"Redemption" Part 5 Jurassic Park #5 (IDW) Written by Bob Shreck Art by Nate Van Dyke Covers by A) Tom Yeates B) William Stout

Dinosaurs on the loose in Glen Rose and a Giganotosaurus about to stomp through the local nuclear power plant! Not. Good.

Read a review of this issue by Patrick Hayes on PopApostle

Story Summary

Picking up from last issue, Dr. Backer and the Army personnel save Grant from the Allosaurus. The dino roundup is beginning to bear fruit, but Sheriff Delgado is injured by a carnivore in the process.

At the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant, a large prehistoric marine lizard is beginning to cause damage on the plant grounds and a watchman sounds the hazard alarm. The alarm sound is heard in town and it attracts the attention of a Giganotosaurus, who mistakes it for the call of a mate and begins heading for the plant. With cell towers and phone lines down from the recent rampage, no one is able to communicate with the plant to shut down the alarm. Our heroes head out in a couple of trucks in an attempt to reach the plant to shut off the alarm before the Giganotosaurus can get there and wreck the plant, releasing radiation and causing a meltdown. They beat the Giganotosaurus there and see a marine lizard in the nearby waters as well.

Unable to communicate with the people inside the plant, Lex begins trying to break the security code on the door to get inside. While she attempts this, Tim is forced to distract the Giganotosaurus in one of the trucks. Lex somehow manages to crack the code and get inside the plant and the watchman shuts off the alarm. Back outside, the beast manages to flip Tim's vehicle and all seems hopeless for poor Tim when the Giganotosaurus is suddenly attacked by a pack of raptors. During the battle the beast stumbles in the waters of the lake and the marine lizard also joins in the attack, taking him down.

Two weeks later, Lex and Tim visit their grandfather's tomb and Tim leaves the piece of amber from his old cane. Lex tells Tim that their grandfather would have been proud that he tried to right his wrongs, just like he did.

THE END 

Didja Notice? 

Like the last page of "Redemption" Part 4, cover A of this issue may have been inspired by the 1969 film, The Valley of Gwangi, about cowboys who discover a lost valley filled with dinosaurs. A scene of the cowboys lassoing an Allosaurus occurs in the film. In the "Story So Far" paragraph on the inside front cover of this issue, it is revealed that this carnosaur is also an Allosaurus.

On page 1, the Army troops use some kind of sonic guns that produce sound waves to knock out many of the dinosaurs. These may be similar to the sonic cannon carried by Isla Sorna security chief Deborah Holland in Prey.

On page 6, Grant identifies a Giganotosaurus on the loose. This was a real theropod dinosaur, fossils of which were first discovered in 1993. It is larger than T. rex but smaller than Spinosaurus.

The Giganotosaurus hears the alarm from the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant and, according to Grant, thinks it's its mate calling. This seems odd in that, having been a captive in Ludlow's breeding lab, it probably did not have a mate. Potentially, it is simply reacting instinctively to what it thinks is the call of an opposite sex member of its species. The concept probably comes from the 1951 Ray Bradbury short story "The Fog Horn", in which a sea monster is attracted to the sound of a lighthouse foghorn, whose wailings sound just like the fog horn; the story was part of the inspiration for the 1953 film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

The small carnivorous dinosaurs that escape from the cage and attack Ludlow on page 8 remain unidentified. Possibly they are intended to be compys, but they are drawn with five-fingered hands instead of three.

The dinosaurs that attack Dr. Backer on page 12 seem to be raptors, but we don't get a look at their feet to see the sickle-claw to tell for sure. 

As the Giganotosaurus approaches Lex, Tim, and the deputy on page 15, the deputy bolts and Tim says, "Why do they always just cut and run like that?" Then, on page 16, the deputy gets gobbled down by the dinosaur and Tim says, "Go figure! That's exactly what happened to the last guy who bailed on us!" Presumably, this is a reference to Jurassic Park when Donald Gennaro fled the vehicle he was in with young Tim and Lex and soon after got chomped by the T. rex.

Possibly the Giganotosaurus, its path of destruction through town and advance toward the nuclear power plant was included in the story as an homage to the Godzilla films of Toho Studios.

On page 21, Backer tells Tim he'd earlier found something back at the lab he might want to keep. On the last page of the story, we see it must have been the piece of amber from his grandfather's cane he was speaking of. But how could Backer have gotten a hold of it already at this point? When we last saw the amber, it was lying on the floor inside the office of the lab where Tim had locked in Ludlow and his bodyguard. And we saw that Backer did not go inside there before going out to help with the roundup in town.

Lex tells the group she was able to figure out the security code for the door at the nuclear plant because she's a genius, plus she got lucky. Are you kidding me? There would be millions of combinations possible on that 20-digit keypad at the door! And how would she even know how many characters to type in for each guess? Ridiculous.

Unanswered Questions

Is Ludlow dead for real this time? We see him getting chewed up by compys(?), but don't actually see his death.

Did the Army and residents of Glen Rose, TX actually manage to recapture all of the loose dinosaurs? Since Ludlow was keeping at least the carnivores' existences secret, would they even know how many were out there? Possibly Dr. Backer would know how many of each species were bred for the entire project and assisted the authorities.