Terrible Lizard from Oni Press, an awesome all ages comic with teeth

For fans of all ages comic books Terrible Lizard has lots to love.  Jess is lounging around at her father’s office, running around and getting into trouble.  Her father is a scientist and the reason for their work is about to come snarling out from a temporal displacement experiment. Terrible Lizard works as a comic and an all ages comic for young reader because of  lots of reasons that leaves us looking forward to the second issue.

The art

The art in Terrible Lizard really has teeth.  The dinosaur (Wrex) is sharply drawn and there is enough action with him to keep all readers coming back for the second issue.  There is also a really nice large ape in the last panel that promises mayhem.  The panel sizes are shaken up nicely with the art, some of full page action shots, explosions or scientific set-ups that help sell where Jess is.

On the variant cover notice how Jess is boarding down the tail of Wrex.  The book has a sense of whimsy against the action and plot set ups that are happening.

The letters and words

Some all ages comics have funky letters that are just a pain to read.  The letters in Terrible Lizard are just normal, comic book letters that anyone who can read, can read.  The vocabulary in the book is perfect for an 8 year old and challenging for those under that.

The hero

In this case the heroine.  With all of the talk about a lack of good heroines in comic books I wonder if they’re looking at the all ages books?  Last week we noticed Oddly Normal and that good book.  Hero or heroine, it doesn’t matter to me, as long as the book is good.  Jess is a good role model for young readers, especially girls, who may not know about cool girls in comics.  If young boy readers don’t want to read about a girl hero they’ll be satiated with the amount of monsters, technology and gun play.

We were also big fans of Super Dinosaur.  That was a really fabulous all ages comic about a boy and his time traveling dinosaur.  Terrible Lizard is as entertaining and a shame that this is only a limited issue series.  We hope that the 2nd issue is as good as the first.  Our copy of Terrible Lizard was purchased at our local comic shop, but you can also get it digitally from Comixology or Madefire.