5 out of 5

A complete reprinting of the Deep Sky edition – which frustratingly only collected issues 1 – 6, leaving issues 7 and 8 in limbo – plus those extra issues plus three new stories which I believe Jim premiered on his website, ‘Paleo’ is, to me, the ultimate Dino comic, something Steve Bissette speaks to the history of in his fascinating intro (also reprinted from the Deep Sky version), finding a balance between something erudite and yet narrationally accessible, which even Ago of Reps Delgado fails to do for me often.  Lawson not only avoids what I perceive as pitfalls of AoR – the wordlessness equating to a sense of aimlessness in the stories, uncomfortable juxtaposed with “comic book” elements that stick out amidst all the realism – but Paleo also shows off his amazing artistry, which I think we can forget sometimes behind the veneer of his Turtles work, or the simple style of some of his solo books like Bade Biker.

What Mr. Bissette highlights, and which thus sticks out in Paleo, is the tendency of a lot of animal books to anthropomorphize their characters, allotting them too human emotions.  Stephen prefers – and based on Paleo so do I – for this to be peeled back; it’s a must to some degree, but if it can be invisible – just saying the dino “senses” something, or “feels” something fairly general – is acceptable, and allows the story to focus more on the tumultuous environment and times than on One Dino’s Story.  Which isn’t to say you don’t need an indentifiable T-Rex or whatever to carry you through, just that Paleo feels ultimately successful for how Jim uses his narration as a vehicle to study the era, or, in the bonus material, to get, perhaps, indirectly personal and dark.

‘Dark’ being an operative word.  AoR (sorry, really my only other touchpoint for Dino books) can get bloody, but there’s sort of a love-nature-love-life sensibility to Delgado’s work.  This is all fine and good; I suppose I prefer Jim’s various studies of the senselessness of life across his stories, frequently referred to as luck.  It’s driven home again and again: the flip-flop between predator and prey, and how skill easily gives way to fear and impulse.  You can get lost in the gorgeous artwork, drifting into the visceral nature of Paleo without really realizing it.  Until the additional shorts – Easy, Floater and Loner – which get really, wonderfully dark.  I also appreciate that I didn’t feel like I needed to be a dino pro to get what I was reading; Jim gives us the proper names, but he doles them out at a reasonable pace so you’re comfortable with the cast.

For $20, Dover has delivered an immense, 300+ page journey.  It’s a heavy book, and doesn’t sit flat, but for a softcover, it feels stable and the printing quality is crisp.  And that twenty bucks is buying you a masterwork from an under appreciated talent; Jim is often a jokester in his other works, but Paleo is serious stuff, meditations on life as told through dinosaurs, illustrated in beautifully detailed but uniquely Jim black and white.