3 out of 5

For some reason it seems sacrilege to criticize Delgado’s work.  He’s seemingly such a well-respected name in both comics and, apparently, Hollywood, and there’s such obvious craft to his work that it’s like trying to nit-pick Watchmen or something – you can say it’s not your bag, but to actually point out things you feel could be better is to be cast out as lacking any astute judgey faculties.

Thankfully, no one cares about my corner of the internet (even though my corner is 77.45% of the internet at last estimate), so I’ll press on with my throat-clearing, eyebrow-cocking, three-starring observations.

Let’s first acknowledge something that does carry over through most of Delgado’s AoR stuff: being wordless, it can be hard to follow, especially if you’re not a dino pro.  I read some reviews of these issues and the reviewers were dropping scientific lizardy names left and right, as though we’re all totally up to date on Spinosaurus aegyptiacus news, fuck you.  Did I miss a memo requiring us to get an obsession with this stuff before diving in?  …Regardless, not armed with that knowledge, you’re left to hunt for identifying features, which are there, but can still get lost when the panels are crowded, which is often.  But as long as the narrative remains focused, this isn’t as much of a distraction.  And oddly, though Ancient Egyptians is intended to have something of a protagonist and a followable tale, it doesn’t feel focused at all; I prefer when Delgado sits back and lets nature’s chaos direct the story.

That story, about Mr. Spinowhatever, is, according to the backmatter, inspired by Yojimbo, and / or the archetype of wandering Western / Samurai lead.  This is actually really stirring in the first issue: slow close up on our lead shambling about dino town, crisscrossing through the various daily squabbles ‘tween other species to nip some food and slink off to sleep.  That’s totally Yojimbo, and once Delgado establishes the throughline he sticks with it, and gives his main character plenty of inferrable personality.  But in issue 2, he starts in with other plotlines – two warring ‘clans,’ following the Kurosawa theme – and also pursues his agenda of showing the ‘reality’ of these predators through a probably-unintended-funny dino-on-dino sex scene; this is where Delgado’s narrational aims become cloudy, and the story starts to lose me, a disconnect that remains until issue 4 winds back down to the wandering loner concept.  So it’s more of a chore than it should be to read.

The art, of course, is phenomenal, as usual, accepting the over-crowding problem mentioned above, and Ryan Hill’s colors are just deep enough to service Delgado’s style without overwhelming it.  However, to trail off of my story quips above – and it’s possible Delgado always did this and I just noticed it more this time – the clean-lined, realistic style kept being offset by comic booky motion lines, which seemed to be required to indicate more subtle movements – acknowledgements, discouragements – between the characters.  Seeing these continually pulled me out of the mood (so perhaps attributed to that disconnect); I also struggle to understand why Ricardo relied on these when, elsewhere, he’s proven plenty capable of showing actions both large and small without those lines.

‘Tis true that I’ve only experienced AoR in blips.  I have the omnibus, and maybe when I read a lot of it together, I’ll either feel like the problems mentioned here were always there, and/or I’ll gain more tolerance for it, and/or something else.  But in the here and now, I’m risking reviewer banishment saying: Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians is… okay.