It’s kind of a no-brainer of an idea to mix superheroes with dinosaurs, which is what Daniel Warren Johnson and Juan Gedeon are up to in Jurassic League. Sure, it’s kind of ridiculous, but after reading Jurassic League #2 it’s painfully obvious this is a story for kids and adults young at heart. It’s bonkers with its approach and it’s a heck of a lot of fun if you let it do its thing.
Jurassic League #2 opens with Batman trying to lose a human kid in the jungle. They can’t speak the same language, because if they did Batman would make it clear he doesn’t want him around. The reluctant Batman doesn’t want a Robin, which is sort of what the creators might be getting at here.
I’m calling him Batman, but it’s actually “Batsaur”. Each hero has a similar sounding name as their DCU counterpart, but with a dinosaur-sounding ending. That includes Superman aka Supersaur. Soon the two are teaming up to find two dino-villains, one of whom is twenty stories tall. The size difference is actually a bit confusing at times, which results in establishing panels to convey just how small Batsaur is compared to the yellow villain.
They’re SO BIG!
Credit: DC Comics
That is a rather small problem in the grand scheme of things, though, as essentially, this is a smash-em-up action fest. The villains want to kidnap the humans, Supersaur wants to save them, and Batsaur wants to kill the dino that killed his parents. It’s simple, made even simpler when Wonder Woman aka Wonderdon shows up. The fact that these characters announce their names is proof enough you shouldn’t take this very seriously.
The main selling point here is Gedeon’s art. It’s loud, expressive, and fun. You can see it in a key scene when the Joker dinosaur is on death’s door, eats a giant worm, and literally springs back to life. Much like the story, the art is cartoony and supposed to be fantastical and fun. The inner child in readers will cheer when our heroes refuse to back down, or take on an action pose. There’s a lot of joy in this art right down to the insanely ripped Supersaur.
There’s a lot of craftsmanship in the use of Ben-Day dots for shadow, hatchwork, and little details. You see it on the page above, with the way Gedeon draws Batasaur’s jaws with a bit of drool connecting the top and bottom of the mouth. Mike Spicer’s colors are super vibrant, reinforcing the all-ages and maybe even younger reader feel. Letters by Ferran Delgado are also great, with multi-edges to word balloons and a lot of oomph to the letters themselves.
Once you admit The Jurassic League is about fun and in-your-face action with a simple plot you should be right as rain. The characters are mostly surface level, which does amount to a simpler reading experience. But hell, it’s the Justice League as dinosaurs, not Shakespeare.
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