"Xenozoic Tales" Review

It's been about a week since I finished reading Mark Schultz's "Xenozoic Tales," so it's high time I posted a review. Well, let's see, where to start? I mean, God damn, what fantastic artwork! How fantastic you say? Well let's just say that whenever I get done working on Crocazill, if my artwork so much as looks like something Mark Schultz scrawled on a bathroom stall then I can die happy. Seriously he had to have sold his soul to the devil or something because his artwork is flawless. The only person working today that can even compare to him is Frank Cho. Sure in the beginning stories you can see he's just starting out and taking cues from earlier artists, notably Milton Caniff, and the dinosaurs don't look as impressive but that's quickly remedied a few issues in, in fact the change hits so fast that I found myself constantly going back and trying to find where it set in! I think I noticed it around the story where they meet the Grith, creatures resembling the Dinosauroid which communicate through Scrabble tiles.
And that's just one of the trippy things you'll find in this book. Never since the original "Land of the Lost" has there been such a unique spin on the lost world story, let alone the post-apocolypstic narrative. The human societies that sprung up after the mysterious cataclysm even has their own names for the dinosaurs. Pteranodons= Zekes, T. rexes= Shivats, etc. These days comics either great art or a great story, but never both. Though like the art the main narrative takes a while to get started as well, but you could also argue that that works in the storie's favor since it introduces you to the characters of Jack Tenrec and Hannah Dundee before they embark on their adventures.
That brings us to the only con of this book, the spoiler being that there are no spoilers. As of this post Mark Schultz has never completed "Xenozoic Tales." I'm not sure exactly why, I read somewhere that he just stopped one day. The final page of the last comic named the title of what would have been the next issue, but none ever came. From interviews I've read Schultz says the art is partially to blame. By the comic's end each page had become so saturated with detail that he finally needed a break in the same way that illustrated version of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" burnt out Berni Wrightson. It's a shame too because it stops right when the characters recieve the call to action and your brain says "Alright here come the thrills!" But then you end up getting the shaft. So Mark, in the off-chance that you've stumbled upon this blog by, I don't know, Googling yourself, hurry up and finish that "Storms at Sea" novella and get your ass back to finishing "Xenozoic!" I'm sure there are people who have been waiting since the 80s for you to do it.

art by Mark Schultz

By the way the video above was from a short-lived cartoon adaptation of "Xenozoic" which ran under the more popular title "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs." Also, I apologize for not posting any art lately. That'll be remedied come Tuedsay!