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 by Paul Cornell and D'Israeli
What to Expect: Dinosaur sex, dinosaur violence, and God.
Review by Alex Frith
Back at the beginning of 2000 AD, Pat Mills asked "What made the Dinosaurs extinct?" and decided that it was greedy humans looking for cheap meat. 27 years later, Paul Cornell asked "What will one day make humanity extinct?" His answer - dinosaurs...
It's a neat premise for a series about dinosaurs (and other creatures) with human voices. And it could possibly make a fun Future Shock. With more than a little help from artist extraordinaire D'Israeli, Cornell has a good go at spinning his idea out into a full series. To be honest, the only thing that makes me hesitate to say it fully transcends its Future Shock roots is that it's a little short. There's a solid plot and some great characterization in there, but some of the main points are a bit rushed - it's an odd mixture of scene and mood setting coupled with some fairly hefty exposition in a few key panels. Or maybe I'm just a bit thick and didn't get it until certain things are explained at the end, and even then I'm still not sure.
 Anyway, the story starts off straightforwardly enough - a team of super-evolved (or at least, intelligent) dinosaurs along with a pterosaur and tree are employed by a self-styled human scientist/God to go around the world and kill off any remaining pockets of humanity who won't pay their taxes to said God. The team enjoys its work, but comes to realize that they are expendable, and that all humans are evil, not least their creator. So they go rogue and decide to try to kill everybody. So far so much fun. Best of all, Cornell treats us to a handful of sequences exploring this mission from the point of view of the different characters. There's the emotional and intellectual tree - prone to a bit of crying and poetry. The no-nonsense Triceratops, a veritable PE teacher of a woman. The surprisingly soulful T-Rex, the petulant Pterosaur, and of course the viciously single-minded Raptor, who speaks only in consonants (a clever idea which Cornell obviously enjoyed exploiting for the noble purpose of extreme swearing).
Each character is superbly designed by D'Israeli, and along with the insights Cornell gives us about who they are and what they each want, there's great fun to be had - all the more reason why it's a shame not to have squeezed in a couple more episodes. I suspect the problem is that ultimately the story has a pretty major theme - creation and extinction - and it's surely very difficult to keep the perspective needed for such a grand theme alongside bridging episodes featuring sex and violence. Of course, these clearly mirror the creation and destruction themes in themselves...
Actually the extended sex joke towards the end of the story is one of the most 2000 ADlike and funniest sex jokes I've read, so top marks just for that. It makes me sad, then, to report that ultimately the story doesn't entirely satisfy. Again, this could well be because I didn't understand the ending properly - we are dealing with grand themes here, not necessarily my forte - but I have a sneaking suspicion that the point of the piece is lost somewhere. Something about humans always trying hard to rule the world and shape it to their needs, but failing in this task however often they scrap it all and start again? There's obviously also a bit of an environmental message - humans ruin the planet for the other life-forms on it, so it's about time that the rest of nature rose up and took their revenge. There's definitely something theological going on as well, though - perhaps it's a commentary on the idea of man (as in, any being imbued with the capacity for intellectual thought and communication with a creator, so that includes the principle characters) as being made in God's image. And as a result wanting to do God-like things, which is to say, trying their own hand at creating. And then mucking things up, either because Man is not God and can't do it right, or, more chillingly, doing it exactly right, but not realizing it until too late that God himself is flawed and can't sort out his own creation anyway...
 Frankly half the fun of these kinds of stories is speculating on the meaning. And while you've got gorgeous D'Israeli art to drink in, not to mention six kinds of monster shooting, biting and swearing at each other, who cares if it all hangs together fluently. As for the package itself, well, it's the nifty Hardback format, which suits these one-off stories very well. There's a neat intro from Cornell at the front, but sadly just one spread of D'Israeli d'esigns at the back - not quite the treat that Leviathan was, although it comes close. The only other thing to note is that the book is slightly shorter (in terms of height), which I guess is because of the Megazine's format at the time the story was originally serialized. Curious.
I can't really think of any other 2000 AD / Meg tale that is remotely like XTNCT - except maybe Mills and O'Neill's Metalzoic, which was of course not produced for 2000 AD originally - and this to my mind is reason enough to seek this volume out and sample its delights for yourself.
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