Jumping-Off Points II: Jumping Out of Aircraft Obsessively, Continued

I said I'd come back to this and so I do. If the DC Relaunch is all about giving new readers jumping-on points, why all the jumping OFF imagery. Subliminally, all those people jumping our of aircraft is going to take its toll. After the first two weeks, DC had published seven comics with that image in them. The last two have added three more:

Comic: Batman: The Dark Knight #1Jump: Batman jumps dramatically out of his batplane at the beginning of the issue, not to fight crime, but to dress as Bruce Wayne in an alley and then swing up to a ballroom's balcony on a bat rope. Gratuitous AND stupid.

Comic: Blackhawks #1
Jump: During an attack on an airport, the Blackhawk known as Kunoichi first rips a guy out of his seat and into some suitcases before jumping off the crashing jet and into the water, slowing herself down with recoil from her "jackhammer" gun.

Comic: The Flash #1
Jump: Goons jump out of a VTOL plane and through a skylight, and one of them and the Flash later fall out of its back end during their escape.

That's 10 this month at DC, but to be fair, other comics publishers gave their readers similar jumping off points:

Comic: Captain America and Bucky #622
Jumps: First Namor, then Toro and Bucky jump out of an airplane to fight Nazi Antlanteans.

Comic: Super Dinosaur #4
Jump: Jets scramble to stop Maximum's aircraft from reach the Dynamo Dome, but the pilots have to bail when they find themselves outgunned.

Comic: Jurassic Park: Dangerous Games #1
Jump: The protagonist is thrown out of a helicopter into the swamps of Jurassic Park Island.

You know who DOESN'T bail out of a crashing plane this month?
Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.

Dinosaur Week Roundup

Monday, I said there was something in the air because dinosaurs were making a comeback. Today, we discuss a number of recent dinosaur sightings...

PrimevalThe show about temporal anomalies through which the "Walking with" creatures come through to the present and the paleontologists who love to fight them came back this year a hiatus of almost two years. Series 4 aired in January, and Series 5 is airing now. Of course, that's all in the UK (or BBC America, which I don't get), and I'm waiting for DVD versions to be issued to Region 1.

Terra Nova

Not waiting to be outdone by the Brits, FOX has made a big commitment to the Spielberg-exec-produced series about humanity abandoning the present (the grossly polluted year 2149) to colonize Prehistory. It's Star Trek's "All Our Yesterdays" meets Jurassic Park. The pilot was supposed to be aired in May as a sneak preview, but the amount of effects pushed it back to the fall. Looks promising, though the involvement of both FOX (the dreaded cancelers of things I like) and Brannon Braga (of Voyager infamy) do make me a little wary.

Jurassic Park 4
But that's not the only Spielberg dinosaur project in the pipeline. The Hollywood Reporter yesterday reported that there were ongoing talks about rebooting the franchise with a fourth film. Good possibility that Terra Nova is being used to grease the market's wheels and progress some CGI development?

Discovery Channel Comics
On Free Comic Book Day, the Discovery Channel unveiled a couple of upcoming series in a special free flipbook. One was about deadly sharks, the other was called Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Predators. While the art is competent, I'm afraid the story (about the "supercrocodile" Sarcosuchus) didn't agree with me. It tries to be a comic book version of the "Walking with" series, but fails by choosing the use the past tense in the narration. All the immediacy is lost. Of course, results may vary in the actual series, and this may yet prove a fun educational book for kids.

Power Girl
Recently, Power Girl and her cross-Earth cousin Superman could be seen fighting magical dinosaurs(!) in the pages of PG's comic, proving all the fun didn't go out of it when Palmiotti, Gray and the wonderful Amanda Connor left the book.

Heroes for Hire
Meanwhile, we've had Spider-Man swinging bioengineered velociraptors(!) around in the pages of Heroes for Hire!

Doc Savage
This month's issue of Doc Savage features the Man of Bronze fighting with a pteranodon!

Invincible
And as if Master Robert Kirkman didn't have his fill of dinosaurs in his recent hit, Super-Dinosaur, he also features the return of Dinosaurus in the pages of Invincible #80 this month. It's pure awesome with a side order of shocking ending.

Avengers Academy
Lest I forget before I leave the comic book world, the Avengers Academy still features Reptil, a superhero who can turn into any kind of dinosaur.

Doctor Who
And after getting only lukewarm reviews last year, the new Silurians are completely redeemed by Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat in the person of Madame Vastra, the Victorian Silurian samurai detective and monster hunter who, along with her butler and gay interspecies lover Jenny, became an overnight sensation after Series 6's mid-season finale. It seemed that for the better part of last week, people were more inclined to talk about the unlikely duo (and wishing very strongly for a spin-off series) than of the revelations about River Song. Quite right too. (Announcing heavy Doctor Who content next week. I've held my tongue too long.)

And I'm not even counting the new Godzilla comic now on the stands (not technically a dinosaur)... and may have missed some! Please, use the comments to tell us about other dinosaur sightings from the past couple months! Share the Dino Fever!

Reign of the Supermen #240: El

Source: Superman: Blood of My Ancestors GN (2003)
Type: PrecursorBlood of My Ancestors isn't a bad Superman comic. I'm just not sure it's a good one.

It's got a good pedigree, with Gil Kane and Steven Grant on writing, and Kane sharing the pencilling duties with John Buscema (which makes a lot of this look like Conan, which isn't a bad thing per se), with inks by Kevin Nowlan. The frame of the story is in fact pretty good: As Superman fights a gigantic alien creature that consumes genetic memories stored in your cells, he gets to experience the life of his first ancestor, a Kryptonian hero known as El. Superman finds renewed strength in the memories and defeats the monster, putting it in stasis inside a small egg and feeding it memories from time to time (the memories don't disappear or anything). It's Superman being Superman, compassionate and altruistic.

Unfortunately, though they try to use El to give Superman a legacy to live up to, there's very little that's Superman-like about this ancestor from 500,000 years ago. Or there is, but only superficially. Perhaps the least excusable similarity between El and Kal-El, is that the people around them somehow share the same names. El fights against the evil city overload Uthor. His adopted parents are Naton and Mar, and he marries a woman with L.L. initials. Quite a coincidence. As the story goes, Uthor's goons jump El and kill him, though he takes a couple of them out in the process. At the funeral, the priests of Rao notice "S"-like wounds on his chest which evoke some prophecy. They immediately take the body and burn it inside a special altar and the prophecy comes true. El is reborn with great strength and power, and with the sign of Rao permanently on his chest. For this episode, the role of Rao will be played by the Red Skull.
And so, El becomes a kind of Christ figure, though he goes on the wrong path almost immediately. This is the part where he becomes like King Conan, fighting and womanizing and generally letting people treat him like a god, though he does help people too, plowing their fields and fighting really rude monsters, etc.
That's the daughter of one of Uthor's henchmen he killed, out for revenge, a revenge she takes by marrying him. She eventually plays Delilah to his Samson, putting shackles on him made from a green metal found under Rao's temple. Uthor pokes his eyes out and plans to execute him, but in his blindness he repents his sins and Rao appears to him. His wife, pregnant and actually in love with him, regrets her betrayal and attempts to rescue him, but it's Rao that returns El's strength in the end. He makes the whole city topple down, burying both him and Uthor. His wife survives and her unborn child will found the House of El which eventually gave us Jor-El and Kal-El.

Heavy-handed with the biblical analogies, Blood of My Ancestors offers a primitive Krypton steeped in fantasy rather than science (hey, DC Earth went through those motions too), and a hero that has his own arc. However, that Krypton and that member of the El family are too dissimilar to the ones we know best to really tell us something meaningful about either of them. El is no Superman, not even once he accepts Rao in his heart. Just the fact that he kills without remorse, when the present day part of the book makes a point of showing Superman's pacifist ways, makes the story alien to the Superman mythos. And when there are similarities, they read like an Elseworld, but are unjustifiable coincidences. Shame.

Bonus: Sweet Kryptonian Dinosaur Rides

Chasing Dinosaurs Through Dinosaur Week

Not surprisingly for a guy who has something called "Dinosaur Week", I'm a big fan of the Walking with Dinosaurs series. I have them all, and I've walked with Monsters and Cavemen and Prehistoric Beasts and an Allosaurus called Big Al. The only one I wasn't particularly interested in was Chased by Dinosaurs, which I was afraid would be too silly. I was never all that fond of "Crocodile Hunter"-style nature shows, so I really wasn't sure the evolution of "Walking with" away from narrated documentary to participative safari was a good idea. I'm ready to eat crow (or whatever its ancestor was). Chased by Dinosaurs includes 5 special episodes of Walking with in which enthusiastic zoologist Nigel Marven (and his hard luck camera crew) travel back in time to interact with all manner of prehistoric creatures. Marven has been compared to an extreme Steve Irwin, swimming with Great White Sharks unprotected and wrestling rock pythons. But dinosaurs are much more dangerous, aren't they?

The Land of Giants
The first special sends Marven to Cretaceous Argentina to seek the largest land dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth - the long-necked Argentinosaurus and its fearsome predator, Giganotosaurus - and having all sorts of other encounters (and close calls) in the process. Though it sometimes verges into silly territory, such as when he swoops down with a one-man plane through a herd of Argentinosaurus, the focus on animals as yet untouched in the series makes the special, well, SPECIAL. It's helped by the inclusion on the DVD of an episode of Horizon entitled "Extreme Dinosaurs" which discusses important finds in Patagonia and how the paleontology on show was worked out by scientists, including the controversial pack behavior of the featured carnosaurs. Extreme Dinosaurs came out a year before Land of the Giants, but serves as a good example of how our understanding of the dinosaurs is continually evolving.

The Giant Claw
In this second special, Marven is sent back to Late Cretaceous Mongolia to find the owner of a large and mysterious claw. Marven discovers the strange Therizinosaurus, which might make you wonder if the bizarre animal is pure conjecture, but no, paleontologists have confirmed its existence. This time around, we are much more aware of Marven's crew, which creates moments of comedy as Protoceratops corner the sound man or Velociraptors chase the camera up a tree. By this point, I had become comfortable with the format and was enjoying the ride. Marven's enthusiasm is contagious, even if the animals aren't really there, and the show has fun putting him in situations where he might (or does!) get hurt, making you wince as he gets too close to an animal, laughing as Mononykus raid his tent, or feeling his joy when he manages to touch one of the great beasts.

Sea Monsters
Comprising three half-hour episodes, Sea Monsters promises to send Marven and his crew to prehistory's seven most dangerous seas. The countdown makes him go back and forth along the timeline, and the show continues to play it for real, with contraptions and gadgets designed to protect its reckless star from the sea creatures he means to encounter. As with the previous two specials, there are animals here we've never seen, and by visiting various eras, we get a lot more than dinosaurs. The first ocean, on an Earth that has yet to have land vegetation, is particularly well done, with Marven needing a respirator on the beach and getting his ankle sliced open by a Sea Scorpion. Of course, it's the Giant Orthocone (above) that steals the show. From there, he heads to other eras, encountering armored fish, sea reptiles and giant sharks. There's an amazing variety of animals, and a nice amount of thrills even if we don't spend entire episodes exploring a single sea (land animals intrude as well, lest you think it's all underwater action), and the first two episodes even end on cliffhangers.

I wasn't sure putting a human into the dinosaur action would work - the time traveler in Walking with Cavemen didn't interact with his subjects - but the technology was already advanced enough in 2002-2003 to make such encounters credible. And of course, it's Nigel Marven who really sells it, infusing humor into the proceedings. Kenneth Branagh's narrations in the previous series wasn't dull, but it wasn't FUNNY. The episodes on Chased by Dinosaurs really do benefit from the human point of view.

RPGs That Dinosaur Week Forgot... The Living Land

Tag line: The Sourcebook of Primitive Reality
Makers: West End Games for Torg, 1990

What is it?
A sourcebook detailing one of Torg's original invading Cosms, the Living Land. The invading cosm is based in North America, gobbling up part of the West Coast, a huge chunk from the tip of Lake Superior to Manhattan, and a patch in Nunavut, turning urban areas and wilderness alike into a misty "Land that time forgot", complete with dinosaurs, swamp things and lizard men called the Edeinos. The book includes info on the world, rules to make it work, new creatures and miracles, adventure seeds, and character sheets for some 16 new archetypes.

Neat stuff
-The Edeinos have a really striking appearance, and the suggestion of a "Tech Prodigy Edeinos" PC archetype pretty funny. You certainly don't expect to see one of these guys wearing a baseball cap.
-The native religion is described in detail and pleasantly alien and interesting, while also being something players can understand and get their teeth into. Basically, the spirit of the land wants to feel emotions and sensations through its practitioners, leading to some interesting ways of crafting Miracles.
-The Living Land has a very low Social axiom, which isn't an easy concept to convey (unlike a low Tech or Magic axiom). So the book takes special care to explain how "civilization" and "socialization" can be drained from a character without affecting its actual intelligence.
-I like the idea that things get lost in the mists all the time, and that the GM is encouraged to make equipment of all sorts disappear for various reasons.
-There's a small, but important chapter on Canada, and as a proud Canadian, I'm always happy to see that. Thankfully, the Living Land hasn't spread to my region, but I'm sure it disrupted the train schedules.

Bad stuff
-The art. Aside from Daniel Horne's cover, good illustrations are exceedingly rare. Jeff Menges (who handles the interior alone) has particular trouble with the human form, though it's at about the same level as, say, any given GURPS sourcebook of the era.
-Though the art and description clearly depict dinosaurs, the sourcebook gives them all new "flavorful" names. It's annoying. It makes the creature you're looking for hard to find, and in any case, you and the players will likely call them by their regular names anyway.
-Some typos. Tsk tsk.

Quote
"The antipope is offering the province of Quebec something they can hardly refuse given the course of the invasion so far." (Aw jeez, Quebec. You're throwing in with the Cyberpapacy?)

How I've used it
Very little, actually. It was available to me for when I ran Torg games (a couple with the game itself, and a couple more converted to Dream Park), but I think the information in the core rules were usually enough. Re-reading it now, I wish I'd done more with it. At the time, it just wasn't one of the Cosms that really excited me, but again, I blame the core rules. The fuller information in The Living Land kinda make me want to run a pulp game in which characters stumble upon a forgotten land (à la Edgar Rice Burroughs). I'd drop the bits about encroaching on Manhattan (though that could be an interesting sequel), but definitely keep the Edeinos, their religion and the mists, which I'd blame for Torg's axiom action.

In conclusion
A fine sourcebook even if you're not playing Torg, it has a lot of flavor text and is evocative of the setting despite its flaws. Rules discussions can, for the most part, be ported over to other games, as they offer good advice about survival in hostile environments and getting lost in them. The coolness doesn't stop with the cover! More on Torg from the SBG.

Reign of the Supermen #238: Super-Caveman

Source: World's Finest Comics #138 (1963)
Type: DisguiseFour years before yesterday's story took place, science was actually in better shape. To find primitive homo sapiens, we'll actually go back 50,000 years, a world populated by woolly rhinos and sabertooth tigers rather than thunder lizards. Not to say "The Secret of the Captive Cavemen" is water-tight...

It starts in Gotham City when Batman & Robin come across an alien invasion. The alien takes a suicide pill rather than be captured (harsh!), but not before revealing that his people can fly back in time to grab primitive humans who will better succumb to their "Z-beam". The Dynamic Duo enlist the aid of Superman and they all meet up in prehistory (Batman knows this time machine inventor, long story...). They get there with time to spare and take pains disguising themselves as cave people.
Animal hair and glue, wanton destruction of so-called invulnerable costumes, and acting dumb are all part of the ruse. But not actually dressing up in skins. That would be silly.

The aliens arrive, Z-beam everyone and get them aboard their spaceship, including our heroes. It flies back to the present and to a planet (with a red sun, haha Superman) where they are all forced to mine "drakkium" which kryptonite to the aliens, until refined when it becomes kryptonite to everybody else. Good thing there's an indigenous dogosaurus to pull the World's Finest heroes out of danger!
Having discovered the aliens are rebels to their own people, the next step is to break their hold over the cave people. Superman finds a copse of hairy trees which gives him an idea that cannot fail:
An amazing likeness and in so little time too. Superman should work on the Walking with series (and instead of bringing a camera into prehistory, he would of course build giant life-like puppets with found materials). Then they defeat the aliens and get the rightful government to bring them back to the past, making sure my ancestor is on Earth so I can eventually be born (thanks!) before walking into the project accelerator... and vanishing!

Dinosaur Week Presents: Super Dinosaur!

To use the most oft-spoken word in the series, this comic is pretty awesome.

Super Dinosaur is a new all-ages series from Invincible's Robert Kirkman and artist and colorist Jason Howard. The high-concept set-up features an "inner Earth" where dinosaurs still exist that's become a fighting ground for people who want to get there hands on a new energy source known as dynore. Our heroes are Super Dinosaur, a kind-hearted sentient T-Rex with exoskeleton arms, and our narrator and the comic's actual protagonist, 11-year-old genius Derek Dynamo. Derek and SD are having fun kicking the asses of evil(?) Dino-Men created by dark-hearted scientist Max Maximus, when their lives are disrupted by a new family moves into their top secret, Inner Earth-defending compound. Derek's father hasn't been able to focus since he was injured in a fight with Maximus, so the government has sent the Kingstons - engineers Bruce and Sarah, and teenage daughters Erin and Erica - to help out.

Three issues in (counting the Free Comic Book Day Origin Special, which fits between #1 and #2), the story has already advanced quite a lot, introducing a new and mysterious villain in addition to the ones from the initial set-up, as well as serving up character-driven family scenes that create strong young audience identifiers. This is the kind of comic that you can read with your kids. They'll likely identify with Derek, a kind if overconfident boy genius who thinks nothing of fighting dinosaur men (and ladies) without the help of his dino pal, though the two teenage girls have opposite personalities that might also be latched onto. The parents are universally benevolent, and of course, there's a cool dinosaur that plays video games and basketball in the mix. The violence is big on explosions, but bloodless and this side of cartoony, though it is shown to have consequences. Super Dinosaur has had a number of looks already, including issue 3's snowsuit, which should appeal to those who love toys (in fact, you'll wish you had a Super Dinosaur action figure and accessories to complete the experience).

Now, I know for a fact Kirkman can write characters from reading Invincible, so I'll be interested to see if Derek gets his bubble burst. The kid thinks his life is quite awesome, and he thinks HE'S awesome. It is and he is, but only at the end of the first issue does he admit to a limit to his innate awesomeness (in curing his dad of this mental problem). . His gee-whiz narration could be read as arrogant at times, but is he heading for a fall? Unlike Kirkman's more famous character, he ISN'T invincible. Or might he mellow due to the influence of the Kingstons? Right now, the girls are cramping his style, but will he be allowed to get older and finally notice one (or both) of them? As for Super Dinosaur, though his function is largely that of a missile-throwing cybernetic dinosaur, he does have a character. Despite Derek being his best friend, he still confides in him that he feels lonely. Is he the only "good" dinosaur? So beyond the basic superheroic plot, there's potential for character development. In that way, it rises above its crazy premise to show it may yet have that thing we call "heart".

Here's hoping Super Dinosaur gets into the hands of kids and parents alike. I wish it a lot of success.

Dinosaur Week Returns!

Well, it's back! I can't believe our Annual Dinosaur Week celebrations were on hiatus last year, putting the lie to that "Annual" in there, but it's never too late to fix a mistake. 2011 DOES have a Dinosaur Week, and I think the timing is just about right. Dinosaurs have been appearing randomly in comics for the past few months, including an important crop of titles on Free Comic Book Day, and Super Dinosaur was released (a review to come later in the week). Is there something in the zeitgeist or what?

So dinosaur content all week, and as a special bonus, all Reign of the Supermen articles will feature prehistoric or otherwise dinosaur-like Supermen!

(Sadly, a lot of my research is now in a computer that won't boot up - speaking of dinosaurs, that's what I'm forced to use instead - but I'll do the best I can with what I had backed-up.)

Reign of the Supermen #236: Supersaur

Source: Ambush Bug Year None #7 (2008)
Type: Alternate Earth
No, it's Supersaur! (At least that's how I call him.) Sadly, that version of the DCU was wiped out in the First Crisis, just as today's Superman won't be here forever.

cough cough

And look! There actually WAS a Supersaurus in nature:
If only he'd been red and blue...

RPGs: TV Shows as Sourcebooks

I've always felt that the best other-media model for the role-playing session was the television show. Like tv shows, most role-playing sessions are episodic, weekly (when you're lucky, at least) and starring an ensemble of regular characters. So it's perhaps not surprising that a couple of shows I was watching over the last week made me think of RPGs.

Specifically: Of using tv shows as "sourcebooks" for role-playing games. This isn't as obvious as it may seem. Sure, you can grab ideas and a sense of story structure from any program, but a resource truly dedicated to making you understand a world? That's more rare. And while SF and fantasy programs can create some wonderfully detailed worlds, they can't really be used to game outside that universe. Shows like Star Trek, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and Hercules/Xena can't really ever be a sourcebook for anything but themselves. And of course, there are people out there playing Star Trek and Doctor Who and Buffy games, but again that's not what I mean.

What shows can you use as a resource for Your Own Game(TM)? Here are examples that cover different styles of play...

The Complete World (That Is Not Completely Fictional)
What worlds remain generic (so that a tv sourcebook can apply to it), but are also gameable? Well, what about historical settings? The show that made me think to write this post is Rome. There isn't a whole lot of Roman Empire role-play out there, but there are some (GURPS, Fvlminata), but while we always knew the basic clichés of the era (gladiators, decadence, the legion, slaves) from cheesy Roman movies and Asterix, it was never so detailed as it appears in the HBO series. Not only is there is a lot of texture thanks to customs, religions and codes of conduct, but the program presented various strata of society, from the soldier to the merchant to the nobility. Previous "Roman sourcebooks" like I, Claudius didn't really give you something gameable (emperors and senators? sheesh!). With Rome, a GM and players can get a real sense of what living in that period felt like AND through the characters of Pullo and Vorenus, have good examples of player characters who get into all manner of trouble on the fringes of recorded history.

The only other shows of the type I can think of are westerns, though that period in history seems a whole lot more tangible to us today. I'm not sure I'd need a Deadwood or Gunsmoke to run a proper western RPG.

Genre Resource
There are many tv shows that plunge you into a world that exists (or has existed), but not all of them are gameable. Shows like ER, the West Wing and Traders make you believe you're experiencing what it really would be like to work in a hospital, the White House of the stock market (respectively). But I haven't seen a lot of medical, political or financial RPGs on the shelves. Have you?

One show I was especially fond of was The Unit. Any military RPG could draw from this one, and its focus on a small elite group is perfect for handling similarly-sized role-playing "parties". The Unit showed a wide range of mission types, from straight military (like defending an outpost on the border of Afghanistan) to spy jobs (posing as dignitaries at an embassy) to counter-terrorism (preventing a bridge from being bombed). Across its four seasons, it also played with just how real you care to make it. Season 1 was quite procedural and gritty, and Season 3 got into the Jason Bourne action a lot more. A show like this uses the "real world" that we all know about, but really gives you a sense of how "adventures" should work in that genre. Invaluable. Your favorite cop show might serve a similar purpose.

Campaign in a Box
Some shows provide a premise you can take and run away with. By now, there have been enough Fight the Supernatural shows (Kolchak, X-Files, Relic Hunter, Torchwood, Buffy, Fringe, Supernatural and tons of others) that any basic scheme (FBI, secret society, regular Joes stumbling into the dark) can be borrowed and mixed with monsters from that show and any game, but it would nice to have a sourcebook of monsters that fit the premise, yet won't all be recognizable to the show's fans.

My suggestion is another show I've been watching lately - Primeval. The premise is simple: Scientists with guns deal with temporal anomalies through which prehistoric creatures enter our world and cause havoc. Who doesn't love a little dinosaur hunting, right? The show manages to use different scenarios each episode and also have a conspiracy subplot it plays with. Whatever you 'port into the game, each season offers a slightly different scheme (through cast and timeline changes): scientists stumble on anomalies, scientists with guns in top secret organization, and scientists and action heroes with guns.

But here's the clincher. Primeval comes with its own set of tv sourcebooks: The Walking with... series. The same guys responsible for Primeval also made this series of faux-nature documentaries about life in prehistory. And it's not just dinosaurs. There are prehistoric mammals you never imagined existed, creatures from the pre-dinosaur days, "cavemen" from the Australopithecus on, and for extra fun, throw in The Future Is Wild and three crazy eras of Earth's future where man is no more. Perfect for animated visual reveals of the creatures coming out of those anomalies!

Those would be my ideas for tv-assisted RPGs, perhaps you have other favorites?

Crossover! Dinosaur Week vs. Encyclopedia Week

Last week was Dinosaur Week II, so I'm bringing out another theme from last year. This is Encyclopedia Week II!

But to ease us into it is one of those fiction non-fiction books that are so precious to me, The New Dinosaurs by Dougal Dixon. Through speculative research and his brilliant illustrations, Dixon imagines what the Earth's fauna would be likeif the dinosaurs had never died out. Gone is the mass extinction and the rise of the mammals. Yet what remains is an Earth that looks like our own, with its continents in a familiar pattern and its habitats mirroring our own. Because the same adaptations mammals evolved would be required of the dinosaurs to fill certain niches, you'll find a lot that's familiar... and yet completely askew.

For lack of space, respect for the book and my scanner's limits, I'll only show you my favorites from each continent. You'll have to check out "An Alternative Evolution" yourself for the rest. Well worth it, dinosaur fans!

Africa: The Vespaphaga
One can only imagine that a saurian Dave Sim would have created a Vaspaphaga version of Cerebus. This is a perfect example of a new niche holder that looks a lot like the old one by virtue of having the same necessary adaptation.

Eurasia: The Formisaur
I'm sure there would still be ants on this alternate Earth, but the Formisaurs give them a run for their money. Their adaptation of relegating the egg-laying to a single female in any given colony has turned them into super-ants living in large thatch condos.

North America: The Nivesaur
I wanted to pick a dinosaur for the arctic clime, and the mountain-climbing, wrinkly Nivesaur fits the bill. That's one Big Foot you don't want to meet on the glacier.

South America: The Fluvisaur
There are a LOT of near creatures on this continent, including the one on the book's cover (a Caedosaur), but I love creatures of the sea, and this gentle(?) Amazonian river seal is just beautiful. It swallows stones to help it stay submerged. Take THAT, buoyancy!

Asia: The Multipollex
Who doesn't like an ape? An owl-ape? Descended from the hypsilodonts, these 2m-long (before the tail) creatures have developped two opposable thumbs on each hand. In line to become sentient?

Australia: The Gryllusaur
Australia always has to have the weirdest animals, and it's no different in the "Neozoic Era". What do you say? You just want to see the equivalent of the kangaroo? Ok.

The Oceans: Pinala Fusiforme
Killer penguin! 'nuff said.

Now, I've gone out of my way to show some of the weirdest beasts in Dixon's book, but there are still recognizable dinosaurs of the brachiosaur and carnosaur types. Some shapes are just more successful than others, and that's why they last so long, same way we still have crocodiles and lawyers. Check it out if you can.