Turok #1
Writer: Chuck Wendig
Artist: Álvaro Sarraseca
Colourist: Triona Farrell
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
Publisher: Dynamite
A review by Josh Rose
For those of you familiar with the game series and the long comic history of Turok, forget it. This is a new Turok in a new Lost Valley. Turok #1 has all the same elements that we associate with Turok: Dinosaur Hunter: A man named Turok who is very skilled at hunting, a dinosaurian species, and the Lost Valley. Turok #1, however, takes those familiar elements and spins them in a way that gives us something new. We don’t know anything about this new version of Turok except that he’s a man on a mission to save a girl and no one else, the Lost Valley is under the control of the Varanid Empire which is run by a fascist race of dinosaur-people.
This isn’t the first appearance of this new Turok; he first appeared in the back of The Sovereigns #0 and #2. Luckily you won’t need to go back and read those issues to understand what’s going on. Chuck Wendig starts Turok #1 by introducing us to the Turok and the Varanid Empire through conversations between two prisoners and between the warden and prisoner administrator respectively. The real fun begins when Turok instigates a mass prison break. Wendig also does a good job moving the plot along and avoids plot-holes with the use of some flashbacks.
Some of the saurians have feathers! The child paleontologist in me is so excited about this! For the most part, Álvaro Sarraseca made the saurians look like regular lizard people (well as regular as that can get), but added some feathers to act like human hair to a few saurians, which lines up with fossil evidence that dinosaurs had feathers. Maybe not enough feathers to make them look like modern birds, but this is a comic review not a thesis on dinosaur plumage.
I think Triona Farrell should have been more consistent with her coloring of the flashbacks in Turok #1. The flashbacks should’ve either been all a different color pallet or consistent with the rest of the book. Other than that, Farrell does a fantastic job with her colors. Lots of browns in the desert settings, and plenty of greens and grays inside the saurian prison. The greens really pop out and give that evil vibe. I found it interesting how Farrell used green to highlight the background for the saurians, and oranges for the humans. Another thing I liked about the art was the red panels to show the action during some of the fight scenes.
The Verdict
Buy it – Turok #1 is a timeless tale of man versus beast, except this time the beasts are intelligent. If you’re a fan of the classic Turok character, I think you’ll enjoy this. If you’re new to Turok, you’ll have a rip-roaring time watching him outwit reptile-people and saving humans.
