A cautious Camptosaurus approaches a resting Allosaurus. Even though the carnivore undoubtedly hunted the herbivore at times, the two weren’t constantly at war with each other. Art by John Conway, from All Yesterdays.

The dinosaurs I grew up with were both intensely exciting and incredibly dull. They were creatures unlike anything I had ever seen, but their drab, scaly flesh was always fit snugly to their bones with little embellishment. For decades, this has been the paradox of prehistoric restorations. Reconstructed skeletons are gloriously magnificent and introduce us to strange creatures that we never could imagined if we did not already know they existed. Yet the art of reviving these organisms has often been incredibly conservative. Dinosaurs, in particular, have often been “shrink-wrapped”–their skin tightly pulled around a minimalist layer of muscle distributed over the skeleton. This may be part of why dinosaur restorations look so weird. As John Conway, C.M. Kosemen, Darren Naish and Scott Harman argue in their new book All Yesterdays, no living lizard, fish, bird or mammal adheres to such a limited “skin on the bones” fashion. Dinosaurs were not only skeletally distinctive, but they undoubtedly looked stranger and behaved more bizarrely than we have ever imagined. The recently-published Dinosaur Art started to realize these possibilities, but All Yesterdays goes even further in melding science and speculation about dinosaur biology.

On a superficial level, All Yesterdays is a gorgeous collection of speculative artwork. Divided into two sections–the first featuring Mesozoic life in new or little-seen vignettes, and the second imagining how we would restore modern animals if we only had partial skeletons to work from–the book features some of the most wonderful paleoart I’ve ever seen. Scott Hartman’s crisp skeletal reconstructions form the framework from which Conway and Kosemen play with muscle, fat and flesh, and, following Naish’s introductory comments, Kosemen provides scientific commentary about how each illustration is not quite so outlandish as it seems. A curious Camptosaurus approaching an Allosaurus at rest is a reminder that, much like modern animals, prey and predators were not constantly grappling with each other, just as a snoozing rendition of the Tyrannosaurus “Stan” shows that even the scariest dinosaurs had to snooze. The gallery’s feathered dinosaurs are especially effective at demonstrating the fluffy weirdness of the Mesozoic. Conway’s peaceful scene of feather draped Therizinosaurus browsing in a tree grove is the best rendition of the giant herbivore I’ve ever seen, and his fluffy, snowbound Leaellynasaura are unabashedly adorable.

The second half of the book continues the same theme, but in reverse. How would artists draw a cat, an elephant or a baboon if we only had skeletons or bone fragments? And what would those scraps suggest about the biology of long-lost animals? If there are paleontologists in the future, and they have no other source of information about our world, how will they restore the animals alive today? They might have no knowledge of the fur, fat, feathers and other structures that flesh out modern species, creating demonic visions of reptilian cats, eel-like whales and vampire hummingbirds.

Working in concert, the two sections will give casual readers and paleoartists a jolt. While some might gripe about Todd Marshall adding too many spikes and dewlaps to his dinosaurs, or Luis Rey envisioning deinonychosaurs at play, the fact of the matter is that dinosaurs probably had an array of soft tissue structures that made them look far stranger than the toned-down restorations we’re used to. As All Yesterdays presents in various scenes, maybe sauropods liked to play in the mud, perhaps hadrosaurs were chubbier than we ever imagined and, as depicted in one nightmare-inducing panel, Stegosaurus could have had monstrous genitals. None of these scenarios are supported by direct evidence, but they are all within the realm of possibility.

The cover of All Yesterdays, a visual celebration of speculative paleontology.

More than a gallery of speculative art, All Yesterdays is an essential, inspirational guide to any aspiring paleoartist. Those who restore prehistoric life are limited by the evidence at hand, this is true, but “more conservative” does not mean “more accurate.” Using comparisons with modern animals, artists have far more leeway than they have ever exercised in imagining what prehistoric life was like. We’ve seen enough Deinonychus packs tearing apart Tenontosaurus, and far too many malnourished dinosaurs. We need more fat, feathers, accessory adornments and scenes from quieter moments in dinosaur lives that do not involve blood and spilled viscera. Professional paleoartists are beginning to embrace these ideas–Jason Brougham’s recent restoration of Microraptor is an appropriately fluffy, bird-like animal rather than the flying monster Naish and collaborators decry–but All Yesterdays is a concentrated dose of prehistoric possibilities that are being artistically explored.

Some of the book’s restorations may turn out to look quite silly. As lovely as Conway’s rendition is, I still don’t buy the “bison-back” idea for high-spined dinosaurs such as Ouranosaurus. Then again, depending on what we discover in the future, some of the illustrations might seem quite prescient. The important thing is that All Yesterdays demonstrates how to push the boundaries of what we imagine while still drawing on scientific evidence. The book is a rare treat in that each section explicitly lays the inspiration for each speculative vision, providing references for those who want to dig deeper.

If anything, All Yesterdays shows that we should not be afraid of imagination in science. Even though we know far more about dinosaur biology and anatomy than ever before, there are still substantial gaps in our understanding. In these places, where bones might not have much to tell us, science meets speculation. The result is not anything-goes garishness, but an exploration of possibilities. Somewhere within that murky range of alternatives, we may start to approach what dinosaurs were truly like.

You can purchase All Yesterdays in any of its various formats here.

The cover of Paleo #2 by Jim Lawson. Image courtesy Jim Lawson and Colin Panetta.

When I wanted to review Jim Lawson’s influential dinosaur comic series Paleo last year, I had to track down the paperback anthology of the first six installments and the miscellaneous issues. The books were hard to find and only available as rare, used copies. But, fortunately for pen and ink dinosaur fans, Lawson has now revived his Cretaceous series for free on the web.

For those unfamiliar with the comic, Paleo is an anthology of stories about dinosaurs that once roamed Cretaceous North America. Huge tyrannosaurs and sickle-clawed dromaeosaurs are the unquestionable stars of the series, but Lawson has picked various protagonists through the issues–from the dome-headed Stegoceras to a Mesozoic dragonfly. And while (thankfully) the dinosaurs don’t talk, Lawson gives each Cretaceous creature a personality and set of particular motivation. Paleo is like Walking With Dinosaurs if we could get inside the dinosaurs’ heads.

According to the site’s intro post, Paleo: The Webcomic will cover the entire run of the original series and the “Loner” storyline and include previously unpublished art. Lawson intends to add a page to the site twice a week, and all of them can be viewed on the iPhone, to boot. There’s already a good deal of material to check out–Issue 1 is already posted with Issue 2 well on its way. It’s great to revisit the Mesozoic through Lawson’s work again, and I look forward to seeing some of his untold tales from the latest Cretaceous.

The cover of Dinosaur Art: The World’s Greatest Paleoart. This book is set to debut in September, 2012.

Museums are where dinosaurs rest, but art is where dinosaurs live again. No press release about a newly-discovered dinosaur, or some new fact about an already-known dinosaur’s lifestyle, is complete with a beautifully-rendered artist’s restoration. And dinosaur art keeps improving. Since the time of the Dinosaur Renaissance in the late 20th century, artists have taken ever more care in rendering the prehistoric creatures and the habitats they called home. Truly, dinosaurs have never looked better, and the new coffee table book Dinosaur Art: The World’s Greatest Paleoart showcases some of the best fossil restorations by today’s foremost paleoartists.

When I first received Dinosaur Art in the mail, I wondered how it was going to set itself apart from similar books. The glossy Dinosaur Imagery showcased some of the most exquisite dinosaur art created since the 1970s, Allen Debus’ Paleoimagery tracked the changing images of dinosaurs during the past century and Jane Davidson’s A History of Paleontology Illustration documented the scientific and popular aspects of accurately portraying dinosaurs. Where Dinosaur Art differs, I found, is that the book puts the emphasis on the artists themselves–from their favorite prehistoric creatures to the techniques they use. And while veteran paleoillustrators such as the incomparable Doug Henderson and the highly-influential John Sibbick are included in the book, the focus is on relative newcomers who have only recently started to shape our image of dinosaurs.

Dinosaur Art speaks to two audiences. If you can’t get enough restorations of prehistoric life–the book focuses on dinosaurs, but also includes ancient mammals and other non-dinosaurs–then Dinosaur Art is an absolute must-have. Even though I had seen much of the artwork before, I didn’t fully appreciate Raúl Martín‘s gorgeous Mesozoic landscapes or Todd Marshall‘s spiky, intricately-detailed dinosaurs until I saw them laid out in high-definition right in front of me. There are even a few fold-out panels, showing the stunning murals by artists such as Julius Csotonyi. Dinosaur Art is an absolute pleasure to pore over, and almost every page is a window into a vanished world.

The book is more than a gallery, though. For many aspiring dinosaur artists, the artist interviews make this book an essential resource. Each artist describes their process, preferred materials, whether digital or more traditional, and how they fill out creatures that we often only know from bones. Many of the questions asked to the artists are consistent from one interview to the next, which easily contrasts the styles and personalities of each. While Gregory S. Paul‘s answers are short and curt, the interviews with Douglas Henderson and Luis Rey feel warmer and more conversational. Together, the lavish art and interviews will undoubtedly inspire the next generation of great paleoartists.

But there’s another reason why Dinosaur Art is an essential book for any dinosaur fan. The collection is a printed milestone of what we currently understand about dinosaur lives, and will act as a baseline as our knowledge of prehistoric life changes. Artists have been altering their work and racing to keep up with the latest discoveries for well over a century; that trend will almost certainly continue. As we discover new dinosaurs and investigate the biology of those we already know, dinosaur art will continue to evolve.

Dinosaur Art is set to debut on September 4, 2012.

A few months back, I mentioned a comic-movie tie-in that sounds like a shameless cash grab – Dinosaurs vs Aliens. Sadly, the titular extraterrestrials are not the parasitic, acid-spitting ALIENS of horror movie fame – imagine what a Triceratops chestburster would have looked like! – but super-intelligent robo-squid who want to wrest control of the earth from the indigenous dinosaurs. Up until yesterday, I had only seen the promotional hype for this monstrous mash-up. Then Part 1 of the comic arrived at my door.

The front matter makes the origin and intent of the story crystal clear. Barry Sonnenfeld, director of the comic-book adaptation Men in Black and its sequels, wanted to organize a graphic novel as a dry run for a feature film. (Rumor has it that there are big plans to turn this story into a cgi-filled blockbuster.) The dinosaur-meets-alien idea came out of the director’s interest in manifest destiny and the atrocities visited on Native Americans by white settlers and explorers who took western North America for themselves. The equation is simple. Sonnenfeld’s aliens are the equivalent of white settlers, and the dinosaurs – daubed with war paint and feathers – are the Native Americans in this alternate history tale.

Scribe Grant Morrison fleshed out Sonnenfeld’s idea, and artist Mukesh Singh brought the tale to life. The result is a glossy detailed book that sets the stage for this prehistoric war of the worlds.

The first chapter is tight and well-executed. Morrison uses a recorded message from one of the alien explorers – discovered in the aftermath of the epic battle the comic describes – to simultaneously explain the alien plan and characterize the primary dinosaur cast. As the alien regretfully describes their plans and hopes for the new world, the dinosaurs act out their own drama according to the narrative. In this first part, the stories of the aliens and dinosaurs dovetail. Since the dinosaurs don’t speak, though, Singh is mostly responsible for telling their story. His scary, osteoderm-covered dinosaurs are further augmented by feathers, paint, and fancy headdresses, and while not totally accurate, each kind of dinosaur that appears is immediately recognizable. Big, sharp-toothed tyrannosaurs, spinosaurs, and allosauroids are the dinosaur leaders, but there are sauropods, ankylosaurs, pachycephalosaurs, and others in the background.

Singh maintains the sharp, beautiful contrast between our Mesozoic heroes and the technologically superior aliens in chapter two, but the narrative starts to slip. Morrison shifts from the taut, straightforward storytelling he established in the first chapter into a purple, flowery style. “When we sounded the arrival horns, it must have seemed as if the sky tore open and rained cathedral bells,” one panel gushes, and another describes how the invading aliens trailed “flags of rainbow vapor, on streamers of cloud.” It’s all a bit too much, especially when Singh beautifully illustrates the scenes on his own.

Even the art eventually falters. Singh’s illustrations in chapter 3 aren’t anywhere as crisp or details as in the first two sections, and here we start to meet awkward, poorly-drawn dinosaurs that look as if they were dashed off in a race to meet publication.

Despite these issues, Dinosaurs vs Aliens is not as corny as I expected. The ‘manifest destiny’ metaphor feels a little heavy-handed at times, but, so far, the parallel with human history keeps the story moving forward at a brisk pace. Since the Part 1 is primarily concerned with filling in background and setting the scene, though, the real test of the graphic novel will be when Sonnenfeld, Morrison and Singh do with the conflict they have created. The premise is in place, and both sides are poised to strike at each other, but the war is yet to come.

The cover art for Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens.

Dinosaurs will fight just about anyone. That’s what movies and comics have taught me, anyway. No surprise, then, that we will soon see a science fiction mash-up that has been due for some time now: Dinosaurs vs. Aliens.

The graphic novel’s premise is exactly what it sounds like. Aliens visit the Mesozoic, and the dinosaurs don’t take too kindly to the invasion. To level the playing field, comic creator Grant Morrison made the dinosaurs extra intelligent. A smattering a preview art even shows dinosaurs that apparently decorated themselves with bone weapons and feather headdresses. Mercifully, though, Morrison’s dinosaurs don’t talk. Instead, much like the creatures in Ricardo Delgado’s Age of Reptiles series, the dinosaurs communicate through body language. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Morrison said, “In fact, imagine The Artist, but with bloody, razor-sharp fangs!”

And that’s not all. Even though the graphic novel hasn’t even hit shelves yet, the story is being transmuted into a screenplay for a feature film. Multiple reports and interviews mention that Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld is working with Morrison on a big-screen adaptation, although there is no certainty that we’ll ever see a Tyrannosaurus chomp into a flying saucer in the theater. The “versus” hook is already pretty worn, and last year’s Cowboys & Aliens—also adapted from comics—was not the awesome blockbuster that Hollywood executives were hoping for. I think dinosaurs have a bit more cultural pull than cowboys, but silent dinosaurs versus alien hordes might be too silly and contrived to make it to the big screen. Might this be the next great dinosaur film? I’m skeptical.

Superhero dinosaurs: Captain America as Triceratops; Tyrannosaurus as the Hulk and Compsognathus as Bruce Banner; Ankylosaurus as Thor. Art by David Resto.

The superheroes of the Marvel comic universe are pretty cool—Iron Man, the Hulk, Wolverine and many others are enduring favorites—but do you know what would make them even more awesome? If they were dinosaurs.

Artist David Resto has mashed up some of the most beloved Marvel comic characters with classic dinosaurs, and the results look like what my dinosaur-loving, comic-collecting 10-year-old self dreamed of. The roguish Gambit as the crested predator Dilophosaurus, Captain America as the shield-headed Triceratops, Daredevil as the horned carnivore Carnotaurus—the amalgamations of pop culture and prehistory Resto has created look worthy of their own one-shot special issue, at least.

I recently asked Resto a few questions about the creation of his dinosaurian superheroes.

Brian Switek: What inspired the creation of superhero dinosaurs?

David Resto: Childhood fascinations, really. Dinosaurs, Superheros… it just made sense for me to get the two together. I was even contemplating doing turtles as superheroes, but somebody got to those way before I did. Ha.

Daredevil as Carnotaurus. Art by David Resto.

BS: How did you choose which superhero should be represented by which dinosaur? Do the dinosaur choices reflect something about each superhero?

DR: For the first round of dinosaurs, The Avengersaurs, I tried to incorporate the superheros element into these terrible lizards. Iron Brontosaurus was the first and most random. When I doodled him out from the reference, he already looked like he was taking flight from rockets at his feet. This spawned the rest. The bone shield of a Triceratops for the Captain. The primal anger of a Tyrannosaurus rex and his miniature Compsognathus, Bruce Banner, at his feet. Lastly, the almighty Mjolnir at the base of Ankylothaurus‘ tail in the adaptation to Thor. After the first set, I just wanted to incorporate my favorite characters to my equally as favorite superhero. I think Stegolossus could be my absolute favorite one that I’ve drawn up.

BS: I write about this topic so often, I have to ask. I noticed that some of the dinosaurs that should have feathers—like Wolveraptor and Nightcrawlimimus—don’t have any. Are they just hidden under the costumes?

DR: Ah, yes. I’ve caught a lot of slack for the Velociraptor and the use of Brontosaurus. The way I went about it is exactly as I did with my childhood. I grew up with these dinosaurs as I represented them. The Spielberg faux pas of Velociraptor is what’s engrained in popularity nowadays. But then again, just like Wolverine and other comic book character adaptations, there is a lot left to interpretation and sheer fun. I suppose if there’s some sort of dinosaur/political correctness organization, they can persuade me to revise these illustrations to best fit their models.

BS: What references did you use to create the dinosaur images?

DR: All of my dino references were discovered online. Google searches and what not. I have linked to the references on each dinosaur through my Flickr and there are also a couple of screencasts that show my process, from laying out the references of both dinos and superheros, to a minimalist trace and layering of the superhero attire. As for the backgrounds, those are fairly abstract. Watching over the screencasts, one can witness first hand the spontaneity of them.

BS: Finally, are there any more superhero dinosaurs on the way? Or even supervillain dinosaurs?

DR: Well, I didn’t expect the dinosaurs to be as popular as they are. The first month I illustrated the majority of them and burned myself out a bit. Since then, I’ve graduated from college and started working full-time and keeping up on other hobbies that I haven’t been able to get the art flow back. I’d like to go the villain route as every superhero needs its counterpart. For now though, I’m trying to get the business end of these guys together before I take another step. I want these to be in good quality and taste for people around the world to enjoy. I’m in the process of perfecting posters and maybe even T-shirts very soon. So, stay tuned.

More Superhero Dinosaurs can be found at the official website, where posters of each are also available.

A reconstructed Tyrannosaurus rex at the Museum of Ancient Life. Photo by author.

A few months ago I took at look back at Jim Lawson’s dinosaur-centered series Paleo. This wasn’t like Disney’s Dinosaur, but a bloodier collection of tales about survival in the Late Cretaceous of North America. The comic’s run ended a few years back, that is, until Lawson started posting pages from his previously unpublished story “Loner” on the web.

As you might guess from the title, “Loner” is the tale of a solitary tyrannosaur. He is one hate-filled beast. In the first few pages alone our star contemplates devouring the young of a nearby female tyrannosaur for no other reason than to quell  his inner turmoil. Not exactly a sympathetic hero.

I won’t say more about the story here—you can check it out for yourself as the the tale continues. In regard to the artwork, though, “Loner” gets off to a rough start. The artwork is not as detailed as that in the original run of the series, and there are a lot of odd, sharp angles on the dinosaurs. The tyrannosaurs look pointy in places they shouldn’t. It’s also difficult to tell the individual animals apart—the book is filled with tyrannosaurs, each looks almost the same as any other. Thank goodness there are text panels to explain who’s who. Given the general lack of new dinosaur comics lately, though, I’m still glad to see Paleo back for another round.

[Hat-tip to Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs for tipping me off to Lawson's blog.]

The cover of Doug TenNapel's Tommysaurus Rex.

According to Robert Mash, author of How to Keep Dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex is the antithesis of everything a good pet should be. “Literally awful and almost certainly needing a special insurance policy” to keep, the king of the tyrant dinosaurs would be nothing more than a bloody catastrophe waiting to happen. That hasn’t stopped dinosaur fans from imagining what it might be like to keep a pet tyrannosaur, though, and that childhood fantasy was played out in Doug TenNapel’s 2005 graphic novel Tommysaurus Rex.

TenNapel’s story starts out with a sadly familiar tragedy—a young boy named Ely loses his best friend when his dog is struck and killed by a car. In an attempt to take the boy’s mind off the accident, his parents send him to stay on his grandfather’s farm for the summer. Insult is added to emotional injury when a gang of bullies assaults Ely, but he quickly finds a new friend and protector. Locked away in the recesses of a cave is a Tyrannosaurus rex—a friendly dinosaur that just happens to have the same mannerisms as Ely’s lost dog.

Naturally, the Tyrannosaurus immediately shows off why big, carnivorous dinosaurs would not make good pets. The predator gobbles up a cow, plows through fences, gives a few houses some impromptu remodeling, and leaves king-sized piles of dino scat all over the local park. Fortunately for Ely, though, the mayor and other townsfolk allow the dinosaur to stay, as long as the boy provides some better training for the prehistoric beast. Almost everyone seems mollified, save for one spiky-haired bully who has it out for Ely and his dinosaur.

But the story is not really about what it would be like to keep a Tyrannosaurus as a pet. The dinosaur is one big MacGuffin—an object that keeps the story moving along as the main characters develop. The dinosaur is there to teach Ely about loss, responsibility and, ultimately, sacrifice as his relationship with the town bully changes. There are a few cute moments specific to the dinosaur—legendary stop-motion film artist Ray Harryhausen makes a cameo to sketch the tyrannosaur—but the story is about Ely beginning to gain some emotional maturity more than a fantastical tale of a life with a dinosaur.

Drawn in black-and-white, TenNapel’s art is closer to that of Calvin and Hobbes than dinosaur-focused comics like Paleo or The Age of Reptiles. That doesn’t mean that TenNapel traded accuracy for a more distinctive personal style, though. The story’s Tyrannosaurus isn’t a plodding, Godzilla-like monster, but a lithe and agile creature that fits modern restorations of the famous dinosaur. Of course, a few embellishments were needed to make the carnivorous dinosaur a sympathetic character; for instance, the eyes and brow ridges of the dinosaur move to give the gargantuan pet emotional depth.

Tommysaurus Rex is not a detailed exploration of what it would be like to keep a pet Tyrannosaurus. It is not meant to be, and that’s a good thing. If Ely’s tyrannosaur had acted like the genuine article—one of the largest predators ever to walk the earth—the boy’s relationship with the dinosaur would have probably ended very abruptly. A flash of teeth, a crunch, and the book would have been finished. I am glad TenNapel took a different route!

The cover of the "Terrible Claws and Tyrants" issue of Dinosaurs: A Celebration. Cover art by Ken Walker.

Paleo, Age of Reptiles, Tyrant—this week I’ve been looking back at comics that tell the stories of dinosaurs in Mesozoic settings (no humans allowed). How dinosaurs have appeared in comics can tell us something about the way images of these creatures have changed and how science trickles into popular culture, and the Marvel/Epic collaboration on Dinosaurs: A Celebration is a great example of what happens when dinosaurs, comics and technical details about prehistory are all thrown into a blender together.

Dinosaurs: A Celebration was not a typical comic series. Run in four issues, the series covered “Bone-Heads and Duck-Bills,” “Egg Stealers and Earth-Shakers,” “Horns and Heavy Armor” and “Terrible Claws and Tyrants.” Instead of giving each dinosaur group one single storyline, though, representative species were brought to life in short comic stories which were sandwiched between explanatory sections about the state of knowledge about dinosaurs circa 1992. A preface to each issue by series editor Steve White explains that the series was meant to be as specific as possible, acting as a condensed dinosaur encyclopedia in addition to an anthology of illustrated stories.

The series was hit-and-miss. While the encyclopedia-type portions attempted to be educational, the short collections of semi-technical passages were dry and uninspiring, and the quality of the artwork varied from story to story. Late in the “Bone-Heads and Duck-Bills” issue there is a beautifully illustrated tale about an attack on a Pachycephalosaurus herd by a Tyrannosaurus pack drawn by well-known paleo-artist Luis Rey, but a comic about South American sauropods illustrated by Chris Foss in another issue directly lifts poses from other works of paleo-art, and the dinosaurs have a lumpy, muddy look about them.

To the credit of the series, though, the comic sections were not overloaded with dinosaurs. There was an emphasis on pack hunting, family behavior, and other bits of speculation that might make a paleontologist wince, but the animals were almost always shown with other species from the same general time and place. A story about a Stegosaurus correctly casts Allosaurus as the villain, for example, and a tale about Struthiomimus set in Alberta, Canada circa 80 million years ago includes only dinosaurs found within the Dinosaur Park Formation.

Like the other comics covered this week, the animals of Dinosaurs: A Celebration were active, socially complex animals. Some of the illustrated dinosaurs still dragged their tails, and there were a few other bits of creative anatomy, but they were generally cast in the mold of dynamic creatures rather than stupid, swamp-bound monsters.

Our understanding of dinosaurs has changed significantly since 1992, though, and there were a few parts that made me cringe as I revisited them. For one thing, the books state that the two main branches of the dinosaur family tree—the saurischia and ornithischia—did not actually share a common dinosaurian ancestor. They had both evolved independently from a similar ancestral species and just happened to converge on a number of features, the comic suggests—but we know this isn’t correct. Both dinosaur subsets did share a common, early dinosaur ancestor and are linked together by a semi-opposable thumb on the hand, a reduction in fingers four and five and an open hip socket. Much remains unknown about the very first dinosaurs and their evolution, but the ornithischian and saurischian dinosaurs are part of the same evolutionary group.

The organization of carnivorous dinosaurs in the “Terrible Claws and Tyrants” issue is an even better indicator of how much has changed since 1992. The comic groups all the large, meat-eating dinosaurs into the group Carnosauria, with all the smaller theropods distributed through a variety of other families. Allosaurus, Tyrannosaurus and Carnotaurus are all listed under one heading because they were big and carnivorous, but size and diet aren’t everything.

Through ongoing investigations, paleontologists have found that the evolution of theropod dinosaurs was very complex. For example, Tyrannosaurus was a giant coelurosaur, a group once thought to contain only small, fleet-footed theropods. Rather than being the next evolutionary step from the Jurassic Allosaurus, the tyrant dinosaur was only a distant cousin, with Allosaurus being more closely related to other giant predators such as Acrocanthosaurus and Giganotosaurus. And, within these revised relationships, many theropods belonging to the coelurosaur subset have turned out to be omnivores or herbivores, meaning that the word “theropod” is no longer synonymous with “meat-eating dinosaur.”

Flipping through it now, the creatures in Dinosaurs: A Celebration—as well as the other comics I reviewed this week—represent the Mesozoic world as I first encountered it. It was a strange transitional phase for dinosaurs. The “Dinosaur Renaissance” had moved the animals out of the swamp and gave them a wider repertoire of behaviors,  but many still dragged their tails and the idea that some of them might have been especially bird-like, feathered animals was still considered to be highly speculative. The dinosaurs of the 1990s were odd creatures that were gradually being remodeling as new finds clashes with traditional images of prehistoric life. Given how much has changed in the past two decades alone, I can only imagine how dinosaurs will look in another twenty years.

The cover of Steve Bissette's Tyrant, issue 2.

Comic books about the day-to-day lives of dinosaurs pop up only every once in a while. More often than not, pen and ink dinosaurs threaten to stomp and chomp unlucky humans who cross their paths, and occasionally a dinosaur will make a cameo appearance in one of the more famous comic franchises. By looking back at comics focused on the natural history of dinosaurs, though, we can get some idea about how perspectives of dinosaurs have changed over the years. Today I’ll be revisiting Steve Bissette’s short-lived series Tyrant.

Running for only four issues published between 1994 and 1996, Tyrant told the story of a mother Tyrannosaurus and her developing offspring in detailed panels of black and white. Yet this description is a bit too simple. The tyrannosaur family was at the center of the series—it is called Tyrant, after all—but Bissette often approached them indirectly, placing them within the rhythms of life and death in Late Cretaceous North America. There was a kind of poetry to the storytelling in which the lives of other animals formed essential parts of the narrative.

The fate of a mother Maiasaura in the second issue provides a good example of Bissette’s technique. Readers are introduced to a scene of broken tree limbs, blood and berries, which Bissette uses as a starting point on a trail leading to the mother Tyrannosaurus dragging a still-living Maiasaura back to the nest. Rather than make the narrative about the tyrannosaur, though, Bissette channeled the thoughts of the doomed hadrosaur—she had gone out to collect food for her young, too, and still carries a mouthful of berries. When the poor Maiasaura finally dies, a mix of blood and berries flow from her mouth in a well-executed three-panel sequence that makes the reader feel the passage of time even though the images on the page are static.

Scenes like the one I just described express Bissette’s strength as a storyteller in Tyrant. The series was about the most celebrated dinosaur of all time, yet the tyrannosaurs did not wholly dominate the storyline. Readers approach the tyrannosaur families from different angles—from the perspective of prey and, in issue four, an unlucky egg-stealer—and this enriched the narrative.

There was one aspect of Tyrant that, to my mind, made it special. At the back of each issue, Bissette included a few supplemental sections featuring correspondence, movie reviews and details about the dinosaurs featured in the series. In this case, at least, the comments of paleontologists about the comic led to a positive collaboration that actually influenced the story.

At the back of issue two, Bissette included comments on the first issue from paleontologists James Farlow and Thomas Carr (the latter of whom is currently one of the foremost tyrannosaur experts in the world). Both called Bissette to task for creating a Tyrannosaurus that, as Farlow put it, “is more reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen than of more recent restorations.” Carr added further critiques, pointing out that all of the story’s dinosaurian co-stars—Styracosaurus, Maiasaura and Chirostenotes—did not actually live alongside the titular tyrant.

Bissette replied by explaining why he made these decisions, but also that he hoped to improve the general level of accuracy in the book without sacrificing the story he had in mind. Maiasaura and Styracosaurus would not appear again, but the small coelurosaur Chirostenotes remained important to the story arc and would stay. Bissette also tweaked the anatomy of the mother Tyrannosaurus in response to the comments he received—she looked a bit better in issue four than she did in issue one.

Curiously, though, a note at the back of the first issue hints that paleontology can benefit from giving artists freedom to speculate. In the “Gizzard” section (because “dinosaurs didn’t have appendixes”, the header joked) Bissette explained that he chose to give the small coelurosaur Chirostenotes a coating of fuzzy feathers. After consulting with paleontologist Mark Ryan on this issue, Bissette found out that feathered dinosaurs were generally frowned upon:

I must also note Ryan’s (and many other paleontologists’) objections to restorations of theropods with feathers. Nothing in the fossil record indicates this is probable or even possible, despite the recent romantic passions for such picturesque adornment.

Just two years after Bissette wrote this, a photo of the first feathered dinosaur found in China made the rounds at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting. It was just the first of many such fossils to be found. (Other feathered dinosaurs had been found over a century before, but they were called Archaeopteryx and considered only as the very first birds until the dinosaur-avian connection was confirmed.) Today, paleontologists would criticize any artist who didn’t give a small coelurosaur like Chirostenotes a downy coat. Our understanding of dinosaurs is changing on an almost daily basis, and exquisite fossils often cause us to reconsider what we thought was improbable or impossible.

I was thrilled when I was able to track down issues of Bissette’s out-of-print series, and the notes at the end of each issue make them all the sweeter. It is one thing to see an illustration and wonder about the process by which it was created and quite another to have an artist let you into his head. The way we imagine living dinosaurs is influenced by a confluence of scientific information, artwork and popular mythology, and Tyrant offers a rare look at how all those factors came together to create an image of prehistoric life.

See my previous posts on Paleo and Age of Reptiles for more on pen and ink dinosaurs.

Up Next: I wrap up this blog series with Dinosaurs: A Celebration

Age of Reptiles: Tribal Warfare by Ricardo Delgado.

Yesterday’s post kicked off my look back at dinosaurs that stomped, roared and chomped their way through comics with Jim Lawson’s Paleo. Rather than placing dinosaurs in the modern era or sending people back to the Cretaceous, Lawson’s stories stood out because he considered dinosaurs in their own world. He wasn’t the first to do so. Other artists have interpreted Mesozoic life if their own unique ways, including Ricardo Delgado in Age of Reptiles.

While Paleo was a collection of one-shot stories that changed characters with every issue, the collected Age of Reptiles covers three limited series published over more than 15 years, each featuring different dinosaurian stars. The series kicked off in 1993 with a tale of warring Deinonychus and Tyrannosaurus (“Tribal Warfare”), was followed in 1997 by a story of a young Allosaurus out for revenge against a pack of Ceratosaurus (“The Hunt”) and recently re-appeared as a visual narrative about the travels of an immense dinosaur herd (“The Journey”).

Delgado’s storytelling style is entirely visual. Unlike Paleo, Tyrant and Dinosaurs: A Celebration, there is no text to guide the reader or tell you what a particular animal is thinking or feeling. This gives the stories a more cinematic flow, as if you boiled down a documentary about prehistoric life into a series of frames. But early on, it also caused Delgado to make his dinosaurs slightly anthropomorphic. The Deinonychus pack in “Tribal Warfare” is especially expressive, wearing grimaces of shock and fear that would have been impossible for the real animals. These little flourishes are absent from “The Journey,” though, and this latest installment in the series is stronger for it—the dinosaurs in this book look more like real animals.

The artistic style varies from book to book as well. In the first book the colors are flat and bright—featuring horned dinosaurs in clashing greens and yellows, and a Saltasaurus with a rainbow neck—while “The Hunt” has a glossier look in which the colors shade into one another. Compared to the earlier installments, the colors of “The Journey” look relatively muted, but generally more realistic than the bright blues, greens, purples and reds of the earlier books. (As shown by sketches in the back of the Age of Reptiles anthology, the colors of the dinosaurs in “The Journey” were modeled after mammals of the modern-day African savanna.) Strangely, though, the dinosaurs of last book are not drawn in as much detail. The book has an unfinished look to it, at least until the few action frames in which the dinosaurs are drawn to a finer scale.

As for the dinosaurs themselves, Delgado continued in classic dinosaur comic tradition of picking characters that never actually met during prehistory. At the start of the first issue, a pack of Deinonychus (an early Cretaceous predator from North America) attacks a Saltasaurus (an armored sauropod found in the Late Cretaceous of Argentina), and the chief rivals of the pack are a family of Tyrannosaurus (giant theropods from the Late Cretaceous of North America). Even worse is a show-down at the end of the first book which takes place in a Brachiosaurus graveyard inhabited by the predatory dinosaurs Carnotaurus, Baryonyx, Dilophosaurus and Oviraptor, all of which lived at different times and in different places all over the world. The Mesozoic mixing isn’t quite so egregious in the following books, but well-read dinosaur fans will be able to spot when creatures from different slices of prehistory are artificially brought together on the page.

The behavior of the dinosaurs was also modified to fit the needs of the storyline. In “Tribal Warfare” and “The Hunt,” especially, the carnivorous dinosaurs are mostly concerned with exacting revenge and ripping one another’s throats out. They don’t act like dinosaurs so much as supercharged monsters trying to protect their respective families. “The Journey” deviates from this pattern in regarding dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures as animals, and while they are mostly motivated by hunger, Delgado included some curious behavioral flourishes.

Following a large and varied herd of herbivorous dinosaurs on a migration to better feeding grounds, “The Journey” opens on a frost-bitten morning. Each species of dinosaur huddles together for warmth. While the Triceratops create a defensive ring around juveniles in the middle, a herd of diplodocids drape their necks and tails over one another to corral their own young. As the dinosaurs wake up, they shake off the ice and blow hot breath from their nostrils into the chilly air—there is no question that these are behaviorally complex, “hot-blooded” dinosaurs.

As would be expected, though, many of the ideas Delgado visually expresses in “The Journey” are speculative, and this is especially apparent in over-the-top sequences featuring predators. Though the massive herd is constantly trailed by a Tyrannosaurus and its two young offspring, the chief threats to the migrating dinosaurs are swarms of Velociraptor, crocodiles and, in the final chapter, marine reptiles such as mosasaurs. In one particularly gory encounter, scores of Velociraptor come streaming out of their cliffside roost and begin eviscerating every animal they can catch, adult sauropods included. Delgado’s art puts the reader right in the middle of it—watching wounds open and guts spill—and this is repeated when the herd crosses a crocodile-infested river. (In a particularly ingenious panel, Delgado shows that the well-armored ankylosaurs were not invulnerable from attack.)

The number of predators Delgado throws at his dinosaurs is ridiculous, but, though gruesome, the violence is well thought-out and reinforces the goal of the traveling herbivores to eat without being eaten themselves. “Tribal Warfare” featured Kill Bill-style violence between raptors and tyrants, but “The Journey” is more akin to what you would expect to see when spotted hyenas run down a wildebeest or lions take down a Cape buffalo. Where documentary programs and books about living predators turn away, Delgado sticks with the scenes, following the breakdown of the dinosaurs.

Delgado’s dinosaurs are clearly products of the major shift that occurred in dinosaur studies in the late 20th century, but this influence is broad rather than specific. Even though “The Journey” debuted in 2009, for example, its dinosaurs don’t always match up with what paleontologists now understand. The raptors and ornithomimid dinosaurs in the book should have been at least partially covered in feathers, for example, and discoveries of juvenile dinosaur “gangs” have been taken to suggest that some dinosaurs did not provide extended care to their young. And, while there is evidence that raptors could be gregarious, there is no evidence for dozens of small predators overrunning sauropods and other large dinosaurs.

That’s the constant tension in comic book stories about dinosaurs. The art and stories are inspired and informed by science, but they are also works of fiction in which the author must develop characters and sometimes go out on a limb about behaviors of long-dead animals. All the background research in the world can’t help you if you don’t have a good story, and in this respect I think Age of Reptiles is one of the better dinosaur series to date. By abandoning captions, Delgado was free to create visions of prehistoric life that make the reader feel as if they are traveling along with the illustrated animals.

In fact, I wonder if some of Delgado’s flourishes will make it on-screen. He is one of the consultants for the Discovery Channel’s upcoming Reign of the Dinosaurs series, which will also feature dinosaurs in a natural setting. Be on the lookout for sauropod sleeping circles and huge raptor packs.

Next Up: Tyrant.