The Jurassic League #1 – Daniel Warren Johnson, Writer; Juan Gedeon, Artist; Mike Spicer, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Let’s get it out of the way first—this is absolutely the most ridiculous comic DC has put out in a very long time. A lot of comics are ridiculous, but few embrace it the way this Daniel Warren Johnson Elseworlds pastiche does. The question is “What if the Justice League were dinosaurs?” and this comic answers exactly that. In another world, a doomed planet sends a child off in a rocket—except that this child is a tiny blue apatasaurus-man who is adopted by a kindly caveman couple and grows into a massive but gentle guardian of his people—keeping a a small village safe from the vicious predators surrounding it. And they are vicious. While humans seem to be the majority on this world, there are large and often intelligent and monstrous evolved dinosaurs around, hunting them for food—and sometimes, even sport, as another mysterious hero on this world soon finds out.
This is the kind of book where a dinosaur Batman fights a velociraptor version of the Joker and later adopts a young human orphaned by the villain—and it’s all played deadly straight. Dinosaur versions of Black Manta and Aquaman still battle over who deserves to be the shepherd of the seas. On a far-away island of triceratops, a young princess has strange visions of a group of dinosaurs uniting to fight evil—and discovers that her island holds a dark secret. The funny thing is, this is obviously a bizarre pastiche that most would play for laughs, but these are actually really well-done reinventions of the Leaguers, particularly Superman and Batman’s analogues. The art by Juan Gedeon is… well, it’s the Justice League and villains as dinosaurs, so who doesn’t love that. It also seems like his style fused with Johnson’s at times. Overall, this is better than it has any right to be and seems like it could become a strange evergreen gem for DC.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
