CBI Archive
Dinosaur-related nitpicks of this weeks DC comics
- by MarkAndrew
- in General
Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 8:06 PM EST
Updated: Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 8:06 PM EST
To Joe Kubert (writer/artist) and Will Dennis (editor) of Tor:
That spiked-back crocodile thing on pages 15-17?
Definitely not a sauropod.
To Bruce Jones (w), Al Barruinuevo (a) and Joey Cavaleri (e) of The War that Time Forgot
Re: The large dinosaurs identified as “brontosaurus” on Page 12:
(A) Apatosaurus was alive in the late Jurassic, NOT the late Cretaceous, and
(B) The dinosaurs in question are almost certainly not apatosaurs:
1) Apatosaurs are low-browsers, adapted for eating bushes and grasses, not for plucking the tops of trees. Bottom line: They’d break their necks if they tried to reach them as far from parallel with their backs as the supposed “Brontosaurus” shown in this panel. 2) Their tales were used to balance their upper body, and should not be dragging on the ground. 3) The high-on-the-head nasal openings aren’t an Apatosaur characteristic.
This critter is almost certainly from clade Macronaria, which contains Brachiosaurus, not clade Diplodocoidea, which is where we’ve stuck Bronto/Apatosaurus. (Although I do believe the tail on the animal in question is longer, compared to body length, than any known Macronarian.)
Here’s the difference:
Apatosaurus Ajax:
Brachiosaurus:
Also Pterosaurs as large as the one shown on page 4 probably didn’t have teeth, and the head on the T-rex from page 21 should be longer and narrower.
And, hey, should anyone at DC need further consultation on dinosauruia, I’m available at a very reasonable rate.
Tor was good. War that Time Forgot wasn’t. But (writer) Bruce Jones prior Dinosaur-centric book A Rip in Time, done with artist Richard Corben, was quite entertaining, and should be snatched up if you see it cheap.
Also Countdown to Mystery might well be the last Steve Gerber plotted book ever. Isn’t that sad?
11 Comments
Elijah
May 10, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I haven’t read the new War That Time Forgot, but I have to say that it seems to be keeping with tradition to fill the stories with completely unrealistic and unresearched creatures that just might, kinda, be dinosaurs.
It’s how Kanigher would have wanted it.
Eric Grant
May 11, 2008 at 4:24 am
I put it to you that people actually living on Dinosaur Island in the DC Universae may know more about when and if there was such a thing as a brontosaur, than any ret-conning real world archaeologist.
Sijo
May 11, 2008 at 7:38 am
Still, there’s no excuse for not doing proper research for a story, especially on stuff that really exists or once existed. Like Grant Morrison’s incorrect depiction of Gibraltar in a recent story. Oops!
Dalarsco
May 11, 2008 at 10:11 am
Were characters using the incorrect terminology? That’s perfectly acceptable, especially in The War That Time Forgot. Those soldiers aren’t necessarily well educated.
Dan Bailey
May 11, 2008 at 10:37 am
And to think I was a bit nonplussed last night, while reading the FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE TPB, to see Mark Twain invoke the dread spectre of Bolshevism *years* before *anyone* — even the Romanovs — would’ve given the slightest toss about a tiny minority of obscure Russian radicals …
Man, I was trained as a book editor, spent more than a decade as a newspaper editor & am now employed as an online editor, but what I *really* want to be is a comics editor … because it becomes more obvious by the day that those guys don’t do anything except play computer games or something. (Except that I don’t have any interest in computer games. I guess I could, like, just read comics all day, instead.)
Mike Loughlin
May 11, 2008 at 11:30 am
At least there weren’t any poison-splitting dilophosaurs or velociraptors that looked like deinonychuses…
Jack Norris
May 11, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Brontosaurus: memorable name used endlessly in literature, art and pop culture. Apatosaurus: boring name good only for correcting people with. Goddamn ICZN.
chris w.
May 11, 2008 at 7:17 pm
The War That Time Forgot will get a second chance next month, it wasn’t great, but not too terrible.
Tor was awesome and is going on the pull list!
James
May 12, 2008 at 4:53 pm
The character who identified the “brontosaurus” was a WWII pilot. He was using the name widely used at the time.
As for the Jurassic/Cretaceous mix up, I think he was showing a pretty reasonable level of education to know the proper name of either period.
MarkAndrew
May 12, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Oh yeah. No problem with that, and I prefer brontosaurus myself. But I’d look pretty stupid if I didn’t demonstrate I knew the proper name. I was going to use them inter-changably… but forgot.
Yes, except the exact quote went as follows Character 1: “Brontosaurus. Later Jurrasic.”
Character 2: “Got us a college boy, Mister Hawkins!”
Character 1 doesn’t correct 2, so the dialog is almost certainly trying to inform us that 1 has some level of education.
(On the other hand: If, during the World War 2 era, scientists actually thought Brontosaurs lived in the late cretaceous, and the mistake was only corrected later, I apologize profusely to everyone involved.)
James
May 14, 2008 at 6:32 pm
[quote](On the other hand: If, during the World War 2 era, scientists actually thought Brontosaurs lived in the late cretaceous, and the mistake was only corrected later, I apologize profusely to everyone involved.)[/quote]
Or maybe he just didn’t do too well in that class (my own college experience involved more binge drinking than academics).