I can’t believe it’s been four years since I last read an issue of the original Jurassic Park comic from Dark Horse International. I was going to publish this review last month but realising November would mark that amount of time I held it back. The comic had finished with the two surviving Velociraptors Alf and Celia having made their escape into the jungle. It felt like a satisfying open ending.
While our comic was cancelled at this point, in the States another four-issue mini-series called Raptors Hijack had already been published by November 1994. After that an annual was released in the spring of 1995, followed by an ongoing monthly that ran for nine issues before finally closing its massive King Kong-esque doors in 1996.
So that’s a lot of story I never knew existed until decades later when writing the blog. Thankfully, IDW gained the rights to Jurassic Park comics and in the 2010s released the complete run as a series of graphic novels. The first two volumes contain what we’ve covered already, so thankfully (given how much they cost on eBay) I’ve only had to purchase the last three books and that’s where we begin, with Classic Jurassic Park Volume 3: Amazon Adventure!
Ian Malcolm, Alan Grant, Ellie Satler and the impossibly-alive Robert Muldoon continue their search in the Amazon and end up face-to-face with a huge gorilla! Well, that shouldn’t be there! Indeed. A mysterious older woman is tracking it and ends up spotting the ‘raptors and how they communicate. In a ridiculous moment at the end of the first chapter she’s suddenly able to use hand gestures to talk to an extinct species she only discovered a few hours before.
Ellie is grabbed by the gorilla but escapes when it and the dinosaurs go toe-to-toe. Afterwards, Alf wants to hunt her down but Celia won’t help, harking back to the regular comic and how Ellie’s kindness to Celia affected her. While all this excitement is going on poor Ian gets a fever. Why is it always him who has to get injured and taken out of the action? As if this wasn’t bad enough he’s also attacked by a leopard! Did writer Steve Englehart just not like Jeff Goldblum?
The plot isn’t really original, even back when we only had the one movie. Biosyn and the old lady (Dr. Belvedere, their communications expert) trap the ‘raptors and build a wall around them which is nowhere near big enough and patrol it with useless guards. Last seen in #10, Fischer returns and is now working for Ingen’s competition. He says he inspected Jurassic Park and it was secure, it was the workers’ fault it all went to pot. This new barrier that he’s also designed is built very quickly and corners cut and would you believe it, that comes back to haunt him. Who could’ve predicted that?
Celia gives birth to some really cool-looking babies and there are some sweet scenes in here, although the art isn’t exactly on a par with the comic’s Age of Reptiles. In fact, at times it looks very rushed. Pencils are by Neil Vokes (Blood of Dracula, Elvira, Evil Ed), inks by Rich Rankin (Robotech, Elementals, Terminator) and colours are by Renée Witterstaetter, with lettering by John Costanza and Brad K. Joyce. In the end the dinos escape by digging under the fence and along the way we get some very Jurassic Park-like moments, such as Muldoon and Grant stranded on a small island next to a raging waterfall with predators nearby, and Fischer gets a suitably grotesque death scene.
However, there’s also a lot which feels very out of place and a lot of actions taken by the characters that just seem plain weird. First up, there are helicopter battles and crashes, Biosyn ordering the murder of the main characters and Ian getting hallucinations that seem to predict what’s going to happen to the other characters he’s nowhere near. Where this came from is anyone’s guess.
Speaking of murder, Muldoon kills some men with his bare hands and seems to enjoy it a bit too much! Apparently he’s also always hated Ian, something which never came across in the film, although I can’t remember their relationship in the novel. If anything, in the movie (which this is the sequel to) the two characters were just as sceptical of Jurassic Park as each other.
Then we have the biggest changes, in Ian and John Hammond. Ian’s character strays from the film when he actually makes physical moves on Ellie, something he would never have done after getting to know her and Alan. But it’s Hammond who’s the most shocking here. He’s worked out that the whole thing was shot to hell thanks to Biosyn funding Denis Nedry’s actions, which is fair enough. However, it’s his reaction that shocks.
His actions don’t suit the character at all. Yes, he was a bit of a git in the book but, again, this is a sequel to the film and not the novel. Hammond’s men infiltrate Biosyn’s headquarters and blow part of it up, taking a lot of innocent people with it. When he’s told over the phone by his counterpart in Biosyn that people were killed Hammond just smiles, hangs up and goes back to sleep! Richard Attenborough would never.
If this all sounds confusing to you then you’ll have a good idea of how I felt reading it. The regular comic’s story wasn’t perfect (Muldoon’s return a particular sticking point) but by this stage I have to say if the first movie sequel had been anything like this I don’t think we’d have seen any more. It ends on a good point from Ellie and a funny line from Ian as you can see here. It’s almost like right in the very final panel things became a bit more like Jurassic Park and its sequels again.
The book ends with two shorter one-shot tales from the Jurassic Park Annual. In the States comics annuals are just regular one-off comics, not the large hardback volumes we get over here. The art is rather good though. Death Lizards is written by Neil Barrett Jr (Predator: Blood Feud, Batman: Ultimate Evil, Hard Looks), pencilled by Claude St Aubin (Cyborg, Amazing Spider-Man, Voyager Planet Killer), inked by Margeaux Pepoy (Ghost Rider, Godzilla, Little Orphan Annie), lettered by Brad and coloured by Renée.
Set in Costa Rica four years after the storm in the movie, we see a community who have recently rebuilt their town being terrorised by a Dilophosaurus pack. There’s some nice Chaos Theory to kick things off, with a flashback to the storm tearing Isla Nublar apart and a tree hit by lightning fall into roiling waters and getting washed out to sea with a handful of dinosaur eggs inside it.
The human characters are a biking gang who lose friends to the dinosaurs. Initially thinking they’re dealing with a vicious serial killer they decide to head out for revenge against the perceived enemy after a lack of interest from the police. However, after the revelation of what’s actually responsible it turns into a by-the-numbers action strip. The stilted dialogue and sometimes amateurish lettering (some captions look like they were added in later) don’t help things either.
Sneakers by Jurassic Park artists Michael Golden and Renée Witterstaetter is the final tale. It’s pencilled and lettered by Ed Murr (Marvel Comics Presents, Avengers, Punisher War Journal), inked by Bob Almond (Black Panther, Deadpool, Nightmare on Elm Street) and coloured by Frank Lopez (Shadowhawk, Black Widow, Frank). Set before the movie, a foreign investor lands on the island with his young daughter who’s taken on a tour in a jeep. But she jumps out and runs down the road near the T-rex paddock, unable to explain or ask for help because she doesn’t speak English.
At the same time the T-rex gets agitated and tries to shove a tree into the electric fence to short it. For much of the tale we’re in the control room and unable to determine if the T-rex has gotten out. We know there was no escape by the dinosaurs until the movie so any suspense is ruined, and working out how to knock off the electric fence wouldn’t make any sense before the movie’s story. In the end the girl’s pet ferret was in her bag and it had fallen off the back of the jeep, so she ran back to get it. The T-rex had apparently smelled it and gotten incredibly worked up over what wouldn’t have been much of a snack.
This graphic novel has been disappointing. I loved the Jurassic Park comic, it had brought me back to the world of comics as a teen after I thought I’d grown out of them. It had its flaws (Muldoon) but I really enjoyed it and was super hyped to read where the story went next after decades of thinking there hadn’t been any more. But this book has felt less like the next chapter and more like one of those dodgy rip-off copycat movies on the SciFi Channel.
The very basic plot feels like it’s trying to be Jurassic Park-like instead of an official Jurassic Park story, if that makes sense. The characters feel like two-dimensional copies of those we all loved rather than actually being them. In hindsight, I’m glad the UK comic stopped when it did and went out on a high.
I don’t like being overly negative on the blog. I deliberately choose comics I know I’ll enjoy while at the same time giving them honest reviews. This feels like one story too many and there are two more volumes to go! They’ll reprint the ongoing Return to Jurassic Park comic that only lasted nine issues in the US. I’ll keep my fingers crossed this volume was a blip and the team can return to form when the characters return to Isla Nublar. Watch out for the next volume in 2027.
