kicknz
09-30-2003, 03:12 PM
From Ain't It Cool News . . .
THE COLLECTED PALEO: TALES OF THE LATE CRETACEOUS (TPB)
Writer/Artist: Jim Lawson
Publisher: Zeromayo Studios
Reviewed by Cormorant
"PALEO is an honest-to-god 'dinosaur comic,' and an impeccable one at that…"
So says comic artist and writer Steve Bissette in his introduction to THE COLLECTED PALEO. It's a trade reprinting the six-part PALEO miniseries that slipped past most folks' radars last year, and Bissette, of course, was one of the artists whose pens brought SWAMP THING to new levels of horror during Alan Moore's groundbreaking run. He also wowed me with his own regrettably short-lived dinosaur comic, TYRANT, a fantastic self-published comic that fell victim to the comic market collapse of the early 90's. More to the point, Bissette knows what he's talking about when it comes to dinosaurs, and when he says PALEO is an "honest-to-God dinosaur comic," what he means is that this isn't a Disneyfied tale of talking dinosaurs nor a tale of a lost island of dinosaurs in contemporary times – nope, these dinosaurs are the real deal, utterly animalistic and no more or less sympathetic than any animal profiled on the DISCOVERY CHANNEL.
And man do they look cool!
The writer/artist of PALEO is Jim Lawson, best known to most folks for working several years on the Ninja Turtles comics. I've seen his work on some of those comics and its good, but this…this you can tell he's poured his heart and soul into. It reads something like Art Adams' style, with some of the most detailed hatching and cross-hatching I've seen all year. These dinosaurs are tactile; you can feel every mottled patch of skin, the peaks and valleys of skin stretched over giant bones, and every razor-sharp claw. I look at a superstar artist like Jim Lee, and while he's solid and getting better, his use of cross-hatching seems more a stylistic affectation than the mature use of the process to simulate three-dimensionality in a 2-D image. Lawson's better than Lee. Like a Joe Kubert or a Barry Windsor-Smith, he uses crosshatching to reveal the contours of his characters with lines that seem to wrap around them. He's also got a wonderful command of spotted blacks (the heavily inked areas that lend visual balance to a comic page) and a flair for storytelling that combines cinematic techniques with minimal-panel-count pages that give over lots of space to the visual grandeur that is…big-ass dinosaurs!
I mention the art before the story, a rarity for me, because when the subjects are as visually arresting as dinosaurs, well, how the hell do you ignore it? But that's not to say that Lawson's writing isn't memorable as well. Each of the six stories in PALEO profiles a single dinosaur, and Lawson's omniscient narrator describes their harsh, survival-driven lives with an appropriate economy of words. I'd even say it's reminiscent of Frank Miller's SIN CITY writing style – spare and harsh - though of course, PALEO's got no first-person narrators. No, Lawson doesn't anthropomorphize his subject matter, but he does evoke sympathy for them as he takes you along on their daily journeys, inevitably through some pulse-pounding bout with danger; often into tragedy.
One of my favorite stories is about an aging Albertosaurus (a close relative of the T-Rex). It's getting clumsier in its old age, the narrator informs us, and we see it for ourselves when an awkward attack lands it a grisly leg wound from one of those dinosaurs that looks like a Triceratops, but with spikes all over its neck frill. Where two issues prior, an Albertosaur had been an antagonist, here the narration gives us sympathy for its plight:
"He regards the wound on his leg. It's bad. The Ceratopsid's horns had ripped open several large gashes in his lower leg, right down to his fibula. There is a lot of blood."
The narrator follows with an anecdote typical of Lawson's ability to bring these animals' histories to life:
"He has been hurt before. Once, in a fight with another Albertosaur, he had damaged his jaw so badly he couldn't eat for nearly three weeks."
Are you on its side yet? I know I was. And there's a really wonderful image of the Albertosaur on the next page, waking up on its side, having slept through a night that layered it in snow. We see the old dinosaur lick its mostly coagulated wound clean, before rising on its painfully stiff leg to investigate the strange quiet in the area. You see…there's another Albertosaurus in the area. It's young, and while usually a scavenger at that age, it's not above bringing down one of its own were it weak or injured…
Exactly how that tale plays out, I'll leave to you to discover. I will say, however, that nearly all of the stories in PALEO are unflinchingly dark, and I had to wonder if that reflected something of its author's worldview. Which fascinates me. Not every moment of every dinosaur's life was harsh, I'm sure, but if a creator chooses to focus on those moments that were, well…that's actually pretty interesting. Gives these tales bite! And I'm willing to bet that readers will get caught up in these stories if they give them a chance. There's a primal desperation to survive throughout PALEO that everyone can identify with, and Lawson brings it to the fore with teeth gnashing and bones cracking.
Which isn't to say you shouldn't share this book with the audience who'd perhaps delight in it the most – kids. You will have to remind them of the whole "Circle of Life" thing, possibly on every fifth page, but they will dig the hell out of Lawson's fantastic dinosaurs. That much I guarantee, and hell, the same goes for any adult who still loves the ol' "terrible lizards." PALEO's a clean, straightforward, and beautifully crafted little trade. It won't change your life, but I won't be surprised at all if readers find these tales as surprisingly moving as I did.
THE COLLECTED PALEO: TALES OF THE LATE CRETACEOUS (TPB)
Writer/Artist: Jim Lawson
Publisher: Zeromayo Studios
Reviewed by Cormorant
"PALEO is an honest-to-god 'dinosaur comic,' and an impeccable one at that…"
So says comic artist and writer Steve Bissette in his introduction to THE COLLECTED PALEO. It's a trade reprinting the six-part PALEO miniseries that slipped past most folks' radars last year, and Bissette, of course, was one of the artists whose pens brought SWAMP THING to new levels of horror during Alan Moore's groundbreaking run. He also wowed me with his own regrettably short-lived dinosaur comic, TYRANT, a fantastic self-published comic that fell victim to the comic market collapse of the early 90's. More to the point, Bissette knows what he's talking about when it comes to dinosaurs, and when he says PALEO is an "honest-to-God dinosaur comic," what he means is that this isn't a Disneyfied tale of talking dinosaurs nor a tale of a lost island of dinosaurs in contemporary times – nope, these dinosaurs are the real deal, utterly animalistic and no more or less sympathetic than any animal profiled on the DISCOVERY CHANNEL.
And man do they look cool!
The writer/artist of PALEO is Jim Lawson, best known to most folks for working several years on the Ninja Turtles comics. I've seen his work on some of those comics and its good, but this…this you can tell he's poured his heart and soul into. It reads something like Art Adams' style, with some of the most detailed hatching and cross-hatching I've seen all year. These dinosaurs are tactile; you can feel every mottled patch of skin, the peaks and valleys of skin stretched over giant bones, and every razor-sharp claw. I look at a superstar artist like Jim Lee, and while he's solid and getting better, his use of cross-hatching seems more a stylistic affectation than the mature use of the process to simulate three-dimensionality in a 2-D image. Lawson's better than Lee. Like a Joe Kubert or a Barry Windsor-Smith, he uses crosshatching to reveal the contours of his characters with lines that seem to wrap around them. He's also got a wonderful command of spotted blacks (the heavily inked areas that lend visual balance to a comic page) and a flair for storytelling that combines cinematic techniques with minimal-panel-count pages that give over lots of space to the visual grandeur that is…big-ass dinosaurs!
I mention the art before the story, a rarity for me, because when the subjects are as visually arresting as dinosaurs, well, how the hell do you ignore it? But that's not to say that Lawson's writing isn't memorable as well. Each of the six stories in PALEO profiles a single dinosaur, and Lawson's omniscient narrator describes their harsh, survival-driven lives with an appropriate economy of words. I'd even say it's reminiscent of Frank Miller's SIN CITY writing style – spare and harsh - though of course, PALEO's got no first-person narrators. No, Lawson doesn't anthropomorphize his subject matter, but he does evoke sympathy for them as he takes you along on their daily journeys, inevitably through some pulse-pounding bout with danger; often into tragedy.
One of my favorite stories is about an aging Albertosaurus (a close relative of the T-Rex). It's getting clumsier in its old age, the narrator informs us, and we see it for ourselves when an awkward attack lands it a grisly leg wound from one of those dinosaurs that looks like a Triceratops, but with spikes all over its neck frill. Where two issues prior, an Albertosaur had been an antagonist, here the narration gives us sympathy for its plight:
"He regards the wound on his leg. It's bad. The Ceratopsid's horns had ripped open several large gashes in his lower leg, right down to his fibula. There is a lot of blood."
The narrator follows with an anecdote typical of Lawson's ability to bring these animals' histories to life:
"He has been hurt before. Once, in a fight with another Albertosaur, he had damaged his jaw so badly he couldn't eat for nearly three weeks."
Are you on its side yet? I know I was. And there's a really wonderful image of the Albertosaur on the next page, waking up on its side, having slept through a night that layered it in snow. We see the old dinosaur lick its mostly coagulated wound clean, before rising on its painfully stiff leg to investigate the strange quiet in the area. You see…there's another Albertosaurus in the area. It's young, and while usually a scavenger at that age, it's not above bringing down one of its own were it weak or injured…
Exactly how that tale plays out, I'll leave to you to discover. I will say, however, that nearly all of the stories in PALEO are unflinchingly dark, and I had to wonder if that reflected something of its author's worldview. Which fascinates me. Not every moment of every dinosaur's life was harsh, I'm sure, but if a creator chooses to focus on those moments that were, well…that's actually pretty interesting. Gives these tales bite! And I'm willing to bet that readers will get caught up in these stories if they give them a chance. There's a primal desperation to survive throughout PALEO that everyone can identify with, and Lawson brings it to the fore with teeth gnashing and bones cracking.
Which isn't to say you shouldn't share this book with the audience who'd perhaps delight in it the most – kids. You will have to remind them of the whole "Circle of Life" thing, possibly on every fifth page, but they will dig the hell out of Lawson's fantastic dinosaurs. That much I guarantee, and hell, the same goes for any adult who still loves the ol' "terrible lizards." PALEO's a clean, straightforward, and beautifully crafted little trade. It won't change your life, but I won't be surprised at all if readers find these tales as surprisingly moving as I did.