Indie Box: two mini stories from Age of Reptiles

Tags

Age of Reptiles, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, indie box, Indie Comics, Ricardo Delgado, the baby turtles, the body

I was chatting with some fellow dinosaur geeks about Age of Reptiles and discovered that artist Ricardo Delgado might be working on a new volume of the series to amaze and astound us. Along the way, I realized I was missing one of the short stories: “The Baby Turtles”. I have now rectified that omission!

Between the epic awesomeness of 2009’s four-issue The Journey and 2015’s stunning Spinosaurus series Ancient Egyptians, Delgado produced two mini-stories that each appear in a different volume of the anthology title Dark Horse Presents.

In 2011, “The Body” appeared in Dark Horse Presents #4 (Volume Two). The story begins with a kill, and its eight pages are essentially a prehistoric nature documentary about what happens to the body of the prey. First, large predators squabble over the meat until they’ve eaten their fill, then smaller scavenging predators arrive, followed by even smaller insects and at last, flowering plants and the elements themselves.

Filled with detail and expressive animals, this wordless poem speaks volumes about both the impermanence and interconnectedness of all life.

In 2014, “The Baby Turtles” appeared in Dark Horse Presents #3 (Volume Three). This story begins not with death but with birth, and the newly hatched sea turtles must make their way from their sandy nests to the ocean where they will spend their lives. A variety of voracious predators await them in the sky, on land, and in the water in a danger-filled expedition that remains largely unchanged for today’s modern sea turtles.

This mini-story is also eight pages long in print, but six of those eight pages are gloriously detailed two-page spreads, each a single image filled with conflict between numerous species.

On a personal note, these pages remind me of what I often drew in elementary school to alleviate the boredom. I spent hours drawing insanely detailed doodles of warfare between different races of aliens with all kinds of weapons, vehicles, and aircraft. I was no Ricardo Delgado by any stretch of the imagination. My aliens would be simple shapes such as triangles with arms and legs, or ovals with multiple appendages like paramecia—just so long as they were easy to draw and easily identifiable as different factions. Every square centimeter of my alien war scenes were covered with detail, slaughter, and simplistic characters who each had their own story in my mind. My mother would sometimes see these pages and really not know what to make of them.

I think Delgado would have understood. I enjoy seeing him take that kind of intensity and deliver it with actual skill and draftsmanship based on extensive research. The detail-rich pages can be daunting to explore, but like some kind of Mesozoic Where’s Waldo, they reveal expressive, individual characters doing unique things within the scenes, all captured in one brief instant of their struggle to survive.

Here’s hoping the rumors about a new, upcoming Age of Reptiles series are true. I’ll buy two copies!

If you’re new to Age of Reptiles and want to get started, I recommend the digital edition of the Age of Reptiles Omnibus for about USD $13. It will be a lot more cost-effective than trying to buy the print versions, and it includes the first, second, and third series.

Cretaceous Carnage with Lobo

Tags

Alan Grant, Carl Critchlow, DC Comics, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, hunting dinosaurs, Kamandi, Lobo, Mark Propst, time travel

Here at Mars Will Send No More, one of our favorite things is traveling time to hunt dinosaurs. We just can’t get enough of prehistoric poaching, saurian slaughter, terrorizing pterosaurs, and wrestling a ramphoryncus. We relish riding rexes, accosting ankylosaurs, and disturbing the dimetrodons. It’s just what we do.

But nobody does it better than DC Comics’ Main Man: Lobo!

In issue 38 of Lobo’s 65-issue series that began in 1993, the homicidal heathen runs amok in a masterpiece of Mesozoic mayhem. The opening splash page parodies DC’s Kamandi, a Jack Kirby creation about the “last boy on Earth” in a post-apocalyptic dystopia populated by anthropomorphic animals.

But the parodies pile up as different characters arrive on the scene, including cowboys thrilled to be in Ray Harryhausen’s Valley of Gwangi and a bunch of aging 1970s rock stars ready to embark on a “Dinosaurs of Rock” tour.

With a cover date of April 1997, this issue was timed to appear just before the release of Jurassic Park: The Lost World in May, complete with a “Jurassik Pork” action figure of writer Alan “Judge Dredd” Grant. Somehow, this series was published without the “Intended for Mature Readers” warning on the cover, and the creative team pushes that boundary. It substitutes “frag” and “bastich” for more common profanities, creatively poses a butt-naked Lobo to avoid full-frontal nudity, and couches Lobo’s sexual exploits in puns and innuendos.

Even when Lobo gets his hand chopped off, there’s something cartoonish about it all. He can’t really be hurt for too long, and his hand is soon re-attached to his arm without explanation, much in the same way that no matter what horrible fate befell Wile E. Coyote, he always got patched up and came back for more senseless violence.

According to Lobo’s co-creator Keith Giffen, the character was originally intended as a satire of grim-and-gritty, hyper-violent comics. But the satire was so over-the-top that it was hilarious, and the more insane Alan Grant made the character, the more fun it was to read. Devoid of restraints such as ethics and empathy, and physically immune to any long-term consequences of his actions, Lobo is like a heavy metal Bugs Bunny with an attitude problem.

As you might suspect, things in issue 38 don’t end well for the dinosaurs, nor for anyone else who encounters Lobo.

The creative team seems to take just as much childish glee in the wanton destruction as the Main Man himself, and the illustrations are both gorgeous and silly at the same time. I have only read a handful of issues from this series, despite having read many more of the Lobo limited series and one-shots, but they were consistently entertaining, and I’d like to hunt them all down eventually. Just like the dinosaurs.

Collector’s Guide: From Lobo #38; DC Comics, 1997. I don’t believe the issue has been reprinted in any TPBs yet, but you might also enjoy the first Lobo TPB that collects several four-issue series and one-shots, including outrageous work by Alan Grant, Keith Giffen, Simon Bisley, Denys Cowan, and Kevin O’Neill.

Indie Box: Steak

Tags

dinosaur, dinosaur comics, eating dinosaurs, hunting dinosaurs, indie box, Indie Comics, Marc Olivent, science fiction, Steak, time travel, Will Conway

Steak is an independently published comic from the UK that explores the personal and political ramifications of traveling back in time to hunt dinosaurs for their meat. Author and educator Will Conway reports that when he started out, he had not heard of the Flesh series from 2000 AD, and that Steak is an entirely different beast. While Flesh sprung from the violent imagination of Pat Mills and focused on brutal chaos in a prehistoric setting, Steak delves into more psychological dimensions of the dino-hunting enterprise. But there’s plenty of Cretaceous carnage, too!

The main character, Benjamin Buckland, comes up with the idea while recovering from a brain injury, and he and his scientific partner Roger Dukowicz conceive the means of time travel after eating “a rare cactus”—presumably peyote. If that sounds like a mentally unhinged way to start a business, then it should come as no surprise that by the second issue, Buckland’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic. It doesn’t help that his more even-keeled partner gets abducted, and a shadowy organization is spying on him.

As a self-proclaimed “zoophage” who gets a thrill from eating exotic animals, Buckland asserts that his main goal is to eat dinosaurs. He pays for his hobby by opening restaurants and doing licensing deals to expand the market for his Mesozoic meat. This leads to hilarious narration about how different dinosaur species taste, several gory yet coldly factual pages about how to butcher them like cattle, and pun-filled products such as “Apattiesaurus” burgers and “Psit-taco-saurus” food trucks. Dukowicz sports T-shirts with dinosaur-themed pop-culture references such as “Iguanodon Corleone”.

Nature is brutal, indeed.

But with corporations trying to steal his technology for profit, and militaries trying to obtain it for a pre-emptive advantage in warfare, Buckland is beset from all sides. How it will all play out remains, at the time of this writing, a mystery. Issue number three of this five-issue series is currently in production, so now would be a good time to subscribe and see what happens next.

Marc Olivent’s artwork is a lot of fun, especially in the scenes of dinosaur hunting and how they go horribly wrong. The dinosaurs are impressive and energetic, whether they are chomping someone’s head or stampeding off a cliff. The narrative structure is creative, jumping around a bit in time in the first issue without much guidance as to when things take place other than intentionally vague captions like “Now then” and “Meanwhile”. It works well for a time-travel story, and piecing together the puzzle is part of the pleasure.

Steak considers the ethics of killing animals that died off millions of years ago. Are they endangered species because they are now extinct or, as one character puts it, is it “morally okay” because “They were already dead before they were already dead, I guess?” And when members of a hunting party get killed by dinos, the lawyers struggle with the question of how to handle someone dying millions of years before they were born. But these philosophical conundrums don’t bog down the narrative, which remains fast-paced and lively, and lets you draw your own conclusions.

So far, the series has avoided the complications of potentially altering the future by killing animals in the past, an idea most famously explored in Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder. But who knows? Maybe we will get there eventually, because Steak is a smart, funny, and exciting romp that serves up a unique and unpredictable take on a classic concept.

Collector’s Guide: You can order print copies at the Steak website, and subscribe to updates about upcoming issues. Currently the first two issues are available for Kindle in the USA and in the UK.

Learning to Love the Monster: Tadd Galusha’s Cretaceous

Tags

book review, 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!

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T. Rex Generations: a book review

Tags

book review, 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.

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! 

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, 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!

If Dinosaurs Were Meant to Fly…

Tags

dinosaur, dinosaur comics, dr. watchstop, eclipse, Eclipse Comics, flight, fusion, Indie Comics, ken macklin, right stuff

In this three-page story by Ken Macklin, a dinosaur invents the first set of artificial wings. “Dr. WatchStop” was one of several original creations by Macklin, about whom I haven’t been able to discover much. It seems he was in underground comics in the 70s, too.

Collector’s Guide: from Fusion #7; Eclipse, 1988.

Fear Walks on Four Feet!

Tags

bernard krigstein, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, golden age, hunting dinosaurs, Strange Tales

So many things work against this piece of golden-age nonsense: disastrous dinosaur depictions, colors fading into putridity, and lots of development to squeeze into four pages. Somehow, they pull it off. This is Bernard Krigstein, isn’t it?

Collector’s Guide: From Strange Tales #61; Marvel, 1958.

Angelo Torres: The Swamp God!

Tags

Angelo Torres, Archie Goodwin, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Eerie, Eerie Magazine, Frank Frazetta, tyrannosaurus rex, Warren

Angelo Torres and Archie Goodwin take you into the swamp to meet your god. And if you know anything, you know it’s a god we can really get behind: Tyrannosaurus Rex! Dig that Frank Frazetta cover. Yes! Thanks to The Warrior’s Comic Book Den for turning us on to this piece of Angelo Torres history!

Collector’s Guide: From Eerie Magazine #5; Warren, 1966.

Prehistoric World: End of An Era!

Tags

Classics Illustrated, Death of the Dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Extinction, Gilberton, Prehistoric World, stegosaurus, trachodon, Triceratops

As part of their Classics Illustrated series, Gilberton published Prehistoric World in 1962. It takes the reader from the beginning of life, through the age of dinosaurs, into the age of mammals, and ends with a detailed look at prehistoric man. Within its 100 pages, we also learn about many key people who shaped the study of prehistoric life.

Collector’s Guide: From Classics Illustrated Special #167: Prehistoric World; 1962. Not in stock? Try it on Newkadia.

Prehistoric World: Mammals + Bones and Stone!

Tags

Classics Illustrated, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, fossil, Gilberton, prehistoric mammals, Prehistoric World, Triceratops

As part of their Classics Illustrated series, Gilberton published Prehistoric World in 1962. It takes the reader from the beginning of life, through the age of dinosaurs, into the age of mammals, and ends with a detailed look at prehistoric man. Within its 100 pages, we also learn about many key people who shaped the study of prehistoric life.

Collector’s Guide: From Classics Illustrated Special #167: Prehistoric World; 1962. Not in stock? Try it on Newkadia.

Prehistoric World: Reptiles of the Sea and Air + A Missing Link!

Tags

archaeopteryx, Classics Illustrated, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Gilberton, ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, prehistoric reptiles, Prehistoric World, pteranodon, pterodactyl, pterosaur

As part of their Classics Illustrated series, Gilberton published Prehistoric World in 1962. It takes the reader from the beginning of life, through the age of dinosaurs, into the age of mammals, and ends with a detailed look at prehistoric man. Within its 100 pages, we also learn about many key people who shaped the study of prehistoric life.

Collector’s Guide: From Classics Illustrated Special #167: Prehistoric World; 1962. Not in stock? Try it on Newkadia.

Prehistoric World: The Dinosaurs!

Tags

ankylosaurus, Classics Illustrated, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Gilberton, iguanodon, paleoscincus, pentaceratops, Prehistoric World, trachodon, Triceratops, tyrannosaurus rex

As part of their Classics Illustrated series, Gilberton published Prehistoric World in 1962. It takes the reader from the beginning of life, through the age of dinosaurs, into the age of mammals, and ends with a detailed look at prehistoric man. Within its 100 pages, we also learn about many key people who shaped the study of prehistoric life.

Collector’s Guide: From Classics Illustrated Special #167: Prehistoric World; 1962. Not in stock? Try it on Newkadia.

Prehistoric World: The Wonderful Earth Movie!

Tags

Classics Illustrated, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Earth as One Year Movie, Earth Movie, Gilberton, James Rettie, prehistoric mammals, prehistoric man, Prehistoric World

As part of their Classics Illustrated series, Gilberton published Prehistoric World in 1962. It takes the reader from the beginning of life, through the age of dinosaurs, into the age of mammals, and ends with a detailed look at prehistoric man. Within its 100 pages, we also learn about many key people who shaped the study of prehistoric life.

Collector’s Guide: From Classics Illustrated Special #167: Prehistoric World; 1962. Not in stock? Try it on Newkadia.

Prehistoric World: In Search of the Past!

Tags

Baron Cuvier, Classics Illustrated, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Gideon Mantell, Gilberton, golden age, iguanodon, Prehistoric World, Richard Owen

As part of their Classics Illustrated series, Gilberton published Prehistoric World in 1962. It takes the reader from the beginning of life, through the age of dinosaurs, into the age of mammals, and ends with a detailed look at prehistoric man. Within its 100 pages, we also learn about many key people who shaped the study of prehistoric life.

Collector’s Guide: From Classics Illustrated Special #167: Prehistoric World; 1962. Not in stock? Try it on Newkadia.

Satanus Unchained!

Tags

2000AD, Colin Macneil, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Gordon Rennie, Satanus, Satanus Unchained, tyrannosaurus rex

Satanus the Black Tyrannosaur! Undisputed Lord of Sauron Valley! Satanus returns from the pages of Judge Dredd in a six-part story called Satanus Unchained. Dinosaur mayhem and carnage ensue when a pack of sport hunters decide to take down the living legend. This is one gorgeously painted story! Check out the first three pages in our gallery today.

Collector’s Guide: From Satanus Unchained; Serialized in 2000AD, progs 1241-1246. Published by Fleetway in 2001. Script by Gordon Rennie, art by Colin Macneil.

Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur Splash Pages!

Tags

Devil Dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, double splash, Jack Kirby, Moon Boy, splash page, splash panel, tyrannosaurus rex

In an age when giants walked the world, he was the mightiest of them all: Devil Dinosaur!

Jack Kirby‘s Devil Dinosaur and his pal Moon Boy inhabit “Dinosaur World.” Devil Dinosaur, as a result of a mutation, is bright red, smart as a human, and super-strong. It’s a fun ride, so hold tight to your Tyrannosaur and get ready to rock!

Collector’s Guide: Collect all 9 issues of Devil Dinosaur or the Devil Dinosaur Omnibus!

The Man Who Drank the Blood of Satanus!

Tags

Blood of Satanus, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Judge Dredd, Lizard Men, Pat Mills, Ron Smith, Satanus, science fiction, tyrannosaurus

Sometimes it’s hard to tell a good idea from a bad idea. Let’s say you had a totally evil tyrannosaurus that died in the Cretaceous but was brought back to life through cloning. Then, after being set loose by atomic weapons, he killed and maimed his way through the future before vanishing into the wild. As a scientist, at what point do you think it would be a good idea to drink that tyrannosaur’s blood?

Collector’s Guide: From Judge Dredd #17; Eagle, 1985.

Satanus first appeared in the Judge Dredd storyline The Cursed Earth. You can find that in the Cursed Earth TPB. But, be warned that due to being sued by fast food fast chains from America, the publishers of 2000 AD did not include four chapters of the 25-episode story (episodes 11-12 and 17-18.) So, go pawn some family heirlooms, and you can pick up the original Cursed Earth stories in 2000 AD, #61-85.

Satanus also appeared in a story gorgeously illustrated by Colin Macneil called Satanus Unchained in 2000 AD #1241-1246. Satanus fans will also enjoy Judge Dredd #7, which reprints the Satanus chapters of Cursed Earth with a cool Brian Bolland cover.

If you like Satanus, check out our gallery of Flesh from 2000 AD, featuring the mother of Satanus, Old One Eye. 

Suicide Squad: Prisoners of the Dinosaur Zoo!

Tags

dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Suicide Squad. Brave and the Bold

Hold on tight, Martians, because the Suicide Squad moves fast. When you meet rampaging dinosaurs in every issue, that’s generally a good thing! The Suicide Squad appeared in three consecutive issues of DC’s The Brave and the Bold in the dark prehistoric times known as the 1960s. We are going to share them all.

Collector’s Guide: From Brave and the Bold #39; DC Comics, 1962.

Suicide Squad: Master of the Dinosaurs!

Tags

Brave and the Bold, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, golden age, Suicide Squad

Hold on tight, Martians, because the Suicide Squad moves fast. When you meet rampaging dinosaurs in every issue, that’s generally a good thing! The Suicide Squad appeared in three consecutive issues of DC’s The Brave and the Bold in the dark prehistoric times known as the 1960s. We are going to share them all.

Collector’s Guide: From Brave and the Bold #38; DC Comics, 1962

Suicide Squad: Raid of the Dinosaurs!

Tags

Brave and the Bold, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Suicide Squad

Hold on tight, Martians, because the Suicide Squad moves fast. When you meet rampaging dinosaurs in every issue, that’s generally a good thing! The Suicide Squad appeared in three consecutive issues of DC’s The Brave and the Bold in the dark prehistoric times known as the 1960s. We are going to share them all.

Collector’s Guide: From Brave and the Bold #37; DC Comics, 1961.

The Black Hole – Whitman’s 1980 Adaptation, #4!

Tags

Black Hole, Black Hole 4, Black Hole comic adaptation, dinosaur, dinosaur comics, Disney Black Hole, rare whitman, science fiction, Whitman

Continuing our tribute to The Black Hole comic books, here is another complete issue for you to enjoy: Issue #4, often touted as one of the rarest of the rare Whitmans!

Collector’s Guide: From Black Hole #4; Whitman/Walt Disney, 1980. Note: Issues #1-2 contain the same material as the 1979 Golden Press Black Hole which is superior in color and paper quality!

 Click to sample the Jack Kirby version of Black Hole.