More life and death in the age of dinosaurs.
Creative Staff:
Story: Ricardo Delgado
Art: Ricardo Delgado
What They Say:
Ricardo Delgado delivers a stunning, elaborate prehistoric parable that evokes classic spaghetti westerns and noble samurai tales of yore! Traveling through a dense swamp teeming with primordial danger, a solitary Spinosaurus aegyptiacus is the unpredictable and deadly antihero of Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I have to admit, as much as I enjoyed the first installment of the series, there was also the frustration of wanting just a bit more context rather than inference by events. Part of the problem with a wordless book is that you have to take in so many visual clues as to the meaning and events. That’s not always easy, but it’s much harder when you have to put yourself in the mindset of these dinosaurs and the more primal and simplistic approach to the world. An approach that is almost entirely about survival. Even procreation is all about survival when you get down to it because it’s a primal drive. So putting yourself into the mindset here, and lacking the “context” of the creatures themselves, as my hardcore dinosaur days are years behind me, makes for a challenge.
But there continues to be a real beauty to Delgado’s work, that makes you want to grapple with more of it even if you feel like you’re failing. And it’s a rare book that you read where you think of yourself as the failure, as opposed to the writer/artist not conveying things. The second issue continues our journey with the Spinosaurus, as it travels about, and we see the way that it has to deal with a lot of different things. Procurement of food is a big one, and it does get some delicious material here to sink its teeth into, but it’s used more for a different purpose here as he comes across a female of the species. The mating dance here is a brief one overall, but there’s a kind of majesty and beauty about it, especially if you “hear” the impact of what these beasts would be like in the world stomping about, and there’s something to be said for that lack of “thinking” about it as opposed to drive. It’s a clear cut vision of survival for the species at this stage and seeing it unfold like this definitely reminds you of the powerful nature of nature itself.
The book delves into other areas of survival at the time, showing us other creatures that inhabit the area and the way they fight for themselves and those they protect in a clannish kind of way. When you view it in the context of the postscript page of the book with Delgado talking about early Kurosawa samurai films, that can add a little more to your view of the Spinosaurus and its movements throughout the story, but also the other creature “clans” that exist. And you can take into context the smaller creatures caught up in the fights of the larger ones, sometimes as prey, sometimes as offerings for matings, but also just the completely innocent in a sense, if there is an innocent in nature. One spot with a small turtle sitting out in the water on a log as everything goes by makes it all feel so small in view of the bigger picture, and I found myself empathizing with it more than anything else.
In Summary:
Age of Reptiles is a challenging series to take in because of the approach that’s taken, but it’s truly the only approach. While we can assign a language to what the creatures here think, it’s impossible to truly put ourselves in the mindset of it. Dark Horse labels the Spinosaurus as the antihero, and that works from our vantage point in how we view the creature moving through its days. But it certainly doesn’t see itself in the same way, and our assignment of that doesn’t make much sense to me either. It’s simply a creature that is, nothing more, nothing less, and it’s the whims of luck and chance that allows it to live another day. Though it’s one of the bigger creatures that strides across this ancient landscape, it’s no different than the small turtles we see caught up in the events here itself. It’s just not aware that it’s such a thing. Delgado continues to put in some beautiful work here, full of detail, that really brings it to life in an engaging way and forces the reader to really try and adjust to this mindset of the material.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: July 1st, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
