Monday, April 19, 2010

Monday Night Murals: "If I don't play ping pong every 108 minutes the whole island's gonna explode....with DINOSAURS!"

Once in a while your little stuffed truly likes to look beyond the Big Two and the murals that everybody knows...for example, it's so obvious that the cover of Kamandi, The Last Boy On Earth #55 interconnects with Bishop: The Last X-Man #3 that it's hardly worth mentioning. But what about indie comics, huh? What about all those CrossGen comic books that form a mural if you crumple them up and throw them in a box? How about the way that issues #13-245 of Cerebus can be arranged to form the words GIRLS ARE YUCKY AND HAVE COOTIES? Or, how about this rarely-seen, probably-forgotten treasure from the early nineties:

Dino Island

Dino Island #1-2 (February-March 1993), art by Jim Lawson
(Click picture to Isla Nublar-size)


I didn't follow Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or most of the output of Mirage Studios, but when I saw the cover of Dino Island #1 by Jim Larson on the rack I had to pick it up and return the next month for the following issue. A science-fiction high adventure featuring a lost avatrix named "Amelia" (golly! wonder who?) fighting for her life on the isle she's crashed on, complete with big brontos and all the usual Jurassic suspects. (In fact, this microseries came out six months before the Jurassic Park.) I enjoyed it quite a bit, and even tho' it's buried somewhere in the Big Bully Vault o' Longboxes, I must dig it out soon and revisit it—Lawson's art is absolutely beautiful and it's a fun story. Two issues was all the series consisted of, and it was never collected in trade. But keep your eyes open when you're checking quarter boxes; it's well worth the search.


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