Terrible Lizard #1

By Cullen Bunn, Drew Moss and Ryan Hill

With a title like Terrible Lizard, it’s not really a hard guess as to what the new Cullen Bunn book might be about. A gigantic dinosaur comes through a temporal displacement machine to the present day. Was that your guess? If so, you’re ahead of the game.

Cullen Bunn has been on a hot streak with his comics lately, especially with the love he’s getting for Magneto. Terrible Lizard feels kind of like the family friendly movie that great directors are forced to do. It’s not terrible, but it’s also not their regular genre and feels a bit off. This issue suffers from moving too fast and not giving us enough to really care about. If any of these characters would die, it would not concern anyone. Bunn seems like he’s trying to make this a fun little book, but based off of this issue, it falls kind of flat. The main character, Jess to her friends if she had any, seems all right, but we don’t know her well enough to care. This is only the first issue, and people need to develop, but ultimately the issue moved too fast to care.

The art duties were handled by Drew Moss with colors by Ryan Hill. Moss does a decent job on the pencils, but it seems pretty standard this issue and he doesn’t do anything that will wow you. Where Moss is at his finest seems to be his composition. He places a backpack and skateboard in the forefront of a panel and Jess in the background. This is actually a great panel because it shows us something about the character. That Jess is a student who likes to skateboard. It’s a subtle hint, but worth noting. Ryan Hill colors this book well. His style makes it feel like a vintage creature feature. This helps the book immensely and adds to the light and cheesy tone of the book.

Terrible Lizard isn’t a terrible book, but it’s nothing special either. Bunn is a very good writer and definitely worth giving another shot to if you didn’t like this introductory issue. The pencils are fine, but the coloring by Ryan Hill is what shines brightest this issue. Terrible Lizard is worth a shot on a slow week, but can wait otherwise.