T. Rex Generations: a book review

Tags

dinosaur, dinosaur books, dinosaur comics, graphic novel, rextooth studios, t rex generations, ted rechlin, tyrannosaurus, tyrannosaurus rex

T. Rex Generations stars four young rexes we meet under the watchful eyes of their parents as they hatch from eggs. In their youth, the rexes learn to survive, scavenge, and hunt. They meet a beautifully illustrated assortment of cretaceous creatures they must battle or escape. Author and artist Ted Rechlin creates even more dramatic page and panel layouts than in his 2017 brontosaurus book, which makes for great fight scenes. And in a world of monsters just as fierce as they are, not every rex will survive.

This book will delight dinosaur enthusiasts and comic book fans, and though it has a lot of physical conflict, it isn’t graphic or gory. Adults and kids can enjoy this all-ages action-packed story together.

My dislikes are mostly minor details: seeing the same double-splash page of empty landscape repeated where more story pages would be welcome; anachronistic phrases such as “so the siblings ease off the gas” that seem out of place millions of years before cars; and a couple spots of clunky exposition such as saying “as was previously noted…” when repeating something from a few pages prior.

My only major concern: why do the young rexes not get named until the final page? Characters we care about in a story usually get identified by name right away, and the parent rexes are identified just after the babies hatch. It isn’t clear why the younger rexes don’t get names until late in their adolescence, unless we see their climactic edmontosaurus kill as a rite of passage into adulthood. But even though a caption describes that as a “first kill”, it seems more likely that a predatory reptile who has been larger than a pickup truck for years has killed more than a few things. After a wild romp in the cretaceous, the last page left me with more confusion than conclusion.

None of that stopped me from enjoying this adventurous addition to my library of dinosaur books and comics. T. Rex Generations is a fun read and a joy to look at. The full-page and two-page illustrations of the rexes and dakotaraptor, edmontosaurus, and ankylosaurus would make great prints or posters.

Get some dinosaur in your new year at Ted Rechlin’s store or on Amazon!

 

Big thanks to Smith Publicity for the review copy of T. Rex Generations, and to Comicon.com for the images in this post.

Matthew Kalmenoff painted dinosaur postcards

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ankylosaurus, brachiosaurus, brontosaurus, dinosaur, dinosaur books, Matthew Kalmenoff, ornithomimus, painting, plateosaurus, postcards, tyrannosaurus rex

Reader Ed Dietrich sent us these postcards as a follow-up to what we’ve shared of the late Kalmenoff’s artwork for The Golden Stamp Book of Animals of the Past and Sinclair Oil’s Exciting World of Dinosaurs booklet. Ed says these cards from publisher Dover bear a 1985 copyright date, which means they come from a book you can still get inexpensively on Amazon: Dinosaur Postcards in Full Color. The complete set contains 24 postcards. Here are five to whet your prehistoric appetite!

Animals of the Past as Painted by Matthew Kalmenoff

Tags

animals, charles mcvicker, dinosaur, dinosaur books, golden books, Matthew Kalmenoff, painting, Prehistoric Animals, prehistoric birds, prehistoric fish, prehistoric mammals, stamp book, trading cards

Today’s images come to us courtesy of reader Edward Dietrich, who recently discovered a 2012 post with my scans of a 1960s booklet, Sinclair and the Exciting World of Dinosaurs. Another reader had informed me that the artist was Matthew Kalmenoff, and Ed added that Kalmenoff did the full-color paintings on the stamps in a book I loved when I was a kid: The Golden Stamp Book of Animals of the Past.

The cover, featured above, has art by Charles McVicker. Ed sent the following scans of Matthew Kalmenoff’s paintings for us all to enjoy. He included notes about different versions of this book, of which there were many!

Though the blog Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs has scans of some pages from a 1950s version of this book, the art was apparently recycled into many editions. Ed says he’s owned a third printing from 1968 (priced at 59¢), plus an eleventh printing from 1975 and an eighteenth printing from 1980 (both priced at 89¢).

Most of Ed’s scans are not from the stamp book edition, but a 1961 version called Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals Trading Cards, and branded “Golden Funtime Trading Cards”. Instead of printing the artwork on sheets of lickable stamps to affix to the pages, this version presented the images on heavy cardstock and had oversized pages. This version only had 45 paintings, compared to the 48 in the stamp books, so Ed thoughtfully scanned the remaining stamps from the other editions.

Some updates to the captions happened between the 1950s stamp book version and this 1960s trading card version. For example, the Protoceratops is clearly labeled as such in Ed’s scans, but was labeled “horn-faced dinosaur” in the 1950s version. Also, the Ichthyosaur is named in this edition, where it was labeled “fish-like reptile” in the 1950s book. “Winged reptile” got updated to Rhamphoryncus. Other captions changed, too, but why should I ruin all the fun of letting you find them?

If you’re like me, you now want wall-sized prints of several of these gorgeous (if somewhat scientifically outdated) paintings. If you’re willing to settle for something smaller, I’ve seen some of them on Amazon repackaged into a 1988 book called Ready to Frame Dinosaur Paintings. I hope Kalmenoff got paid well for this artwork, considering how many times it was repurposed into different publications over the years.

If you’re digging these paintings and want to see more of Matthew Kalmenoff’s vintage artwork, cruise back to the original post that started all this madness, because I updated it with more images and links. I was excited to learn about this connection to one of my childhood treasures via total strangers’ commenting on a post about a book I randomly found on eBay. Talk about going full circle!

A big “thank you” goes out to Ed for taking the time to scan and share these images! This blog would be nothing without the people who have dropped by over the years to share my enthusiasm about dinosaurs, prehistoric animals, comic books, poetry, and mutant brains from outer space. Happy New Year to you, and may your dreams be filled with prehistoric mammals!

The next three images are the ones from the stamp books that did not appear in the 1961 trading cards version.

If I ever get around to recording another album of guitar instrumentals, it’s going to be called “Skull of the Uinta Beast”. Hell yeah!

Here are two images of the cover from the 1961 trading cards version!

 

The Thunder Lizard Returns: Dinosaur Books by Ted Rechlin

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Allosaurus, brontosaurus, coloring book, dinosaur comics, dinosaurs, dinosaurs live, farcountry press, jurassic, rextooth studios, ted rechlin, tyrannosaurus rex

The Thunder Lizard Returns: Dinosaur Books by Ted Rechlin

 

 

I began reading dinosaur books in the late 1970s, and back then, we had a dinosaur called Brontosaurus: the iconic Thunder Lizard! But the beast I grew up with would be revealed, in my adulthood, to be a complete fraud. Brontosaurus was nothing more than a hoax perpetuated with the bones of the real animal: Apatosaurus.

 

Just like my generation needed to reconceive of dinosaurs as having feathers, lifting their tails instead of dragging them, and living as endothermic animals instead of exothermic reptiles, my generation accepted the disappearance of our beloved Brontosaurus.

 

But it seems we were wrong about being wrong. Recent examinations of the fossil record have shown both Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were real animals: structurally similar, but differentiated by their skin. The Thunder Lizard has returned!

 

Author and artist Ted Rechlin couldn’t be happier about it. His graphic novel Jurassic puts Brontosaurus back in the spotlight. When a baby Brontosaur is separated from his mother, he gets swept up in a journey through the perilous landscape of a forgotten North America, encountering all sorts of species of dinosaurs Rechlin renders in gorgeously colored illustrations. Through the young Bronto’s eyes, readers take a tour that is both educational and exciting.

 

 

Despite a few violent dinosaur fights, Jurassic keeps the gore to a minimum, focusing instead on the drama. Rechlin doesn’t try for the existential terror of Jim Lawson’s Paleo and Loner, nor the biological brutality of Ricardo Delgado’s Age of Reptiles. But like those comics, Jurassic tells a thrilling story about animals in the natural world.

 

 

Just between you and me, the Brontosaurs may have been the main characters, but they were not the superstars of the story. That honor belongs to the incredibly awesome Allosaurus who rages through this book, a massive female fighting machine storming the countryside with a pack of smaller Allosaurs at her side. Rechlin renders her with savage, majestic beauty, and she totally steals the show.

 

 

Rechlin doesn’t get heavy-handed with his natural philosophy, but the final scene with the big female Allosaurus puts the entire story in a different light. Throughout the book, you sympathize with the baby Bronto’s separation from his mother, and you hope he will be okay. The female Allosaur and other carnivorous creatures are threats to our main character. But at the end of the day, the murderous Allosaurus is shown to be an attentive mother whose primary concern is feeding and caring for her own babies.

 

 

The interdependent struggle of all animals to survive, eat, and rear their young is a tale that echoes Jack London’s Call of the Wild and White Fang, and it’s a consistent theme in dinosaur comic books. Eat or be eaten. Jurassic‘s triumph is how subtly Rechlin handles this theme and communicates it without getting excessively graphic.

 

 

Brontosaurus, Allosaurus, and many more dinos also appear in Rechlin’s coloring book Dinosaurs Live! This innovative work combines drawings of dinosaur skeletons, educational and entertaining captions like a comic book, and full-page spreads of the dinosaurs in all their fleshy and feathery glory.

 

 

Rechlin isn’t afraid to convey science in casual, conversational language that uses humor to memorable effect. You will learn from his coloring book, but you will laugh, too. Like Jay Hosler’s Clan Apis, which teaches about honeybees, Rechlin’s coloring book is strong on biology without being a stuffy textbook.

 

 

No, I can’t bring myself to color these beautiful pages. I would feel like I was defacing a black-and-white dinosaur comic book such as Epic’s Dinosaurs: An Illustrated Guide by Charles Yates, or Tyrant by Steve Bissette. I might need a second copy so I can color the pages guilt-free!

 

 

Also on my wish list is Rechlin’s other full-color dinosaur graphic novel, Tyrannosaurus Rex.

 

Below is a list of where you can buy these books on Amazon, and with links to purchase directly from FarCountry Press, the distributor who kindly sent us review copies and images. FarCountry has many animal, nature, and history books, and other exquisitely drawn coloring books featuring flora and fauna of national parks.

• Buy Jurassic on Amazon or from FarCountry. 
• Buy Dinosaurs Live! on Amazon.
• Buy Tyrannosaurus Rex on Amazon or from FarCountry. 
• Ted Rechlin’s store, RexTooth Studios, carries books and cool posters! 

indie spotlight: tomb of the triceratops

Tags

dinosaur, dinosaur books, fiction, michael ajax, science fiction, tomb of the triceratops, young adult

Click the cover for a free Kindle preview of Tomb of the Triceratops.

Tomb of the Triceratops takes you on a dinosaur dig where researchers and a group of young students uncover a realm where dinosaurs are still alive. The boys selected to go on this archaeological expedition risk their lives to free a triceratops from the clutches of its brutal, otherworldly tormentors.

And that’s just the beginning.

Author Michael Ajax seasons the story with plenty of dino facts that will surely please any dino-maniac. Between the action scenes, the characters are just as likely to discuss the biology of a Stygimoloch as they are their interpersonal conflicts. The people in this story are passionate about dinosaurs, and that makes it especially fun for those of us who share that enthusiasm.

Though action-packed, Tomb of the Triceratops keeps its language and violence in the “family-friendly” range. Even as an adult reader, I was pulled into the nightmarish struggle of the captive triceratops, but the level of detail and word choice did not venture into overly graphic territory. If you thought Jurassic Park and Rex Riders were fun, this is a good addition to your bookshelf.

The boy heroes of the story casually banter with each other, keep secrets from the adults, and have an unforgettable adventure in this first novel by Michael Ajax. Discover the mysteries inside the Tomb of the Triceratops in paperback or for just 99 cents in Kindle.

Author website: http://www.michaelajax.com/

The World Around Us #15: Prehistoric Animals

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Al Williamson, Classics Illustrated, dinosaur, dinosaur books, dinosaur comics, Gilberton, illustrated story of prehistoric animals, Prehistoric Animals, prehistoric mammals, Sam Glanzman, vintage dinosaur books, World Around Us, World Around Us 15

Gilberton published The World Around Us #15: Prehistoric Animals in 1959 as part of its Classics Illustrated line. World Around Us is a must-have for any collector of dinosaur comics. Despite the way current advances in understanding dinosaur anatomy have made much of this book obsolete from a scientific perspective, it has a quaint historic charm and many stunningly rendered pages. It features uncredited artwork by Sam Glanzman and Al Williamson, according to Steve Bissette’s essay on PalaeoBlog. While dinosaurs take up much of the book, it also features prehistoric mammals, the origin of the planet Earth, and biographies of important biologists and paleontologists.

Collectors can often find a low-grade copy of World Around Us #15 at MyComicShop in the $5-15 range. Copies in various grades appear on eBay, with Fine and Fine+ grades listed in the $30-50 range.

In our second year on this blog, we presented the individual stories in this book as a series of posts. But now, here it is all in one shot for you prehistoric animal enthusiasts. Enjoy!

Flesh: The Dino Files TPB

Tags

black and white, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, dinosaurs, Flesh, flesh dino files, Indie Comics, Pat Mills, UK comics

This isn’t the first time Flesh appears this blog, so let’s keep it brief and look at some awesome dinosaur art! We got our copy at MyComicShop but you can also find it on Amazon. You can see more pages in our Flesh Archives. Okay? Wow, what a beautiful volume this is. Check it out!

random godzilla post

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action figure, auctions, bandai, figure, figurine, Godzilla, gojira

Alright, so it’s not really random. Being random is just cool these days, and you know we try very, very hard to fit in and be normal.

We sacrificed a Bandai Godzilla figure to the gods of shipping this week, part of our project to preserve our glorious eBay Top Rated Seller Status. Hey, we had to go through hell to earn it, so why not try to meet the minimum sales goals one more year? Why not stuff the radioactive lizard overlord right into the sacred eBay fires? Godzilla always rises again from the monstrous depths that spawned him (or her, as the case may be.) GOJIRA! It turned out to be a good move. Gojira sold in 48 hours, edging us ever closer to our 100th sale in 12 months.

 

 

kingfisher dinosaur encyclopedia

Tags

Dino books, dinosaur, dinosaur book, dinosaur books, Dinosaur Encyclopedia, dinosaurs, Kingfisher, kingfisher dinosaur encyclopedia

Kingfisher Dinosaur Encyclopedia brings readers up to date on many current developments in dino science. Lavishly filled with photographs and paintings, and easily-read charts, it is a visual feast worthy of a hungry Allosaurus.

One of the best features: a focus on certain regions of dino discoveries. You will visit specific digs, sites in England, Portugal, and China, that yielded new discoveries in the last 10 to 20 years and pushed dino science forward. Many books lack this regional organization, making this one special. You get a picture of each unique biome certain dinos inhabited, where some books simply list dinos alphabetically or historically. The grouping also gives the writers a chance to share about current leaders in the field in these countries.

Kingfisher breaks up its pages into small blocks of text that the reader can take one at a time, or in chunks. Like any Megalosaurus could tell you, it’s easier to digest things when you break them into smaller peices first! This makes the book entertaining and light, but by no means insubstantial. A reader can simply enjoy highlights, or dig deeper.

From the 2000 specimens of a single Cretaceous bird unearthed in China, to the confident resolution of an old myth about Oviraptors, to the solid presentation of the meteorite impact site, Kingfisher gives new dino fans a great introduction, and updates us old dino fans about several solved mysteries.

Criticisms? Calling the book an Encyclopedia may be stretching it. It is not an exhaustive tome of the history of paleontology, or dino physiology, or even a complete list of all known species. I have several “encyclopedias” and scientific texts that are more intensive. They’re also a lot harder to read! So, although I wouldn’t call it an encyclopedia, it’s a worthy and exciting book.

The one missing bone in this skeleton is a pronunication key. Dino books lately have thrown this idea away, and Kingfisher’s isn’t the only culprit. Some help pronouncing the latest Chinese dinos would really help us read this out loud!

Glad to have this on my shelf with the other great dino books. Recommended for all ages, young and old.

Buy the Kingfisher Dinosaur Encyclopedia on Amazon.

Ten More Top Ten Favorite Single Issues

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comic books, top ten

Since we posted Our Top Ten Favorite Single Issues in October, 2011, our fan-blogging obsessions brought many more printed treasures to our attention. One by one, we added them to Mars Will Send No More until today’s post can link you to every one of them for in-depth exploration.

Qualifications for inclusion on this list are simple: The issue cannot be from a series already covered in our original Top Ten, and it must be brain-stunningly awesome. Six of them are black-and-white books, and we had only read three of them before we started this site in 2011. Allow us to present, in no particular order, Ten More of Our All-Time Favorite Single Issues. Click their titles to learn more about each one!

Armadillo Comics #2 by Jim Franklin; 1971, Rip Off Press

Man from Utopia #0 by Rick Griffin; 1972

Lone Wolf & Cub #28; First Publishing

Devil Dinosaur #1 by Jack Kirby; Marvel, 1978

Cartoon History of the Universe #1 by Larry Gonick; 1978, Rip Off Press

Anarchy Comics #1; 1978, Last Gasp

Silver Surfer #1; Marvel, 1968

Super Villain Classics #1; Marvel, 1983

World Around Us #15: Prehistoric Animals; Gilberton, 1959

Psychotic Adventures #2. Last Gasp, 1974.

Runner up:
Spectacular Spider-man #21; Marvel, 2003.

But what about…?
Several noteworthy series have not made it into our Top 20 single issues. This includes works like DMZ, Clan Apis, Frank, 100 Bullets, and Sin City, where the entire series as a work of art outweighs any single issue. We might rectify this with future lists!

World of Dinosaurs by Edwin Colbert and George Geygan

Tags

dinosaur, dinosaur book, Edwin Colbert, George Geygan, Home Library Press, vintage dinosaur books, World of Dinosaurs

Some time ago we posted an ad for World of Dinosaurs from a vintage issue of The Brave & the Bold. We went looking for the book after finding that ad, and got an affordable copy. Colbert, a respected paleontologist who among other things discovered Coelophysis, would no doubt want to update some of the science in World of Dinosaurs, from the swamp-dwelling sauropods dragging their tails to the extinction theories. Nevertheless, we always get a kick out of the art in vintage dinosaur books, and George Geygan’s painterly approach is no exception.

Collector’s Guide:
– from World of Dinosaurs by Dr. Edwin H. Colbert and George Geygan; Home Library Press, 1961.
Note: an edition published in 1977 had the title The Dinosaur World.

 

He Could Hit Tyrannosaurus Rex with a Stick – the Biggest Stick He Could Find!

Tags

Danger in Dinosaur Valley, dinosaur, dinosaur books, diplodocus, Joan Lowery Nixon, Marc Simont, Putnam, vintage dinosaur books, World Series baseball game

 
Danger in Dinosaur Valley portrays the intelligence and adaptability of a child who teaches his parents some important life skills. A young diplodocus observes a World Series baseball game when time travelers come to visit, and he uses baseball to save his family.

 

 
As with many older dinosaur books, Danger in Dinosaur valley gets some things wrong: pterodactyls are not birds, television signals do not travel across time with their televisions, and brutal hand-to-hand combat is not always the best option. But the story works in its own cute way, and this vintage dinosaur book entranced us many times as young Martians. Treat yourself and your dino-loving kids to this entertaining tale by Joan Lowery Nixon, with artwork by Marc Simont!

Collector’s Guide:
– from Danger in Dinosaur Valley; G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1978.
Note: most existing copies of this out-of-print children’s book are ex-library copies.

 

dinosaur toy

Tags

dinosaur, iphone, photography, plastic, toy

dino cards: tuojiangosaurus

Tags

dinosaur, postcards, Tuojiangosaurus

Intrepid internet adventurers may want to track down the set of cards that include these dinosaurs. We haven’t yet, and so they remain part of the mysterious collection of postcards we joyfully receive here at Martian HQ.

As a bonus, the bright colors look amazing in our black light chamber.
Witness today the awesomeness of Tuojiangosaurus!

 

 

dino cards: hadrosaurs

Tags

dinosaur, hadrosaur, postcards

Intrepid internet adventurers may want to track down the set of cards that include these dinosaurs. We haven’t yet, and so they remain part of the mysterious collection of postcards we joyfully receive here at Martian HQ.

As a bonus, the bright colors look amazing in our black light chamber.
Witness today the awesomeness of the Hadrosaurs!

 

 

dino cards: parasaurolophus

Tags

dinosaur, parasaurolophus, postcards

Intrepid internet adventurers may want to track down the set of cards that include these dinosaurs. We haven’t yet, and so they remain part of the mysterious collection of postcards we joyfully receive here at Martian HQ.

As a bonus, the bright colors look amazing in our black light chamber.
Witness today the awesomeness of Parasaurolophus!

 

 

Dinosaurs Washed My Dishes!

Tags

dinosaur, dishes, plastic dinosaurs, toys

We woke up the other morning to find dinosaurs hard at work, scrubbing and stacking the dishes.

 

The More the Hoardasaurus Gave Away, the Less Nervous He Felt!

Tags

Glink, Hoardasaurus, Price Stern Loan, Robin James, Saveopotamus, Serendipity, Stephen Cosgrove, tyrannosaurus

 
The Serendipity series of children’s books began in 1974 as author Stephen Cosgrove’s personal vision. He collaborated with illustrator Robin James many, many times on stories that entertained while demonstrating a value or life lesson. In Search of the Saveopotamus may have caught our youthful attention with its colorful dinosaurs, but its philosophy has remained important to us even as adults.

The main character, the Hoardasaurus, has become a nervous wreck. His collection of material possessions brings him no joy. Spending his every waking hour fretting that someone might steal his stuff, he can never really enjoy what he has. True, he has some things of value. But, he holds onto old junk and broken things with equal fervor.

The Hoardasaurus reminds us not to spend our life obsessing over material possessions. They may fill our space, but they cannot fill our hearts. He reminds us that we can let go of all that does not bring us joy. He reminds us that part of the joy of material things is not hoarding them, but giving them. He reminds us we can move into the future with greater speed and agility when we liberate ourselves from carrying around the past. And, he reminds us that even Tyrannosaurus likes to play with a yo-yo.

Collector’s Guide:
– from In Search of the Saveopotamus; Price/Stern/Loan, 1974.
A Serendipity Book by Stephen Cosgrove, illustrated by Robin James.

 

A Striking Example of Centuries of Progress!

Tags

big news, chicago, chicago world's fair edition, dinosaur, Sinclair, Sinclair dinosaur, Sinclair Oil, Sinclair World's Fair Dinosaur, worlds fair

Today we’ll share with you a publication nearly a century old now: the Chicago World’s Fair Edition of Big News. Published by Sinclair Oil, it showcases their dinosaur exhibit at the World’s Fair in 1934.

Yes, we have shared with you some other Sinclair memorabilia in our Sinclair Archives, and specifically some things from this same World’s Fair. But this monstrous tome takes the prehistoric cake. Though our copy has damage, the images and text remain intact for the most part. Allow us to mention a few notes, or just scroll down to our gallery today and dive right in!

But first, a word from beauty and the beast:

Notes: We spliced a few things, but the front cover has a tear requiring more digital reconstruction than we care to do right now. To keep the file sizes at 1 MB or less, we reduced our original scans by 90%. You will find you can still enlarge them on your screen a great deal and retain clarity.

One image we did not bother to splice together in our restoration efforts: the silly Sinclair Minstrels musical act with members in blackface. Some parts of American history just don’t merit the pixels they are printed on. These embarrassing racist depictions stick out like a sore thumb among the dinosaur sculptures. But, they also remind us of the cultural attitudes of the dominant class in this time period.

We know there was a second edition of this magazine with different images, but we don’t have it… yet! We also know many of these dinosaur depictions have what we now consider gross scientific inaccuracies. We could point them out to you and play dino expert, but it’s really more fun finding them for yourself!

While Scaly Monsters Fought in Pennsylvania!

Tags

ads, dinosaur, Saturday Evening Post, Sinclair, Sinclair Dinosaurs, Sinclair Oil

Look what we have here: Sinclair Oil ads from 1931 and 1932! These off-beat dinosaur illustrations ran in the Saturday Evening Post. You will see we included the ad copy, too, for completion. We confess that we don’t understand the pictures, really. Are they sculptures? Dioramas? Paintings? Pictures of sculptural dioramas developed and then painted over? If you have a clue, educate us with a comment, please!