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"Photo Finish" Part 2
Return to Jurassic Park #8 (Topps Comics)
Written by Tom and Mary Bierbaum
Pencils by Armando Gil
Inks by Steve Montano
Cover by
Michael Golden |
Derek and
Abby seek to prove Abby’s innocence in the photo fiasco.
Story Summary
Having escaped from Army custody and grabbing Derrick from the
dormitory, Abby leads him into the jungle to search for the
mail sack she threw out of the helicopter. Bieber and Shandy are
also in the jungle searching.
Abby and Derrick find the mail sack in the middle of a dinosaur
egg patch and also run into the friendly Ouranosaur (from
"Photo Finish" Part 1),
which Derrick takes to calling Godzookie. Bieber and Shandy
catch up to them as well and gain the upper hand, but then the
mother dinosaur, a Parasaurolophus, storms in to protect her
eggs. Bieber manages to shoot the dinosaur with a tranquilizer
dart but then she crashes on top of the two, asleep. They are
unable to crawl out from under the weight and beg Abby and
Derrick for help. Our heroes report the incident to General West
and his men pull the two out.
The remaining film rolls are found in the mail sack and General
West confirms that Bieber and Shandy had planned to sell the
dinosaur photos to a U.S. tabloid.
Later that evening, Derrick and Abby are about to share a
romantic moment in the jungle when they are interrupted by
Godzookie.
DA END
Didja Notice?
The dinosaurs chasing Abby and Derrick on the cover of this
issue are Parasaurolophus.
On page 1, the helicopter landing pad is just a nice, breezy
walk from the InGen compound, but in the movie
Jurassic Park, it seemed to be quite a
bit further away.
The sauropods on pages 2-3 are probably Apatosaurs or maybe
Diplodocus.
On page 5, Bieber calls a Stegosaur they've encountered Bessie.
This is probably a reference to the dinosaur as if it were a
cow, as Bessie is a common name given to a pet cow.
Though not identified as such, judging by its friendliness, the
Ouranosaur Abby and Derrick encounter in the jungle must be the
same one seen on page 6 of
"Photo Finish" Part 1.
On page 7, panel 3, two small dinosaurs with horns on the tips
of their noses observe Derrick, Abby, and the Ouranosaur. I'm not
sure what species these two are intended to be.
On page 7, Derrick refers to the Ouranosaur as Godzookie. This
is a reference to Godzilla's nephew Godzooky from the 1978
Saturday morning animated program Godzilla. Godzooky
was sort of a smaller, cuter, bumbling version of his gigantic
uncle (Godzooky's parentage was never discussed).
When Abby and Derrick find the mail sack on page 9, there is a
small lizard resting on it. From the looks it is probably some
kind of dinosaur but it's hard to tell the species from the position
it is in. Possibly just another little compy in a hunkered-down
position.
On the last 5 panels of page 13, Bieber's and Shandy's skin has
been seemingly left uncolored...so, they look like zombies!

On page 17, we see that Bieber and Shandy had a deal to sell
their dinosaur photos to the Weekly World News, the same tabloid
from which some headlines are seen taped up in Grant and Ellie's
research trailer at the Montana dig site near the beginning of
the movie Jurassic Park.
The Weekly World News was published from 1979-2007 and now features its
stories on a website,
weeklyworldnews.com. It features mostly satirical,
non-real stories. In the context of the Jurassic Park
universe, this would have been a true story for the
normally satirical paper.
A copy of
Weekly World News is seen sitting on the Art Director's desk
on page 17. It has two headlines: HORRORS! PIZZA WITH FACE OF
SATAN and ELVIS FOUND ON MOON. As far as I can tell the Satan
headline is made up, but there was a similar headline to the
second, though I don't know the date: STATUE OF ELVIS FOUND ON
MOON.
The Art Director has the name plate "Dick Kulpa" sitting on his
desk. Kulpa is a cartoonist who really was the Art Director of
Weekly World News at the time this story was written (he created the famous Weekly World News
character of Bat Boy).
On page 18, Abby refers to Bieber and Shandy as Bieber and
Butthead. This is a reference to the animated cartoon series
Beavis and Butt-head which was running on MTV at the time.
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