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Comic Reviews, Havoc

HAVOC #3: PSYCHOTiC GOOD BUDDiES

20 July 2022 Phil Boyce 5 Comments

The third issue of Havoc begins not only with a RoboCop cover, the ‘Half Man, Half Machine, All Cop’ detective is also the star of the free gift poster. It would be a few years before I’d become a big fan of the character through the series, but I had enjoyed the film and was curious about him at this stage, so I remember this cover eliciting an excited response from 13-year-old me. As a 44-year-old adult now though, I’m not too sure about boasting how there are “predators” inside! It was a different time.

What a glorious poster! Lee Sullivan’s painted image looked incredible on my wall and I may just have to put this one up in the home office too. We’ve definitely been spoiled with Havoc’s free gifts so it’s disappointing we wouldn’t get any more for the rest of the characters, or the “psychotic good buddies” as they’re described on the contents page. Inside the 36-page comic the strips have been swapped about a bit with the beginning of a new Conan the Barbarian tale up first. Whether the choice of order was deliberate or just to shake things up, I think having the first chapter of a new story as our opener was a good move.

Last week I spoke about how I wasn’t enamoured with the character of Conan after it felt like he was preying upon the mysterious woman he met in some snow-covered mountains. From some comments on social media about the review I see I’m not alone in this thinking. It was based on one of the original Robert E. Howard tales but his next adventure, Cauldron of the Doomed! is a Marvel original, with a plot by the strip’s artist John Buscema (The Avengers, The Punisher, Kull the Conqueror) however the dialogue has been written by Michael Fleischer (The Spectre, Jonah Hex, Rogue Trooper), with lettering by Janice Chiang (Batman, DC Super Hero Girls, previously featured on the blog in Visionaries).

In these first seven pages Conan comes across as much more heroic and chivalrous (well, for Conan) than the brute last time, which is good because I really didn’t want to read more of what we had been previously. Of course we start things off with some brutal violence, it is still Conan after all. Taking part in a paid-for fight in a town he’s passing through in order to afford a horse for his further travels, he eventually defeats the local champion much to the delight/horror of those placing bets. During this display he also catches the eye of a woman watching from the stands.

Marielle De Bruvahr fakes an injury to grab his attention, a trick one of the onlookers is all too familiar with in a funny panel above. Conan isn’t falling for it but he plays along and on this one page alone he comes across as a completely different person than the one in the first two issues. He takes her home, making sure she’s safe. She shows him a massive mansion full of statues of strong men she admires, including her father. The strip ends when it’s revealed she is the sculptor.

While she is clearly intelligent and talented, she also barks orders at her slaves and clearly manipulated Conan into coming home with her. What she wants from him isn’t known yet, nor whether she’s friend or foe, but it’s clear she’s isn’t another damsel in distress. I’m intrigued and I’m rather enjoying this strip, it’s a world of difference compared to what came before. A good start then to #3 and it continues with Howard Mackie‘s reinvented Ghost Rider, pencilled by Javier Saltares, inked by Mark Texeira, coloured by Gregory Wright and lettered by Michael Heisler.

“The innocent blood spilled here tonight must be avenged! It is my solemn duty.”
Ghost Rider

Remember, this was my introduction to the character and actually I’ve never read any more after the cancellation of Havoc, so all these years later this is my re-introduction. With the build up complete and that wonderful reveal on the final page last week we can jump straight into the action with Danny Ketch now fully transformed. A flaming skull is something you’d think was the embodiment of evil, so of course this is the first impression he leaves on those around him, but in reality he’s pretty much the embodiment of that “psychotic good buddie” line.

I love this juxtaposition, the frightening creature instilling fear into the bad guys. Yes, that idea isn’t new, but this isn’t Batman with his strict rules, this is something… else. My first impression is this Spirit of Vengeance needs to be battled by Danny; will he be able to control its murderous ways, what is he able to remember afterwards, is he fully aware while in this form but can’t control it, or maybe he doesn’t want to control it while transformed? Please, no answers, I’m discovering this fun character anew.

“The innocent blood spilled here tonight must be avenged! It is my solemn duty.” I love that quote, especially coming from a character that looks like this as he holds a police officer up in the air. Even with his instruction to the police that his sister Barb (again incorrectly described as his girlfriend in the opening dialogue box) needs medical attention and the fact he’s saved one of the hoodlum kids, the police still assume he was responsible for Barb’s condition and the deaths of those men strewn about the place.

Fired upon, the Ghost Rider doesn’t injure any of the cops, instead throwing the one he held aloft at his colleagues in order to escape and flipping one of their cars over onto the other to stop them pursuing, as he rides off on that really cool bike. No wonder I loved this strip so much as a young teen. This is definitely the one I’m most looking forward to in the next issue. The character already has my full attention. Although, I do remember almost every issue my favourite would change and that’s probably likely to happen again if these first three reviews are anything to go by.

The Eye Level news page brings us all the latest from the world of fantasy films this time. It begins with news of a film I love, Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, but from what the column says here it could have been very different indeed. (I’m relieved the article’s writer crossing their fingers didn’t make any difference.) Although, how reliable is that bit of news when no less than three sequels announced here never made it to the screen?

Of course, at the time of The Rocketeer’s release a sequel looked like a sure thing but a disappointing box office return soon put that idea to bed. At least for a few decades anyway, with news just last year of a long-awaited sequel, the original film having gathered quite the cult following in the years since (and a cartoon series a couple of years back). As a fan of the movie, let’s hope this Eye Level isn’t as wrong as it reads and perhaps was just 30 years ahead of its time.

The lead strip in the first two issues, and cover star for the premiere edition, Dwayne McDuffie and Gregory Wright’s Deathlok is tucked away in the middle of the comic with the story taking a big step forward in its set up. Michael Collins, the loveable family man from #2, heads off to work at Cybertek where he develops artificial intelligence software in robotic limbs for amputees, believing he’s helping make the world a better place. Sudden demands from on high and being locked out of classified systems he previously had access to worry him. So he decides to hack in and see what’s really going on.

He discovers the Deathlok programme and sees footage of the death of Colonel John Kelly’s brain (from #1). Furious that one of his colleagues knew about this (he’s told, “Everybody who could handle it knew”) and believing there’s a conspiracy within the company he confronts Ryker, who he sees as a friend and confidant. First though, we get a tender scene of him at home where he asks his wife what she’d think if he quit his job on moral grounds. She backs him and there’s even a funny moment involving the dishes amongst the drama.

Having been able to share his frustrations (although not telling Trace what he found out in order to protect her and Nick) he plucks up the courage and goes to see Ryker, not knowing he’s actually the man behind Deathlok. Drawn by Wright and Jackson Guise with lettering by Richard Starkings, this double-page spread below ends the story for now and it’s all building momentum brilliantly. I like these small, weekly chunks. We’re all set now for the next phase in the story, seeing Deathlok again but with a murdered, peace-loving family man within it.

You just know Michael is going to end up going toe-to-toe with that huge tank, don’t you? That’s a Chekhov’s gun if ever there was one. Moving on to writer/artist Walt Simonson’s Star Slammers next and that shuttle craft last issue was more important than I thought. Somehow Lackland had made it far enough away in a few seconds to jump into it, take off and attack the Slammers. It all comes to an end just as quickly when the one dressed in red, Sphere (we’re finally getting their names) uses a catapult to fling a rock through the cockpit, causing her to crash.

According to the terms of their contract, the Slammers are awarded any spoils of war and they take this to the extreme, commandeering the Skriks’ ship and any and all weaponry the citadel had used against them. As you can see below it’s quite the selection. It’s here they take off and we realise for the first time, three issues in, that this planet and the skirmish on it were merely an introduction to the main characters and not part of the overall plot. Instead, said plot only begins now.

Alongside leader Sphere are female Slammer Jalaia and young boy Slammer Ethon. In the booklet that came with #1 the Slammers’ page was made up like a Wanted poster by the government of the planet Orion. It said they were associates of the traitorous Galarius of Orion, who it was believed moulded them into the army they had become. In this issue our three protagonists are taking a break while their ship travels through hyperspace and we’re finally able to get a bit of an insight into each of them and the background to the whole tale.

All of the weaponry they’re collecting, the spoils of all the jobs they’re hired to do, aren’t being used in a war just yet. Instead, it’s been foretold that Orion is going to invade their planet, although when this is meant to happen hasn’t been determined. Instead, they’re putting their faith in the predictions of ‘The Grandfather’, a former resident of Orion. This must be Galarius.

Most interesting is the fact the Star Slammers have a sort of hive mind. They call it ‘bridging’. Ethon is a newbie and has bridged with Jalaia but not with Sphere yet, however he has been the Slammer to bridge with The Grandfather the most and is being lined up to be the deepest mind-bridger of them all. What this actually means and how it will help them in the coming war is anyone’s guess right now.

So far this strip still feels ill-suited to the anthology format. All of the others seem to suit Havoc, giving us enough every week to satisfy. They were written as monthly comics with roughly 22 pages of strip so each tale is only being split into four (as far as I can tell so far), however Star Slammers was written as a large one-off, graphic novel-size strip so its pacing is going to be vastly different. That could be why younger me didn’t take to it at the start because nothing seemed to happen. Hopefully as we get further along into the meat of the story that’ll change. The art is lovely though, coloured by Louise Simonson and Deborah Pedler, with distinctive lettering by John Workman.

It would appear Nixco’s potential RoboCop replacement isn’t exactly the most accurate of crime stoppers if these panels from the next part of Kombat Zone are anything to go by. There were meant to be a couple of twists in this chunk of the story, namely how Kombat promotor Dek King (who Murphy is looking for) is involved in the Nixco robot and that he has x-ray film of RoboCop’s inner circuitry to help them. Unfortunately both of these story elements are given away in the dialogue box at the top of the first page, which is only meant to catch us up on what happened last time.

This is rather careless and ruins the main plot points before we have a chance to read them. It’s a real shame because Alan Grant’s story so far, while it does have much in common with RoboCop 2, is so far a lot more enjoyable. I also really like the scene when Nixco’s Krayton and Mr. Darkstone look over the film of Alex’s circuitry to see where they’ve gone wrong. I’m not going to pretend I understand how these scans could solve their programming errors, but I don’t think we’re meant to dwell on it that much. Lee Sullivan’s pencils, Kim DeMulder’s inks, Steve White’s colours and Richard Starkings’ letters set the scene in such a good way I just went along with it.

After another Media Break in which we find out Spain has declared war on four North African countries and the Detroit Zoo is miniaturising its animals to alleviate their cramped conditions, Murphy shows up at another Kombat game in search of Kyng, coming across some drug dealers outside. It’s here I find the strip is kind of a cross between the over-the-top violence of the original movie and the later TV show I was such a fan of.

One of the dealers opens fire on Robo, trying to take him out (this is set in the earliest days of his time on the beat and they’re still surprised to see a robot cop) and returns fire and kills him. However, the others are captured alive, two of them ingeniously knocked out in a way that really does remind me of the more fun ways he’d subdue criminals in the series rather than just opening fire indiscriminately like he does in the movies. Save for the Havoc error with the dialogue box this is great fun!

That’s us at the end of another issue, already a third of the way through a run which should’ve been so much longer. The Next Issue page doesn’t really give too many hints about what’s to come, although we can deduce that RoboCop will somehow end up in the fighting ring and Michael’s brain will be causing some grief for the Deathlok computer. I’m interested in seeing how the Star Slammers story adds to their grand background tale and Conan has redeemed himself somewhat, but it’s still the other three strips I’m gagging to read more of.

I’m glad I only have to wait seven days! While there’ll be no more wonderful posters to gawk at hopefully there’ll be plenty to enjoy inside. The review of the fourth edition of Havoc from Marvel UK will be here from Wednesday 27th July 2022.

iSSUE TWO < > iSSUE FOUR

Comic Reviews, Havoc

HAVOC #2: FLAMiN’ HELL!

13 July 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

With five different strips to this anthology and each one an imported American story split into multiple parts across weekly issues variety was always going to be a key factor of Havoc. What I didn’t expect was how different each issue could feel as a whole. Last issue’s action packed Deathlok gives way to proper character introductions, Star Slammers begins to show a glimmer of political intrigue, Ghost Rider has the reveal we’ve been waiting for, Conan the Barbarian comes to a sudden end already and RoboCop brings in the satire and characterisation that always set him apart from other action fare.

In the middle of all this is a large, glossy Deathlok poster, the issue’s free gift. Drawn by Joe Jusko in 1989 it must’ve been a piece of art to promote the comic in 1990 when Marvel in the US brought the character back. I definitely remember having this on my wall at the time and I particularly like the way we see the complete human and cyborg sides of him next to the completed transfer and the birth of a character I loved that summer. In the comic itself there’s also an article about the strip with insights from the creative team.

First up though is the Deathlok story written by Dwayne McDuffie and Gregory Wright which begins by adding the logo, story title, credits badge and a quick recap to the original splash page opener by Wright and Jackson Guise, with the original lettering in the rest of this chapter by Richard Starkings. Cybertek Systems Inc. know fine rightly what happened to cause the disaster last issue. They also know without a human brain it’s “nothing but a multi-billion dollar mannequin” and then the reader is instantly taken to the home of Michael Collins, a software programmer working on artificial limbs.

In the scene in his home his young son is playing a computer game and upgrading his character with the biggest gun possible without giving thought to armour, speed, agility etc. Trying to teach his son that a real hero isn’t all about weaponry and violence, it falls on deaf ears as the boy is having too much fun. Even if I didn’t remember it, it’s clear the strip is setting Michael up as the new Deathlok, so his abhorrence towards violence is an interesting take. Like having Danny in Ghost Rider being a bit of a coward last issue.

As a teenager I always loved the quieter moments amongst all the action in my comics. Thing is, not all of the comics I tried out could carry it off. Transformers was surprisingly good at it although it rarely happened, it was part of the fun in G.I. Joe too and here the domestic scenes made the story (and the comic) feel more mature to thirteen-year-old me, like I was watching a really good movie set up all the pieces correctly with the right pacing and character development. I loved this juxtaposition. It wasn’t trying to entice me with endless action, I was expected to return to see it all develop. I wasn’t being talked down to.

The story ends this issue with Ryker of Cybertek ordering his team to neutralise the software fault by the next day for another brain transplant, even though they haven’t got a volunteer lined up. It’s clear he doesn’t intend to ask. On the next page a Deathlok article is an interesting read about what drew co-creator Dwayne McDuffie to the job and what the character meant to him. The way he describes the relationship between the computer and Michael reminds me of another character by the same name and his computerised partner, namely Michael Knight and K.I.T.T.; particularly in Knight Rider‘s first season when the two main characters butted heads a lot as they got to know each other, so I’m excited to see this play out in this strip.

The Star Slammers get a little more than four pages this time, although having read this part I can see that was the best place to end it a week ago. Having saved the citadel they make their way inside and are greeted by very welcoming, grateful hosts. The Slammers have no wish to celebrate, they know the Skriks will be back soon so they simply demand their payment and a place to rest. While they sleep an official called Lackland comes to warn them the others mean to kill their saviours instead of paying up.

But on the very next page it appears Lackland is working for the enemy, the Skriks. As they wait to see if the mercenaries will change sides, their ship on which the Skriks reside is locked up tight and flown off to the citadel, where it lands and is surrounded by tanks before the Slammers announce it was them. They had simply snuck up to the ship and locked the Skriks inside their own home. The episode ends with Lackland making a run for it as another ship comes into view above, so it’s unclear where this is headed.

To be honest, not much is happening yet. It’s still setting up its plot, characters, background and the politics involved. There’s the potential of political intrigue here which I hope I’m right about, because so far it’s not great; the Slammers’ capture of the Skriks all happens off-page and I’m not feeling connected to anyone yet. It’s not necessarily the fault of writer and artist Walt Simonson (colours by Louise Simonson and Deborah Pedler, letters by John Workman) because this was written to be read as a whole, not as a serial.

While other strips seem to be benefitting from the weekly short doses, engrossing me in each chunk of story and building anticipation, it may just be these early pages of Star Slammers that aren’t so suited to the format. Maybe once it gets going it’ll fit in more and I do remember enjoying it later, so I’ll wait to see how my attitude changes in the weeks ahead. But for now it’s time to move on to the character whose introduction has really made an impact on me, Howard Mackie‘s Ghost Rider.

“I am Ghost Rider, the Spirit of Vengeance!”
Danny Ketch/Ghost Rider

The story’s recap incorrectly labels Barb as Danny Ketch’s girlfriend when she was clearly described as his sister last issue, then we kick off with the kids that scared Danny stealing the briefcase Deathwatch’s and Kingpin’s cronies fought over. Deathwatch leaves but not before ordering his men to pursue and kill all witnesses. The kids run but Danny is struggling with his unconscious sister and must find somewhere to hide. In a nearby scrapyard he carries Barb inside a pile of scrap cars where something glows in the dark at his presence.

He spots a motorcycle and, while it just looks like a regular bike, it’s brand new. What’s it doing here amongst all this junk? He leans Barb up against it to keep her sitting upright but she’s bleeding everywhere. Meanwhile, the men outside capture the girl who stole the briefcase but realise the only way to ensure there are no witnesses is to level the whole place with a thermite grenade. It’s at this point Danny’s life changes forever.

His hands covered in blood, and in complete panic, he doesn’t know what to do. It’s at this point the original light he saw glows again. It’s coming from the petrol cap on the bike, which he touches with his blood soaked hand as he thinks about how he’d do anything to save his sister.

I remember seeing that panel and getting excited when I first read this. I was always someone who’d never flick through his comics before settling down to read them. (At least, not since I’d done that with an issue of Transformers and had a shock ending of a story ruined for me before I’d read it.) So I always read from front to back without so much as looking to see what features are inside.

I was so glad I kept to this because as the ground underneath their feet begins to rumbled, Deathwatch’s men were about to get the shock of their lives, and young me got such a thrill when I turned the page to this final image! Ghost Rider’s art team are penciller Javier Saltares, inker Mark Texeira, colourist Gregory Wright and letterer Michael Heisler.

Now that’s a cliffhanger. In theory, not seeing the main character of the strip until the final page of the second chapter shouldn’t work. As mentioned above, the slower pacing of splitting up the stories isn’t working for the Star Slammers, but here it most definitely is. The bike has completely changed shape and looks awesome flying through the air as it jumps over the henchmen, the ghostly, flaming skeleton carrying Barb off to safety.

If you’re familiar with the character you may have to excuse me because apart from this back in 1991 I haven’t read any of the comics. I would’ve been hooked to Ghost Rider had Havoc carried on, I remember that much and I feel the same now only two issues into this read through. So yes, I’m a newbie, I’ll be describing things you may have become quite used to a long time ago, but I’m an excited newbie. You may see me grow into quite the fan of Danny’s as the summer continues.

After an Eye Level about a set visit to the filming of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is the RoboCop video competition promoted on the cover, but it wasn’t the video I was expecting.

I always found it strange to have cartoons and toys based on adult movies (the same goes for Aliens). I don’t mean collectibles either, I mean an animated series and toys actually aimed at children when the original movie was certificated ’18’. After the TV show later in the 90s I eased up on that somewhat (I spoke last time about why that’s my preferred RoboCop) but at the time of Havoc it was all rather weird. Anyway, the cartoon and associated merchandise weren’t a success and only 12 episodes were made, broadcast in the States in 1988. Clearly it took a while for it to make its way over here.

Today Conan reads very differently in a more enlightened world

Conan the Barbarian is up next and I was very surprised to see it’s the conclusion to The Frost Giant’s Daughter already. Not being familiar with the character I assumed his stories would be the same length as the rest, but this short story ends here. There’s plenty of fighting as he takes down the two huge men he came up against last time, an uncomfortable moment when he tries to force himself onto the woman with a kiss to change her allegiance and it all ends with asking more questions than it answers.

Chased down by Conan in such a forceful way I found myself on the side of the woman (who is meant to be evil). She finally frees herself from his grasp and calls out to Ymir, the god who is apparently her father. I know the stories are from a different time but that doesn’t make it any more enjoyable. Adapted from Robert E. Howard’s original story by Roy Thomas, with art by Barry Windsor-Smith and lettering by Artie Simek, it looks the part of a classic comic strip but it doesn’t make for easy reading. Unfortunately, at the time I didn’t think anything of it I’m sorry to say. Today it reads very differently in a more enlightened world.

I think Conan rather deserved the treatment dished out there! He awakens on the final page surrounded by the men he was previously fighting alongside. No one finds any tracks or evidence of why Conan had just walked off on his own and it’s only when someone called Gorm speaks out that Conan realises what he’s holding. Was it a dream? A myth? Or real? It’s kind of left that it did happen on some level, but other than that it’s up in the air.

More amenable to my tastes is the last strip and it’s back to RoboCop. The recap gives away a key plot point, explaining the video used to film Murphy’s fight with the gang last issue was an x-ray device, something the strip itself hasn’t told us yet. Proper credits are given this time though and with names like Alan Grant, Lee Sullivan, Kim DeMulder, Steve White and Richard Starkings the big guns (no pun intended) are pulled out to finish off the issue.

Some detective work leads Murphy to a legal Kombat game where men in insulated suits try to electrocute each other with tasers. Behind the scenes it’s all very reminiscent of modern day wrestling with over-the-top characters and hints that the match results may be fixed when a scan shows Murphy the suits have been tampered with. The previous victim was called Powky and Robo finds out he worked for the Kombat promoter, Dek Kyng, an obvious reference to Don King. Meanwhile OCP are nervous that a rival company called Nixco are developing a rival to RoboCop.

Media Break, the news programme from the first movie and TV series makes a return and while the hilarious advertisements for the consumerist future are missing, they’re still a neat way of getting plot and context into the story. There’s also a good deal of humour here too, such as how Robo deals with a suspect who uses metal teeth to fight back and gets them stuck in his arm. This results in Murphy questioning why anyone would willingly have flesh and bone removed and replaced with metal. While he recharges he reminisces about how he wasn’t given the choice, losing his wife and child in the process.

The final panel gives us a glimpse of the new rival robot and it feels very similar to the plot of RoboCop 2 so far, which wasn’t exactly a great movie. This strip was originally published in America in the same year as the second film so the plot should’ve been known, so it’s surprising this is going to use the same idea. But of course I could be jumping to conclusions here, I’ll wait and see how it develops, for now all the key elements that make a good RoboCop story are in place.

A really fun sophomore issue which, Conan aside, has me clamouring for more from these characters, even the Star Slammers had just about enough in their five pages to keep me locked in to their story for now. The Next Issue page promises more of the same but things are definitely building in at least three of the stories and with a giant RoboCop poster next time it’s another one to look forward to.

The third issue of Marvel UK’s Havoc will be reviewed right here this day next week, meaning you can check it out with a selection of highlights from Wednesday 20th July 2022.

iSSUE ONE < > iSSUE THREE

Comic Reviews, Havoc

HAVOC #1: EXPLOSiVE START

6 July 2022 Phil Boyce 3 Comments

While I’d been allowed up to four comics on order at the local newsagent, by the summer of 1991 this number had been whittled down to just two, The Real Ghostbusters and Transformers. Most comics I’d tried had ended up cancelled very quickly, so I’d become a bit disillusioned. Then, after months of not bothering, I decided to have a look at the comics shelves one Saturday morning and was met with this.

While I’d spotted RoboCop on the cover it was the bigger character called Deathlok that really grabbed my attention, especially when I pulled aside the free introductory booklet (images from which can be seen in the introductory post). How the booklet blacked out everything apart from Deathlok just looked really cool and having a quick flick through I also saw Conan who I’d heard of from friends, and a fiery skeleton on a motorbike. I had to try this out! At only 55p for 36 pages Havoc was a bargain, the same price as Transformers which was two-thirds the size and on smaller paper.

There was also that 16-page booklet which introduced us to each of the five main protagonists: Deathlok, RoboCop, Ghost Rider, Conan the Barbarian and the Star Slammers. It was a meaty read (edited at lauch by John Freeman and Harry Papadopoulos) and I enjoyed it so much I cancelled my order for The Real Ghostbusters after 150+ issues to reserve Havoc instead. Little was I to know only nine issues would ever see print. But for now let’s relive this excellent title, which coincidentally lasted for the exact amount of time I was off school for the summer holidays (in Northern Ireland kids get all of July and August off).

Upon returning to school some of my 2000AD-reading friends were raving about Havoc and the comparisons are clear. Havoc was also an anthology title and while the stories were imports from America the sci-fi settings and hard action had grabbed their attention in the same way as Tharg’s comic. I’d only read a few issues of 2000AD at that time and found Havoc to be much better; it was in full colour for a start, it had RoboCop and the action and characterisations seemed (to my teenage self) to be more mature. This was a huge step away for my usual comics.

So first up is Deathlok, a character I’d never heard of and who Marvel US had resurrected a year earlier. Originally created by Rich Buckler in 1974 in Astonishing Stories, there’d eventually be various characters with the same name, all deceased humans brought back as cyborgs. Dwayne McDuffie (Batman, Back to the Future, Damage Control) and Gregory Wright (The Punisher, Daredevil, Nick Fury) brought the idea back with a new human character in a mini-series and then an ongoing comic between 1991 and 1994, the first time Deathlok had had his own title. It was this run we were to be treated to, drawn by Wright and Jackson “Butch” Guice (Supergirl, Black Panther, Winter Soldier) with letters by Richard Starkings (Elephantmen, Zoids, Transformers).

Between the end of the mini-series and the start of the ongoing an eight-page prelude tale was published in Marvel Comics Presents and it’s this that Marvel UK decided to use first. (From #2 they’d go back and print the mini-series.) This gives us a proper action-packed introduction to the technology and the idea behind the strip. No, it wasn’t hugely original by the time 1991 rolled around, with Terminator movies and RoboCop himself on the scene, but something would set Deathlok apart and that was the interaction between the human brain and the computer. That’s something for a future review though.

It’s smart to begin the premiere issue with a complete story and it perfectly sums up the set up and the kind of action we can expect. Former army colonel John Kelly volunteered to have his brain transplanted into Cybertek‘s Deathlok and become the ultimate tactical weapon. Sent on a Test Run, he’s armed with paint pellets while 12 mercenaries try to take him down with live ammo. The communications between human brain and computer are relaxed, even jovial, but when Kelly decides on a little grandstanding things take a shocking turn.

The computer has calculated that Kelly’s thoughts are an input error, sending an electrical charge to eliminate the problem and killing him instantly. Its system now “de-bugged” the programming for a live scenario takes over and immediately replaces the paint gun with a live plasma pistol. But Mr Ryker of Cybertek doesn’t stop the test, even as he watches the mercenaries die one-by-one. There’s just too much money at stake. The story ends with the company casually discarding what happened because they have a deadline and Mr Ryker’s final foreboding words show us the direction it’s about to go.

In the introductory booklet a little bit of information popped out at me as a fan of Transformers. It appears Cybertek Systems Inc. is a division of the multinational oil company, Roxxon. This company name appeared a couple of times in Transformers as a competitor to Blackrock. It was just in passing, but it tied the characters in to the larger Marvel universe around the same time as Spider-Man helped out the Autobots.

Test Run is a great introduction to not only Deathlok but to the whole remit of Havoc. I particularly liked Richard Starking‘s (launch editor for Marvel UK’s The Real Ghostbusters) lettering during the interactions between Kelly and the computer. I remember the intrigue as a teenager and how I lapped up the action, thinking that if the rest of the issue was anything to go by I’d discovered a winner.

John Workman’s trademark style adds bold, in-your-face lettering to Star Slammers, perfectly suiting the narrative

Havoc may have been a meaty 36-page read for us but to fit in five ongoing strips originally written as much larger chapters (while giving each one a satisfying chuck and a cliffhanger every week) couldn’t have been an easy task. But the team pulled it off. The next strip is Star Slammers which originally saw print in #6 of Marvel Graphic Novel in the States back in 1983. Given just the four pages in this premiere issue, it acts as a nice tease for the characters created, written and drawn by Walter Simonson (Jurassic Park, Hawkgirl, Detective Comics), coloured by his partner Louise Simonson (writer on New Mutants, Warlock, Action Comics) and Deborah Pedler (Alien, Marvel Graphic Novel, Conan) although Deborah is mistakenly listed as “Parker”.

John Workman is the letterer here and among his many credits (for example Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse, Orion, Spider-Girl) he worked alongside Walter on the movie adaptation of Jurassic Park, which was published in the UK by Dark Horse International, split over the first five issues. His trademark style of breaking the panel lines which I enjoyed so much in those early Jurassic comics adds a bold, in-your-face style of lettering to Star Slammers, perfectly suiting the narrative.

Spence and Slinger are two tired soldiers looking out from the citadel they’re protecting, surrounded on all sides by campfires belonging to their enemy, the Skriks. They’ve called for help from the Star Slammers and hope more than a hundred turn up at least, although Spence thinks it’ll be less than fifty and that he and his comrades are doomed. Suddenly all hell breaks loose, there are explosions and gunfire everywhere and within minutes the enemy has been wiped out as far as the eye can see. Spence’s monologue returns just to confirm he was right, there were definitely less than fifty of them.

That’s it for part one. In the booklet their introduction is written as a warning from “the glorious planet Orion” but as yet there are no more details about characters or overall plot. As a kid I remember being underwhelmed but my attitude changed as the story continued and now as an adult I’m intrigued. On the next page comes something my adult self has been really looking forward to. I’m including it just for some fun and context about when the comic was released. It’s the first Eye Level.

This was the weekly news column with all the latest information from the world of television, movies, comics and videogames. This was around the time we had that TV show Movies, Games + Videos so this has taken me right back. Most notable for me here is the hype machine for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves because I enjoyed it at the time but the years have not been kind to the ridiculous movie. I remember all the buzz about how expensive Terminator 2: Judgement Day was for the time and it’s nice to see a film I’ve just recently rediscovered getting a quick mention, namely the excellent Rocketeer.

As well as the news above, the booklet had extra pages for RoboCop, so sure was everyone that this was a franchise to run and run. The second and third movies put an end to that. Personally, I much preferred the TV series. The original writers were creative consultants and it was more in line with what they’d written for the film (which ended up being known more for its over-the-top violence). Yes, TV series in the 90s couldn’t have the violence of today’s shows so Murphy captured criminals instead of killing them, but all the social commentary, politicking and character development was there and I loved it. It was big budget and a great character piece at its heart. (And that episode with his dad! Oh my, I’m welling up just thinking about that scene… anyway… ahem…)

The booklet is set up like a series of Wanted posters (except for RoboCop obviously) and our next antihero is described as “a so-called do-gooder” who they suspect is really just “a deep rooted psycho”. Originally created as a Western character before being renamed Phantom Rider, the first supernatural Ghost Rider was Johnny Blaze who you’ll know from the movies if not the comics. Havoc’s strip is the sequel to that run and stars new character Danny Ketch. It was written by Howard Mackie (Moon Knight, Mutant X, X-Factor), pencilled by Javier Saltares (X, Wolverine, The Prowler), inked by Mark Texeira (Hercules, Psi-Force, Megalith) and coloured by Deathlok’s Gregory Wright, although they’re all just listed next to “art”, such is the limited space in the credits. Completing the team is Michael Heisler (Arkham Asylum, writer on DV8, Union) on lettering.

Apart from this ghostly illustration as part of the title there’s no inkling about what’s going to happen or how Danny becomes who he is destined to become, but I didn’t mind that at all. In fact, back in 1991, knowing I’d only have to wait seven days for the next part I liked the slow development and the suspense it brought. Of course, the original story wasn’t written in this way, it’s only because it’s being chopped up but we’re still getting a full story every month, just a little bit at a time, Transformers-style.

So Dan and his sister Barb are in the middle of a cemetery at Hallowe’en, visiting Houdini’s grave because Barb wants to take pictures of the rituals that take place there every year. They’re spooked by a group of prankster kids who are soon chased off by Barb, while Dan cowers from the initial fright. I like this, setting up the character who will become this flaming skull as a rather timid individual.

Hearing a gunshot Barb wants to investigate and they find new character Deathwatch facing off against some goons sent by classic Marvel character Kingpin. Deathwatch has shot one of their couriers and appears to be outnumbered when some shadowy figures shoot Kingpin’s men in the back with crossbows. Removing his mask, our new villain strangles the remaining gangster but the loud crack of his neck breaking is too much for Barb and she involuntarily lets out a scream, alerting the men to their location.

It was all very serious and violent for teenage me. It was like catnip! The tone was perfect, I already liked and cared for Dan and the ending was a shock. The Next Week caption at the bottom had me hyped and the strip was instantly a favourite. One piece of the puzzle at a time was being put into place and I couldn’t wait for more. I find that feeling returning now. After Havoc’s cancellation we just couldn’t get hold of the US comics at the time where I lived, and now 31 years later this is already making we want to check out the modern Ghost Rider comics. Havoc has got into my mind again.

“They stand face to face. Both are tall men — and built like tigers. But one of them is — Conan the Barbarian”
The Frost Giant’s Daughter, Robert E. Howard/Roy Thomas

Next up is Conan the Barbarian, only known to me at the time from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies of the 80s which never really appealed to me. This turned out to be the most surprising strip in Havoc because I wasn’t expected much at all but really enjoyed it, so now it’s time to find out if I still do three decades later. The story is interesting but the real world background of it is fascinating. The original Frost Giant’s Daughter was written by Conan’s creator Robert E Howard in 1934 but was originally rejected by the magazine he submitted it to and so the character and settings were changed. It only eventually saw print as a Conan tale long after Howard’s death.

In comics, this adaptation is by far the oldest strip among those in Havoc. Published in Savage Tales in 1971, a censored version (mainly for nudity) was printed in Conan’s own comic the following year with a new opening. It’s that version we got in Havoc. Adapted by Roy Thomas (Arak Son of Thunder, Shazam!, The Dragonlance Saga) with art by Barry Windsor-Smith (Machine Man, Iron Man, Avengers) and lettered by Artie Simek (Fantastic Four, Showcase, Kid Colt), this gripped me instantly as a teenager with its action, setting, the blood and guts and the sexual undertones. It was like nothing I’d read before. I was captivated.

I had no idea this strip was older than the others and it doesn’t read as such either, the writing capturing the timeless rhythms of Howard’s originals. After a huge and bloody battle a young Conan collapses in the snow but as death creeps in he sees a beautiful woman, becoming instantly enamoured with her. Confused as to how she could be so scantily dressed out in the cold he assumes she must come from a village he didn’t know about, somewhere he could rest before his next battle. But there’s nowhere nearby, her identity is a mystery and her see-through clothing (censored here) entices Conan into the chase.

Her existence doesn’t make sense here in the snow covered mountains, so Conan’s pursuit changes from one of lust to a search for answers, fearing it’s some sort of vision or trick. I can’t remember the exact reason and I don’t want anyone to tell me if you know, I’ll find out in real time as always. At the end the fact it’s a trap is made very clear, but no other answers are forthcoming yet. I find myself remembering the sense of childhood wonder I had in reading this and I’m intrigued now to find out more about Conan himself, as well as the mystery at hand. A strong start.

The final strip was the one I was most looking forward to when I initially saw the lineup as a teen. Deathlok looked awesome but I already knew Alex Murphy aka RoboCop and it felt exciting to see him in comic form. What a shame then that this first chunk of Kombat Zone is probably the weakest of this first issue. I put this down to the fact I’ve seen so much more of RoboCop since then and in particular the characterisation in the TV series. Here he comes across as rather two-dimensional and his speech patterns read very strangely, rather clichéd compared to the first film or the show.

But hey, it’s only the first five pages! I’m not going to get ahead of myself. I’ll see how it develops. Robo intercepts a hover-bike gang as they seemingly take down an innocent stroller in Old Detroit. But in the background someone is filming the confrontation with RoboCop and when the victim makes a plea to pay off his assailants one of the bikers makes a passing comment about already being paid. There’s more to this random attack than meets the eye.

Murphy may not have heard this or seen the man with the camcorder but the way the bikers attacked is enough for the detective to have his doubts. But our mysterious stranger throws in a “smart-gun” (which was rather forward thinking for an early 90s comic) which kills the ‘victim’ Alex had saved and the last of the bikers before he can give anything away. It’s all over very quickly and after some of the more substantial reads it’s a bit of a disappointment when this is the big licenced strip.

Of course, none of the ongoing stories in this issue were ever designed to be broken down like this, so overall the comic has done a wonderful job of selecting the right characters, stories and ending points to give us a flavour of Havoc’s future. So I can forgive the feeling of two of the strips being all too brief this time out, we’ve been spoiled by the package as a whole.

What a shame the great team assembled for RoboCop aren’t given any credit because the Deathlok ones are mistakenly reprinted instead. RoboCop: Kombat Zone reads like a who’s who of comic legends in my eyes. It’s written by none other than Alan Grant (Judge Dredd and Batman, including the Judgement on Gotham crossover, Toxic!), pencilled by Lee Sullivan (Transformers, Doctor Who, Tekworld), inked by Kim DeMulder (Batman, Transformers, G.I.Joe), coloured by Steve White (Dragon’s Claws, Xenozoic Tales for Jurassic Park, Transformers)and lettered by Richard Starkings. What talent! After finding this out I’m all the more excited now for the rest of the story.

I’m just going to finish off now with a quick look at the other non-strip pages in this premiere issue, notably the Next Issue page and the retro adverts. You may notice the date for #2 is given as Monday 15th July 1991. Havoc was advertised as being on sale every Monday and a lot of other comics said so too but were released on the Saturday beforehand. The date on the cover of weekly/fortnightly Marvel UK comics was always the date the next issue would go on sale, kind of like an expiry date for each issue, the date the newsagent would remove it from the shelves.

Havoc has the date of the following Saturday on its cover but on the Next Issue page it’s two days later, the following Monday. I have very clear memories of picking this up every Saturday morning throughout the summer of 1991 and in later years when I worked in various newsagents in my teens and early 20s comics were never released on a Monday. (The only publications beyond newspapers that would ever arrive on a Monday were women’s weeklies.) So I’m not sure why the wrong date is given here, but it gets even more out of sync later in the run as you’ll see.

Elsewhere there’s an advertisement for Havoc’s sister title Meltdown both in the comic itself and on the back of the free booklet, there’s one for Thorpe Park dressed up as a competition and on the back cover of this mean, action-packed, mature read are the Fiendish Feet! Oh I loved those yoghurts as a kid.

This has been a rather long post, I know. But it was necessary to introduce Havoc, its strips, their main characters and all of their creative teams. It’s been a blast revisiting this issue and I’m so glad I haven’t got long to wait until I do it again for #2, albeit maybe with a slightly shorter blog post. The next issue of what should’ve been a very long-running comic will be here on the OiNK Blog from Wednesday 13th July 2022.

GO TO iSSUE TWO

JURASSiC PARK #10: BETRAYALS, TAiLS & GOLDBLUM

29 March 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Another exciting Gil Kane cover that bares absolutely no resemblance to anything that occurs inside, or any other issue or even the movie. It’s the second of two covers from the American preview comic, the previous one shown off last month. That Topps Comics preview contained two small strips set before the events of the movie and the first was underwhelming to say the least. The second, the headline story inside this issue, is far better and concentrates on the man we all loved to hate, the person behind all the chaos, Denis Nedry.

Portrayed by Wayne Knight in the film, Gil produces a great likeness here while not getting so hung up on it that he ends up expressionless. Betrayal is written by Walter Simonson and tells the tale of Nedry’s arrival on Isla Nublar to work on the computer systems that would be so instrumental in the creation and eventual downfall of the park; networking of computers, park systems, zoological simulations and crowd control measures all make up his complicated job. Dick Giordano (Detective Comics, The Sandman, Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man) joins Jurassic Park to ink Gil’s pencils, John Workman returns as letterer, as does Renée Witterstaetter as colourist (and Story Editor for this and the sequel story later in the issue).

Some fans online have mistakenly said there’s an error in Nedry’s and Hammond’s relationship in the film. Hammond‘s favourite phrase was, “Spared no expense” and yet Nedry is constantly saying he’s underpaid, his boss unwilling to negotiate. Here, Simonson picks up on a plot thread from the novel that the film touched upon (and those fans missed) and elaborates on it. Nedry’s bid was very high, no expense was spared, but it was made before he knew the secret of what the attractions on the island actually were. Once he found out he thinks he underbid, but Hammond is a man who honours his word and expects others to do the same.

Realising the fortune Jurassic Park is going to make Hammond, Nedry constantly tries to spin that his work is going to be far more complicated than first estimated, but really it’s not true and he’s just pushing for more money. Hammond doesn’t budge. His computer experts perfectly relayed to Nedry what was required, the fact the animals are dinosaurs doesn’t change anything. Six months in however, Nedry begins to realise extra money will never be forthcoming from his computer work and when he overhears Henry Wu discussing the embryo laboratory he clicks that’s where the money is, in the dinosaurs, and their embryos are perfect for smuggling off the island.

The story ends with his first attempt at reaching out to Ingen‘s competitors but for me the real meat of the story is seeing the beginning of the relationship between these two characters. Also, unlike the previous prequel story (Genesis) foreshadowing isn’t shoved in our faces, instead it just concentrates on telling a good story based around a key plot point in the movie, with the characters at its heart. Hammond comes across as a bit too cantankerous at points compared to Richard Attenborough‘s charming portrayal and more like he is in the novel, but in the end it’s an interesting little prequel and a nice addition to the comic.

There’s no Xenozoic Tales this issue so the remaining strips get more room to breath, although I do miss Tenrec and Hannah. They’ll be back, though. Alongside the eight-page Betrayal and the ten-page Dark Cargo (for a meaty 18 pages of Jurassic Park) is Ricardo Delgado‘s always stunning Age of Reptiles which makes up 11 pages, sandwiched in the middle. It starts off serenely with a large Ankylosaurus enjoying some bark from a monstrously sized tree that dwarfs even this huge dinosaur. Then they hear a noise and step to the side to have a look around the tree. Personally, I think the way this simple gesture is drawn is just so full of character.

I was beginning to feel sorry for the peaceful beast who now found themselves outnumbered three-to-one against our favourite predatory rascals, the Deinonychuses. As you can see from what happens on the next page I needn’t have worried. This is enough to make the smaller dinos run off, beaten with one swipe of a tail. I just love this big action shot though, especially since the build up was so peaceful, it’s such a surprise! We get another little respite when we check in on the Tyrannosaurus rex pack as Long Jaw arrives back and nuzzles the noses of his mate Talon and their baby, with the other male Blue Back and his mate Climber looking on.

The whole pack is angry and soon Long Jaw sees why. The large circular nest is empty of all its eggs except for a few pieces of broken shell and one last intact egg, tucked in next to Talon. We then get a double-page spread and a really brilliant moment as he looks down at evidence of who robbed their nest and, even though a T-rex‘s face shouldn’t be that emotive, we can tell he knows exactly who was responsible. The way Ricardo lays this out with his face between the footprint and those same feet now on a nearby beach is just genius.

Look very closely at that big panel in the middle of the page. Have a look up into the cliffs and, amongst the silhouettes of the craggy terrain you should spot the shapes of a head and a tail. I’ll admit I don’t think I ever noticed this the first time around back in the 90s because it surprised me when I spotted them now. It’s so subtle, I love it. It also leads on to the climax of this issue’s chunk of the story.

After filling their bellies with the eggs the three thieves start making their way up a very narrow path along one of those cliff faces and come face-to-face with our two female Tyrannosaurs. Their size and power in comparison is perfectly captured and I particularly like the overhead view showing just how trapped the smaller dinos really are. There’s even a tiny bird looking on. Little details like this amongst all the action and drama is a trademark of Ricardo’s and one of the reasons I love his work so much.

The leader of the Deinonychuses turns and barks orders at the others, one of whom turns and runs at the T-rex coming up behind them, the story cutting off for this issue as they leap into the air, claws bared. Age of Reptiles was never intended to be told in this way; it was created as a graphic novel to be read from beginning to end in one sitting. But it just works so well, editor Dick Hansom doing a great job of knowing when to edit to make each piece feel like a complete chapter. It’s a great cliffhanger. (Yes, that was very much an intended pun.) However, it’s a particularly frustrating ending this time, which I’ll explain after the third and final strip.

“Phooey on your ‘Chaos’! We’ve got boats, planes, radar…!”
Renny

“So does the war on drugs.”
Dr Ian Malcolm

Steve Englehart‘s Jurassic Park: Dark Cargo continues with Dr Ellie Satler, Dr Alan Grant and the juvenile Velociraptors transported from boat to a huge air transport and during the flight our human heroes eventually awaken to find their cage surrounded by the hissing, clicking raptors. One tries to pick the lock of the cage just as they did to their own, but Alan’s broken belt buckle from his failed attempt, still caught in the lock, stops them. They run off, the pilot noticing shifting weight so George Lawala (the first in a long line of greedy humans who would underestimate the intelligence of dinosaurs) goes to investigate. He frees Alan and Ellie and gives them shotguns, the chapter ending with them all searching the huge plane.

That’s the main plot out of the way. That’s not to say it isn’t fun, it certainly is, it’s just there are two individual pages elsewhere in the story involving subplots that really stood out to me. The first involves the army’s continuing attempts to clean up the mess of the island’s failed park. Having tracked Alan and Ellie to the beach they’re at a loss as to where they are. For me it’s great to see the new character, INgen‘s Dr Fischer back again (he first appeared in #6) and I’m still hoping we get to see more development of him in the future. But it’s the person on the next page that elicited the highest level of excitement when I read this back in 1994.

Of course, nowadays we’ve seen Dr Ian Malcolm, so memorably played by Jeff Goldblum, in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and he’ll be returning again in the sixth film, Jurassic World: Dominion later this year (at the time of writing). At the time his return was a complete surprise. If the comic had a proper editorial and Next Issue promos I’m sure this would’ve been mentioned before it happened, so for once I was glad of the minimalist approach. It meant the surprise was kept until this very moment. He just appears in this one sequence as he recovers from his injuries from the movie but it’s exciting to see the character in this first official sequel, and he’s perfectly drawn by Armando Gil and Dell Barras (with John Costanza on letters and Renne colouring).

Also mentioned here is ‘The United States Central American Command Center’, or ‘CENTAMCOM’, the comic’s own take on the real world CENTCOM and the resources they have in their search. It brings a larger scope to the background story that’s slowly developing while the main plot focusses on our two main characters. I always enjoyed these aspects of the films, always wishing they’d delve deeper into the inner workings of INgen and the larger world within which the stories were set. Then it all ends with the biggest shock of all. Under the final panel we’re unceremoniously told #11 wouldn’t be on sale until Thursday 9th June. What?

This issue went on sale on Tuesday 29th March 1994, so suddenly my favourite monthly comic was telling me I had to wait ten weeks for the next chapters to all these stories. Can you now understand why I was so frustrated earlier? The use of the JP logo on the cover instead of the previous title graphic (I love the logo but preferred the previous one for the comic) was just the first big change to come. Ironically, this issue felt once again like the first one I bought, settling back into a great format after a couple of months of trying to fit too much into its 36 pages. But that would all change. I’ll go into that next time because at this point originally I hadn’t a clue why there was such a long wait. You’ll just have to wait to find out too.

I’ll finish off with a look at the very-90s adverts this issue contains. There’s a teeny tiny liddle widdle radio which would’ve been right up my alley back then and it isn’t dissimilar to that given to Bond by Q in Skyfall many years later. The back cover has an advert for Dark Horse International‘s Manga Mania as the animation style started to take hold here, mainly thanks to Akira (with a hint of things to come for Jurassic Park on the bottom-left of its cover) and there’s a convention to match. Finally, those highly expensive phone-in competition lines which, when you think about it, should never have been in the pages of comics such as this (or the magazine Commodore Format I was collecting at the time which had plenty of them) when so many young readers could be tricked into spending a fortune on their parents’ phone bills. (No, I didn’t.)

So, with a clifftop battle in full swing and a pack of deadly Velociraptors on board a cargo plane we have to be patient and take a breather from the comic for a while. It’s difficult enough to not read ahead but this is going to be ridiculous! I’ll just have to cope somehow. The next Jurassic Park review will be here from (big sigh) Thursday 9th June 2022, just one day before the release of the next movie in fact. Oh, now I’m all excited again!

iSSUE NiNE < > iSSUE ELEVEN

JURASSiC PARK #9: SPARED NO EXPENSE

3 March 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

This review was due on 22nd February, click here to find out about the delay. More catch-ups to come this week.

The cover for issue nine of Dark Horse International‘s Jurassic Park is a strange beast, showing what appears to be Dr Alan Grant killing a Tyrannosaurus rex! Drawn by Gil Kane it’s completely uncharacteristic not only of Alan but for the comic too, which so far has stayed true to the book and movie. Seeing one of our heroes with a massive gun taking down one of the animals like a clichéd action hero, while a second T-rex comes up behind has nothing to do with Jurassic Park!

The cover is taken from the US comic series’ preview issue which contained two small prequel strips. It had two different covers, neither of which reflected in any way to anything that happened within the stories (a pet peeve of mine). They were also seemingly drawn long before the artists even knew what the script for the movie contained. A bizarre thing to begin with then, even more so to choose it for the UK comic when so many other more suitable ones were available in the US series by now. But the real news was those prequel strips had arrived.

In fact there are no less than four strips this month, but with no extra pages some of our regulars have a little less room to breathe. Things kick off with the eight-page prequel story Genesis which shows us the moment ill-fated lawyer Donald Gennaro is shown the secret heartbeat (as John Hammond describes it here) behind the island, which up to this moment Donald thought was simply a luxurious tropical adventure park. Much of the movie adaptation team are back including writer Walter Simonson, Gil is pencilling, Renée Witterstaetter is on colours, John Workman‘s speech balloons are back and they’re joined by new-to-JP inker Mike de Carlo (Crisis on Infinite Earths, Legion of Super Heroes, Animaniacs).

Ground is being broken for Jurassic Park and Gennaro is there for the first of his many visits. Set several years before the movie there’s obviously going to be a distinct lack of dinosaurs for the most part, but this is all about the background to the story, which already had such a solid grounding thanks to Michael Crichton‘s original novel, from which writer Walter is choosing individual scenes. There’s also a baby T-rex and some lovely foreboding imagery, such as the use of an excavator’s clamp digging a deep trench beside the dirt road. It’s clear what this represents to the reader. A nice touch.

Hammond takes Gennaro to a small cabin and shows him some old monster movies, full of stop-motion dinosaurs and the like (a simple trick to get them into the comic), and gets really excited as he explains how these thrilled audiences and the advances in technology have made them more realistic and thus more exciting, a nod to the revolutionary CGI of the film. Gennaro doesn’t care and soon the two men are on their way to the famous hatchery where Dr Henry Wu has summoned them to see the birth of InGen‘s very first dinosaur. It’s a tiny T.rex but Gennaro is still unimpressed.

He’s a numbers man, he wants to see the final product, the things that are going to get people spending money on over-priced tickets to get there. While that much is in keeping with the movie character, I still feel he would’ve had some form of awe towards the first living, breathing dinosaur baby in millions of years! The fact he’s actually disgusted by it is a bit much. For me there are also too many instances of movie dialogue being used. It’s meant to come across as clever foreshadowing, but with the amount that’s used it just feels forced and unoriginal.

Because of the overuse of this dialogue for all three characters these final scenes come off as plain silly. Gennaro saying he wouldn’t walk out of a men’s room to see the T.rex is an oddly specific thing for someone to say, and of course it’s only written here because of how he’d memorably meet his fate in the film. Perhaps without all the other movie dialogue (and especially without Hammond’s retort!) it would’ve been a funny touch to end on. All-in-all, it’s a strange little strip. It adds nothing to the Jurassic Park story and actually does a bit of a disservice to the characters involved.

The war is on

Much better is the next chapter of Age of Reptiles. The ongoing Jurassic Park sequel is still in here but 11 pages of Ricardo Delgado‘s incredible creation is next up, breaking the comic up a little. After the cliffhanger last issue there are no prizes for guessing the pack of Deinonycuses are down another member. After one of their friends has his head bitten off and his body dragged back into the water we get a funny moment of the fish (which distracted him in the first place) wriggling its way across the rocks and plopping safely back into the lake.

The two remaining members of the group, leader Dark Eye and Quetzal are spending their day stalking a giant T.rex called Long Jaw, the same one we got acquainted with last time. What are they hoping to find out? That’s for another episode. This issue, they witness from afar the ‘rex challenging the leader of a herd of Triceratops, each one beautifully and individually coloured by James Sinclair. The leader of the herd isn’t backing down and roars at the ‘rex, the giant predator remaining silent, the small bird on his nose responding instead.

However, as you can see from the second photo above, after many cries from his mate the male Triceratops takes a look at the Tyrannosaur‘s slowly opening mouth and decides to heed her warnings, leaving a miffed T.rex behind in a moment that did make me laugh. It was a fight for the sake of a fight, it was never about predator and prey, but that panel with the little squiggly line above Long Jaw’s head depicting his annoyance is a great comedy moment after a few pages of tense build up.

We rejoin our two smaller dinosaurs as they return to their nest only to find that while they’ve been following one of the Tyrannosaurs, Blue Back (who they originally ran into back in #6 when all this began) took advantage of their absence and has killed everyone else in their pack in revenge for the theft of his family’s eggs in #7. Once he sees the shocked look on their faces he simply drops the final body and leaps across the chasm in an echo of their escape from him, disappearing into the jungle. The war is on.

Once again Ricardo’s pacing is superb and his art gorgeous, with James’ colours the perfect accompaniment. There’s action, an interesting story, individual characters and some genuinely funny humour. It was always a highlight of each issue and was the first strip I’d read every month. While it was originally released as a book I prefer getting little chunks of it at a time. It highlights the tension and obviously makes it last longer.

Every creature here is so full of character but where did I get those wonderful names from if there are no written words in the strip? Well, included in this issue is a bonus Cast of Characters page from the book. It would’ve been good to have had this alongside the first chapter but it’s better late than never. Also, there appear to be some interesting new characters to come. I can’t remember them so I’m excited to see where they fit in with everything. More exciting times ahead.

Our regular Jurassic Park strip has been cut down to only six pages but we can’t really complain when we’ve already had an additional prequel, totalling 14 pages for our title strip. Our regular sequel team return for the first (little) chunk of Dark Cargo; writer Steve Englehart, penciller Armando Gil, inker Dell Barras, letterer John Costanza and colourist/story editor Renée Witterstaetter. Confusingly, the story is called ‘Raptor – Part Four’ on the contents page because Dark Cargo was the second issue in the original American Topps Comics ‘Raptor’ mini-series, and the first (‘Aftershocks‘) was split across the three previous UK issues. This confusing decision to list the strip after the US comic’s individual series rather than the actual strips would continue all the way to the final issue.

Doctors Ellie Satler and Alan Grant awake locked in a cage on a cargo boat with big game hunter George Lawala in charge. The juvenile Velociraptors have been locked up separately right next to them, already wide awake and alert to everything going on around them. This is key (no pun intended for what I’m about to describe), as we see the ‘raptors in the background of nearly every panel of the humans talking, watching what they’re doing. Alan realises his belt is the one with the buckle he’s used as a substitute knife before on digs and perfect to pick the lock, before Ellie notices something happening in the other cage.

We also see the dinosaurs hissing and clicking at each other, Alan deducing they’re discussing them and how to escape. I can remember pieces of what’s to come and it’s definitely a story centred around the intelligence and learning capabilities of these juveniles, and their instincts and observations of the various humans around them. I’m looking forward to reading it again after so long with a fresh set of eyes, especially after enjoying the four movie sequels (so far) which have really delved deep into this.

There’s a funny moment when Alan comments how these are adolescents, the equivalent of human teenagers and says, “Not quite fully grown but wanting to take on the world! The absolute worst group to let loose!” But before they can warn Lawala of the lock picking he sprays them and the ‘raptors with a sleeping agent and off they all nod until next month. Before they pass out Lawala shows us he’s the atypical Jurassic Park villain (before there was such a thing); he’s never encountered a dinosaur before, but he’s a human, and a man, and thus is more intelligent and can control them just like any other animal he’s hunted. We just know that’s going to work out well, don’t we?

“The necessary sacrifices were made.”
Fessenden

It may be just one small scene on board the boat, but it’s atmospheric stuff and has plenty for readers to get their teeth into, building excitement for the chapters to come. I’m actually surprised at just how much of this could’ve been the basis for some of the main stories in the sequels, especially Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World which both did a superb job of building on the themes presented here. It also doesn’t feel like we’re being short-changed with only six pages this month because it’s a perfect little strip in its own right and acts as a prelude to the disaster to come.

Mark Schultz‘s Xenozoic Tales rounds off the issue, once more beautifully coloured by one of my favourite Transformers colourists Steve White (whose current dinosaur artwork needs to be seen) but we only get a measly four pages this time. Obviously, editor Dick Hansom would’ve had this all worked out in advance to give us as much as possible every issue, knowing we’d have extra content this month. As such, there were only four pages left of this particular story to tell. But what four pages they are.

It not only solves the mysteries of that cliffhanger but also grosses us out a little on the way to its conclusion

So Tenrec returns to Fessenden after the shock cliffhanger and demands a full explanation. The swamp had taken over body, mind and soul of his entire research team, everyone driven to the edge of nervous collapse. But Fessenden was getting incredible results from his experiments; he could solve the food shortage crisis. As you can see above he started performing autopsies on the local dinosaurs and experimenting on his own people, deliberately cutting them off from the outside world so they’d have no choice but to take part. Soon they were thriving in the swamp and even communicating with the animals. But then the physical changes began.

He doesn’t delve deeper, instead making a sudden run for the swamp. For the final page of the story and the comic we’re presented with this below. It not only solves the mysteries of that cliffhanger but also grosses us out a little on the way to its conclusion.

At its centre it’s a typical tale of humans messing with nature and suffering the consequences, so it’s quite appropriate for a Jurassic Park comic. However, it’s told in a very engaging way, is beautifully drawn and I’m so glad Steve was brought on to colour it, he takes it to a whole other level. Any fans of Mark’s comic really need to hunt this down because this particular coloured version is exclusive to Jurassic Park.

Despite the rather average headline prequel story this month, this is still one of the best issues yet thanks to just how enjoyable the three ongoing serials have been. It bodes well for next month, that’s for sure. The next issue’s review will be here from Tuesday 29th March 2022.

iSSUE EiGHT < > iSSUE TEN

JURASSiC PARK #6: THE LOST WORLDS

30 November 2021 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

By 1993 I’d moved on from comics into the world of computer games magazines, but when I saw that ‘Jurassic Park‘ title with that tagline peering over the other comics on the shelves I was quick to grab it! Previously put off by the movie adaptation, here was the first official continuation of the movie’s storyline. But there was more, beginning with that brill Walter Simonson cover! As I flicked through to get an idea of what it was about I noticed back up strips too. On first sight it felt like the Transformers comic I’d loved so much. I was sold and bought my first comic in over a year.

Of course this wasn’t to remain the official sequel for long. Just a few years later Michael Crichton would release his novel The Lost World and the subsequent film was based upon that. But the American Topps Comics was the first to do so and Dark Horse International published it here in a typical UK comic format, meaning they were chopped up into smaller parts and backed up with other strips following the central theme. To the uninitiated it might sound like this would drag a story out unnecessarily but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

UK readers were used to monthly stories from across the pond being split up in weekly or fortnightly comics out of necessity. This may have been a monthly but it still felt completely normal, it was just how things worked over here. Also, the Topps stories were split into mini-series with an unspecified gap between each so editor Dick Hansom‘s decision also made sense. If the comic had kept to this format a four-issue mini-series in the States could’ve lasted a full year over here. If the publishers themselves hadn’t gone bankrupt we could’ve had multiple years of Jurassic Park here.

The first thing this issue hits us with isn’t a comic strip but it still takes me right back. I may not have had a Sega Mega-CD (or any wish to own one) but I do remember the onslaught of new gaming consoles at the time, investing in the 3DO myself which I adored. My computer was the Commodore 64 but I loved reading up on the latest tech and the Jurassic Park game for the Mega-CD was completely different than all the others and looked like a proper adventure on the island. The constant hype for all these new machines was so exciting for me back then, like the future was arriving!

“That T-rex saved us from the ‘raptors! By the time we left Jurassic Park, I was almost — hell, I WAS in love with her!”
Dr. Alan Grant

So let’s get started with our three strips. While Dark Horse’s Aliens had various stories within that universe to pull from, joining the eight pages of Aftershocks (our main strip) here is the return of Xenozoic Tales (at ten pages) and new back up Age of Reptiles (at 12 pages). Yes, our main strip is shorter than the others but cliffhangers in all three had to be carefully chosen. With a unique dinosaur theme throughout – movie sequel set in the present, sci-fi action set in the far future and historical adventure set in the actual time of the dinosaurs – I never felt short changed and it never felt like anything other than a proper Jurassic Park title.

The first story begins with a narrative caption simply stating, “Three days later” above the body of a furious Tyrannosaurs rex. Writer Steve Englehart (The Avengers, Doctor Strange and creator of Star-Lord) was given free rein to develop the movie story as he saw fit, picking up the story with Dr Alan Grant and Dr Ellie Satler returning to Isla Nublar to supervise InGen‘s military-style cleanup operation. This already contradicts what came later (Hammond told us in The Lost World they’d been left alone) but let’s go with it as an alternative storyline.

We turn over to this great double-page spread above, narrated by Alan as he watches the ‘rex destroy jeeps, tanks and anything else thrown at her. She’s furious with her prey but Alan’s inner thoughts are ones of love, of being grateful that she saved all their lives. Her very existence in the modern world is a miracle and , just like in the novel and the film, even though he and Ellie are frightened they’re equally in awe of her.

InGen want to regain control, contain the animals and begin scientific experiments on them in an attempt to make back some of the money they’ve lost. They don’t want to reopen the park. A new character called Dr. Fischer is the face of the corporation. He believes Ian Malcolm‘s predictions were coincidence rather than proof of Chaos Theory and he makes it clear he stands for advancing the scientific community, rather than science itself, putting him at odds with Alan.

It’s a small slice of action but it’s a great start and thought provoking at the same time

There’s a hint in here too that the Velociraptors had managed to escape their enclosure earlier than we’d thought, because no eggs were found in there and we knew they were able to breed. This ties in with the book but not the film. In Michael Crichton‘s original story the ‘raptors were able to get in and out of their enclosure at will without the humans noticing. In fact, some had made it on to one of the boats for the mainland, which added more tension to Alan and the kids’ return to the Visitor Centre because they had to warn the boat before it docked. But in the film they clearly didn’t get out.

The art style is a world apart from what we had in the adaptation. Armando Gil (The ‘Nam, Savage Sword of Conan, The Punisher) brings a gritty, mature style to the art. His T-rex certainly looks the part, closely resembling the actual dinosaur and he really captures her size and power. (Also, an uncredited Dell Barras, see next issue’s review.) Alongside Armando comes letterer John Costanza (Green Lantern, Batman, Ronin) and colourist and story editor Renée Witterstaetter (Silver Surfer, The Sensational She-Hulk, Jason Vs. Leatherface) whose subdued colours suit the wonderfully scratchy artwork perfectly. It’s a small slice of action but it’s a great start and thought provoking at the same time. I like InGen’s desperation and the fact Dr. Fischer believes he’s right, that what he’s doing is for the greater good. I hope it develops these threads.

Carrying on the theme of not learning from past mistakes comes the first backup strip, Xenozoic Tales in which our hero Jack Tenrec finds himself at odds with the council and his new friend Hannah Dundee. Both his and Hannah’s tribes want to stop his campaigns against their poaching. But Jack is standing firm, knowing he’s baring witness to humans going back down the very same path that led to the cataclysm in the first place. Creator, writer and artist Mark Schultz has been very clear from the first chapter this is a story about the dangers humans pose to our world.

Benefactor is the seventh story in the series but only our third, something I went into more detail on last time. This could be because only some of the tales had been published in colour by this time, done so here by Christine Courtier. It ends with a cliffhanger for the first time and I remember these strange creatures from later in the run. Hannah has been sent to look for Jack after he’s stormed off. Using her tracking skills, unaware the council man who accompanies her is intending to kill Jack, she catches a glimpse of his Cadillac shining in the hot afternoon sun but gets more than she bargained for as she approaches it. The back-stabbing and the politics, wrapped up in an adventure in a land populated by dinosaurs is unique and really fun to read.

When I scanned over this issue in the newsagent’s my eyes lit up when I saw the final strip. I know it’s a cliché and an exaggeration to say “it took my breath away” but you’ll get my point. Set in the Mesozoic period it follows a pack of Deinonycuses and a T-rex family as they do battle after one steals the meal of the other. Created and intricately drawn by Ricardo Delgado and beautifully coloured by James Sinclair it contains no narrative captions at all. Everything is told solidly in pictures only, without even any lettered sound effects.

Ricardo is an artist working in the movie and television industries, whose credits include everything from The Real Ghostbusters and WALL-E to Jurassic Park III, suitably enough. James’ credits have also included Legends of The Dark Knight, Hellblazer and The Mask comics. Age of Reptiles was Ricardo’s first book in a series and hadn’t been released here yet when it became serialised in the pages of Jurassic Park, where it’s an even better fit than Xenozoic Tales for obvious reasons.

It tells an absorbing story through great art and wonderfully designed characters. The Deinonycuses kick things off by taking down their dinner, a giant Brontosaurus. Originally I thought these were Velociraptors until I read the catch up on the contents page of the next issue, although to be fair they are a very closely related species. I love how each one has particular markings and by paying attention to such things we get to know each one over the next few months. How Ricardo imbued each one with individual personalities through facial expressions and movements is simply genius.

They begin to feast but are rudely interrupted when a giant T-rex jumps on top of their prize and roars at them to back off. But they aren’t giving up so easily and one leaps in to slice at the bigger beast. The strip was quite gruesome and violent for the time and, while there’s nothing to put off younger readers yet, it will build upon this as the story develops. But it also had its lighter comedic moments, one of my favourites coming up right now. After the smaller dinosaur leaps and slices we turn over to be met with the page on the right below.

This still makes me laugh to this day. As the story develops we’d see an ever-increasing battle of revenge between these characters which would include ferocious fights, some tender moments and one surprisingly heartbreaking scene. Don’t believe me? You’ll just have to wait and see. It’s not an exaggeration to say it’s a thrill to be reading Age of Reptiles again after so long. The collected books go for silly prices online these days so I’m happy to wait and play the slow game with this serialisation. It’s worth the price of admission alone.

To finish off here’s a look at the advertisement on the back cover for the Jurassic Park videogame which was being released on a variety of platforms. It’s the tagline I love the most here. This was around the time Street Fighter II was everywhere (it would even be a comic advertised in these pages soon enough!), making this a brilliant piece of competitive marketing for the time!

I remember playing the Nintendo Game Boy version. Even though it didn’t follow the plot of the film at all and had Alan Grant out in the park collecting all the eggs with a gun, firing tranquillisers at all the dinosaurs as if they were all out to eat him, it was still a really fun game to play. Especially at night when I was meant to be asleep for school the next day, having to play it using that heavy, cumbersome light attachment on the supposedly handheld console.

This was a brilliant start to my Jurassic Park comics journey. Surely here was a title that I could collect without fear of it being prematurely cancelled? How could a comic based on the hottest thing on the planet be anything other than a runaway success for years and years? Well, if the comic had kept to this format and continued until the end of the US strips, those 19 American issues would’ve spanned a whopping 57 British editions over nearly five years! The next one is #7 and its review will be up on the blog on Tuesday 28th December 2021.

iSSUE FiVE < > iSSUE SEVEN

JURASSiC PARK #5: RUSHED ‘RAPTORS

26 October 2021 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

It’s time to bring the movie adaptation of Jurassic Park to a close with the last 12 pages of the final chapter, originally part of issue four of Topps Comics‘ mini-series in the States. For UK readers it was split in two, with new backup strip Xenozoic Tales bringing up the rear. However, due to the decision to keep the comic going the back up gets more pages this time around and there’s a simple explanation.

I’m going to assume last month’s issue was originally going to follow the same formula as the ones that came before, with a full chapter of Jurassic Park and a behind-the-scenes feature. In the US it had been decided new adventures would make up another mini-series, but there was going to be a small gap before it went on sale. To plug this in the UK this last chapter was split over two issues and the back up added to fill out the pages. This explains why there were only four parts to the behind-the-scenes series, with none this month (or ever again actually).

The opening chapter of Xenozoic Tales was quite short in length, so more of the Jurassic Park strip was included last time, but Mark Shultz‘s stories were of varying sizes, so working all of this out to spread over the two issues has resulted in 14 pages of the movie adaptation climax and 18 for Jack Tenrec and Hannah Dundee. It makes for a strange balance but that would all be corrected next month. More on this below.

The monthly competition page acts as a kind of editorial this month, hyping the conclusion and the new strips to come. A strange choice of prize though, a graphic novel collection of the strip readers have read in the comic. Elsewhere, the lovely gloss paper of the covers makes these adverts for Dark Horse International‘s other mature titles really pop, especially that Aliens one. The more I see these adverts the more I want to add them to my collection at some point, even though I know they too were cut short.

So on to the end of the comic book adaptation of one of the biggest movies ever made. This month it crams in Dr. Ellie Satler‘s escape from the maintenance shed, the survivors reuniting, the Velociraptors infiltrating the visitor centre, the kitchen scene with the kids, the control room scenes, their escape and the final shock ending. That’s a lot for writer Walter Simonson and story editor Jim Salicrup to squeeze in and unfortunately just like last month it suffers as a result.

Case in point is the famous kitchen scene with Tim and Lex sneaking about and eventually getting one over on the ‘raptors. Tense in the movie, here it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense. For a start the shadow signalling danger is barely noticeable and the reflective surface of the kitchen appliances Lex used in her terrifying encounter in the movie seems to be floating in mid-air!

At least the kids get a few pages for their scene, the rest really are cut down to their bare bones. The idea behind each one is there and is solid, the main imagery is perfectly captured and the big scare moments are all present and correct. But with all the trims it rushes from one of these moments to the next every few panels, meaning their impact is diminished.

So ends the movie adaptation. But hang on, where’s Ray?

At least the dinosaurs themselves look good as you’ll see below, with penciller Gil Kane‘s and inker George Perez‘s Tyrannosaurus Rex and those ‘raptors looking suitably powerful in their final confrontation, which thankfully is given a bit more room to breathe. Not too sure about the green blood though. You’d have to ask colourist Tom Smith about that one. The random letter jumbles making up the noises of these animals are just plain bizarre, but at least John Workman‘s unique style of breaking the panels still looks the part.

This dramatic angle of the Tyrannosaurus rex is so good it’s used twice over the double-page spread, but they both look so good we’ll forgive the repeating. There’s a lot of powerful red, at least giving the impression of a gory fight to the death despite that sanitised blood colour. But still, somehow it works and it’s the powerful, dramatic scene that’s been missing from so much of these two issues. I particularly like the fact the iconic ‘When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth’ banner from the film is worked in as a caption.

“And behind them, receding into the distance Jurassic Park and the past are swallowed up in the gathering dark. The End.”

So ends the movie adaptation. But hang on, look at that final panel above. Where’s Ray? Yes, in the film he was killed in the maintenance shed off camera and Ellie discovered his severed arm when she went to reinstate the power grid. But last month Ellie volunteered first in a major change from the film. This meant Ray was still alive in the control room and yet here he’s nowhere to be seen. It seems the one black character has been completely forgotten about. It’s clear this final chapter was rushed with it’s art not being as detailed or polished and with huge chunks missing to get to the finish line in the page count, but still, just forgetting about a character is a massive oversight!

It’s such a shame it had to end this way because the first three chapters were so good that’s it’s more disappointment than anything else I’m feeling right now.

With no written feature to break up the strips this time we head straight from a natural island off the coast of Costa Rica to a manmade island group off the coast of North America for this month’s Xenozoic Tales: Mammoth Pitfall, written and drawn by Mark Schultz, coloured for a Marvel US reprint by Denise Prowell.

The story comes from the second issue of creator Mark Shultz‘s original series, but three stories which took place between last month’s introduction and this one have been skipped. That unfortunately means character development is going to be pretty spotty. For example, last month Jack and Hannah had just met, but here he’s trusting her in her attempts to capture a mammoth for domestication and she knows enough about him to know when he’s in trouble. It’s a shame we can’t appreciate their developing friendship properly but then again it’s only thanks to Jurassic Park we got to read them at all.

Jack knows nature has certain rules and understands a mammoth will always be a dangerous animal to humans. It should be respected and left alone. However, the reason the attempt fails is because of interference from another human who sabotages their attempt and sets Hannah up for a nasty death squish. After a very lucky escape she hides in the boot of Jack’s prized Cadillac. She later pops out and saves him from the man threatening to kill him if he doesn’t teach him the most prized skill of the time: how to drive!

Sometimes it seems nature bends the rules.
Mark Shultz, Xenozoic Tales

It’s all great fun and the wordplay between Jack and Hannah is natural and funny. Trapped inside his garage by the angry beast the action is put on hold and it’s testament to Mark’s writing how equally compelling these simple character scenes can be. The script is full of interesting contradictions too. The juxtaposition between the dinosaurs and the cars is effortlessly presented, Hannah seeks action while Jack wants the easy life, and Jack the environmentalist and animal lover has dedicated his life to restoring the very machines responsible for the great cataclysm. (Although he has converted them to run on dino guano.)

Curious to see what all the fuss is about with these ancient contraptions Hannah convinces Jack to take her for a ride, then to chase a storm back to the city. They discover the dead body of the mammoth she tried to capture, clearly the victim of a predator outside the garage. Jack is furious. “He should never have died here.” It’s great to see these characters learning about each other. Again, it pains me we’re not seeing it all.

The storm chase naturally ends in disaster. They crash, the Cadillac becoming a write-off in a sodden ditch. Tenrec carries an unconscious Hannah through the driving wind and rain until he bumps into a sheltered building of some sort that he wasn’t previously aware of. With no time to question its sudden existence he places Hannah inside and tries to wait out the storm. Flood waters rush them and by morning the storm has revealed the shelter that saved their lives.

With this the story comes full circle. The mammoth that Hannah was so certain could help them rebuild their world has in the end saved their lives, by losing its own, because of her. It’s thought provoking and rather sad and I felt genuinely sorry for the mammoth in the end, and thought less of us as a species. Which I think was the whole point. It’s a very different strip, but it works perfectly as a back up in this comic. After all, both strips are about the interaction between dinosaurs and humans and what happens when we try to force our dominance on animals we were never meant to meet.

With this we reach the end of another issue and the back page has me very excited. Using a one-colour version of the cover to my very first issue, the announcement I’ve been waiting all these months for is finally here.

If I’d been collecting these issues in 1993 then I’m sure I’d have been hugely excited by this! Who wouldn’t have been? Even now I’m hyped. Discovering #6 on the shelves with the promise of new adventures inside was thrilling and this promo is bringing back all of those feelings again. The mention of the third strip and even the competition headline are bringing a big goofy smile to my face because I remember both so distinctly. It’s quite extraordinary.

As is normally the case with all of these real time read throughs I will have to practice will power, but this is going to be harder than most. I’ll do it though, I’ll wait for the correct date, no matter how impatiently. That date will be Tuesday 30th November 2021, so join me then as we embark once more to Isla Nublar for the original, forgotten sequel to Jurassic Park.

iSSUE FOUR < > iSSUE SiX

JURASSiC PARK #4: BACK UP SYSTEMS

28 September 2021 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

With issue four the UK version of Jurassic Park was evolving. As mentioned last time the US comic was no longer going to finish after the adaptation, with further mini-series now being produced. In the UK, Dark Horse International decided to turn their four-issue, three-weekly mini-series into an ongoing monthly, not that any fanfare is made of this because the reader wouldn’t have been any the wiser it had originally been due to end this issue (and a few weeks ago). Indeed, the comics checklist last issue erroneously said #4 was the end.

This change produced the delay in the release of this issue as plans were made for the new format of the comic and acquiring more content for each issue. This begins with the first back up strip here, bringing Jurassic Park more in line with the company’s other comics such as Aliens. The front page recolours a panel from the strip inside (and I love the font they’ve used) instead of having a proper cover image. This final chapter of the adaptation is being split in two, so the original cover was being kept in reserve for the following month.

The sequence in the tree with Tim trapped in the Explorer has been completely excised!

Check out this month’s comics checklist and you might get an idea of the make up of the company’s titles. The issue at hand begins with a competition for the excellent The Making of Jurassic Park. I actually bought this book at the time and it was a heavy tome, full of details on the making of the film and stands up today as one of the very best of its kind for any movie. You’ll also see an advert for Manga Mania, which fed off the new craze to hit these shores. Ultimately it’d also be a very important title for Jurassic Park fans. But that’s a story for another time.

Our freshly chopped final chapter is still a lengthy 16 pages so regular readers wouldn’t have felt short changed, at least with the page count. Unfortunately, the actual strip itself is another thing. Yes, this is the first time in the comic’s young life when I’ve been left disappointed.

Last month the Tyrannosaurus rex attack was brilliantly handled with plenty of building tension and atmosphere so I was looking forward to seeing how the final act would begin. The opening is great, with Mrs Rex towering above Dr. Alan Grant and Lex, both trying to keep completely still.

It’s all going so well until those final couple of panels. The sequence in the tree with Tim trapped in the Explorer has been completely excised! So it plummets to the ground instead and then he’s just unbelievably pulled out and off they go. Alan even has a map at hand to make their trip back to the Visitor’s Centre quicker, which is a rather cheeky shortcut. In previous issues scenes had been moved about, moments edited, others added to, all in order to properly adapt the film to the comic page and I’ve been really positive about it. But all throughout this issue huge swathes of story are just missing or reduced to a shadow of their former selves.

Case in point is the fatal encounter between Denis Nedry and the Dilophosaurus. The movie scene included plenty of misdirection and humour, putting the audience at ease before the shock, and that wouldn’t have been easy to translate here but they could have tried. Instead this very famous scene only gets two pages. It’s a very basic sequence now; the dinosaur may as well be a lion. Denis gets attacked as soon as he steps out of the vehicle, he jumps back in and we actually see the Dilophosaurus jump in after him (ruining the final moments of the original) and… well, that’s it.

This truncating happens to basically every major moment, whether it’s the nighttime meeting with the Brachiosaurs, rescuing Dr. Ian Malcolm after the T-rex attack, even the electric fence scene (as you’ll see below) and Robert Muldoon‘s stalking of a Velociraptor. Each are reduced to fit on a page or two and basically follow a set pattern of only showing the first and last moments of the scene and erasing everything else, including almost all the humour.

“Think they’ll have that on the tour?”
Dr. Ian Malcolm

Right back at the beginning of this adaptation I stated how I didn’t usually like comic versions of films and this was the reason why. But up to this point Jurassic Park had been the exception to the rule, with a proper restructuring of the film to suit the format and it was working a treat as a comic in its own right. Maybe if they’d had five chapters instead of four (in the original US comic) it would’ve worked out differently, but then again maybe the pacing could’ve been plotted out better by writer Walter Simonson and story editor Jim Salicrup. Yes, having all the dino action in the final chapter would, in theory, make for a big climax but there’s just too much of it to fit in.

The result is a clichéd comics adaptation where it feels more like a way for people to reminisce about the movie they saw in the cinema months previous, rather than working as a good comic book. If I sound overly critical it’s only because the team had been doing such an amazing job so far, even adding in extra dialogue from either the original novel or earlier drafts of the script. So it’s more disappointment than simple negativity.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still things to enjoy here. It’s all on a lovely high quality gloss paper stock this month, some of the best lines from the film are still intact and the art in the first eight or so pages is top notch. However, in the second half even legendary artists Gil Kane‘s pencils and George Perez‘s inks start to feel a little rushed and Tom Smith‘s colours feel unfinished and flat, leading me to believe they were working very close to the deadline of getting the original US series out in time for the movie.

The chapter is cut off with a superb cliffhanger though. The view of a Velociraptor‘s feet as it chases Dr. Ellie Sattler is just as unnerving as it was in the film. It’s a shame then the terrifying Velociraptors, when viewed in full, are reduced to looking like miniature T-rexes. Below is this final scene with its positives and negatives, alongside that fence scene with the dramatic resuscitation of Tim also taken out.

I also noticed Ray didn’t volunteer to go to the maintenance shed as he did in the original story, where he met his grisly end. Instead Muldoon and Ellie head off while Ray looks on silently. This means he’s still alive, a big departure from the film. It’ll be interesting to see how that effects the rest of the story next month.

For now, the sun sets on the adaptation as we move on to something else entirely

With 16 pages to the main strip I assume there’ll be roughly 12 or 13 next month unless the final chapter was given a few more pages in the original American Topps Comics publication. Either way there’s a lot of the film left to cover in half a chapter. The kids and Alan are still out in the park which means their return, the kitchen scenes, the chaos of the Velociraptors in the Visitor’s Centre and the climax are all to come.

I’ll still hold out hope things can be turned around because so far it feels like spending 90 minutes being completely engrossed in a film only for its ending to let you down. Which of course is not what happened with Jurassic Park! For now, the sun sets on the adaptation as we move on to something else entirely.

In the early days of Marvel UK‘s Transformers its back up strips were in some way related to the robotic theme, such as Machine Man or Iron Man. It wasn’t long before it instead became a way of bringing some of Marvel’s other US characters to these shores for the first time, but Jurassic Park kept its strips dinosaur-themed, much to the delight of teenage me. The second back up would appear in my first issue (#6) but here readers were introduced to Mark Shultz‘s Xenozoic Tales.

Later adapted into a cartoon TV series called ‘Cadillacs & Dinosaurs‘ it was an independent, alternative title Mark wrote and drew himself, running for 14 issues irregularly released between 1987 and 1996. Most of the strips were printed in black and white but Jurassic Park brought in artists to colour them exclusively for UK readers, this first one coloured by Ray Fehrenbach. This complete story was the first one written by Mark and what an introduction to something brand new this first page was.

Set in the 26th century, global warming has resulted in sea levels across the globe forcing humans to initially build underground. After 600 years they’ve reemerged to find their cities flooded, technology virtually non-existent and strangest of all the world is populated by dinosaurs once more. Anyone capable of mechanical work is seen as invaluable and this is where Jack Tenrec comes in, a car mechanic with a penchant for Cadillacs. Thanks to these skills he acts as an unofficial head of security and advisor to his tribe’s leaders and lives on an outcrop (formerly high hills) not far across the water from An Archipelago of Stone, the home of the tribe and in reality the remains of New York City.

I love that first page, cleverly written from the point of view of a Pterodactyl. In the story a neighbouring tribe’s ambassador, Hannah Dundee arrives at the City in the Sea and a team of poachers who had previously stolen from her Wassoon Tribe want her dead before they’re found out. It’s up to Jack and his men to stop them. All the way through this strip, knowing he’s about to get in way over his head, Tenrec keeps telling his men to send someone called Hermes to help. Then, just as it seems he’s doomed a surprise arrival bursts in. That’s Hermes!

Well I certainly didn’t expect that. Hermes the Allosaurus disposes of the villain, munching on his head and throwing him out the window, before Tenrec thanks him, revealing who this is. That doesn’t mean he’s a pet of course and the usually cool and collected Jack knows it.

It’s brilliant stuff. Original, fun and surprising, introducing the main protagonists, the unique setting and the cast of regular and semi-regular guest characters, all in 12 pages while maintaining an interesting story and racking up tension is rather a phenomenal feat. No wonder Xenozoic Tales is so highly regarded even to this day. It may at first seem like a strange choice for Jurassic Park’s back up but it works perfectly and as a teen I remember being engrossed with the slowly developing back story that would become more apparent in later issues. (Sadly, Hermes never reappeared.)

In between the two strips is this month’s look into the making of the movie, covering the famous disaster that hit Hawaii and the relief efforts the producers helped coordinate, plus the building of sets and the end of principal photography. At the very end of the feature is the teeny tiny box with the date of the next issue including a little tease that things were afoot for the future of the comic.

Thankfully they didn’t say “great news for all readers” or we’d have got the wrong idea. With these couple of pages, a long main strip and a back up it really does feel more like the kinds of UK comics we were accustomed to at the time. I may have enjoyed the extras more than the adaptation this month but I know from memory that what’s to come from Jurassic Park made this one of my very favourite comics growing up. So stay tuned for some terrific stuff from Isla Nublar, as well as from the far future and soon the distant past too!

The fifth issue and the conclusion of the movie storyline will be stomping its way on to the blog in one month on Tuesday 26th October 2021.

iSSUE THREE < > iSSUE FiVE

JURASSiC PARK #3: CUDDLY CARNiVORE

19 August 2021 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Don’t let the rather playful, pet-like Tyrannosaurus rex on the cover put you off, this is not a sanitised version of Spielberg’s monster movie. Things really do kick off for Dark Horse International‘s UK version of Jurassic Park comic this issue, as Dennis Nedry puts his plan into action just as the unfortunate coincidence of a tropical storm hits the remote island of Isla Nublar.

But before we get to that let’s take a look at some of the other bits and bobs included. The full comics checklist returns, featuring all five of the publisher’s UK titles and an extensive list of imports. You’ll notice the next issue of Jurassic Park has no specific date and I’ll get to that at the end of the review. There’s also an advertisement for possibly the worst idea in clothing ever to grace anybody’s chest. It’s difficult to make out but those of us who are old enough will remember these ridiculous t-shirts with a horrible rubber dinosaur sticking out, Alien-style. I remember there being Yoda ones in the shops too and they were just as garish.

The issue opens up with the biggest competition yet on page two and oh, how this takes me back. My friend had a Sega Mega Drive back then and, while we never played this game, I’m reminded of the weekly trips to the local video store to rent the latest games. The writer certainly seems just as enthused. (It’s definitely a step up from glow-in-the-dark stickers.) If only this kind of hype were evident on the editorial page every issue instead of the straight contents list we got instead. It’s not like there wasn’t a lot of Jurassic Park news to get hyped about after all.

The constant presence of rain in the background and the subdued colours envelop the reader in the cold, wet nighttime scene.

Clearly there was an excited human team behind the comic. Readers who had seen the movie in cinemas would definitely have been looking forward to this issue too. Things kick off with the sick Triceratops scene now playing out like the movie after last issue’s cliffhanger. As it turns out, the supposedly terrifying creature (which wouldn’t have harmed them anyway) just collapses when the story begins, which makes that cliffhanger a bit of a cheat.

The scene uses more dialogue from the book that didn’t make it into the final cut of the movie, specifically the resolution of what made her sick in the first place which really showcased Dr. Ellie Satler, so it’s nice to have these details back in the comic.

While Nedry’s ultimate fate isn’t played out yet we do at least get some extra characterisation for the man whose greed would ultimately lead to the park’s destruction. He’s actually worried about turning off the park’s security before the tour gets back. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, he actually cares and his intention is to sneak off to the boat, hand over the embryos and get back before anything bad transpires from the temporary deactivation of the electronic gates.

“Always on the lookout for a future ex-Mrs. Malcolm.”
Dr. Ian Malcolm

Of course, the storm would put a rush on things and we all know the outcome for everyone involved. Despite his worry he’s still an annoying hacker at heart and his “hacker crap” still keeps Ray out of the system long enough for his plan to be put into action.

The build up to the main event is superbly handled. The constant presence of rain in the background and Tom Smith‘s subdued colours envelop the reader in the cold, wet nighttime scene. Iconic moments such as Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ian Malcolm‘s chat and that famous moment the giant T-rex stares in at them, looking for a moving meal, are brilliantly captured.

Gil Kane‘s and George Perez‘s (our cover penciller/inker respectively) version of Ian continues to exude a darker presence, his humorous lines reading a little more cutting than Jeff Goldblum‘s perfect delivery. It’s such a shame then, how Walt decides to change a key moment in a way which has a detrimental effect on the character, which we’ll get to that in a minute. For now, let’s back up a little to the first appearance of the issue’s big selling point.

Three issues in the comic team finally get to have the big reveal and their first bit of proper dinosaur action, something they’ve only been able to hint at thus far. This was a key scene to get right and just as the tension rose to its crescendo in the movie, here we’ve got pages of rain, booming sound effects and progressively more frightened characters until we turn a page and are confronted with this next image.

Timing is everything and editor Dick Hansom made sure to add an additional advertisement page after the editorial so that later in the comic this would work as intended. Of course, on closer inspection you could critique this image and say the size of the T-rex means she could easily chomp down on cars even with the fence electrified (and also, that’s one huge goat), but then we’d be missing the whole point of this glorious splash page.

Sure there’s some artistic licence at play here but you can’t deny its impact. Those proportions are corrected for the rest of the attack scene and to be honest it was only upon the second reading that this reader picked up on it, such was the impact of this atmospheric rendering.

“It is a beautifully-designed killing machine!”
Panel caption (Walter Simonson)

What follows are an intense few pages which I believe would work just as well on their own merit even without the memory of the movie. In the film the juxtaposition of the giant predator and the kids Lex and Tim made for a genuinely terrifying moment in cinema history. Conveying that to comics panels was never going to be easy but the simple addition of descriptive captions ends up being the perfect solution.

With the attack in full swing, every few panels we get a direct, to-the-point fact about the T-rex‘s size and strength. The attack spans four pages and each of these little captions brings another level of tension until they culminate in “It is a beautifully-designed killing machine” as it stands on the upturned car, its weight squashing the metal down into the mud, Tim still trapped inside. It’s a genius move.

What comes immediately after these superb pages is the first big disappointment in this adaptation.

As you’ll remember, in the film Ian lights a flare to get the T-rex‘s attention away from the kids and only starts running once he knows he’s being chased. This gives Alan the chance to rescue the children. But here he just runs away, leaving everyone else to their fate. There’s no indication he’s doing it as the foolhardy yet heroic gesture of the movie. It’s completely out of character and if this had happened in the movie it probably would’ve turned the audience against him for the rest of the story.

A very odd choice and one I definitely do not like.

The end result is the same however, with Malcolm being tossed through the walls of the public toilet where lawyer Donald Genaro ran earlier to hide when he abandoned Lex and Tim. The ending to his particular story happens out of frame with only a scream in a speech balloon pointing off the page (in letterer John Workman‘s unique style). This seems like another rather odd choice seeing as how the vast majority of readers will have witnessed the scene play out in the film. Why censor it?

A couple of dubious choices by Walt and story editor Jim Salicrup aside the story rockets towards its cliffhanger. In America this would’ve been the penultimate chapter in a four-issue mini-series but here in the UK we actually still had two parts to come. How so? You’ll find out next month. (I have to try to get you back here somehow!) In the meantime this final page brings things to an end but the issue has more to give before we place it back on the shelf.

Last issue the behind-the-scenes feature introduced us to the various special effects departments and their roles in bringing Michael Crichton’s creation to the screen. This time the focus is fully on the mechanical dinosaurs themselves, created by Stan Winston and his team, in Building a Better Dinosaur.

We all know how the film led the way in its use of computer graphics, but what can’t be forgotten are the wonderfully lifelike creations that the cast actually got to interact with. As a huge fan of Jaws (which gets a humorous mention here), Jurassic Park always felt like a descendant of that original mechanical predator movie and this brief write-up is an interesting look at how they were created and operated. It’s just a shame it doesn’t contain any accompanying design or set photos of the details covered in the text.

The back cover is a double whammy of information on Dark Horse’s range, beginning with a subscriptions page and then a colour advertisement on the back. The company was making real inroads into the UK comics market, bringing international comics to our shores on bigger, better quality paper, chock full of strips and features. It’s unfortunate that the whole market was shrinking rapidly and ultimately there wasn’t much time left for the imprint and its titles. But we’ve got plenty of issues of this comic to go so we’ll not get bogged down with endings just yet.

For now, we’ve got a bit of a wait until the next issue because the comic’s schedule was changing. With Topps Comics in the US now committed to further mini-series and the UK comic selling well enough it was decided it would continue past what was originally going to be a four-issue adaptation. Jurassic Park was now going to be a monthly ongoing comic, the date of the next issue unknown at the time of going to press. (Something similar happened with Bram Stoker’s Dracula.) The strip in the next issue was split in two so as to give the American comic enough time to get ahead before the new, original strips could be printed here.

Rejigging it into an ongoing comic would take a little planning and working out what to fill the pages with. So in the end Alan and Lex would have to stay completely still all the way until 28th September 2021 for Jurassic Park #4! So will you. Will it be worth the wait?

iSSUE TWO < > iSSUE FOUR