gascoine, was a British comic book artist best known for his work in girls’ comics. Sadly, he died in 2007, according to his Wikipedia page.

Reviews

• None

Extinction Event by WildStorm (2003-2004)

Summary

A group of ranch hands in modern-day Texas are searching for a missing calf when they stumble upon a remarkable find: 65 million-year-old ruins inscribed with dinosaur carvings. Six months later, the U.S. military has commandeered the site and brought in pilot Rick Benson to fly a specially built aircraft down a two-mile deep shaft amid the ruins. The hole leads to a gigantic cave filled with machinery keeping thousands of dinosaurs in suspended animation. The presence of humans causes the dinosaurs to stir from their slumber, but what seems like the greatest discovery in history soon becomes a nightmare. Turns out the animals are far more intelligent than we imagined, and they want their planet back.

My thoughts

Extinction Event was a five-part miniseries published in late 2003 and early 2004 by WildStorm, an imprint of DC Comics. The comic’s creators obviously meant the series to be the start of a much larger publishing run as the story ends on a cliffhanger, so don’t dive into it expecting a tidy resolution. No sequel ever materialized, probably because the comic isn’t very good.

Extinction Event has more in common with War of the Worlds than The Lost World, although its plot borrows heavily from Doctor Who and the Silurians. The super-intelligent dinosaurs here basically are a faceless alien force intent on humanity’s destruction. After an initial setup in the first two issues, the story boils down to the dinosaur army’s rampage across Texas and the heroes’ attempts to stop it. Why do the dinosaurs hate humanity so much? That’s never explained. They wake up and instantly start slaughtering every person they find, although you would think they would be surprised to see humans given they had never encountered them before. And if you're wondering how a few thousand dinosaurs could overrun several billion humans, these dinosaurs have psychic powers that turn people into mindless puppets – except for the heroes, who can resist their mental powers because… plot convenience?

The writing is ludicrous. Extinction Event reads like something I would have penned in seventh grade: Just a bunch of “cool” ideas thrown into a narrative blender with no care for creating a story with any type of logical coherence. My favorite bit of WTF comes near the end when the hero enters a town to tell the residents – who have no clue that anything out of the ordinary is going on – that an army of psychic dinosaurs is about to invade their community, so they should arm themselves and follow him into battle. And they do! I’m guessing because you don’t mess with Texas?

The art is a mixed bag. A big problem with many dinosaur-themed comics is the artists are often skilled at depicting human anatomy but not dinosaur anatomy, so you get silly-looking terrible lizards. The opposite is true for Extinction Event. The dinosaur art is the bright spot of the series. The animals are highly detailed and show a surprising amount of scientific accuracy, including feathers. Unfortunately the colorist paints all the dinosaurs the same shade of green, which diminishes the work the penciler put into them. Still, I wish more comics had dinosaurs that looked this good. That said, the human characters look awful, with strangely elongated torsos, oversized limbs, and undersized heads. The artist clearly was hired for his ability to draw dinosaurs, not Homo sapiens.

As far as I know, Extinction Event was never collected into a single volume, so you will need to hunt down all five issues individually if you want to read the series. Trust me, it’s not worth the effort.

Trivia

• DC shut down WildStorm in 2010.

• The writer’s website is www.robertwienberg.net

• The penciler, Brett Booth, has provided art for a number of popular superhero comics. You can read more about him on his Wikipedia page. 

Reviews

• None

Dino Island by Jim Lawson (1993)

Summary

October 1942. Pilot Amelia not-Earhart is attempting to break the record for fastest flight across the Atlantic Ocean when her P-51 Mustang takes an unexpected detour. After passing through a strange atmospheric anomaly, Amelia lands on an uncharted island inhabited by living dinosaurs. She quickly befriends a surprisingly docile Triceratops, encounters a small colony of other castaways, and finds a gigantic alien structure that may explain the island’s existence as well as provide a way home.

My thoughts

Dino Island is a two-issue comic book miniseries published to cash in on the interest in dinosaurs generated by the release of the first Jurassic Park film, which came out the same year. Writer and artist Jim Lawson is best known for his work on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He is also something of a dinosaur nut, having self-published the wonderful dinosaur comic Paleo: Tales of the Late Cretaceous.

Dino Island isn’t as good as Paleo, in part because the dinosaurs take a back seat to a rather mediocre story about the origins of the island. Two issues were too short for the tale that Lawson wanted to tell. He introduces plot elements that go nowhere and there is no real logic in why anything happens over the course of the story – one moment doesn’t connect to the next. The series also concludes with a downer ending, which is surprising given its light-hearted subject matter.

The art is the bright spot. Lawson draws in a cartoony style that might put some people off, particularly when it comes to his human characters. That said, I found it rather pleasant to look at. I especially liked Lawson’s use vibrant colors, which was a nice change of pace from the black-and-white Paleo.

Dino Island ultimately is a comic that looks better than it reads. If Lawson had chosen a simpler plot and focused more on the dinosaurs, then I think he would have had a winner. Instead we’re left with a comic whose sole claim to fame is as a relic of the dinosaur craze that accompanied Jurassic Park.

Trivia

• The covers of the two issues form a single continuous image when laid side-by-side.
• Lawson’s superior comic Paleo can now be read online for free.

Reviews

• None

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter by Dynamite Comics (2014)

Cover blurb

THE GOLD KEY UNIVERSE BEGINS HERE! Classic Characters by some of Comics Hottest Creators! - Magnus, Solar, Turok and Dr. Spektor! Dynamite is proud to present an all-new adventure ongoing from superstar GREG PAK (Batman/Superman, World War Hulk) and incredible artist MIRKO COLAK (Red Skull: Incarnate, Conan)! Shunned from his tribe, a young Native American named Turok fights to survive, making a lonely life for himself in the unforgiving forest. But his hard-won cunning and survival skills face the ultimate test when man-eating THUNDER LIZARDS attack his people! Why are dinosaurs here? How have they survived? And will Turok use his abilities to save a society that's taken everything away from him?

*Blurb from the first issue of the series.

My thoughts

Turok is a hard man to kill, and not just in his stories. Few comic book characters have been rebooted as often as the "Dinosaur Hunter." He got his start in 1954 in the comic Turok: Son of Stone. In this first outing, he was a pre-Columbian Native American who, along with his young sidekick Andar, stumbles into a lost valley of dinosaurs. He was resurrected in 1993 (the same year Jurassic Park hit theaters) as a gun-wielding hero who found himself up against aliens and cyborg dinosaurs. There were a couple more attempts to revive the comic, but what most people know the character from is the 1997 video game, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. After a handful of sequels, the game was rebooted in 2008, this time turning Turok into a space marine. He even starred in a 2008 direct-to-video animated movie, Turok: Son of Stone, which is a surprisingly decent film.

And that brings us to the most recent incarnation of the comic book series: Dynamite’s Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. There is no way to review this comic without giving away the big plot twist in the first issue, which shapes the rest of the series. So here’s a summary of my thoughts if you want to skip the spoilers below: I hated it.

In Dynamite’s take on the character, Turok is a young outcast whose parents were murdered by their adopted tribe. Andar is no longer his sidekick but a tormenting bully. The two are drawn together when dinosaurs suddenly appear and attack Andar’s companions. And where did the dinosaurs come from? They were brought to North America by European Crusaders who discovered the New World roughly two centuries before Christopher Columbus.

You see, in the alternate timeline of the comic, dinosaurs exist in the Old World and have been integrated into medieval society. The terrible lizards helped Europeans conquer the Middle East and now the Crusaders have turned their sights on the Americas. The first four-issue arc of the series concerns Turok’s efforts to free Andar’s tribe from the foreign invaders. The next four-issue arc sees Turok journey west, where he encounters a tribe of city dwellers under threat from Genghis Khan’s hordes, who have also managed to find their way to the New World.

I’ll give the creators of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter credit for trying to take the comic in a different direction by setting it in an alternate timeline rather than a lost valley. Still, there is little else to recommend. The writing suffers from trying to cram too much action into too few issues, resulting in illogical leaps in plot and character development. The setting is surprisingly unimaginative: Wouldn’t European culture have evolved in a different direction had dinosaurs still existed? Why settle for generic knights in armor when you could have had something more exotic? And the art goes from serviceable in the first four issues to damn ugly in the next four.

Poor Turok: Someday you will get a reboot worthy of your legacy. Just not today.

Trivia

• Turok features feathered dinosaurs, or at least partially feathered dinosaurs. Still, none are drawn with any great skill.

Reviews

• IGN (Issue 1)
• Comic Book Resources (Issue 4)
• Ain't It Cool News (Issue 4)
• Comic Bastards (Issue 7)

Chronos Commandos: Dawn Patrol by Titan Comics (2013-14)

Cover blurb

When the Allies and Nazis develop time-diving technology that could see the Second World War derailed by creatures from the Cretaceous, only the Sarge and his hand of misfit soldiers can save the future – by saving history! Dinosaurs! Giant crocodiles! Albert Einstein with a machine gun! All that barely scratches the surface of the first issue of this astounding, fully-painted pulp spectacular!

* Blurb from the first issue of the five-issue miniseries.

My thoughts

Chronos Commandos starts with a time machine materializing in the Mesozoic. Out from it pour four U.S. soldiers in World War II uniforms. They are led by Sarge, a cigar-chomping macho man who just wants to complete the mission so he can return home and grab a coffee. After some gory encounters with dinosaurs and time-traveling Nazis, Sarge is the only one left out of his squad. He hops in the time machine and travels back to the future only to find his base under attack by Nazis. It turns out the Germans have stolen a vital piece of time travel technology and have fled with it to the Age of Dinosaurs. It is up to Sarge and a small squad of men to travel back in time and recover the tech or risk losing the war.

Chronos Commandos is a tough comic to review because its creators purposely set a low bar for themselves: It is meant as nothing more than a brainless tribute to the pulp comics of yesteryear, in particular The War That Time Forgot. Taking the comic too seriously would be a mistake. That said, there are some flaws that diminished my enjoyment of the title. First is the main character, Sarge, who is supposed to be a tough guy but instead comes across as a jerk more interested in his own preservation than the safety of the men he leads. Another problem is the depiction of the Cretaceous, with the creators mixing and matching dinosaurs from different eras in the setting. I know it is a bit silly to demand scientific rigor from a pulp comic, but I would have liked to seen a broader range of dinosaurs than your standard raptors, T. rexes, and stegosaurs. As for the art, it is serviceable – it does its job but is nothing to write home about.

My verdict of Chronos Commandos is a resounding “meh.” The comic wasn’t a complete waste of my time, but I wish its creators had been more ambitious. There is nothing wrong with B-grade entertainment, but that’s not an excuse not to shoot for something a little grander.

Trivia

• Chronos Commandos was not the only dinosaurs vs. Nazis comic series released in 2013: The year also saw the debut of Half-Past Danger.

Reviews

• Clandestine Critic
• IGN
• Comic Book Resources

Half-Past Danger by Stephen Mooney (2013)

Summary

Summer, 1943. Sargent Tommy “Irish” Flynn is leading a squad of U.S. soldiers through the jungles of a remote South Pacific isle when he stumbles upon a secret Nazi base. Before he gets a chance to report what he saw, his squad is attacked and decimated by a pair of T. rexes, with Flynn the only survivor. Fast forward two months: Flynn, now deeply haunted by his experience, is recruited by the U.S. Army and MI6 Agent Miss Huntington-Moss to return to the island, find out what the Nazis want with the dinosaurs, and stop them at any cost.

My thoughts

Half-Past Danger was a six-issue comic miniseries that was apparently a labor of love for its creator, Stephen Mooney, who provided the art and story. It’s an obvious homage to the pulps of yesteryear and to early comics such as The War That Time Forgot. Mooney’s passion for the subject shines through, particularly in the illustrations, which are excellent.

I wish I could say the same for Mooney’s storytelling abilities. The first issue provides a nice setup, but by the second issue Mooney is in too much of a hurry to get to the action. He spills the big secret of the island and devotes the remaining issues to a series of chases, each more implausible than the next. There also are a couple of plot twists that frankly don’t make a lot of sense. And, to be honest, he overuses T. rexes – I would have liked to have seen a wider variety of dinosaurs.

That said, I don’t want to come across as too negative because I enjoyed the comic despite its flaws. It’s fun, brainless entertainment, and the artwork alone is worth the price of admission. Half-Past Danger is worth picking up if you come across it.

Trivia

• The official blog of the comic is www.halfpastdanger.com

Reviews

• Comic Related
• Geeks of Doom
• IGN

Guns of the Dragon by Tim Truman (1998-99)

Summary

Shanghai, 1927. China is divided by civil war. In an effort to unify the country, Chinese nationalists along with the U.S. Army recruit three obscure DC Comics heroes – Bat Lash, Enemy Ace, and Biff Bradley – to recover a pair of mythological swords. The catch? The swords are located on the long lost “Dragon Isle,” and the heroes must also bring back a dragon to convince the Chinese the legend is true. And if that wasn’t enough, it turns out the communists, Japanese and supervillain Vandal Savage also want the swords - and they’re willing to kill for them.

My thoughts

Guns of the Dragon was a four-part miniseries published in 1998 and 1999 by DC Comics. The idea came from writer and illustrator Tim Truman, who wanted to pen a pulp adventure in the spirit of Indiana Jones but using DC characters appropriate for the time period. He also decided to set most of the action on Dinosaur Island, a location that was featured prominently in the War that Time Forgot, a 1960s comic about World War II soldiers fighting dinosaurs on an isolated Pacific island.

As for miniseries itself, all the pieces are there for a good story, and the plot gets off to a decent start in the first issue. But once the characters reach the island things fall apart. The main problem is there are simply too many villains, and their competing storylines break up the action. The art is inconsistent – sometimes it is really good, other times it is simply serviceable. And for a comic that came out several years after Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs are a disappointment. They are drawn as lumbering, tail-dragging behemoths. I would have rather seen them portrayed as the active, agile creatures we know they were.

That said, Guns of the Dragon is an interesting piece of DC lore that fans of the comic universe may appreciate more than I did. Unfortunately, the miniseries has never been collected in a single volume. You will need to find the individual issues online or in a comic book store.

Trivia

• Dinosaur Island would pop up sporadically in the DC universe in later comics, and the island itself became a villain in the miniseries DC: The New Frontier.

• The author’s website is www.timothytruman.com

Reviews

• Random Happenstance
• Every Day is Like Wednesday

Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards by Jim Ottaviani & Big Time Attic (2005)

Cover blurb

COWBOYS, DINOSAURS, AND SCIENTISTS?!

The wild, wild west provided the setting for some famous battles, but the gunfight at the O.K. Corral can’t hold a candle to the Bone War. In the late 1800s the newly re-United States dug, tunneled, and blasted its way to the Pacific Ocean, exposing rock that hadn’t seen the light of day for millions of years.

Nor had the bones buried in those rocks. Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards is the story of Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, two scientists who found and fought for those bones, and the artist Charles R. Knight, who almost single-handedly brought dinosaurs back to life for an awestruck public.

My thoughts

If there was an award for best title ever for a work of fiction, then it would definitely go to Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards.

Luckily, the rest of this graphic novel is just as good. Bone Sharps is a fictionalized account of the “Bone Wars,” the name given to the bitter rivalry between two 19th century American paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and O.C. Marsh. Both men were consumed by hatred of the other, and in the end they would die nearly penniless and alone partly as a result of their feud. But their rivalry also led to the discovery of hundreds of new dinosaur and prehistoric mammal fossils, with Marsh’s work in particular providing some of the earliest fossil evidence to back Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

If I have one complaint about Bone Sharps is that it doesn’t show how each man’s work related to the scientific debates of the time. But other than that I have a hard time finding flaws in this excellent comic. Ottaviani’s writing does a good job capturing personality quirks of each scientist. He also manages tell a good tale without taking too many liberties with history, as revealed in a “Fact or Fiction?” appendix in the back of the book. The cartoonish art could be a turnoff for some readers, but I quite liked it, particularly the use of sepia tones to give the comic’s panels an old-timey look.

Bone Sharps is the best account of the infamous Bone Wars you will find outside reading a history book. Definitely pick it up if you have even the slightest interest in the subject.

Trivia

• Mark Schultz, creator of Xenozoic Tales, provided the cover art.
   
• Ottaviani has teamed up with many artists over the years to pen several graphic novel biographies of famous scientists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer and Richard Feynman. His works are available at www.gt-labs.com

Reviews

• Bookslut
• iFanboy
• Publishers Weekly

Neozoic #1 by Paul Ens et al. (2007)

Neozoic opens with the ultimate example of collateral damage.

Sixty-five million years ago, an alien ship is cruising in the general vicinity of Jupiter when the crew’s unseen opponents blast the vessel to smithereens. One of the pieces strikes a passing asteroid, nudging it off course by a hair. This is the rock that, in our timeline, killed the dinosaurs. In Neozoic, the asteroid was deflected just enough so that it strikes the moon instead, taking out a sizable chunk of the satellite in the process.

The dinosaurs never go extinct as a result, leading to a modern-day world of besieged humans, giant T. rexes and – if the cover is any indication – women with two right hands.

Neozoic is an upcoming title from the new comic company, Red 5 Comics. It’s written by Paul Ens, with pencils by J. Korim and colors by Jessie Lam. And to skip to the end, yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it, although as a first issue, it’s really only a tease of what’s hopefully to come.

Ens works with an interesting premise: Instead of having dinosaurs continue to dominate the mammals after their aborted extinction, the two groups have been engaged in 65 million years of evolutionary competition. Humans have evolved and are the same as we know them, so are horses. Wolves, however, have grown to gigantic sizes to prey on the dinosaurs. The terrible reptiles themselves are pretty much the same ones we know from the fossil record. A T. rex plays a central role in the first issue but is depicted as much larger than the real thing, more for dramatic effect than scientific speculation about what the species would have evolved into. Neozoic isn’t a hard-science take on the alternate world theme, but rather a fantasy with dinosaurs substituting for dragons.

The main problem with the first issue of Neozoic is that, as a first issue, it needs to provide a lot of backstory about its universe in a short two-dozen-or-so pages. Add on top of that the fact the comic has a rather large cast of characters. Ens and his team make the smart decision of keeping the opening story fairly simple so the reader can absorb all the new information: A young architect is working on a project outside the walled city on Monanti, much to the disdain of a squad captain from the famous Predator Defense League, whose mission is to defend the city’s population from the predators beyond its walls. Needless to say, the league will have to put its skills to use, and before the end there are hints of a romantic subplot, political intrigue and a mystery involving the dinosaurs.

The art by Korim is highly stylized, eschewing the ultra-realism of, say, Mark Schultz for a more cartoon-like look. For the most part it is excellent, and his jungle environments in particular stand out. There are a couple anatomical irregularities with the humans, though. I couldn’t get over the oddly-formed round gut on one character, and readers both here and elsewhere have pointed out that the female on the cover has two right hands. I strained my eyes looking through the comic to see whether that was some strange feature of the character or just a mistake, but if she is supposed to have two right hands, I didn’t see any evidence of it.

Also a shout out to Lam, whose colors are appropriately muted for the setting and manage to capture the hazy atmosphere of the outdoors.

It’s hard to give a final word on Neozoic because this is only the first issue of what could be a long-lived series, but I like what I see. The writing shows promise, and the art is more than satisfactory. This is not a comic for people who insist that the science in their fiction be as accurate as humanly possible, but if you get a kick out of watching a hot chick take down a T. rex with nothing more than a sword and a gauntlet that shoots acid -- à la Buffy the Vampire Slayer with dinosaurs -- this title is for you. I’m definitely interested in seeing where this one is going.

The comic should be in stores in October but is now available for pre-order. You can order using a PDF order form or through this web site.

Reviews

• Silver Bullet Comic Books
• Poptown!
• Comics And...
  

Tommysaurus Rex by Doug TenNapel (2004)

Paperback cover blurb

From the creator of Creature Tech comes a story about a boy and his T-rex. Ely is an everyboy trying to cope with the loss of his dog Tommy. When he finds a live, 40-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex trapped in a cave behind his grandfather’s house, Ely embarks on an adventure to tame this seemingly friendly giant, convince the town his new pet isn’t a threat and keep his dinosaur safe from the jealous town bully. Ely discovers what it takes to be a man… and what it costs.

My thoughts

Who knew a story about a boy and his T. rex could be touching?

Yes, touching.

Tommysaurus Rex is a graphic novel about a young boy, Ely, who goes to spend the summer with his grandfather after his dog gets hit by a car. While fleeing a bully, Ely finds a cave with a living T. rex inside it. The dinosaur doesn’t gobble him up, or else this would be a different story. Instead, it behaves like his dead pet dog, Tommy, playing fetch and chasing cats. Soon the whole town knows about the dinosaur and it becomes a media celebrity. But as often the case, good times rarely last forever.

TenNapel weaves a sad-but-ultimately-uplifting tale in Tommysaurus Rex, which shows a surprising amount of sophistication for what is essentially a retelling of countless Disney tearjerkers, substituting a dinosaur for a dog. Granted, TenNapel’s vision of childhood is a little too Lassie and he overdoes it on the poop jokes, but the story has a good sense of humor and it is beautifully illustrated with cartoonish, black-and-white panels. What really raises it above most stories of its kind is the sympathetic portrayal of the bully – in fact, I would argue that Tommysaurus Rex is his story, although he is not the main character. The other characters are a bit stereotypical, but they’re likable.

The graphic novel weighs in at only a little more than 100 pages, so you’ll be able to finish it in under an hour. Also, it’s a good gift for kids, particularly if you want to introduce them to comics. Just make sure to keep a box of tissues handy.

Trivia

• TenNapel is an artist and animator whose best-known creation is the video-game hero Earthworm Jim. You can check out his web site here.

• Ain’t It Cool News reported back in 2004 that Universal Pictures has acquired the rights to turn Tommysaurus Rex into a feature film. I haven’t heard any news since concerning the status of the film.

Reviews

• Ain't It Cool News
• The Fourth Rail
• Paperback Reader
• Silver Bullet Comic Books
  

Xenozoic Tales (a.k.a. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) by Mark Schultz (1986 onward)

I have bad news: The world ended 11 years ago. It’s just that no one has told you yet.

That, at least, is the history of the world according to the comic book series Xenozoic Tales. First published in 1986, it postulated that by the then-future year of 1996, a cataclysmic series of geologic upheavals would begin to change the surface of the earth. Things get so bad that by 2020 the planet is no longer habitable and most of the human race is extinguished, along with the rest of life. A few groups of humans, scattered here and there, retreat to underground bunkers in a desperate attempt to survive. When they emerge 500 years later, instead of finding a wasteland, they find a lush ecosystem where every species that has ever walked the planet has been resurrected, from trilobites to mammoths. Also, there’s a second moon. A new geologic era has begun – the Xenozoic Age.

Xenozoic Tales is better known by its nickname, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and there are plenty of both throughout its pages. Mark Schultz published 14 issues of the comic before he stopped, mid-story, in 1996. Don’t let that turn you off though. Even half-finished, Xenozoic Tales remains the best dinosaur comic ever published, and in my view, one of the best adventure comics ever to appear.

The series owes a lot to the adventure comics of the 1940s and 1950s, and in early issues Schultz is clearly trying to imitate their art style. (EC Comics is often cited as his source of inspiration.) Set on the transmogrified east coast of North America, the story centers around Jack “Cadillac” Tenric, who is an odd cross between an auto mechanic and a forest ranger.

Tenric uses his skills to rebuild 20^th century machinery – particularly Cadillacs – and to protect the surrounding wildlife from the predations of human poachers. Not much is known about the cataclysm that changed the world other than it was brought about by humanity’s mistreatment of the environment, and Tenric’s job is to make sure his “tribe” doesn’t repeat those past mistakes.

Trouble comes in the form of the beautiful Hannah Dundee, an ambassador from the neighboring city-state of Wassoon. The dangerous environment of the Xenozoic Age makes communication between the surviving remnants of humanity difficult, and while she is welcomed, the leaders of Tenrec’s tribe are suspicious about Dundee’s motives.

Tenric and Dundee have a rocky relationship, with Tenric a little too hotheaded for his own good and Dundee too secretive about her real mission among his people, but there is sexual tension between the two from the start. Together they explore the Xenozoic’s mysteries: What exactly caused the cataclysm? How did the strange ecosystem come to be? And who are the Grith?

Xenozoic Tales is a black-and-white comic that shows in the world of comics, color can be overrated. Schultz’s art style evolves over the series’ 14 issues, starting from simple-but-promising drawings in the first few issues to a fully organic and exquisitely detailed style by the last issues. His dinosaurs also evolve over the course of the comic. Science-literate readers will likely be disappointed with the tail-dragging saurians appearing in the first issues, but they will notice that in later issues his dinosaurs catch up to modern thinking, yet retain a Charles R. Knight-vibe at the same time. Steve Stiles supplies the art for the short stories appearing at the end of each issue that flesh out the invented world, but his own style is rather clunky compared to Schultz’s work.

The stories themselves are well-told, with better-than-average characterization and plenty of action. My main complaint with the series is that it ends mid-story, with no resolution to the mysteries it raises. Schultz hasn’t indicated when – or even if – he plans to finish what he started.

Don’t let that stop you. If you see this comic, get it. Sadly, it can be hard to find. Dark Horse Comics published the entire series in two volumes a few years ago, but they quickly sold out and now the individual volumes rarely sell for less than $70 each. Cross your fingers and hope that someday Dark Horse decides reprint the comic.

Trivia

• Xenozoic Tales, under the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs name, has enjoyed a good amount of marketing success. It was turned into a short-lived – and, unfortunately, a dumbed-down – Saturday morning cartoon; a fun beat-‘em-up arcade game; and a Sega CD full-motion video game. (You can watch a video of the open titles for the cartoon here; and the promotional video for the CD game here.)

• Topps released a short-lived series of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs comics in 1994 that were a tie-in with the TV show. These are not the original comics.

• A short biography of Mark Schultz is available here.
  

Reviews

• The Fourth Rail (Dark Horse Vol. 1)
• The Fourth Rail (Dark Horse Vol. 2)
• Michael Vance
• The Masked Bookwyrm
• Toonpedia.com
  

Paleo: Tales of the Late Cretaceous by Jim Lawson (2003)

Paleo is a comic for anyone who enjoyed BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs; that is, a comic that does its best to get the science right and only wanders from that goal when the needs to the story dictate otherwise. There are no humans, and the dinosaurs are, as far as I can tell, appropriate for the Late Cretaceous setting.

The comic was a labor of love for artist Jim Lawson, who has illustrated the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic books. It was published over eight issues beginning in 2003, with the first six issues later collected in a single volume. There are no colors, this is a black-and-white comic.

Each issue tells the story of a different dinosaur or creature that inhabited the world of the Late Cretaceous. There is some anthropomorphizing of the animals but not to the extent of Age of Reptiles, another dinosaur-only comic. One story concerns an injured Albertosaurus fleeing the predations of its larger cousin, Tyrannosaurus rex. Another story is about a baby Stegocerus on its own after its mother is eaten by a pack of “raptors.” Yet another follows the flight of a dragonfly through a Cretaceous swamp. You get the idea.

Paleo is straightforward in execution and pretty much accomplishes what it sets out to do. There are few happy endings, since this is a fairly accurate portrayal of nature “red in tooth and claw,” but not every story is a downer either. The dinosaurs are anatomically accurate although Lawson tends to exaggerate certain features – giving them oversized feet and calves, for example – and his animals and environments usually lack natural curvature and look a bit blocky as a result. I’m not keen on the stylized art style, thinking Lawson could have used a little softer touch and cut back on the heavy use of ink in some panels, but others may like it.

Whether readers will enjoy Paleo will depend on their personal tastes. This is a comic best suited for dinosaur fanatics – people who enjoy dinosaurs for what they were rather than just seeing them as monsters to be thrown into a story to oppose human heroes. I quite liked it, even though, as already stated, I didn’t particularly care for the art style. If you’re the kind of person whose shelves are lined with non-fiction books about dinosaurs, then this is for you.

Trivia

• One reason to get the Paleo graphic novel, which has issues one through six, is that it also features an excellent essay by comic book artist Steve Bissette about the history of dinosaurs in comics. You can also read the essay online at Palaeoblog, with links to each entry posted here.

Reviews

• Ain’t It Cool News
• Ain’t It Cool News (second review)

Cavewoman by Budd Root (1994 onward)

Throw together hungry dinosaurs, excessive gore and a dash of soft-core porn, and the result will be something like Cavewoman.

Cavewoman is a self-published comic by artist Budd Root. The first 12 issues of the series are collected in two volumes, and several individual comics after that. Root doesn't seem to be cranking out any new Cavewoman comics, judging by the official web site, which was last updated in 2004.

Meriem Cooper is the title character, a ridiculously proportioned woman with super-strength and who is super tough, meaning she can go one-on-one with dinosaurs and come out without a scratch. (She also is named after one of the producers of the original King Kong, one of several references to the movie throughout the series.) Meriem was stranded in the Late Cretaceous with her scientist grandfather, who was eaten by a T. rex shortly afterward.

She isn't alone for long, however. The series begins when Meriem's hometown of Marshville, Oregon, is transported back in time due to a military experiment. It isn't a happy homecoming, since the townsfolk are soon terrorized by dinosaurs, who dispatch their victims in one grisly scene after another. Cavewoman mainly concerns Marshville's struggle to survive the prehistoric onslaught, with Meriem serving as its protector.

The series has a large cast of characters, from a King Kong wannabe to a paleontologist clearly modeled after Robert T. Bakker. It's a black-and-white comic, and very tongue-in-cheek in tone. Is there any other comic that guest stars Abbott and Costello as surgeons?

Cavewoman is an entertaining romp if you don't take it too seriously. It's not for everyone. The fixation on gore is a little childish, as is Meriem's tendency to lose her skimpy reptile-hide bikini. (Some "adult" versions of the comic feature full nudity.) The dialogue and characterization are adequate, only feeling clumsy when Root tries to get serious, such as when Meriem confronts her estranged mother.

The dinosaur illustrations are what stand out about the comic, with Root's terrible lizards appropriately scaly and menacing. Still, there didn't seem to be enough predators in the fossil record to satisfy Root's needs, so he invents a few of his own, from a giant, child-eating frog to creatures that resemble flying velociraptors. This isn't a comic emphasizing scientific accuracy.

I would recommend Cavewoman to anyone who likes the sillier side of sci-fi. If you enjoy watching Godzilla trample Tokyo, or have logged in frequent flyer miles aboard the Satellite of Love, then this is for you.

Links

• Interview with Budd Root

Age of Reptiles: The Hunt by Ricardo Delgado (1996)

Blurb

His mother slaughtered by a pack of Ceratosaurs, a terrified Allosaur must make his way across the sweltering deserts of Jurassic North America -- or face the same fate himself. The Hunt is on in this new chapter of Ricardo Delgado's Age of Reptiles! Told entirely in pictures, the Age of Reptiles series is regarded as one of the finest uses of the comics medium and is appropriate for all ages. Through his innovative approach, storyteller Ricardo Delgado has earned such renowned fans as Burne Hogarth, Ray Harryhausen, Mike Mignola, John Landis, Mark Schultz, and Steve Bissette -- and once you've read Age of Reptiles: The Hunt, you'll count yourself among them!

* Blurb from publisher’s web site.

My thoughts

Age of Reptiles: The Hunt is a sequel to Age of Reptiles: Tribal Warfare, although it doesn’t matter which order you read them in, because they share only the title. The first series was set in the Cretaceous. The Hunt is set in the Jurassic and follows the adventures of an allosaurus out for revenge.

The story opens with the protagonist watching his mother get killed by a pack of ceratosaurs. Years later, he is being pursued across the desert by the same pack when he stumbles across a lush valley filled with plant-eating dinosaurs. (Can anyone say “smorgasbord”?) Things happen, and by the end of the series the allosaurus is taking his revenge on the members of the pack, one by one.

Again, there are no speech balloons or any type of narration, with the story told entirely through pictures. The personalities of the dinosaurs, however, are highly anthromorphized, and the cast of characters isn’t particularly nice: It only takes a slight insult to get gangs of different species fighting to the death. (The allosaurs and ceratosaurs are not the only ones who don’t like each other.)

The comic lacks the coherence of the first series, often wandering away from its main story to follow not-very-interesting side stories, and sometimes things happen that make no sense at all. Spoiler alert, highlight with cursor to read: At one point, for example, a giant tidal wave wipes out the valley. Where did this tidal wave come from? Wasn’t the valley supposed to be in the middle of the desert?!

While the story is lacking, I can’t fault the artwork, which is top notch. The colors are vibrant, and the dinosaurs are detailed and well drawn. Since this is a comic meant to be looked at rather than read, it’s still worth the cover price.

Trivia

• The ceratosaurs in the comic can change their skin color to make themselves practically invisible. A similar idea was explored in Michael Crichton’s The Lost World, a sequel to Jurassic Park, although in that case it was a pack of carnotaurs that could change color. The dinosaurs were left out of the movie.

• The artist, Richardo Delgado, has worked on several TV and film productions, including The Incredibles and Treasure Planet.

• Age of Reptiles has its own Wikipedia entry.

Reviews

• Mark Allen

Age of Reptiles: Tribal Warfare by Ricardo Delgado (1993)

Blurb

Thundering herds of lizards roam Cretaceous America, and the earth trembles with their passage. Enormous yet graceful meat-eaters shred the still-living meat from the bones of placid plant-eating saurians. Tyrannosaurus rex, the most fearsome carnivore that ever lived, is king. But even T-rex isn't safe from the greedy eyes and the ravenous appetites of a band of bird-quick Deinonychus. A tale from an age before humans and language, Age of Reptiles: Tribal Warfare is a 128-page epic told entirely in pictures. Ricardo Delgado, production artist for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, has crafted the finest graphic novel about dinosaurs ever released.

* Blurb from publisher’s web site

My Thoughts

Age of Reptiles: Tribal Warfare starts with a pack of Deinonychus (i.e. “raptors”) taking out a sauropod only to have their kill stolen by a T. rex. One of the raptors, in a not-very-wise move, decides to take a swipe at the rex but manages to get himself killed instead. The raptors don’t take too kindly to the murder of one of their own, so they plot revenge, a move that will lead to escalating hostilities between the two tribes of dinosaurs.

As you may have guessed, Age of Reptiles isn’t about scientific accuracy. The dinosaurs don’t talk, there are no speech balloons or narration of any kind, but they are far too smart for real animals and their behavior is anthromorphized to the extreme. The comic is a fantasy about dinosaurs, a fun one at that. The panels are brightly colored and Delgado’s Cretaceous world is appropriately lush, with towering forests and deep blue seas. The dinosaurs themselves are well drawn, although they sport emotive faces and, in one case, a Carnotaurus is given bull-like horns to make it look more devilish.

The story serves as an appropriate vehicle to explore the world of the comic, and there is an interesting twist at the (very) end. The comic was first published in 1993 and features T. rexes and raptors, which I’m sure had nothing to do with the fact the first Jurassic Park film was released that same year. *cough*

Trivia

• The artist, Richardo Delgado, has worked on several TV and film productions, including The Incredibles and Treasure Planet.

• Age of Reptiles has its own Wikipedia entry.

Reviews

• Mark Allen
• The Want List