Devil Dinosaur…

Another Kirby Klassic Komic…

Well after officially launching the brand new Wizards Keep – Believe in Dreams outlet at Botany Bay over this last weekend, I have taken out a little time to read the collected hard cover Devil Dinosaur, before retiring to bed for a few nights, having only been lucky enough to catch issue #1 the first time around when marvel published it in the 70’s.

Again Jack shows us how to tell fun stories with an outlandish concept…a young adolescent, called “Moon-Boy” and his friend, who just happens to be a Dinosaur and a Tyrannosaurus Rex at that, called “Devil”…

Amongst the stories we meet up with many different protagonists for the twosome to thwart, amongst them a Witch, Aliens from outer space, Giant Ants, Killer-Folk, Giant Early-Men, and Giant Spiders, amongst a great host of other Dinosaur types, both large and small.

It fits somewhere in between Jack’s earlier Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth concept for DC comics and his 2001 A Space Odyssey concept for Marvel comics using Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s seminal work on the short story, novel and film respectively.

Only Jack could have pulled this off as he did.

This was Jack’s last work for Marvel comics, before his work in animation began. Jack would return to comics in the eighties for various other comics companies, but not the big two of Marvel and DC.

I feel the stories of Devil Dinosaur and his sidekick Moon-Boy were written and drawn with FUN being the operative word. Inside these tales we see less of the philosophising we see in his works such as the Fourth World series and tales from his Spirit World books like “TOXL– The World Killer”, and many of his other work, where we see evidence of Kirby’s views on philosophy, war, and life in general.

If you haven’t already bought this book…and why not is the question…? If you want a large dose of fun as only the creative mind of Kirby could bring about, then do yourselves a favour and look it up. You’ll be glad you did so.

By the way going back to my initial sentence at the top of this Blog, both Margaret and myself would like to thank all those that took time out to speak to us both on both Saturday and Sunday at Botany Bay.

I will be signing and sketching there again soon.

Now back to the drawing board for me and…

Until next time have fun!

Tim Perkins…
September 5th 2007