In NEOZOIC, a debut title from publisher Red 5 Comics, there’s nothing special about an 80-foot-long brachiosaurus lumbering past a group of human travelers. It’s been going on for millions of years.
However, if those same humans hear the blood-thirty roars of a T-Rex, then it’s time to call the professional super-hunters of the Predator Defense League. Armed only with swords, arrows, warrior cunning, ruthless precision and a lifetime of training, these exceptionally skilled athletes keep the citizens of the walled city of Monanti from becoming a dinosaur’s breakfast.
NEOZOIC is the creation of Lucasfilm-veteran Paul Ens, writer of the fan-favorite “Star Wars: Evasive Action” series. Like most boys, at an early age Ens was inspired by dinosaurs. “And like most comic writers,” he adds, “my childhood influences never left me. Dinosaurs thrilled me first from the pages of science books, then in entertainment like Land of the Lost, Godzilla and Jurassic Park.”
Unlike most dinosaur-themed fiction, where ill-prepared and unsuspecting modern-day humans are thrust together with pre-historic beasts through some contortion in time, NEOZOIC imagines an Earth where the dinosaurs escaped extinction altogether. As a result, the entire history of the human race unfolded side-by-side with the giant beasts, leading to a society greatly different than the one we know today.
While the kinetic pencils of J. Korim and the rich colors of Jessie Lam deliver on the promise of epic evenly-matched human / dino battles like never seen before, the complex heart of NEOZOIC is in its ensemble cast of characters.
“Just as the war with cylons is merely a backdrop for multi-textured drama in Battlestar Galactica,” Ens explains, “the epic struggles in NEOZOIC are human conflicts stemming from the different approaches to survival from such formidable natural predators.”
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