Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2010 December 01 • Wednesday

Comics featuring dinosaurs have occupied a prominent place in my reading recently. Where to begin?

Perhaps my favorite is this recent collection of Mark Schultz's Xenozoic comics, which originally came out in the 1980s. (As always, I apologize for the poor image quality. I take pictures of the books with my camera, which is really not the best way to demonstrate their virtues.)

It takes place in the future, the 30th century, I think, after nuclear war and environmental disaster have wiped out most of humanity. Now we have to share the earth with dinosaurs, giant insects and other monsters.

The two main characters are Jack and Hannah, who are friends, comrades and lovers. Jack is a mechanic dedicated to preserving nature's balance while Hannah is a scientist and scholar who will risk anything to acquire knowledge.

It's like a cross between Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow and Modesty Blaise if written by Edgar Rice Burroughs!

A story arc gradually develops and reveals that the future has the same sort of problems with corruption and abuses of power that the past had. Humans might learn from their mistakes but forget what they learned after a few millennia. The conclusion of this first volume left me in suspense. I hope the next book comes out soon!

Another intriguing new title is Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City, a comic in newspaper's clothing.

This story of a New York City infested with pterodactyls in the first decade of the twentieth century is really well written and illustrated. Where's the next one?

From France comes the first book in Jacques Tardy's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec series, which has apparently been made into a movie by Luc Besson.

It gets off to a great start, with the hatching of a pterodactyl egg and various other inexplicable events.

More dinosaurs appear in an eerie dream sequence.

As much as I liked the idea, the first story didn't come together for me. The plot was either too convoluted or simply not effectively presented. It's not clear what's going on until the last few pages, when Tardy dumps buckets of exposition and explanation on the reader.

Perhaps I was too tired when I read it and I should give it another chance. I can, however, recommend without reservation Jacques Tardy's It Was the War of the Trenches, a graphic novel about soldiers in World War I.

While I thought I noticed allusions to Herge and Tintin in Adele Blanc-Sec: Pterror Over Paris, it occurred to me later that I should be reminded more of S.O.S. Meteors by Edgar P. Jacobs.

It also has a great story idea, great atmosphere and so on, but it also gets bogged down in exposition and too many interchangeable characters. Check out how much text there is in these pages.

The idea of a panel without words must have seemed like some kind of crazy art experiment to Jacobs. I love his use of color, though. That's the only of his books I've read. Maybe there's one with dinosaurs in it.

Finally there's The War That Time Forgot.

The high-concept idea is that during World War II, United States soldiers find themselves on an uncharted island overrun by dinosaurs. Like Edgar P. Jacobs, the creators of The War That Time Forgot won't show without also telling, but at least they offer almost constant monster action.

They throw in some robot soldiers, too, just to keep you on your toes.