THE JURASSIC LEAGUE #1 Review

The Jurassic League #1 is published by DC Comics and written by Juan Gedeon & Daniel Warren Johnson. Gedeon also provides artwork with colours by Mike Spicer. Letters are by Ferran Delgado.

The Jurassic League #1 is available now in print and on digital where all good comics are sold.

Synopsis

You know the story: an infant escapes the destruction of its home planet and is deposited on Earth to be raised by human parents.

A goddess from a lost city defends truth. A Tyrannosaurus rex dons the visage of a bat to strike fear into evildoers hearts. This heroic trinity, alongside a league of other super-powered dinosaurs, join forces to save a prehistoric Earth from the sinister machinations of Darkseid. Wait… what? 

Okay, maybe you don’t know the story. So join us and bear witness to a brand-new‚ yet older than time‚ adventure and experience the Justice League as you have never seen them before!

Review

The Justice League, but dinosaurs. You’re sold right? When The Jurassic League #1 landed in my inbox I thought “is this real? Is it April 1st.” The concept instantly took me back to my childhood in the 90’s and infinite toy lines which vied for my attention through flashy TV ads. But the DC Comics versus dinosaur mash-up is an instant page-turner and a huge delight to read.

As the synopsis says “you know the story” and it’s true. Gedeon and Johnson’s story doesn’t veer too far from the DC Comics history that we know. It’s now just set in a prehistoric era where our heroes are all larger than life dinosaurs. The concept is beautifully simple. There’s no crisis-level event or dimensional shift which means these characters have human history. It’s simply the DC Universe if everyone were a dinosaur.

The story of issue one doesn’t waste too much time on setup either. A flashback re-tells a familiar scene from DC history before bursting in to action alongside Batsuar and Jokerzard. As the two dinos go head-to-head there are clues that something is bubbling under the surface. But before too much can be revealed we shift to another set-piece alongside Blackmantasaurus and then on meet Wonderdon. Gedeon and Johnson balance the action and character well in this opening gambit, injecting more than a healthy dose of intrigue in to the story.

Gedeon and colourist Mike Spicer do an excellent job of rendering the pre-historic DC Universe. Much like those toy commercials from when I was younger, everything about The Jurassic League looks tantalising. The dino-versions of our heroes instantly look like action figures I want to play with. Or even better, video-game character I *need* to control. The visual concept speaks to so many of the crazy IPs we were exposed to when it was much more commonplace to throw together disparate concepts like superheroes-meets-dinosaurs.

In all in.

Verdict

Bonkers and totally unexpected, The Jurassic League is immediately the number one comic book I never knew I needed in my life!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐