Age of Reptiles (1993), Omnibus Volume 1

July 1, 2011

No New York gang rumble, in West Side Story or elsewhere, could be as gorgeous or as bloody as the dinosaur dust-ups so abundant in this wordless collection. Probably no actual dinosaur conflicts could be, either: the color choices are pure speculation, the depicted population density improbable, and--according to a Smithsonian article--many of these saurian species never coexisted in place or era. Age of Reptiles began in the 1990s as Eisner-winning comic books and grew into three series. In Tribal Warfare, a clan of Deinonychus steals the eggs of a marauding tyrannosaurus that chased them off their hard-earned prey. The Hunt follows a young allosaurus that takes revenge on the pack of ceratosaurs that slaughtered its mother. Never before collected, the final series, The Journey, follows a mass migration of numerous dinosaur species. All three stories appear here in Delgado's clear-line, you-are-there realism. VERDICT Understood as nature fantasy (reversing James Gurney's Dinotopia) rather than paleontological nonfiction, this collection emerges as a classic of storytelling and a sumptuous meal for dinosaur geeks, tweens and up. Note that frequent and explicit violence may limit placement. Dark Horse confirms that Delgado is planning future volumes.--M.C.

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