Review by Frank Plowright

It turns out that the dinosaurs weren’t wiped out by a meteor striking Earth, and neither were they dim. They were smart enough to build spacecraft and evacuate before the meteor hit and to colonise other planets. Since then, though, there’s been a fall-out between the herbivores and the carnivores, and the more kindly herbivores need to be constantly on guard. Our focus is Captain Teggs and his crew on the DSS Sauropod.

Steve Cole’s Astrosaurs novels are an obvious success with 22 in print. However, the last of them appeared in 2012, which makes a graphic novel revival in 2025 somewhat surprising. Three stories rework the first three novels, with Cole adapting ‘Riddle of the Raptors’ and ‘The Seas of Doom’ and his son Tobey Cole taking on ‘The Hatching Horror’.

Fact sheets for the five crew members precede the stories, and reveal a mixed crew of well-intentioned folk, but perhaps not all the sharpest blades in the toolbox. It proves to be the case in silly science fiction adventures where they’re easily fooled in the first instance, but have the initiative to save the day.

As these are all-ages adventures Alex Lopez bases the look of the characters on the novel cover illustrations, so draws generally cheerful dinosaurs with even the Raptors not too frightening, although their teeth are often on display. Colour supplies the backgrounds, but the figures have enough variety and combined with the efficient comedic staging it’s enough to compensate for the lack of detail. When the plot calls for something awe-inspiring such as a star dragon, Lopez designs a stunner.

The three plots concern a plan to sabotage the Great Dinosaur Games, transporting rare pleisosaur eggs to a new planet and investigating an undersea menace. They’re all funny and unpredictable, and introduce the characters to a new generation in fine style.