Cretaceous (Family Comic Friday)

Travel back in time to the days of the mighty thunder lizards in this week’s Family Comic Friday with the new graphic novel, Cretaceous!

CretaceousWritten and Illustrated by Tadd Galusha
Published by Oni Press
Pages: 160
Retail Price: $14.99
Tadd Galusha (Godzilla: Rage Across Time) must be a time traveler. I’ve never seen a more accurate portrayal of prehistoric nature than in this graphic novel. Punches are not pulled, literally! Dinosaurs fight- a lot! They die. They get eaten. They pee! There’s even a very graphic depiction of a live underwater birth.

Cretaceous is a book that is deceptively immature. First of all, the stars of this book are all dinosaurs. Kids of all ages love dinos! Then there’s the dialogue- there is none! Other than the Onomatopœia of the T-rex’s roar and crack of a branch from a stalking raptor, there are no words in this book. Even the fact file of creatures featured in back have very few words.

If there ever was a nature documentary on dinosaurs, I would expect it to look just like Cretaceous. The events covered in this book is some pretty intense stuff. The book is recommended for ages 10-12. Normally, I would point out how a book may even be okay for younger readers. Not this time. The level of violence, as well as how accurate the look of the creatures might actually make this book too scary for younger readers.

As research on dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures increases, our idea of what the animals really looked like is evolving. Baby dinos and some predator creatures had wings. This is one of the first non-academic books I’ve come across that actually features that aspect. Even the Jurassic Park trilogy, noted for its realistic depiction of such creatures, hasn’t been able to get that right!

Cretaceous was an extremely quick read. But it was exciting, thrilling and at some moments a little tragic. I know it’s still early in the year, but I think Tadd Galusha should be looked upon as candidate of some sort for an Eisner or other literary award for this graphic novel. It’s that well done and that good!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars!

Cretaceous debuted in print and digital formats on March 26th, 2019.

This review was continuously published on Outrightgeekery.com.