I think in the middle of this current heatwave (at the time of writing) it’s quite apt the next issue of OiNK, up for review this coming Monday 26th July 2021, is the summer edition. In these days of social media influencers and celebrity endorsements, here’ a very 80s superstar to give you her opinion on what’s to come.
So “special” was the next issue it had two promotions inside #6, from which both of these clippings have been taken, both created by Patrick Gallagher.
The next issue was also one which would end up reaching more readers through a special giveaway, and the one where some exaggerated controversy came from. The next OiNK contains a strip which is the source of another oft-told myth about the comic and I’ll be setting the record straight on Monday. So come back then for one cool comic.
If you were to take a quick glance through this latest issue of Marvel UK‘s Visionaries from 1988 you’d think it was business as usual, with another lengthy strip featuring the Knights of the Magical Light and their quest to rebuild their crumbling planet. After last month’s superb story by new writer Gerry Conway anticipation is also high. But look beyond the brilliant cover by Mark Bagley and we discover some bad news on the editorial page.
There we find a tiny message from editor Steve White announcing the horrible news that this, only the fifth issue, will be the last. He says there are more details to come so we’ll concentrate on the strip first and see what those details are later. As with the previous issues, it’s written by Gerry Conway, pencils are by Mark Bagley, inks by Romeo Tanghai, letters by Janice Chiang and colours by Julianna Ferriter.
This issue’s story is called Dream Maker and begins with my favourite Visionary from the cartoon, the lightning fast Witterquick atop a cloud covered mountain answering the cries of a beautiful but entombed woman called Sirena. As he attempts a rescue a demon appears, apparently threatening to kill our hero for looking upon the woman’s beauty. It might appear this demon is jealous and has trapped his great love to be wit them forever, but as we find out later it’s just a bit of clever writing.
I say clever writing, but with a name like Sirena and a front cover showing her in control of monstrous forces the game has kind of been given away. If there was any doubt left the comic’s editorial made sure to erase all mystery beforehand. It’s still a compelling read though. I get the distinct impression Gerry, co-creator of The Punisher, really enjoyed developing these toys into three-dimensional characters. This issue concentrates almost exclusively on Witterquick and the Darkling Lord Cindarr, who we also see awaken from the same dream, with him in place of the Spectral Knight.
Sirena tells both men she’s a former Queen who has reached out telepathically to the only man able to recover the magical stone that can open her prison. Not convinced the dream is real, Leoric knows there’s no stopping Witterquick’s impetuousness so he wishes him well but offers no help or resources. On the other hand Cindarr has to fight off Reekon and Mortdredd who accuse him of abandoning his post at Darkstorm‘s castle. While you might wonder why a Darkling Lord would care about an imprisoned woman, it’s the first sign of there being more to Cindarr than we initially thought.
Witterquick’s impulse to save the poor villagers is soon overpowered by his desire for Sirena
The scene shifts to a crumbling mountain road where the giant ‘Bronze Warrior’ statue looks down upon a ramshackle village led by a despot warlord. The statue is a rusting metal ruin of unknown origin from the previous Age of Magic, now a tourist attraction with a gleaming jewel eye. Witterquick’s initial impulse to save the poor villagers from their maniacal leader is soon overpowered by his desire for Sirena, such is her power over him.
Soon he and Cindarr are in a race to claim the key, the jewel. Both use their magical poems, Cindarr unleashing ground-shattering destruction, Witterquick giving himself incredible speed which he uses to grab the key first. Despite this, Cindarr still saves Witterquick’s life when they’re suddenly attacked by the villager’s warriors.
It’s a gut reaction by Cindarr and a big surprise for the reader. He’s the highlight of this story and showcases the potential for complex character arcs to come between the warring factions. How heartbreaking that this is showcased in the final issue. Offering up a temporary alliance he uses his incantation to shake the very ground upon which the statue stands, scattering the warriors and allowing both of them to escape, the statue left wobbling in the wind.
Both characters seem to be fighting against where they’ve been placed in this new world, seeking to find their true selves
We also see Witterquick open up about who he really is, flaws and all, through thoughts and the well written (as always) narrative captions. In the comic his magical speed also seems to apply to his heart. He’s quick to fall in love, quick to jump to conclusions, quick to leap into danger, all of which can get him into trouble, all easily avoidable if he just took a step back and thought things through first.
Struggling with his thoughts, Witterquick dreams once more. Today I wouldn’t bat an eyelid at the image below, but in a toy comic of the time I think it shows Visionaries was aimed at a slightly older audience than Transformers, albeit an audience that still played with action figures. We’d have seen the likes of this in Conan comics so I thought it was interesting in the middle of a Hasbro toy licence.
Nudity in dreams is said to represent vulnerability, perfectly summing up Witterquick’s thoughts at this juncture in the story. The bewitching hold Sirena has over him, believing it’s true love, makes him shake off the doubts and carry on. From here on we see both Knights frequently cross paths with each other, more as competitors than enemies, creating an interesting dynamic and lots of fun moments.
They come up against a monstrous beast guarding the caverns underneath the toppled statue, providing us with an example of their back and forth race. Cindarr scoots past in the background (above right) as Witterquick struggles with the beast before transforming into his cheetah totem, biting the beast and escaping, the captions hinting at themes covered in last month’s review.
“But in the end, we fought as allies. Imagine if our leaders could find a way to do the same.”
Witterquick to Cindarr
These caves take our Knights back underneath the statue where Witterquick uses his speed spell once again to grab the jewel before it collapses. The Darkling Lord is buried under tons of metal but not before changing to his gorilla form for protection. After bursting out, in a moment of revenge he shames and embarrasses the warlord in front of all of his followers, freeing the people from his rule.
It’s another surprising Cindarr moment I didn’t see coming for a character so simplistically depicted in the cartoon, and it would appear it surprised him too. Both characters seem to be fighting against where they’ve been placed in this new world, seeking to find their true selves inside all of the magical armour that now defines them.
Attacked and ashamed by Sirena’s demons, the truth is laid bare and Cindarr’s heart is broken. About to be set free, she no longer needs him, he is but a complication. I actually felt for Cindarr here; the spell had him genuinely believing he was in love and doing the right thing, something he shouldn’t care about doing.
Now in the area foreshadowed earlier we see the demon attacking Witterquick but it’s holding back, not wishing to kill our hero, claiming he’s there to stop evil from being released. It’s at this point we realise those panels at the top of this review now read very differently.
Witterquick is unable to listen to reason and only the intervention of a vast gorilla (complete with Grimlock-like speech in this form) stops him from unleashing Sirena. Cindarr could have simply walked away; more evil being unleashed into the world and one less Spectral Knight should be a good thing, should it not? But he’s become an unlikely hero, trying to keep the witch imprisoned and saving a warrior he’s come to respect.
But unwittingly they’ve gotten too close and the jewel floats on a magical current right into the lock of Sirena’s tomb. Here her true appearance is revealed as she pushes against the dissolving seal in a scene reminiscent of scenes from popular mini-series V just a few years previous.
His mind set free at last, Witterquick’s horror is clear. Working together, this leads to a final desperate bid to not only save their planet but also their dignity, as they use both staff powers together, combining speed and destruction into an unstoppable force and unleashing it directly upon the dissolving force field.
The prison explodes, taking Sirena with it. My favourite part is not this appropriately action-packed finale itself, but rather the immediate aftermath when the two enemies help each other out of the rubble and share this moment.
I laughed when I read this. Gerry’s scripts are just so beautifully written in these quieter character moments. After being at loggerheads through the long quest and intense action these two simple words sum everything up for the men. The next page also reveals a little about their views of the ongoing battle for the planet. I’d have been disappointed if the story hadn’t included this conversation after all they’ve been through.
It’s a nice final page, the second panel summing up a lot of conflicts in our real world. The respect and understanding between Cindarr and Witterquick is clear and it’s left very open ended. There can be no other outcome, for now at least. No, they’re not friends but can they truly be enemies again? At least they get to end their adventure with a shared laugh and as far as the comics go I’ve got a new favourite character in Cindarr.
This dynamic is just crying out for further exploration but for now Visionaries bows out. At least it does so in style with another superb story, nicely developed characters and plenty of surprises. As you can see the promised “details” don’t amount to much, just the date on which their remaining stories will be serialised in the weekly Transformers comic.
It’s quite the wait but a new look was coming up in Transformers so a new back up strip (temporarily replacing Action Force/G.I. Joe) would help launch it and bring in Visionaries readers eager for more. There are still a couple of dedicated publications to come for our intrepid magical heroes in the form of the Visionaries Annual at Christmas time and a Spring Special next year. That annual may have been released in August but let’s face it we all got them as Christmas presents. So that’s when it’ll be covered here, following the real time nature of reading these as originally intended.
Speaking of further publications, on the back cover is another gorgeous contemporary advert. Dragon’s Claws was created by the ace Transformers team of Simon Furman and Geoff Senior. Set in the distant future of Britain it was a comic I’d seen advertised as a kid and had always wanted to try but never got around to. This is going to be corrected in 2023. The complete collection is sitting on my comics shelves waiting patiently for their own real time read through on the blog. Watch out for that.
In the meantime you can expect reviews of the final two Visionaries stories on the dates of their respective conclusions in the pages of Transformers. Each story was split into four parts as was custom for the back ups, so the first story’s review will be on the OiNK Blog from Friday 1st October 2021.
As with any comic review I’m limited to showing you a few select highlights of each issue of OiNK. Rebellion own the rights and I’m always hopeful they’ll publish reprint volumes at some point through their Treasury of British Comics label. Also, I just don’t agree with putting whole comics online, regardless of their age. All of this adds up to a difficult review to write this time.
That’s because this issue is superb. Every strip hits. Every joke lands. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been enjoying the issues so far but everything just seems to come together here with complete confidence. As such, it’s been less about which strips to choose as highlights and more about which ones to leave out! Thankfully the cover is a necessity and must be included and it’s one of my very favourites. An Ian Jackson classic, the best so far and one of the best of the whole run, it perfectly encapsulates the anarchic feel of OiNK. We’re off to a great start then.
Ian’s interpretation of each animal is genuinely funny, but put them all together and it’s a cover that commands attention and time spent pouring over all the details. It even gets its own backstory, again drawn by Ian and written by Tony Husband. The theme this fortnight is perfect fodder for the team behind the comic, already used to pork-ifying anything and everything in sight. However, there’s not a pig in sight in the biggest highlight of these 32 pages, Twee Tales present The Wonderful Wildlife of Watery Down.
Co-editor Patrick Gallagher‘s neighbour, Ann Martin brought her gorgeous artwork to a spoof of Richard Adam‘s classic novel Watership Down. The script is one big set up for a good old pun so marrying it with such beautiful illustrations, which wouldn’t look out of place in a children’s book, is a wonderful move. The first page puts the reader at ease with its gentle fields and cute critters before we turn over to the second half.
Ann would only contribute to three issues in total (returning for #30’s Hamadonna and #60‘s Pigasus) but the terrible puns would return with a vengeance in the final strip of this very issue, which we’ll get to below. Watery Down was definitely seen as a highlight of the series, evidenced by the fact it was one of only a handful of stories to be reprinted in the final editions of OiNK.
Another one-off I wanted to include is written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Weedy Willy‘s artist, Mike Green. A Shaggy Bird Story is the sweet tale of an injured animal being taken in and looked after by a young boy, who nurses it back to health before releasing it back into the wild. It all starts off innocently enough with the boy’s “unspeakably miffed” pet cat setting things in motion.
Every time I see that cat sitting on the windowsill in December it makes me laugh. I think this may have been one of the back issues my cousin gave me because I distinctly remember this strip despite the fact I hadn’t discovered OiNK yet. It’s testimony to the comic that its one-off strips are as well remembered as the regular characters and this is one which has stood the test of time and the old grey memory cells.
If you track this issue down on eBay (and you really should) you’ll find Jim Needle‘s Pete’s Pup continuing to terrorise his family with his monstrous appetite, there’s another spoof of a children’s favourite in the shape of Rupert the Pear, the Grunts page admits it had to get creative in the early issues and Uncle Pigg’s Amazing Facts About Animals showed OiNK could be an educational read.
Pete’s Pup by Jim Needle Rupert the Pear written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Davy Francis Grunts compiled by Patrick Gallagher Amazing Facts written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Ed McHenry
In the early days of the comic our esteemed editor ran a regular competition in which he’d judge readers’ messy bedrooms. It was a case of the messier the better and those chosen to feature would win a piggy prize. This time around pig pal Simon Sarfas showed us how it was done and the result was probably not a million miles away from my own childhood bedroom, although these days it makes me cringe thinking about a mess like this! I’m just showing my age now.
I always thought these were a mainstay, at least in the first year of the comic so it surprised me to find out they only appeared four times, including the original promotion in the preview issue. It did receive criticism from some parental groups who saw it as encouraging children to be even more messy than they already were but we were kids, that was our job.
At least Simon has his television close by so he can somehow make it across his room without damaging his feet in time for the afternoon film, Laffie. The next instalment in the Golden Trough Awards series is my favourite. Taking the ‘Wonder Dog’ concept of Lassie and really running with it, it puts the canine hero aboard a plane when the captain finds himself stuck in the toilet tens of thousands of feet in the air. So a typical Lassie-type plot then.
One look at that dog in the pilot’s seat and how could this not be one of the selected highlights?
Brought to you by the same partnership as the first strip in this issue, Tony Husband has written a hilarious script full of daring dos and funny eyewitnesses, all brought to the page with Ian Jackson‘s unique style. What we end up with is a frantic, madcap yarn that starts at full speed and doesn’t let up.
One look at that dog in the pilot’s seat and how could this not be one of the selected highlights?
I remember I could spend so long just looking at Jackson’s artwork and roaring with excited laughter as a kid. That feeling hasn’t dissipated as an adult. The feeling of excitement returns later too with a tiny two-panel strip hidden away underneath Tom Thug‘s. If you’re new to OiNK you’ll probably be wondering why this unassuming little section of the page could be anything more than a funny space filler. But for pig pals everywhere this is just the first appearance of a comic icon.
Of course at the time readers couldn’t have known how big a part in the future of OiNK Pete and his Pimple were going to play. Lew Stringer‘s creation would eventually return in #15, becoming one of the main strips in each and every issue, even continuing into the pages of Buster for a period after OiNK came to an end.
Lew would actually end up having to tone down Pete’s strip in order for them to appear in Buster. What was there about the character above that would need toned down? Just you wait and see! We’ll get to the reason behind that when he reappears again later this year.
Every single panel contains at least one pun, with well over a dozen altogether in just the one strip
You should prepare yourself for this final highlight, especially if you groaned at the conclusion to Watery Down. While that had two pages to build up to one gag, Fish Theatre starring Noel Pilchard does the opposite and squeezes in an absurd amount of puns into its one page. Written by Graham Exton and drawn by Ed McHenry, Graham told me how he’d often use up several scripts worth of puns all at once, robbing himself of the chance to use his vast array of jokes over many stories.
In the end he just ended up giving himself more work, having to think up new puns each time, but the end result is so funny I think it was worth all that extra effort. Every single panel below contains at least one pun (sometimes more), with well over a dozen altogether in just the one strip. Don’t think it’s possible? You have been warned.
I really didn’t want this issue to end but what an ending it gave us. It’s been a blast revisiting this particular OiNK and to have such a faultless issue this early in its life proves the strength of its concept and of the team assembled to bring it to life. It just keeps on getting better and better and with over 60 issues plus specials and books to come, there’s a lot of laughing yet to do.
With the comic still fresh out of the gates it wouldn’t have a dedicated Holiday Special until the following year, but #7 makes up for that with its summery theme and ice cold cover. Confused? The next issue’s review will be here from Monday 26th July2021 and all will be revealed.
This coming Monday 12th July brings an issue of OiNK I can’t wait to get my trotters on again. When I read these comics over seven years ago for the previous blog this felt like the point where it all clicked into place, where it really settled into its own and became the OiNK we all remember. With a new confidence about it, it just felt like the perfect issue.
From the promotional advert in #5 above (by co-editor Patrick Gallagher) I can tell you Watery Down will definitely feature. A spoof of Watership Down with just sublime artwork from Ann Martin all in the name of a good (or should that be terrible) pun. So make sure you bookmark the blog or follow along on social media so you don’t miss the review and the highlights of OiNK’s Animal Crackers issue.
We’re jumping back 28 years now to the first issue of Dark Horse International‘s UK version ofthe Jurassic Park comic. How can that film be 28 years old? Anyway, published by Topps Comics in the States, over here it was repackaged on larger A4 paper of a higher quality, with that distinct Dark Horse banner and over the course of its run included extra features, competitions and back up strips like most UK comics.
By a happy coincidence 8th July was a Thursday in 1993 so it looks like each issue will be up on the blog on the same day of the week as the original run. Surprisingly this first issue went on sale before the movie was released over here, which didn’t stomp its way into cinemas until 16th July.
As I noted in the introductory post I’d originally spotted an issue of the adaptation in a shop but never bothered to buy it. I hadn’t enjoyed comics adaptations of movies previously and also felt I’d moved on from the medium. (We all make mistakes.) My first issue ended up being #6 and by then it contained three strips per issue, but it hadn’t started out that way. This first issue is cover-to-cover Isla Nublar, containing the first full chapter of the adaptation, a whopping 29 pages in length with the rest of the 36-page comic containing features that I’ll get to below.
Edited by Dick Hansom (Aliens, Total Carnage, Speakeasy) there was never an editorial and instead a simple credits page for the strips, but the background of the island sets the scene. Let’s talk about that team Topps Comics assembled to adapt the film to comic form! As a fan of the franchise I’m pleasantly surprised by the names here. I may not have been aware of who all but one were at the time but I certainly am now.
The one name I did recognise originally was Jim Salicrup thanks to Transformers and whose adaptation of the Visionaries origin story has also been reviewed here on the blog. He also edited multiple superhero comics for the company before moving to Topps and eventually to Papercutz where he now resides as Editor-in-Chief, alongside being a trustee of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Writer Walter Simonson was tasked with adapting the screenplay and is probably best known for creating Star Slammers (featured in Havoc comic here in the UK), writing/drawing Thor for nearly five years in the 80s, drawing Robocop vs Terminator and writing Iron Man 2020 who popped up in the UK version of Transformers.
“You’ll decide you’ll control nature, and from that moment on you’re in deep trouble, because you can’t do it.”
Michael Crichton
Penciller Gil Kane sadly passed in 2000 but leaves behind a wealth of comics work on everything from Action Comics to Teen Titans and co-creating Iron Fist for Marvel. He was the artist on landmark stories in The Amazing Spider-Man, tales which led the Comics Code Authority to rewrite their rules about the depiction of drug abuse. Inker George Perez has won several awards for his comics artwork throughout his career, co-creating the characters White Tiger and Taskmaster for Marvel and he was artist on Crisis of Infinite Earths, The Avengers and Teen Titans amongst many others. George also wrote and drew on the highly regarded Wonder Woman of the late 80s and early 90s.
Colourist Tom Smith has worked for so many comics companies it’d be impossible to fit them all in here. Marvel, DC, IDW, Topps, Top Cow, Malibu and more. The Avengers, Hulk, X-Men and Justice League are just some examples of his artwork and he’s coloured for such legendary artists as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Finally, John Workman lettered the complete run of Doom Patrol and has been a frequent partner of Walter’s. His style stands out, opening up the panel frames when his speech balloons or captions touch them, as evidenced throughout these early issues of Jurassic Park. John has also created strips for Star*Reach and lettered critically acclaimed titles such as Thor and Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse. What a team!
It’s important to put this story in the context of its time. Nowadays, mainly thanks to the film series we know details about dinosaurs and their social orders, hunting habits and intelligence. They’re no longer the lumbering, stupid lizards of stop-motion special effects. This all changed with the first Jurassic Park and reading this exchange between Dr. Ellie Satler (portrayed in the movie by Laura Dern) and Dr. Alan Grant, taken from the novel rather than the film, takes me right back to that time when this was all new information.
But taking me back also worries me. You see, as a kid I found comics adaptations of movies always seemed to have issues, such as excising whole scenes, leaving huge plot holes behind, or they’d copy some moments word-for-word but with artwork that failed to convey any of the drama, making exciting scenes rather dull. They felt very rushed with little thought given to what would work.
It’s brave to take up four pages with the opening of a gate!
Instead of falling into the traps above for a quick cash in, Walter seems to be properly adapting the story for the comics medium. Take the scene above for example. In the movie Alan (Sam Neill) simply described the hunting techniques of a velociraptor to the child. With his raptor claw fossil in hand and using it with slow, deliberate movements, Neill’s tone and delivery made this scene foreboding and funny in equal measure. This wouldn’t work in a comic, so instead we’re shown what the kid could’ve been imagining at this moment. It’s from this we get our cover image too.
Some scenes remain unchanged, at least in their dialogue if not their setting. The classic Dodgson scene with Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) is played out pretty much as it is in the film, but then again what’s in the film is almost verbatim what Crichton originally wrote in his book. So when it’s already worked in written form it doesn’t require changing. Speaking of the book, on more than one occasion some of its original ideas and dialogue, changed for the film, can be found here.
The following page is a good example, showing our main characters arriving on a helicopter at Isla Nublar, an island which covered in a thick fog in the original novel but not the film. There are also more details from Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) on how Chaos Theory predicts the experiment will fail. Crichton’s novel can often give several pages at once to Ian to describe his theories so obviously the movie had to simplify things, but they were utterly fascinating to read and in the comic just a little bit more of that original text is slipped in.
With an adaptation like this the aim is to have it on the shelves when the movie hits cinemas. This means work would commence with an earlier draft of the screenplay. As the screenplay changes from one draft to another some of those alterations come too late, meaning the comic could contain parts of the previous versions. In the case of Jurassic Park it makes for fascinating reading at times for a fan like me who knows the film so well.
However, the biggest change in this first chapter definitely comes as a result of the medium and the requirement to split the film’s story into four chunks. If I were to tell you that the cliffhanger at the end of chapter one is the first encounter with the brachiosaur, where John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) had his “Welcome to Jurassic Park” moment in the film, fans should instantly be querying why these next four pages are in this issue. (Actually, Hammond had his moment in the comic when they landed in the helicopter.)
These pages do look wonderfully dramatic, though. It’s brave to take up four pages with the opening of a gate! In the film this didn’t happen until after we’d been fed all the science behind the park and the characters were heading out on the inaugural tour. But this isn’t the comic team taking liberties with the story. The first chapter is very much about making the introductions and with a distinct lack of dinosaurs some changes had to be made to grip readers to the overall story. If that means some iconic scenes have to be moved or elaborated on visually (like with the child’s imagination earlier), then so be it.
I think it was a smart move to rearrange the placement of this scene, but some people will always complain about such changes, like how movies have to change certain aspects of a book. Well of course they do, it’s a completely different medium. Books based on films also add and rearrange elements of the story or characters to suit the reading experience, but they’re still the same story, just adapted to suit. Having read the novel, I’ve always felt Spielberg did a perfect job of translating Michael Crichton’s novel to the screen and now the comic was adapting Spielberg’s adaptation!
I do believe Hammond’s famous line would’ve worked better as part of this cliffhanger, but that’s just personal preference. There is one difference from the film I’m not keen on. In Crichton’s original story, while Grant overlooks the landscape he mistakes a brachiosaur’s neck in the distance for the trunk of a tall tree, until the dinosaur moves. Here, he’s meant to mistake a leg for a tree instead as they drive within a few metres of it. They didn’t see the giant tail or the belly over their heads? If this was the original idea for the film I’m glad they changed it.
The final double-page is a beautiful image of their first encounter, with the remainder of this classic scene hopefully playing out next time. The captions make reference to the creatures welcoming them to the island and is also lifted straight from the book. In the novel the brachiosaurs come to this area whenever the helicopter approaches the island, eager to see the humans who they associate with looking after them. It’s a lovely, tender moment in the book designed to give a false sense of tranquility to the island.
When I collected Jurassic Park back at the time it was cover-to-cover strips, with the occasional competition and comics adverts thrown in for good measure. It was a pleasant surprise to see a series of additional features about the making of the movie in these early issues.
They begin right back at the beginning, long before any filming had taken place, informing the reader about Amblin and Spielberg buying the rights, their first impressions and what they felt were the scientific and moral highlights. These were the important things they’d want to concentrate on when developing their own vision. It makes for a good if somewhat brief read and there’s more to come over the next few issues.
There’s also a checklist of Dark Horse’s local and import comics to be released over the next month. I can remember picking up an issue of their Aliens comic at some stage on a family holiday. Either it must’ve been before Jurassic Park or I was familiar with my friends’ copies because the trademark banner on the cover of this comic was already familiar at the time. I didn’t know there was a Dracula title and, while Jurassic Park has started out with just one strip every issue, it’s clear its stablemates were similar to other UK comic publishers’ titles, especially the aforementioned Aliens.
So there you go, our first look at Jurassic Park UK, a comic which has been sadly largely forgotten in the intervening years. I adored it and I can’t wait to share those later issues with you but so far I’m actually enjoying a comic movie adaptation, which is noteworthy in and of itself.
To finish here are your obligatory retro advertisements. I’m not too sure about some of those t-shirt designs but given half the chance as a 15-year-old I’d have jumped at the chance. On the back page is Kenner‘s toy range. I wasn’t even aware there was one. Obviously for a younger audience than I was but I’m still surprised I never spotted them in the shops.
There are some brilliant Jurassic merchandise adverts in this series and I’ll definitely be including them as we go, alongside those for some very-90s comics. I hope you’ll come along for the ride because it’s going to be great. After all, it has been 65 million years in the making.
Issue two of Jurassic Park will be roaring its way on to the blog in just three weeks (a unique release schedule for me) on Thursday 29th July.
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