By Jim Ottaviani & Big Time Attic
Publisher: GT Labs
ISBN: 0-9660106-6-3
As somebody who enjoys dinosaurs perhaps a little more than is healthy, I'm a sucker for anything with a prehistoric beasty on the cover. This particular book is a lengthy cartoon strip charting the sometimes insane rivalry between the two biggest names in paleontology, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Now, if you're into this sort of thing (which, of course, I am) you know about these two chaps. Together, they did as much to set back the science of palaeontology as they did drive it forward, and to put that in to context, they are responsible for so many dinosaur excavations that even today, over a century later, we've still not examined all of their finds. They used despicable tactics and dynamite to achieve their aims, so it's far from a dry scientific tale. The story also follows Charles R Knight whose artwork of the time put flesh on to the dinosaurs bones and helped shape our vision of prehistoric life, a vision that has only begun to change, at least as far as dinosaurs are concerned, in recent years.
You don't have to have an interest in dinosaurs to enjoy this book. It's much more about the people, their ambitions and their failures, and how they lived in the late 1800s. The art is uncluttered and the storytelling well-paced, perfectly suited to a historical tale. (The cover is by Mark Schultz, a respected and influential comic artist, but the interior art compares to that of a gag cartoonist) This is a book worthy of a read primarily as a superb example of cartooning, but it's also a fascinating insight into a bizarre rivalry that can't fail to entertain.
And if you liked that: Then you may enjoy Age of Reptiles from Dark Horse
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