Tag Archives: Ricardo Delgado

Oh No! Not the Babies! Age of Reptiles Ancient Egyptians Issue 2 Review

by in Ancient Egypt, Comics, Dinosaurs and tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Well, #JurassicJune is over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue enjoying awesome dinosaur filled stories. Last time, I reviewed Age of Reptiles Ancient Egyptians Issue 1, and had a little bit of a heart attack just from the mere knowledge that it existed.

Once calm, I enjoyed the story quite a bit, and was fascinated by the texture of the images, how easy the story was to engage with even without speech bubbles, and how the paralititans are showed as dangerous and not gentle giants.

For the most part, everything that I enjoyed in issue one remains present in issue two. The artwork is still incredible. Primal in a way that really allows the reader to feel like they’re in the ancient past. Brutal too, but that likely has more to do with the content of the story.

Still no speech bubbles . . . and still a unique and interesting choice which adds to the story rather than takes away from it.

I was bit disappointed by our second encounter with Paralititan Stromeri, which are attacked early in this issue by Carcharodontosaurus. In issue one, Paralititans were massive, almost bullying creatures, larger than life and seemingly unassailable. Without getting into spoilers, the opening scene of issue 2 shows that no longer to be the case, and the reader is again presented with a sort of cow-like creature that despite its size cannot defend against smaller but more vicious predators.

It seemed a bit of a step backwards to me.

Regardless of what we think the creatures may have really been like or not, they had been set up one way in issue one and were now being depicted as something else. I suppose not all individuals in a group are the same, and perhaps this group was merely less aggressive than what we saw before, but my initial reaction while reading was not as sense of “no behavior is a monolith” and that different groups will act differently, but one of “would that have happened like that?” Based on the expectations I had from issue one? I’m not sure it would have.

But issue two does not just rest on its laurels, it pushes forward, adding new elements while continuing excellence in the areas I enjoyed in issue one.

Slightly spoilery, but one new element brought to the fore in issue two was sex . . .

Yup, dino sex.

If you’re worried about the kind of hackneyed, purple, and often pornographic depictions of eroticism found in the quite baffling and prevalent sub-genre of Dinosaur Erotica, you needn’t be.

Courtship in issue two consists of presenting the lady Spino with a fish (we saw something similar with the Utahraptors in Raptor Red, one panel of them doing the deed, and then they retire to Lady Spino’s nest to find . . . well you’ll just have to read it.

In reality, its just ‘mating’, akin to something we might see in Prehistoric Planet or a documentary about some other kind of animal. It looks awkward, uncomfortable, and probably a bit painful for everyone involved. However, there is a pretty strong thematic current surrounding violence within this issue so perhaps its depiction adds to that stream. Who is to say? It certainly adds drama to what happens next which again, I don’t want to spoil (but is some deft story telling by Delgado).

Far more important thematically however, is the part of life’s cycle which comes after sex . . . Children.

We see each of the various dinosaurs rearing their young in some capacity during this issue, and I found this theme to be deftly used in each instance. Delgado discusses his inspiration in afterward text at the end of the issue, reliving his experience watching westerns and samurai movies. Sanjuro appears to have stuck with him, specifically the experience of a wandering samurai who gets drawn into local politics and helps nine young samurai. Sanjuro learns that violence is not always the answer.

Delgado says it caused him to think a lot about the place of violence in his work, and ultimately he decided it should be varied. All things considered, this issue seemed to me to be one of the violent ones.

Anyway, that’s all I have for you this week. Is anyone else reading these? Or has already read them? What did you think of issue two? Please leave your answers in the comments. Looking forward to chatting about this one!

See you next time!

Alert! Alert! This Is So Cool – Age of Reptiles Ancient Egyptians

by in Ancient Egypt, Comics, Dinosaurs and tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

We’re three quarters of the way through #JurassicJune2023, and by now you’re probably expecting another post about Prehistoric Planet. Episode five, Forests, would make the most sense and indeed that was the episode I was gearing up to rewatch and write about . . .

That is, until I stumbled across this: Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians.

At seeing this title, my existence became a rollercoaster. I can’t even tell you whether or not my palms were sweating, or if my knees got weak (feels like the next clause should be about my arms getting heavy or mom’s spaghetti). I don’t remember. All I know is that the next 45 minutes were a blur of google searches and a lot of whispered cursing.

This was my thing! The thing I had wanted to make. The thing I had hoped I’d staked a claim to with Narmer and The God-Beast. Had someone else already done it? Had I waited too long? Had someone copied me? Was theirs better?

All of these thoughts ran through my mind as I saw the cover image in a goodreads list about dinosaur books. Obviously these kind of thoughts are futile. Nothing is original and indeed even I can’t take credit for the Ancient-Egypt-and-Dinosaurs idea considering its genesis in my own headspace (I essentially ripped it of from a conspiracy theory).

Still, you just can’t help the things you feel sometimes . . .

Anyway, I had to know and so I purchased every issue of Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians in digital from Dark Horse comics.

It appears that I was safe enough for now. While this comic takes place in “Ancient Egypt“, it is not the time of pyramids or pharaohs. The Sphinx does not watch mysteriously as both men and dinosaurs go about their daily business.

For AoR:AE, “ancient” is the Cretaceous Period. While there is not a primate in sight, we do spend the issue with my beloved Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus as they hunt fish and defend themselves from another familiar face: Paradiddle Stromboli Paralititan Stromeri.

The Spino also encounters some smaller theropods which I believe are meant to represent Deltadromeus, and witnesses the death of a larger theropod which I believe is meant to be Carcharodontosaurus. All of these dinosaur friends I’ve used in my own fiction, and I think most of them might also be familiar from The Lost Dinosuars of Egypt.

I probably could get away with just gushing about these creatures for the rest of the post, but this post is supposed to be about a work of fiction, so I’ll do my best to stay on target.

I’ll admit that I’m still a newbie when it comes to comics. The last one I reviewed was the Annotated Sandman Vol.1 (need to pick up the rest of those!) back in 2022, and before that, only a handful of Moon Knight comics, so I can’t really say I’m well versed in this medium, but a couple of things stood out to me while reading AoR:AE.

Perhaps the easiest thing to notice is the images themselves. They’re incredible. It looks like Ricardo Delgado did both the writing and the artwork for these books, and it’s not like anything I’ve seen before. I’m at a complete loss for adequate vocabulary with which to describe what I’m seeing, but I’ll persist in trying anyway.

It sometimes feels like there’s as many black lines on the page as there is colored spaces (texture?). These dinosaurs are wrinkled and leathery things (unsure how prevalent feathered dinosaurs were in 2015 when this debuted), the trees gnarled and snaking, and just about everything is incredibly detailed.

Another dinosaur artist I hear about and see images from quite frequently, Mark Witton, posted on how Age of Reptiles influenced his own artwork. He notes that the framing of the images is ‘cinematic’, and likens the artwork to “… ambrosia from the loftiest peaks of Olympus.”

I have to agree.

The next thing which stuck out to me was the complete lack of dialogue or speech bubbles (seemingly a pretty common feature of comics). I suppose this only makes sense as dinosaurs would not have spoken any kind of language (despite what you see in Dinotopia), and a book filled with RAWRs and GRRRRs would easily become tiresome and quickly push the tone from serious to silly.

What’s amazing about this though, is that the narrative does not seem to suffer at all for the omission. Some frames which depicted a lot of movement were a struggle to understand what exactly was happening, but I imagine this would still have been the case with speech bubbles. I think it’s more my inexperience with the medium than any failure on the part of the depiction. AoR:AE‘s was still easy to follow, and also quite compelling. A feat to be sure.

Finally, I loved how the story framed the Paralititans as dangerous, almost villainous creatures. All sauropods are often depicted as gentle and peaceful giants, much like massive cows (a notion formed from the Jurassic Park movie no doubt).

But given the fact that nothing else around was even close to their size, I would not be shocked to find that they were the bullies of the cretaceous. Afterall what could stop them?

Give This One a Read?

Absolutely. Top marks for Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians. Pure dinosaurian ambrosia, made even sweeter by the fact that I don’t have to give up on my own Dinosaurs in Egypt setting. So good even that I may just take a quick break from Prehistoric Planet and work my way through these issues for a bit. I guess I’ll be back next time with Issue #2

That’s all I have for now. Has anyone read these yet? What stood out to you the most? Please leave your answers in the comments. I’m excited to talk about this one!

Still here? Awesome. I hope you enjoyed Alert! Alert! This Is So Cool – Age of Reptiles Ancient Egyptians. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, I had a similar idea in my own story, Narmer and the God Beast except I went full tilt and have ancient Egyptians and dinosaurs inhabiting the Nile Delta at the same time. How cool is that?

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