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Age of Reptiles #1-3
Age of Reptiles Omnibus, Vol. 1
Forget the Silver Age, and bag the Golden Age - this is the Age of Reptiles! Ricardo Delgado, winner of the Eisner Award for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition, and a prolific development and storyboard artist (Men in Black, The Incredibles, WALL-E, X-Men Origins, Wolverine, and The Matrix series) has crafted epic tales about the most unlikely cast of characters, dinosaurs!
This volume collects long-out-of-print Age of Reptiles miniseries Age of Reptiles and Age of Reptiles: The Hunt, the never-before-collected third series, Age of Reptiles: The Journey, and a wide assortment of bonus material, including supplementary text pieces, a cover-art gallery, and sketchbook material.
This volume collects long-out-of-print Age of Reptiles miniseries Age of Reptiles and Age of Reptiles: The Hunt, the never-before-collected third series, Age of Reptiles: The Journey, and a wide assortment of bonus material, including supplementary text pieces, a cover-art gallery, and sketchbook material.
398 pages, Paperback
First published January 19, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
February 8, 2016
Dinosaurs. That's all I really need to say.
February 26, 2017
Rating is for "The Journey", as I've reviewed the other collected books in their own separate pages.
The journey is the best Age of Reptiles book of the lot, which is unfortunate considering you can apparently only find it here (outside of the original comics). The story is pretty apparent, it concerns a migration of friendly dinosaurs, who get hounded by the more predatorial creatures. The art is pretty sexy, and this book has more complex paneling than previous volumes. The absence of anthropomorphic traits is an big plus for this volumes, I actually felt like I was watching, for the most part, real dinosaurs.
The journey is the best Age of Reptiles book of the lot, which is unfortunate considering you can apparently only find it here (outside of the original comics). The story is pretty apparent, it concerns a migration of friendly dinosaurs, who get hounded by the more predatorial creatures. The art is pretty sexy, and this book has more complex paneling than previous volumes. The absence of anthropomorphic traits is an big plus for this volumes, I actually felt like I was watching, for the most part, real dinosaurs.
April 7, 2023
I purchased this a few months back at my friendly local game store. Having always been a huge dinosaur nerd since I was a small boy I hadn't gotten to read anything with dinosaurs in it for many years. This is an easy book to "read" as it contains no text or speech bubbles in it as comics and graphic novels have. This book is nearly 400 pages long. It has a few essays in the back and a nice forward to open it. Delgado loves Ray Harryhausen and so do it. The first essay is about him and his impact on this artist.
This tells several stories about family units, herds and hunts and mass migrations on a planet that is changing under the animals' very feet. The story here needs no words because the length and breadth of these tales is conveyed in the drawings and the color.
Simply put, this is amazing.
The varied species here and the stories told without the bothersome baggage of words are a marvel. There is so much to take in with the eyes the story is so strong. The details of the different dinosaurs, their expressions and colors and the mastery of art on display here is wonderful. I don't k ow what else to say save that this will not leave my library, but will be passed on to my daughter, as all great works of art should be.
Danny
This tells several stories about family units, herds and hunts and mass migrations on a planet that is changing under the animals' very feet. The story here needs no words because the length and breadth of these tales is conveyed in the drawings and the color.
Simply put, this is amazing.
The varied species here and the stories told without the bothersome baggage of words are a marvel. There is so much to take in with the eyes the story is so strong. The details of the different dinosaurs, their expressions and colors and the mastery of art on display here is wonderful. I don't k ow what else to say save that this will not leave my library, but will be passed on to my daughter, as all great works of art should be.
Danny
September 8, 2018
This comic about dinosaurs tells its stories without words, so it helped me appreciate how important visual storytelling is. Surprisingly, I got really attached to some of the characters, which gives the book some emotional weight when those characters go through hardships, and oftentimes those stories end in tragedy. It was a darker book than I expected as many of the featured dinosaurs get eaten. The illustrations are beautiful, but be aware that the violence is depicted quite graphically, so if you are squeamish, that might be a problem, and be careful not to buy this book for a dinosaur-loving elementary school student. Other than that, I highly recommend it.
August 9, 2012
Silent comics are really difficult to pull off well. They've got a lot going against them. Exactly half of the linguistic repertoire being forbidden, the creator is forced to rely wholly upon visual language for all exposition. When characters cannot exposit their own motives to the reader, they must rely on illustrated cues to make their purposes, intents, reasons, and passions both knowable and then known. And as difficult as that sounds, the requirement upon the artist of these characters is phenomenal. Not only does the artist have to reliably draw characters recognizably and convey story through panel-to-panel storytelling transitions (as is the case even in comics featuring dialogue and narration), but beyond this, the artist must be able to convey all those burdens generally carried by the writer of words. Personality. Interaction. Interrogative. Exclamation. Thought. Emotion. Reaction. Success in these tasks takes the hand of a master.
Silent comics are really difficult to pull off well. So it shouldn't surprise or disappoint us to discover that Ricardo Delgado's Age of Reptiles doesn't find a good pace until its final third. This is no slight against Delgado's abilities or craftsmanship. For the one, the silent comic is an incredibly difficult undertaking and I've rarely1 seen it accomplished well. For the other, he's telling stories in which his characters are dinosaurs, which compounds his storytelling issues expansively. And for the last, Delgado does end up succeeding—it just took him a while (understandably) to find his sea-legs. Delgado takes a high-concept comic fraught with potential but held back by its own experimentations and turns it into a masterpiece.
Age of Reptiles Omnibus, vol 1 is composed of the first three Age of Reptiles miniseries,2 each following the experiences of some dinosaur or other. Watching Delgado's evolution over these nearly two decades is a pretty wonderful experience. As he ages, one gets the sense that he becomes more and more comfortable with his production. What initially seems (for all its grandeur) forced soon becomes a thing of easy comfortability. His style, technique, and storytelling mature and the direction of his narrative becomes more profound as well.
Delgado's first series, "Tribal Warfare," features very detailed penwork. Every crease, crevice, and fold in his dinosaurs' skin is rendered in crisp black lines. Delgado's attention to detail is somewhat awe-striking, but generally (and despite a good sense of visual presence and doing a lot with negative space) the art in these pages feels exceptionally busy. It's possible that this line-heavy style could have worked with some of today's advanced colouring techniques, but Delgado was stuck with 1993's primitive colouring tools. Instead of softening his drawings' hard edge, his colours are garish and serve mostly to heighten the uncomfortability of his art.
Still, his3 choice here is fascinating. Where he (or colourist James Sinclair) could have made his dinosaurs from a palette of earthy tones—tans, greens, rusts, the occasional spark of a subtle blue—he puts forth a rainbowed array of reptiles. "Tribal Warfare" opens with a lime-green pteranodon whose neck is striped with vibrant white and blue and whose crest is bright yellow with a red-spotted pattern. As well, each wing features a large red spot like a Japanese Zero. There are much more colourful dinosaurs in store. The colouring was dissonant but it did make distinguishing different reptiles easier. Still, while I see what Delgado was aiming for and I think the choice both bold and imaginative, I don't think it ultimately helps so much as it could.
On the positive side we do see Delgado occasionally insert broad vistas or well-positioned actors in ways that presage the wonderful scenes he would produce in the future. In fact, even in his earliest series, Delgado's ability to craft pages that impress is powerful.
The second volume contained in this anthology, "The Hunt," is a step in what looks like a better direction visually. Delgado's work is still incredibly detailed and he sometimes overwhelms his art with his lines, but his pen seems leaner, less heavy on the page. He's not quite there yet, but he's trying something different and that's good. As the book was published in 1997, comics colouring was undergoing a computer revolution. Artists hadn't quite evolved to the point they're at in the late Two-Thousand-Aughts (where colourists like Dave Stewart rule the roost with their phenomenal technique), but as with his linework, it's a step in a healthy direction. Delgado continues to favour wild colour variation for his dinosaurs—only now the transitions of colour on a single beast are less jagged and favour smooth gradients. Strangely, while I think this smoothing works pretty well on his landscapes, for the dinosaurs themselves I actually prefer the abruptness in the colour-design in the earlier work—after all, if you look at the stripes and splotches on a fish at your local pet store, you'll note that they don't gradually fade into the base colour of the fish.
[Click image to view larger]
Where "The Hunt" really takes off is in Delgado giving greater reign to his penchant for one- and two-page spreads and to larger set pieces. The third chapter of "The Hunt" is especially compelling, as Delgado takes an excursis from the story of a lone allosaurus to follow several winged pterosaurs in an exciting dogfight. The chapter is filled with gorgeous skyscapes and some scenes of the flying reptiles that could have been cribbed from Miyazaki's Porco Rosso. It was a beautiful chapter and fit (along with chapter four) as a nice break from the less-exciting-though-titular hunt that comprises that volume's storyline.
In the final installment of this omnibus, "The Journey," Delgado seemingly rights all wrongs. Created twelve years after "The Hunt," he's come to a design and illustration sense that is finally easy on the eyes, powerful in communication, and still adept at conveying the wonder of the earlier series' best moments. His style now resembles some happy hybrid between Guy Davis and Mike Mignola. His work is still incredibly detailed, but he shows a marvelous sense of restraint, allowing abstraction where needed. As well, there are moments such as a partially devoured anklyosaur floating in a river that are magnified by Delgado's talent with framing and negative space (I think it may have been this instance that put me most in mind of Mignola). What may be most jaw-droppng in "The Journey" is just how many dinosaurs Delgado draws on every page. His story calls for it for sure, but it's still a minor wonder to behold.
[Click image to view larger]
Further, colouring for the book has come into its own at last. I'm not sure if the solution was bringing Jim Campbell on as colourist or if it was just a matter of Delgado witnessing the evolution of computer colouring over the intervening decade. Whatever the case, "The Journey" makes Age of Reptiles a beautiful book. The colours are muted and more in line with what a reader might expect from a book about dinosaurs. Delgado's reptiles still have distinctive markings but they aren't any longer gaudy, flamboyant party-goers. Bravo, whoever was responsible for the shift.
Where "The Journey" also excels over the prior two series is in story. To illustrate, however, I'll have to complain about something central to the earlier two books.
The reason, presumably, that Delgado chose to make Age of Reptiles a silent work is that dinosaurs are not people. They presumably have little facility for language and if they did and we could translate it, their way of conveying meaning might be so alien to us that we wouldn't understand anyway. My guess is that this book was made wordless in a bid for realism.4 It's a good idea if one can do it well— and by time "The Journey" arrives, Delgado is doing it well.
The problem, if realism is Delgado's reason for not verbalizing anything, is that the first two stories are built almost entirely on personification. "Tribal Warfare" features a grudge between a family of T-rexes and a family of utahraptors (I think they're utahraptors). The lead tyrannosaurus scares the raptors off their fresh, rightful kill and initiates a back-and-forth war of attrition that lasts four chapters and ends in all-out battle. It's a fine story but not a fine dinosaur story unless you want your dinosaurs fixed with embedded human motivation. "The Hunt" follows a young allosaur as he flees from the murder of his mother by some wildly coloured raptors. Their pursuit of him lasts for what seems years. Long enough at least for him to grow to full-size. Both the raptors' dogged pursuit of the allosaur despite there being far more docile game everywhere and the allosaur's plan to revenge himself against them left me incredulous. I couldn't be sure why Delgado didn't just give these animals voices if he was going to give them human motivation.
"The Journey" solves this problem in two ways. The first is that Delgado gives no opportunity for these reptiles to act in any way other than as the animals they are. The other is that "The Journey" is not the story of a dinosaur protagonist but instead the story of a massive migration. I'm reminded of Planet Earth's segment on the migration in Africa toward the Okavango Delta. Delgado depicts a collection of herbivore dinosaur herds moving from arid lands toward a lush forest. Their way is perilous and they are followed closely and picked at by predators. If there is a protagonist at all, it is the combined herd, striving forward while being winnowed and whittled. It's magnificent and I'm so very glad that Delgado chose this direction for the third series.
While "Tribal Warfare" and "The Hunt" are each forgettable, "The Journey" makes me curious if there will be a fourth series. I will read it if there is, because Ricardo Delgado has improved that much.
Notes
1. Off the top of my head, I can't actually think of any stellar examples beyond Shaun Tan's The Arrival .
2. This volume contains three Age of Reptiles stories: "Tribal Warfare," "The Hunt," and "The Journey." (Published in 1993, 1997, and 2010, respectively.)
3. I say "his" here, but it's entirely possible that these choices belonged to colourist James Sinclair, who colours both "Tribal Warfare" and "The Hunt." Still, I have a hard time believing that Delgado didn't at least direct Sinclair's choices by laying out a house style.
4. Interestingly, Delgado doesn't even use onomatopoeia. No sound effects. No grunts or growls or moans. This, I think, is a great idea. Too often, creators will personify their creatures through clever use of animal noises that stand in for human intonation. A dog that looks quizically and says: "ARF?" Question mark included. Any sense that this is a real dog is shattered the moment he says ARF with a question mark attached.
_____________________
[Review courtesy of Good Ok Bad]
Silent comics are really difficult to pull off well. So it shouldn't surprise or disappoint us to discover that Ricardo Delgado's Age of Reptiles doesn't find a good pace until its final third. This is no slight against Delgado's abilities or craftsmanship. For the one, the silent comic is an incredibly difficult undertaking and I've rarely1 seen it accomplished well. For the other, he's telling stories in which his characters are dinosaurs, which compounds his storytelling issues expansively. And for the last, Delgado does end up succeeding—it just took him a while (understandably) to find his sea-legs. Delgado takes a high-concept comic fraught with potential but held back by its own experimentations and turns it into a masterpiece.
Age of Reptiles Omnibus, vol 1 is composed of the first three Age of Reptiles miniseries,2 each following the experiences of some dinosaur or other. Watching Delgado's evolution over these nearly two decades is a pretty wonderful experience. As he ages, one gets the sense that he becomes more and more comfortable with his production. What initially seems (for all its grandeur) forced soon becomes a thing of easy comfortability. His style, technique, and storytelling mature and the direction of his narrative becomes more profound as well.
Delgado's first series, "Tribal Warfare," features very detailed penwork. Every crease, crevice, and fold in his dinosaurs' skin is rendered in crisp black lines. Delgado's attention to detail is somewhat awe-striking, but generally (and despite a good sense of visual presence and doing a lot with negative space) the art in these pages feels exceptionally busy. It's possible that this line-heavy style could have worked with some of today's advanced colouring techniques, but Delgado was stuck with 1993's primitive colouring tools. Instead of softening his drawings' hard edge, his colours are garish and serve mostly to heighten the uncomfortability of his art.
Still, his3 choice here is fascinating. Where he (or colourist James Sinclair) could have made his dinosaurs from a palette of earthy tones—tans, greens, rusts, the occasional spark of a subtle blue—he puts forth a rainbowed array of reptiles. "Tribal Warfare" opens with a lime-green pteranodon whose neck is striped with vibrant white and blue and whose crest is bright yellow with a red-spotted pattern. As well, each wing features a large red spot like a Japanese Zero. There are much more colourful dinosaurs in store. The colouring was dissonant but it did make distinguishing different reptiles easier. Still, while I see what Delgado was aiming for and I think the choice both bold and imaginative, I don't think it ultimately helps so much as it could.
On the positive side we do see Delgado occasionally insert broad vistas or well-positioned actors in ways that presage the wonderful scenes he would produce in the future. In fact, even in his earliest series, Delgado's ability to craft pages that impress is powerful.
The second volume contained in this anthology, "The Hunt," is a step in what looks like a better direction visually. Delgado's work is still incredibly detailed and he sometimes overwhelms his art with his lines, but his pen seems leaner, less heavy on the page. He's not quite there yet, but he's trying something different and that's good. As the book was published in 1997, comics colouring was undergoing a computer revolution. Artists hadn't quite evolved to the point they're at in the late Two-Thousand-Aughts (where colourists like Dave Stewart rule the roost with their phenomenal technique), but as with his linework, it's a step in a healthy direction. Delgado continues to favour wild colour variation for his dinosaurs—only now the transitions of colour on a single beast are less jagged and favour smooth gradients. Strangely, while I think this smoothing works pretty well on his landscapes, for the dinosaurs themselves I actually prefer the abruptness in the colour-design in the earlier work—after all, if you look at the stripes and splotches on a fish at your local pet store, you'll note that they don't gradually fade into the base colour of the fish.
[Click image to view larger]
Where "The Hunt" really takes off is in Delgado giving greater reign to his penchant for one- and two-page spreads and to larger set pieces. The third chapter of "The Hunt" is especially compelling, as Delgado takes an excursis from the story of a lone allosaurus to follow several winged pterosaurs in an exciting dogfight. The chapter is filled with gorgeous skyscapes and some scenes of the flying reptiles that could have been cribbed from Miyazaki's Porco Rosso. It was a beautiful chapter and fit (along with chapter four) as a nice break from the less-exciting-though-titular hunt that comprises that volume's storyline.
In the final installment of this omnibus, "The Journey," Delgado seemingly rights all wrongs. Created twelve years after "The Hunt," he's come to a design and illustration sense that is finally easy on the eyes, powerful in communication, and still adept at conveying the wonder of the earlier series' best moments. His style now resembles some happy hybrid between Guy Davis and Mike Mignola. His work is still incredibly detailed, but he shows a marvelous sense of restraint, allowing abstraction where needed. As well, there are moments such as a partially devoured anklyosaur floating in a river that are magnified by Delgado's talent with framing and negative space (I think it may have been this instance that put me most in mind of Mignola). What may be most jaw-droppng in "The Journey" is just how many dinosaurs Delgado draws on every page. His story calls for it for sure, but it's still a minor wonder to behold.
[Click image to view larger]
Further, colouring for the book has come into its own at last. I'm not sure if the solution was bringing Jim Campbell on as colourist or if it was just a matter of Delgado witnessing the evolution of computer colouring over the intervening decade. Whatever the case, "The Journey" makes Age of Reptiles a beautiful book. The colours are muted and more in line with what a reader might expect from a book about dinosaurs. Delgado's reptiles still have distinctive markings but they aren't any longer gaudy, flamboyant party-goers. Bravo, whoever was responsible for the shift.
Where "The Journey" also excels over the prior two series is in story. To illustrate, however, I'll have to complain about something central to the earlier two books.
The reason, presumably, that Delgado chose to make Age of Reptiles a silent work is that dinosaurs are not people. They presumably have little facility for language and if they did and we could translate it, their way of conveying meaning might be so alien to us that we wouldn't understand anyway. My guess is that this book was made wordless in a bid for realism.4 It's a good idea if one can do it well— and by time "The Journey" arrives, Delgado is doing it well.
The problem, if realism is Delgado's reason for not verbalizing anything, is that the first two stories are built almost entirely on personification. "Tribal Warfare" features a grudge between a family of T-rexes and a family of utahraptors (I think they're utahraptors). The lead tyrannosaurus scares the raptors off their fresh, rightful kill and initiates a back-and-forth war of attrition that lasts four chapters and ends in all-out battle. It's a fine story but not a fine dinosaur story unless you want your dinosaurs fixed with embedded human motivation. "The Hunt" follows a young allosaur as he flees from the murder of his mother by some wildly coloured raptors. Their pursuit of him lasts for what seems years. Long enough at least for him to grow to full-size. Both the raptors' dogged pursuit of the allosaur despite there being far more docile game everywhere and the allosaur's plan to revenge himself against them left me incredulous. I couldn't be sure why Delgado didn't just give these animals voices if he was going to give them human motivation.
"The Journey" solves this problem in two ways. The first is that Delgado gives no opportunity for these reptiles to act in any way other than as the animals they are. The other is that "The Journey" is not the story of a dinosaur protagonist but instead the story of a massive migration. I'm reminded of Planet Earth's segment on the migration in Africa toward the Okavango Delta. Delgado depicts a collection of herbivore dinosaur herds moving from arid lands toward a lush forest. Their way is perilous and they are followed closely and picked at by predators. If there is a protagonist at all, it is the combined herd, striving forward while being winnowed and whittled. It's magnificent and I'm so very glad that Delgado chose this direction for the third series.
While "Tribal Warfare" and "The Hunt" are each forgettable, "The Journey" makes me curious if there will be a fourth series. I will read it if there is, because Ricardo Delgado has improved that much.
Notes
1. Off the top of my head, I can't actually think of any stellar examples beyond Shaun Tan's The Arrival .
2. This volume contains three Age of Reptiles stories: "Tribal Warfare," "The Hunt," and "The Journey." (Published in 1993, 1997, and 2010, respectively.)
3. I say "his" here, but it's entirely possible that these choices belonged to colourist James Sinclair, who colours both "Tribal Warfare" and "The Hunt." Still, I have a hard time believing that Delgado didn't at least direct Sinclair's choices by laying out a house style.
4. Interestingly, Delgado doesn't even use onomatopoeia. No sound effects. No grunts or growls or moans. This, I think, is a great idea. Too often, creators will personify their creatures through clever use of animal noises that stand in for human intonation. A dog that looks quizically and says: "ARF?" Question mark included. Any sense that this is a real dog is shattered the moment he says ARF with a question mark attached.
_____________________
[Review courtesy of Good Ok Bad]
March 4, 2018
The artwork was very gorgeous. These dinosaurs are quick and intelligent, but still more reptilian than bird. (Lots of scales, no feathers on these dinos.) The coloring of the creatures is wild, even psychedelic.
I wasn't a huge fan of the artist's tendency toward cartoony reaction shots and anthropomorphism to a ridiculous degree, such as turning the Velociraptors (or maybe they were Deinonychus?) into unrepentant bad guys. It seems that the realism of the artwork deserved better than this silliness.
The final story, which depicted a great migration of numerous species and was obviously based upon studies of similar migrations that have been occurring with modern-day wildlife since time immemorial, was the most realistic and reined in the series' cartoonishness.
I wasn't a huge fan of the artist's tendency toward cartoony reaction shots and anthropomorphism to a ridiculous degree, such as turning the Velociraptors (or maybe they were Deinonychus?) into unrepentant bad guys. It seems that the realism of the artwork deserved better than this silliness.
The final story, which depicted a great migration of numerous species and was obviously based upon studies of similar migrations that have been occurring with modern-day wildlife since time immemorial, was the most realistic and reined in the series' cartoonishness.
July 22, 2017
Remember Rite of Spring sequnce in Fantasia? That's this. Awesome.
August 20, 2021
If you haven't read the series before, the first thing you'll notice about Age of Reptiles is that there are no words. None. A text bubble, a voice-over, or even a sound effect were all absent. To my mind, half of the attraction of the book is that Delgado doesn't provide any information regarding the dinosaur drawings. Including information would turn it into an "educational" book, which would take away from the enjoyment. A story written entirely via images, Delgado takes the notion of dinosaurs, adds vivid color (though it's presumably assumed), and adds just the perfect amount of anthropomorphism (parental love, vengeance and hatred).
A lot of time and effort went into this book. Delgado is a master storyteller and a gifted draftsman. His knowledge of contemporary paleontological science, which he has utilized to recreate an entire extinct ecosystem, is very impressive. Awe-inspiring and beauty. In spite of the lack of dialogue and text, the book takes a while to read. Delight in Delgado's universe, which is rich with intricacy and elegance. A casual go through leaves a much to be desired, thus it rewards numerous readings.
The only thing that irritated me was the excessively gaudy color in the first few chapters. However, this goes too far and detracts from the drawings. Although the majority of this book is colored differently, I believe that this was an early issue that has now been resolved.
Those who enjoy comics, dinosaurs, or good storytelling will enjoy this book.
September 18, 2018
This would have been an easy 5 stars had Delgado colored all of the series himself. That said these are fantastic stories that really highlight that you can tell powerful, emotional tales without one bit of dialogue.
January 14, 2020
Age of reptiles is a book about a dinosaur called the spinosarous, and his journey through a swamp facing other dinosaurs. Throughout his he experiences many different sized animals giving him a perspective of what the world was made of around him. Being a wordless book many unexpected events happened, which is why i would highly recommend this book. It kept me thinking about how he felt and gave me a deep perspective of his feeling and actions.
October 29, 2021
I like dinosaurs, and the art is great, but the stories were repetitive and fairly uninteresting.
January 31, 2014
The day I come across a book of dinosaurs without picking it up is the day that I am truly dead inside. This Age of Reptiles collection combines two things that I've dug since I have first experienced them, dinosaurs and comic books. The dinosaurs hunt in packs, sleep in circles with their horns out, have chameleon like abilities, lurk in the bush waiting for prey, are painted in vibrant hues, all of which truly fit with the action of the book. It's no surprise that Ricardo Delgado is an accomplished story board artist. Delgado's art reminds me a little of Geoff Darrow's, particularly the big T Rex and Mososaur featured in a duel near the end of The Journey storyline. A dinosaurs index would've been handy for people who haven't been admired dinosaurs for most of their lives. I'm pretty sure that if these stories had come out a few years ago as opposed to the mid 90s the dinosaurs would have feathers on them (if you think a therapod with feathers is ludicrous, like I initially did, then you gotta look at Lammergeier aka Bearded Vulture . Those have feathers and are terrifying.) The stories center around the epic lives of dinosaurs, from inter species clashes or mass migrations. Of course it's not a cold work of pure science, but that wouldn't be very good for a comic book. Totally read this.
November 16, 2022
Мабуть, найкрасивіше й найнезвичніше що я відкрнила для себе в рамках челенджу 2021 року, коли читала по одному мальопису на день. Цікавезні, іноді навіть смішні оповіді про життя різних динозаврів, намальовані супер-реалістично й з чудовим сюжетом, що розповідається без жодного слова (а що ще ви очікували від динозаврів?).
October 6, 2016
Just not my style. I'm not into wordless graphic novels, or--for that matter--many graphic novels, period. So I paged through a couple of pages and called it a day.
November 29, 2016
Very cool to look at, but sometimes hard to understand exactly what's happening.
September 11, 2018
A cool comic book full of lovely dinosaur pics. The writer/illustrator deserves all the praise he gets from luminaries such as Ray Harryhausen & John Landis in the intro: the art is awesome (roarsome?) with some gorgeous prehistoric landscapes, from lush forests to arid deserts. The dinosaurs are red in tooth & claw and pretty graphic in terms of gore: should I have attempted this whole review in rhyming couplets? The T Rexes and similar predators are magnificently rendered and some of the tableaux are breathtaking.
Dropped stars due to the lack of satisfying story. I appreciate it's a documentary style that mostly eschews anthropomorphic Disney tendencies, but this is still a narrative. I struggled to differentiate some of the dinosaurs and each of the three books meander along before finishing with a big "what, is that it?" Pity, because those pictures are superb. The velociraptors are still sneaky bastards, ditto the mammals who are just starting to appear (whatever happened to those little critters?)
The kindle edition I read was good value and lends itself well to tablet viewing. The author outlines his childhood influences in some informative end notes. He is clearly a decent chap and even shares some family pics...which is nice.
Dropped stars due to the lack of satisfying story. I appreciate it's a documentary style that mostly eschews anthropomorphic Disney tendencies, but this is still a narrative. I struggled to differentiate some of the dinosaurs and each of the three books meander along before finishing with a big "what, is that it?" Pity, because those pictures are superb. The velociraptors are still sneaky bastards, ditto the mammals who are just starting to appear (whatever happened to those little critters?)
The kindle edition I read was good value and lends itself well to tablet viewing. The author outlines his childhood influences in some informative end notes. He is clearly a decent chap and even shares some family pics...which is nice.
May 5, 2018
While some feathers can be seen, these are largely more old-school dinosaurs with a vibrant, glowing pallet. While the linework is sometimes busy, the art is absolutely gorgeous. Lifelike poses and motion, with some exaggeration in the faces for character - each dinosaur is an individual with recognizable features and its own personality. There's gore, but the violence is realistic and akin to what one might see in a nature documentary (as opposed to a slasher film or survival horror game).
The stories are pretty simple and straightforward but have deep themes. Of the 3, Tribal Warfare is the strongest, with the clearest action and deepest relationships.
It is the 'silent film' of graphic novels - there is no dialogue, no narration, no sound effects. They aren't missed. The visuals are so, so strong and evocative you don't notice the difference after a couple pages. While you can blaze through it, it really benefits from a slower, contemplative pace where you can drink it in.
My only real complaint is that the pacing was a bit uneven and it was so short. Even going deliberately slow it ended too soon. I wanted more.
The stories are pretty simple and straightforward but have deep themes. Of the 3, Tribal Warfare is the strongest, with the clearest action and deepest relationships.
It is the 'silent film' of graphic novels - there is no dialogue, no narration, no sound effects. They aren't missed. The visuals are so, so strong and evocative you don't notice the difference after a couple pages. While you can blaze through it, it really benefits from a slower, contemplative pace where you can drink it in.
My only real complaint is that the pacing was a bit uneven and it was so short. Even going deliberately slow it ended too soon. I wanted more.
September 11, 2023
An expressive and talkative wordless graphic novel. However, things were a smidgen repetitive by the final section/chapter. I recommend not reading any of the introductions until after finishing if you are an adult (I don't see kids reading them) as they can, even subconsciously, tell you how you will feel about things. I skimmed the extras and did not read the essays included at the end. Though the bonus cover art and sketchbook should be looked at. The art is perfect for setting the mood/scene. There is violence, as there are meat eaters, but it is not gratuitously done, just showing that the reptiles have to eat and have to defend themselves. My two favorite scenes are where the flying reptile is slicing into the cloud (had this been a movie, as one introduction says it could be, I would expect you to see it coming out the other end. Or if it had been more science fiction/fantasy you would enter another world on the other side) and where two sea creatures are dead on the beach with their telling, but seemingly small details are shown (the aggressor still has its prey in its mouth; one of its fins partly covered by sand; the waves rolling and crashing in the backdrop).
July 11, 2021
A silent comic about the Mesozoic era. Enjoyable for anyone who loves dinosaurs with well done art, but the stories here struggle to be more than just "carnivores hunt herbivores." Of the three stories, Tribal Warfare was my favorite because it had a discernible plot about a feud between a pack of Deinonychus and a pair of Tyrannosaurs. As for the other two stories, I found The Hunt boring but enjoyed the documentaryesque style of The Journey which follows the mass migration of a herd of dinosaurs.
The world portrayed here is vibrant and brutal. This was before feathered dinosaurs became well known, but the dinosaurs we see here are colorful and based on patterns of modern animals. While spare on plot, this series did have a few standout, cinematic moments. Mine were: a raptor duel in a Brachiosaurus graveyard which is framed like a samurai flick; a clash of titans between a Tyrannosaur and a Mosasaur; and the treacherous crossing of the herd over a river swarming with Deinosuchus.
The world portrayed here is vibrant and brutal. This was before feathered dinosaurs became well known, but the dinosaurs we see here are colorful and based on patterns of modern animals. While spare on plot, this series did have a few standout, cinematic moments. Mine were: a raptor duel in a Brachiosaurus graveyard which is framed like a samurai flick; a clash of titans between a Tyrannosaur and a Mosasaur; and the treacherous crossing of the herd over a river swarming with Deinosuchus.
April 30, 2021
Ricardo Delgado creates an immortal masterpiece of wordless storytelling as he portrays a series of prehistoric dramas played out by a vast cast of dinosaurs. Here we see that nature is as cruel as it is unjust, but that love for one's own, the fear of dying, and the struggle to live on burns brightly in all of us, whether we are a tiny Compsognathus or a towering Diplodocus. Such a tale might falter were the visuals not up to spec, but Delgado's artwork is just perfect across the board. Terrific composition and layout, strong linework, brilliant inks and colors, and a flowing narrative sense that makes you immediately return to the first page when you finish to start all over again. This belongs in the collection of any serious fan of graphic novels or dinosaurs.
Disclaimer: I know Ricardo Delgado personally, and was involved in the publication of his novel, Warhead. I was not asked to provide this review or compensated for it in any way.
Disclaimer: I know Ricardo Delgado personally, and was involved in the publication of his novel, Warhead. I was not asked to provide this review or compensated for it in any way.
January 15, 2020
Beautiful illustrations bring to the page the imagined world and life of the dinosaurs. I love the detail in the images, from the wide sweeping vistas to the fine detail on the close-ups of the dinosaurs teeth and scales. Not every panel is so detailed, but the overall impression is one of tremendous life and vitality. As far as story, things get a bit repetitive here. It’s always about Hunter versus hunted, kill or be killed. Usually this involves larger dinosaurs going after another’s young, and the parents seeking revenge or trying to rescue them. Spoiler: most of the dinosaurs die by the end, if you didn’t assume that already. The existence is pretty bleak and brutal, so this isn’t a book I would recommend for younger kids.
April 1, 2024
Is it possible to say I've read something that has no words? I think in this case the answer is yes. I enjoyed this omnibus although at times I wasn't quite sure what actions the artist/author was trying to have the dinosaurs do. It didn't matter too much though if I didn't understand the whole story as I understood enough. The colors in the first part were beautiful and vibrant. At first I wasn't sure why none of the dinosaurs had feathers but I see now this looks to originally be published in the late 90s before some scientists brought up the idea that dinosaurs could have potentially been feathered. This was a really cool comic book.
May 17, 2017
I guess this won awards? It was super-highly reviewed? I don't see the appeal; like 1 and 1/2 stars.
This is a wordless graphic novel; it's very hard to follow the action because of the very small pictures of various similar-looking dinosaurs. In one of the introductions-- there are 2 by 2 different people-- the writer talks about anthropormophizing the animals and seeing emotion on their faces, making it such a deep story. I looked really hard for that and couldn't find it. I don't know if this isn't the book for me, or if I'm not right for this book.
This is a wordless graphic novel; it's very hard to follow the action because of the very small pictures of various similar-looking dinosaurs. In one of the introductions-- there are 2 by 2 different people-- the writer talks about anthropormophizing the animals and seeing emotion on their faces, making it such a deep story. I looked really hard for that and couldn't find it. I don't know if this isn't the book for me, or if I'm not right for this book.
November 6, 2020
I do love dinosaur their such good creatures that have ruled the earth for 165 million years but do you know what if your reading this book i,m asking you to text the author himself to make one of these books about the dinosaur extinction that be cool right to end the series i know you want to go on but like star wars ended with the rise of skywalker why not also end the age of the most greatest creatures to have ever ruled the earth! No other creature on this planet ever ruled like the dinosaurs have a good day.
June 20, 2018
So we've got a bunch of stories about dinosaurs here. They're dialog-free, which makes sense given the characters, but there's a rather large amount of anthropomorphism in most of the narratives, which I found rather distracting. The only story which is largely free of this is also the least complex or interesting over all, and has weaker art than the others: simpler line-work, and much less intricate colouring.
This was OK, but I'd hoped for more.
This was OK, but I'd hoped for more.
September 8, 2018
So, go into this book knowing it's ALL pictures. Well, other than introductions and various other essays. I bought this book on sale because I love watching artists tell stories. Granted, I wasn't a huge fan of the colors on the first portion of the book, but by the time I got to the end of this volume the artwork was beautiful. It is a fast "read", but I imagine one could examine the volume again and again.
June 12, 2021
Silent comics aren't really my thing, with a notable exception being GI Joe 21 from the original Marvel series, which may be the most famous silent comic issue ever. The art in this series is gorgeous, and while I did confused at times trying to tell all of the dinosaurs apart, overall this was good. The art and colors are top notch, and appeared to be well researched.
If dinosaurs are your thing, this is worth checking out.
If dinosaurs are your thing, this is worth checking out.
July 22, 2018
if you ask regular people, they’ll tell you that the JP franchise is all they need. I would go ahead and tell the to shut right the front door until they’ve read this. we don’t know what dinosaurs look like, but this really brings them to life ㏌ a non-traditional way that seems perfectly traditional for the medium.
March 12, 2023
Recommend for anyone interested in dinosaurs
Really entertaining book with a lot of drawings of dinosaurs, pterosaurs and marine reptiles form the prehistoric era. The book is full of drawings of all kinds of prehistoric animals and the book is a lot of fun for anyone interested in dinosaurs.
Really entertaining book with a lot of drawings of dinosaurs, pterosaurs and marine reptiles form the prehistoric era. The book is full of drawings of all kinds of prehistoric animals and the book is a lot of fun for anyone interested in dinosaurs.
December 10, 2018
This is such great visual story-telling. There are no words, just expressions, so you can interpret the pictures as you see fit. Fortunately, you don't necessarily have to because there is always a clear vision for the story, be it plot or experience.
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