The never ending journey.
Creative Staff:
Story: Ricardo Delgado
Art: Ricardo Delgado
What They Say:
Ricardo Delgado’s latest tale of survival and the cycle of life in Cretaceous Africa! Will the lone, deadly Spinosaurus aegyptiacus survive to see another day? With colors by Ryan Hill (House of Night, Judge Dredd: Mega-City Two), this powerful, beautifully detailed adventure comes to a dramatic finish!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians comes to a close with this installment and our journey with our lead Spinosaurus has what feels like it’s most significant installment here. There’s a really interesting vibe one has from this book depending on how you approach it as there’s a certain superficiality about it. You can read it in straightforward form and glide through it in a few minutes. You can pore over the artwork and attention to detail that brings the story to life in a really fascinating way as there’s so much to dig into. And you can set it up against a larger backdrop and look at it as talked about prior to release as being in the vein of a spaghetti western and watch how our Spinosaurus moves through this part of the world. THe bookends of the series reinforces that well and you can essentially view it in that kind of movie fashion.
What we get here is certainly a chaotic piece of work in a sense as it brings us the nature of nature in its simplest. The book gives us a kind of beauty at first as Spinosaurus comes out of the water with some food and is ready to enjoy it and we see that against the backdrop of a lot of dinosaurs right around him, some big hulking brutes, a lot of smaller ones and some flying ones as well. There’s a majestic sense about it that really is electrifying. But we also get the sense of terror about it as well because those with strength will take what they want. And these dinosaurs do just that with one hulking one coming in to threaten the Spinosaurus. But as we’ve seen with him in the past he’s not one to suffer this lightly and goes right on the offense, defending himself and ensuring that he’ll win. It’s a cutthroat world to be sure and this installment reinforces it in a huge way.
In fact, the bulk of the book is just fight after fight as the Spinosaurus sets these things in motion. It’s a powerful moment when he fights back at first but even more so in how it “inspires” the other dinosaurs cowering in the trees and undergrowth to come out as well. With the big guy taken down it doesn’t take long for the others to get into it. This produces a fascinating feeding frenzy that in its own way terrifies the other big dinosaurs moving around the area. It’s not a radical game changer in a sense but if you place this within the spaghetti western mold you see it as the final big fight that changes this small area and opens it up to some new directions. That it closes out in a truly classic sense, after a moment where you place some humanity on the Spinosaurus, only reinforces that as a whole.
In Summary:
As a first experience in this particular world through this miniseries, I definitely enjoyed the work as a whole. It’s not an easy one to take in when you get down to it because you have to change your normal comic reading perceptions and put more into it, particularly as you cannot and must not place human ethics and motivations on the dinosaurs moving about in it. The story of the Spinosaurus here is a pretty good one that shows what a devilishly fraught life it is and what challenges are being faced on a regular basis when it comes to simple survival. Delgado brings it to life in his style that pays so much attention to detail that it can be overwhelming. It’s a book that reminds you of just what kind of true passion some creators have to bring something unique to life. While we get dinosaurs in comics once in awhile it’s even rarer to get what feels like a true dinosaur story brought to comes – or any other medium – like what Delgado has done here. Definitely an experience worth having.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 2nd, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
