Broken Frontier

Jurassic Park #1 is the first issue of a new series that revisits the Jurassic series.  It takes place thirteen years after the first movie, and seems to be focused, at least in this first issue, on the now-grown Murphy kids. 

Lex, the sister, has become a successful businesswoman who runs the largest organic food supply company.  She is working on keeping Jurassic Park closed to the public.  Meanwhile, her brother, Tim, is working on turning a profit by helping a mysterious backer reopen the park.  

The issues surrounding Jurassic Park have, as one would expect, become a huge point of controversy among the leaders of the world.  Lex advocates continuing the sanctions on a world stage while Tim sneakily deals with senators and other powerful backers to get the dinosaurs out.  Things get out of control when the mysterious backer arranges for some of the big carnivores to escape during transport.

The premise of this story is not bad.  The brother-versus-sister dynamic seems like it will play out in a very interesting way.  Even though Tim operates primarily behind the scenes and Lex is constantly in the public’s eye, writer Bob Schreck hints at larger secrets for the both of them.  The fact that the two have become successful businesspeople creates a lot of possibilities for the story.  However, even though Schreck seems to be setting up Lex as the protagonist, he hasn’t made much effort to make her a likable character.  Her goals are noble, but her arguments are flimsy.  She gains support for sanctions by painting a picture of a world overrun by dinosaurs.  From the movies, it doesn’t seem that the creatures are intelligent enough to be able to do that.  Also, she named her corporation Lexxcrops, which sounds LexCorp, the most evil company ever.

Artist Nate Van Dyke does a great job with the art in this book.  His people have character and personality, while his dinosaurs look convincing enough.  There are definitely some memorable dinosaur images in this book.  However, most of them seem to be on full page spreads or just headshots.  The images that fall outside of those two categories are either recycled from earlier or aren’t given as much attention in terms of detail.  Van Dyke demonstrates strong artistic ability; it would be so much better if he gave the same attention to each frame.  In addition, the stars of Jurassic Park have always been the dinosaurs.  Van Dyke’s style is very focused on people, which takes a little away from the reading experience.

Overall, the book is well constructed and thoroughly readable.  While this first issue isn’t exactly captivating, it has the potential to grow into a lot more.