Review by Win Wiacek

There’s an irresistible, nigh-visceral appeal to dinosaurs. Most of us variously – and too often haphazardly – over-evolved apes seem to be irresistibly drawn to all forms of education and entertainment featuring monster lizards of our primordial past.

Designed as a purely visual experience, this hypnotically beguiling series of sequences from Ricardo Delgado represents one of the most honestly enchanting brushes with prehistory ever imagined. Age of Reptiles opens a window onto distant eons of saurian dominance and devoid of sound or text provides a profound, pantomimic silent movie focusing on everyday experiences as they were way back then.

The tales originally appeared as a sequence of miniseries between 1993 and 2010, the first two being subsequently collected as individual compilations Tribal Warfare and The Hunt. ‘The Journey’ is only available in book form as part of this excellent and economical Omnibus line, gathering the material into one handy Brachiosaur-sized book.

‘Tribal Warfare’ is a fantastic extended clash between a pack, or perhaps more properly clan, of Deinonychus (think of them as Velociraptors) and a particularly irate opportunistic and undeterrable Tyrannosaur. The savage struggle, literally red in tooth and claw, takes both sides to the very edge of extinction.

These tales, the astoundingly rendered and realised scenery and environment of all these tales 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.

That theme is further explored in ‘The Hunt’ wherein the eat-or-be-eaten travails of a mother Allosaurus end only after she dies defending her baby. The culprits are a determined and scarily-organised pack of Ceratosaurs who latterly expend a lot of energy trying to consume the carnosaur’s kid amidst scenes of staggering geographical beauty and terrifying magnificence. Think of it as Bambi with really big teeth and no hankies required.

The theme of unrelenting and ruthless species rivalry and competition is downplayed or at least diverted for the final episode. ‘The Journey’ concentrates on an epic migration across the barren surface of the world as millions of assorted saurians undertake a prodigious and arduous trek to more welcoming feeding and spawning grounds. Because that’s how life works, they are dogged every step of the way by flying, swimming and remorselessly running creatures looking for their next tasty meal.

Although occasionally resorting to a judicious amount of creative anachronism and historical overlap, Delgado has an unquestioned love for his subject, a sublime feel for spectacle and an unmatchable gift for pace and narrative progression. Coupled to the deft hand imbuing the vast range and cast of big lizards with instantly recognisable individual looks and characters, this always ensures that the reader knows exactly who is doing what. There’s even room for some unexpectedly but most welcome rough-love humour in these brilliantly simple forthright, primal dramas.