"Aftershocks" Jurassic Park: Raptor #1 (Topps Comics) Written by Steve Englehart Art by Armando Gil and Dell Barras Cover by Michael Golden

Grant and Ellie are brought back to Isla Nublar to help advise the U.S. Army on reigning in the loose dinosaurs on the island.

Story Summary

Three days after the end of the movie Jurassic Park, Grant and Ellie return to Isla Nublar. It seems that the island is now considered a co-ownership of the U.S. and Costa Rican governments and Grant and Ellie, as well as elder paleontologist Dr. Fischer, have been brought in as advisors to help the U.S. Army wrangle the dinosaurs and put them back in their pens. They successfully tranquilize the T. rex, though not without some significant damage to army vehicles.

The army also reports having found no eggs in the raptor pen. General West thinks that's good, but Grant doesn't. He believes most of the dinosaur species were breeding, so the raptors may have had an earlier method of escaping their pen to lay their eggs someplace protected and hidden. But the general and Dr. Fischer don't believe it.

The next day, an armed Grant and Ellie take a JP Jeep to the western side of the island. Grant believes that since the human habitations were on the eastern side, the raptors would choose to go as far from that as possible to lay their eggs. The two begin exploring the caves on the beach while the tide is low. Suddenly a man on a one-man underwater jet ski emerges from the water in the cave they're exploring. He introduces himself as George Lawala, a hunter who has been hired to bring back some living dinosaurs. Grant and Ellie try to tell him that he can't remove any dinosaurs from the island and a fight ensues. Grant and Ellie lose their rifles and Lawala chases them deeper into the cave, where they soon come face-to-face with an adult raptor and five young ones.

Lawala shoots and kills the adult, but is bitten in the foot in the process. Still, he successfully duels Grant and Ellie, knocking them out. When they come to, they find themselves held captive, along with the five young raptors, as Lawala's boat takes them all back to the mainland.

TO BE CONTINUED IN JURASSIC PARK: RAPTOR #2

Notes from the Jurassic Park Chronology

The first page of the issue informs us that the story opens three days after the survivors fled Isla Nublar at the end of the movie Jurassic Park.

Didja Notice? 

On page 6, Grant explains he stood in the path of the T. rex because he knew how far it could go after being hit with the tranquilizers. That seems unlikely considering he's only had a couple days experience with actual living dinosaurs. Muldoon as the park warden or Dr. Harding as the park veterinarian would have more likely been the ones to know. In the JP novel, Muldoon even fires some small missiles at the T. rex to tranquilize it.

On page 8, after the army reports finding no eggs in the raptor pen, Grant seems to think the raptors must have had a way out of the pens early on, and they would leave their pen to lay their eggs somewhere they could keep them hidden. This seems unlikely. Why would the raptors return to their pen after gaining freedom? And why bother to rip the fencing to escape after the power outage in the movie if they already had another way in and out?

On pages 10-11 a ship is seen traversing the ocean horizon in the background as Grant and Ellie search the western side of the island for raptors. This must be the boat Lawala later mentions he rode his underwater jet ski in from.

Where did the adult mother raptor come from? She would seemingly have to have been one of the ones bred by the scientists for the park, but if she escaped from the pen her absence would have been noticed by the keepers. Possibly she is one of the raptors brought over from Site B in the missing episode that was ultimately cut from Jurassic Park: The Game (see "The Intruder") which would have revealed that five raptors had been brought over from Site B (Isla Sorna, as seen in The Lost World) to replace the five killed by the lead raptor as described by Muldoon in Jurassic Park; at the end of the game, three or four of those raptors are still alive. ("Gods/Men" seems to confirm that she was formerly one of the raptors bred and held in the park facilities.)

Page 21 seems to suggest that even after death, raptor bodies, like snakes and other reptiles, can continue to twitch and bite for some time.