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"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.
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