Review by Win Wiacek

Richard Delgado’s primary career is as one of the most respected storyboard artists in Hollywood, underlined by his credits including Men in Black, The Incredibles, WALL-E, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and The Matrix. In 1993, though, he indulged himself with a personal project using those storyboarding skills to look back to Earth’s Mezozoic era and to tell the tale of a fantastic extended clash between a pack – or perhaps more properly clan – of Deinonychus and a particularly irate opportunistic and undeterrable Tyrannosaur.

Unless you’re a dinosaur fanatic, the Deinonychus is a more obscure dinosaur, clawed with teeth, and far smaller than the Tyrannosaur, although still large by human standards with a body length of up to eleven feet. Perhaps a more accessible reference is to note that they’re closely related to the Velociraptors of Jurassic Park.

Introductions from Ray Harryhausen and John Landis underscore Delgado’s heavyweight credentials, and Tribal Warfare’s endpapers provide a map of the area in which the action takes place. Individual dinosaurs are named in introductory sketches in what’s otherwise an extended wordless sequence. Delgado’s deft hand imbues the vast range and cast of big lizards with instantly recognisable individual looks and characters, and this always ensures the reader knows exactly who is doing what.

The astoundingly rendered and realised scenery and environment are as much leading characters in the drama as any meat and muscle protagonists. Moreover, all the other opportunistic scavengers and hangers-on that prowl the peripheries of the war, are ever-eager to take momentary advantage of what seems more a mutual quest for vengeance than a simple battle for survival. Eventually the savage struggle, literally red in tooth and claw, takes both sides to the very edge of extinction.

It’s incredibly realised, and generated a 1997 sequel, The Hunt. Both were later collected in Age of Reptiles Omnibus.