Skreeeeonk! Godzilla in Hell!

Tags

Godzilla, godzilla in hell, gojira, IDW Publishing, indie box, Indie Comics

In 2016, IDW answered my long-unheard prayers for a Godzilla story that cut out all the stupid human parts, made my favorite radioactive lizard the main character, and gave him the task for which he above all other creatures is best-suited: destroying the ever-loving shit out of everything in his path! The five issues of Godzilla in Hell are my favorite Godzilla story so far, beating the original 1970s Marvel stories I loved as a kid and topping the monumental, manga-style Dark Horse mini-series from 1988. Let’s take a look inside.

The first issue begins with Godzilla falling through a hole into the wastelands of Hell. It offers zero explanation about how or why this fate befell our hero, and that is a solid artistic choice. You are either all-aboard with this insane premise or not, and no amount of pseudoscience, mysticism, or tedious exposition will sway your opinion. So, why bother?

Each issue has its own creative team with its own visual style, and issue #2 is the only one that has narrative captions. Otherwise, the series has little use for text beyond monstrous screaming. I get the impression that each team received minimal instructions, something along the lines of “Godzilla encounters various horrors and monsters on his way to the end of the issue, where he will descend into the next level of Hell.” The plot is as simple and direct as Godzilla himself, who meets each foe head-on with primal ferocity and unbridled rage.

This is what Godzilla is all about to me. He’s a force of nature like a waterfall or a late-period John Coltrane improvisation. It never occurs to him to slow down, run away, or give up. And when he meets, in the third issue, a weird entity that attempts to convince him to join the forces of peace and submit to its will, Godzilla ain’t tryna to hear any of that bullshit. Peace is for beings of lesser fury.

Godzilla’s path, as he demonstrates with unrivaled brutality, is one of pure destruction. In some ways, his portrayal in this series reminds me of the unstoppable Itto Ogami in Lone Wolf and Cub. No matter what you throw at him, he’s on a mission of annihilation. Skreeeonnnnnkk!

Along the way, Godzilla murders every freakish monstrosity and classic kaiju Hell can throw at him. Yet his triumphs are short-lived. He is doomed at the end of each issue to go to another hellish level, like Dante’s Inferno but with way more ass-kicking.

In the final issue, the king of all monsters is eaten alive and completely destroyed by a swarm of flying scumbags who are little more than mouths and wings and hate. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but it is a pitch-perfect finale that expresses Godzilla’s true essence in a way no movie or comic book ever has, before or since. If you want the best Godzilla story ever, then the solution is simple: Go to Hell!

Collectors’ Guide: It’s hard to find the original single issues in print or TPB, but this five-issue series was collected along with two other mini-series in Godzilla: Unnatural Disasters, which is easy to find for about $20 on Amazon in TPB format or Kindle/Comixology format, and also at MyComicShop in TPB format.

Learning to Love the Monster: Tadd Galusha’s Cretaceous

Tags

cretaceous, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, indie box, Indie Comics, Oni Press, tadd galusha, tyrannosaurus rex

The Cretaceous graphic novel is the most recent addition to my collection of pure dinosaur comics, and it is non-stop awesome. Like Ricardo Delgado’s Age of Reptiles series, it is a wordless dino adventure, though Tadd Galusha does drop in the occasional text-based sound effect or growl. Cretaceous delivers a wildlife documentary from hell, with nearly every page being full of brutally violent dinosaur fights and dinos eating other dinos. This tale of carnage and mayhem is not a cute book for toddlers!

If you’re like me, you wish that Godzilla movies and comics would just get rid of all the stupid human parts and show more monster battles. Galusha—who worked on some Godzilla comics for IDW—must feel the same way, because Cretaceous is all killer and no filler. Early on, I wondered if the book even had a plot, or if it was just an endless stream of savagery, with different dinos weaving in and out of each other’s lives on the way to their doom.

Although that’s a fairly accurate statement about Cretaceous, a plot does emerge. The protagonist is an adult male Tyrannosaurus Rex, a fearsome monster who, in the first scene, attacks a herd of Parasaurolophus and slaughters one of them. He carries the fresh corpse back to his home, where the meat feeds his juveniles first and then his wife. The mother Rex waits patiently while the children feed, and this detail of her characterization takes us on the first step down the path of learning to love these murderous beasts. Yes, they are killers, but within their family unit is affection, devotion, and tenderness.

But not even these rulers of prehistory can escape the eat-and-be-eaten web of life, especially when smaller predators have developed the skill to hunt in packs and accomplish what a lone individual cannot. Tragedy befalls the Rex family, and the remainder of the book resembles an old-fashioned revenge tale. A classic Western, almost.

The daddy Rex hunts his enemies and searches for his surviving child. The perpetual horror he encounters earns him our sympathy, and his mastery of unarmed combat earns him our respect. Step-by-step, as we follow him through the forest primeval and other resplendent landscapes brought to life by Galusha’s pen and colors, we learn to love this monster.

The environment is so much a part of the action that it’s practically a character itself. Galusha doesn’t just draw pretty backgrounds. The earth, the trees, the fog, the ocean—they are all more than mere settings. They are both friends and foes to the dinosaurs, often at the same time. Plus, their visual splendor is a counterpoint to the sheer terror that drives Cretaceous. And is that any different from our real lives? We are fragile creatures, even the toughest of us, inhabiting a beautiful universe where life often feels like a relentless string of one ugly event after another.

Yet life goes on, and though we know exactly how all our stories will end, we persist. By boiling down the dinosaurs’ lives into their most primal aspects, Cretaceous seems to comment on our human lives. Galusha presents an unflinchingly brutal vision of life and death, a narrative of ceaseless struggle illuminated occasionally by the moments of hope, triumph, and even love that keep us going—despite knowing all too well the cards are stacked against us. We come to love the monstrous Rex, because the monster is us, and everything around us. His quest is ours.

Cretaceous blew my mind and earned a spot among my all-time favorite dinosaur comics, a pantheon which includes Ricardo Delgado’s Age of Reptiles, Steve Bissette’s Tyrant, and Jim Lawson’s Paleo and Loner.

You can find Cretaceous on Amazon in paperback or Kindle/Comixology ebook formats.

black-and-white art from Illustration Age’s Tadd Galusha page.

indie box: Terrorsaurs!

Tags

black and white, commandosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, indie box, Indie Comics, Mirage Studios, Peter Laird, Steve Bissette, terrorsaur

Today’s entry in the Indie Box is one I have never owned nor even seen in the flesh. But with insane, sci-fi dinosaur art from Steve “Tyrant” Bissette and Peter “Ninja Turtles” Laird, who could resist? These pages come from the Mirage Mini Comics Boxed Set, a treasure so long out-of-print that I don’t mind if you post a link to buy it in the comments!

Now behold the legend of the Terrorsaurs!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

indie box: Teknophage

Tags

Bryan Talbot, dinosaur, indie box, Indie Comics, Neil Gaiman, Rick Veitch, Tekno Comics, Teknophage

Inside the indie comics box today, it’s Teknophage: a walking, talking, totally evil dinosaur who rules a world much like ours, only infinitely more terrible. Teknophage feeds on souls, which he extracts from helpless humans in the horrifying vats of his mobile city. He cruises his planet spreading misery every where he goes. Many have tried to overthrow him, only to have their souls ripped from their tortured bodies and consumed.

Rick Veitch created this evil bastard reptile for Tekno Comix, a Neil Gaiman venture. With artist Bryan Talbot, Veitch blends horror, science fiction, and a cynically hilarious social satire to make Teknophage a story you will never forget – assuming you survive!

Here is a preview of the pages where Teknophage recounts his earliest days as just another evil telepathic dinosaur, and how he discovered the multi-dimensional technology that made him master of the planet.

Collector’s Guide:
– From Teknophage #4-5; Tekno Comix, 1995.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

dinosaurs of the tellus science museum

Tags

dinosaur, exhibit, georgia, museum, planetarium, Prehistoric Animals, tellus science museum

This month, my mom and sister took me to the Tellus Science Museum in Georgia, and I was spoiled with an afternoon of prehistoric life and outer space! The museum lobby showcases a huge apatosaurus skeleton, and my sister snapped a photo for me to share with all the dino geeks who frequent this blog.

The camera on my phone isn’t as nice as hers, but I snapped a few pics, too. Here is the apatosaur’s head in a position where he might be eating a planet.

The planets in the pic appear over the entrance to the planetarium where we enjoyed a presentation about how Earth was formed. This was fortuitous timing, because the film showed something I was reading about that very day: how an ancient proto-planet named Theia crashed into an early version of Earth, a cataclysmic collision that enlarged Earth and resulted in the formation of our Moon, our tilted axis of rotation, and eventually our ocean tides.

The film presented this event as a known fact, but it’s a hypothesis that best explains how things got the way they are now. The Theia hypothesis is explored in more detail in the book I took on my trip, an amazing and often poetic exploration of geology, chemistry, and cosmic history that begins with examining a single pebble found on a Welsh beach.

The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey into Earth’s Deep History by Jan Zalasiewicz is a bit wordy at times, being written by a lecturing professor. What it lacks in concision, it makes up for in its flowing language that links many scientific disciplines to each other and gives insights into how big-picture events like the origin of Earth relate to small-picture events at the atomic level, all to create the rocks we sometimes ignore beneath our feet but which, upon examination, reveal so much about our world.

The prehistoric exhibit at Tellus Science Museum showcases specimens found in Georgia, and it features some fossils visitors are invited to touch (including Megalodon teeth and Triceratops poop). The Appalachiosaurus pictured below was new to me.

This fearsome beast shares exhibit space with a pair of Dromeosaurs whose informational plaque needs a bit of an update. The plaque mentions feathers and the relation of dinos to modern birds as a kind of hypothesis, but these things are now known with about as much certainty as we can get. After all, we’ve found the feathers, and paleo-artist William Stout was among the first to depict them in his mural paintings for the San Diego Natural History Museum. You can read more about that in Prehistoric Life Murals by William Stout, which includes amazing reproductions of his paintings in a glorious hardcover volume.

Tellus also has aquatic beasts, including a Mosasaur and a sea turtle, the two main characters in one of my favorite stories, Archelon and the Sea Dragon by Francis K. Pavel. You might enjoy the short essay I wrote about the book for an undergraduate project a few years ago.

For flying reptiles, Tellus has a trio of Pterosaurs. Here’s one of them.

Tellus has prehistoric mammals, too, including this Smilodon.

These are just a few of the wonders in the prehistoric life exhibit. And I didn’t even photograph any of the awesome space exploration stuff. Tellus Science Museum has a bunch of other exhibits, too. I didn’t see them all, but I loved what I saw. If you go, you might call ahead to find out the showtimes in the planetarium, because several shows play at different times throughout the day. The Birth of Planet Earth is well worth seeing, and I’d have liked to see the other features if we had more time.

On your way out, you can visit the gift shop and get a cuddly ammonite and a few of his stuffed trilobite friends!

If you can’t make it to Georgia any time soon, Amazon also carries critters from this plush toy line called Paleozoic Pals.

Big Box of Comics Part 3: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Tags

big box of comics, comic books, eric talbot, Jim Lawson, Kevin Eastman, Mirage Studios, Peter Laird, review, steve lavigne, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TMNT, triceraton

This post is part of a series about what was inside this month’s big box of free comics.

The Return to New York story in the original TMNT series #19–21 is even better than I remember. I think I was in turtle overload when I read it years ago, and I’d forgotten much of it. Visually, it’s one of the greatest TMNT stories of all time, with stunningly detailed artwork, creative layouts, extensively choreographed fight scenes, and incredible double-splash pages.

The black & white artwork creatively uses both black and white ink in addition to detailed screentone shading (sometimes called by the brand name Zip-A-Tone). The result is some of my favorite artwork in any TMNT story, and it’s a joy to watch the Turtles hack and slash their way through sewers full of enemies while their new Triceraton friend destroys everything in sight with his blaster.

But I was in for a shock when I read issue #6. It wasn’t just the wraparound cover that’s even more awesome than I remember. It wasn’t just the visual splendor of Turtles and Triceratons in combat. No, the shock was the discovery of just how many ideas I apparently stole from this single issue for my fiction series, The Adventures of Meteor Mags and Patches.

Issue #6 has asteroids, dinosaur-type aliens in a combat ring fighting to the death, a ruling body referred to only as the High Council, silly satire, aliens who dislike mammals (“Shut your face, you puny piece of mammal droppings!”), heroes who insult the dino-aliens (“Where I come from, bozos like you know their place—in museums, displayed as skeletons of long-dead ancient freaks!”), fight scenes that last for several pages with scant dialogue, and a shoot-out while attempting to board a spaceship. Somehow, this mid-1980s masterpiece burrowed so deeply into my brain that I was unconsciously drawing on it for inspiration decades later.

I wasn’t planning on picking up the original ten issues of the series, but after reading #6, I want to read the whole storyline again!

Buyers Guide:

—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #6. Reprinted in: Ultimate Collection Hardcover #1.

—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #19-21, Return to New York. Reprinted in Ultimate Collection Hardcover #3.

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

Tags

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

Tags

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

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. The triumph of Jurassic 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

Tags

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

Tags

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

Tags

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 the Ten More 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!