"Gods/Men" Jurassic Park: Raptors Attack #4 (Topps Comics) Written by Steve Englehart Pencils by Chaz Truog Inks by Paul Fricke Cover by Michael Golden

Seeking to avenge the death of Lawala, Muldoon organizes a safari into the Columbian jungle to track down the raptors.

Story Summary

As he leads them and a posse of natives into the jungle in search of the raptors, Muldoon tells Grant and Ellie about how he and Lawala became blood brothers.

Malcolm continues flirting with Ellie every chance he gets and Ellie tells him, "At your rate we'll be close friends by the year 2000." (This issue was published in 1994).

Muldoon spots the three raptors through binoculars on the other side of a canyon spanned by a single rope and plank foot-bridge. He is about to shoot the raptors from the distance when the native tribesman suddenly emerge from the jungle and attack him to protect their new gods. The raptors see the melee and run across the bridge to attack the humans. Ellie is under attack by Alf and Betty while Celia tries to stop them as she did in "Animals/Men", but this time they don't listen. Grant shoots Betty to save Ellie. When the two remaining raptors see the dead body of their sister they seem to decide that it's time to retreat and survive. Re-crossing the bridge, they sever the ropes from the other side with their teeth and claws.

TO BE CONTINUED IN JURASSIC PARK: RAPTORS HIJACK #1

Didja Notice? 

In the "What Has Gone Before" summary of the story so far on the inside front cover, it describes Muldoon learning that the raptors had killed his blood brother George Lawala and so the question of the apprehension of the escaped raptors becomes "would they bring 'em back alive...or dead?" The phrase "bring 'em back alive" is famous as the title of a book by Frank Buck, a famous hunter and "collector of wild animals" in the first half of the 20th century, similar to Muldoon in the JP universe.

On page 1, as the safari to catch the raptors is underway, Malcolm is singing, "We're off to see the lizard, the wonderful lizard of--" before Muldoon cuts him off. Obviously he is parodying the title song of the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

In a flashback scene of raptor memories of life on Isla Nublar, we see a time when the mother raptor told her five younglings about the "evil hairless apes" who might come and put them in a cage like she had been. Then the younglings are seen sleeping and dreaming about a hairless creature with simian features imprisoning them. But how would either the adult or young raptors know what an ape was? Apes were still tens of millions of years from evolving when the dinosaurs inhabited the Earth and so would have no genetic memory of them; and there are presumably no apes on Isla Nublar in the present for them to have seen.

It's possible that writer Steve Englehart, well-known for his Marvel Comics work, borrowed the term "hairless ape" from the Howard the Duck comic books published by Marvel. Howard is known to use that term to describe humans.

On page 11, after relating the story of how he and Lawala became blood brothers, Muldoon ends with "That's why his killers will die." Muldoon is supposed to bring the raptors back alive if possible, but it seems he may have tipped his hand that he actually intends to kill them.

On page 14, Malcolm comments that Muldoon's recent comments remind him of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men or Bogart in The Caine Mutiny. Nicholson played a fierce U.S. Marine Colonel in A Few Good Men (1992) and Humphrey Bogart was the paranoid captain of the Navy destroyer-minesweeper Caine in The Caine Mutiny (1954).

On page 15, Malcolm avoids answering Ellie's question regarding how many wives he's had by saying, "Chaos theory doesn't admit to discrete integers." "Discrete integers" is probably a reference to discrete mathematics, a real world area of study that is part of many mathematical disciplines.

Also on page 15, Malcolm comments that, instead of spending time with Ellie, Grant is "desperately seeking dinosaurs". This is probably a reference to the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan.