Only a short while after I did an overview of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot for the anniversary of his death, it seems that the tale of Caspak–or at least, the first two parts–will be adapted into the comic medium. When dinosaurs are involved, you don’t have to twist my arm particularly vigorously, particularly if they’re based on a classic author’s interpretation.

There are some crossover ideas that just make sense.

Much like BOOM! Studios, Campfire is a relative unknown to me, but a trip over to their About page has piqued my interest considerably. Why? The Classics section. Adaptations of Verne, Wells, Conan Doyle, Stevenson, Haggard, London–I’m a complete sucker for this sort of thing. Burroughs has another adaptation in The Lost Continent (aka Beyond Thirty), and it would be very interesting to see how they interpret the high-concept story. There are also stories based on mythology, biographies, and original fiction, but the Classics library is by far the most expansive.

As is tradition, Campfire have split up The Land That Time Forgot, with the first section using the complete tale’s name. Having looked through the seven-page preview, it looks interesting. The comic put me a bit in mind of Herge: the atmosphere was a bit Tintin-esque at times. I was delighted to see Bowen’s loyal airedale terrier Crown Prince Nobbler has made his triumphant return, looking about as lovable as Snowy. Indeed, it’s only on seeing characters illustrated that the similarities to Tintin come to the fore. The first chapter, though heavily truncated, was mostly adhered to.

About the only disappointment to me is in the cover, which depicts a fairly typical post-Jurassic Park Tyrannosaurus. While I naturally appreciate up-to-date palaeontology in most dinosaur works, particularly those where they are in their natural environment–time travel stories being the most usual–I have to think there could be a bit of leeway for artistic license. In the case of The Land That Time Forgot, the Tyrannosaurus does not appear until the third part, “Out of Time’s Abyss,” though there is a case of grim foreshadowing in the first part. There, it has a very interesting description:

Bradley was in the lead when he came suddenly upon a grotesque creature of titanic proportions. Crouching among the trees, which here commenced to thin out slightly, Bradley saw what appeared to be an enormous dragon devouring the carcass of a mammoth. From frightful jaws to the tip of its long tail it was fully forty feet in length. Its body was covered with plates of thick skin which bore a striking resemblance to armor-plate. The creature saw Bradley almost at the same instant that he saw it and reared up on its enormous hind legs until its head towered a full twenty-five feet above the ground. From the cavernous jaws issued a hissing sound of a volume equal to the escaping steam from the safety-valves of half a dozen locomotives, and then the creature came for the man.

This monster is later called a Tyrannosaurus by Bradley, who saw a picture of its skeleton in a magazine. Obviously, Bradley isn’t a palaeontologist, so whether this creature truly is a Tyrannosaurus–or was intended to be one by Burroughs, who was clearly acutely aware of evolution’s capacity for change–is up to debate. There certainly is nothing in the palaeontological record that suggests it had anything resembling armour plating, nor can I find any references of such a suggestion among palaeontologists. Taking the Dinosaur Summer route, one could simply assume that this was an “evolution” of the Tyrannosaurus into an even more terrible form, akin to Dougal Dixon’s Ganeosaurus tardus.

In my opinion, a Tyrannosaurus with thick folds of skin like that of an Indian Rhinoceros, or even hard plates like an armadillo or pangolin, would be pretty unique and imposing. Hopefully when Campfire get round to “Out of Time’s Abyss,” they’ll go for an illustration of Burrough’s creation, rather than attempt to update There seems to be a tendency to do this in other stories where dinosaurs are involved in a modern world, even though the nature of evolution could easily rationalize the differences. Though there are instances of basic animal body-types persisting more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years–crocodiles, sharks, turtles, lizards–it seems a shame to me, to basically alter a story for scientific considerations.

A pox on the tyranny of scientific relevance, says I. Even so, Campfire’s second volume, The People That Time Forgot, seems to honour some of the obsolete scientific depictions: the “pterodactyls” are portrayed as bat-winged Pteranodons–toothed Pteranodons at that, which is rather funny being as their name means “winged & toothless”–and I can imagine other common mistakes might turn up.

Still, at only£6.99 for each, they might be worth a gander. Though I don’t buy everything with dinosaurs–more due to lack of funds than lack of desire, believe me–I’ll be getting them. Should you? If you’re a fan of Burroughs, comics, or classic adventure literature, checking them out can’t hurt.

After all, it has dinosaurs.