Comic Review-Age of Reptiles- Ancient Egyptians #1- I don’t empathise with lizards

Creator: Ricardo Delgado
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 3rd June 2015



The Reptilian part of the brain is concerned with fight or flight. It is the part of the brain that governments around the world want their (tax netted) subjects to be caught in.

If a population is in fight or flight mode they can be easily controlled, as morality and intellect play no part in the decision-making processes. You simply need to scare them (terrorism, global warming, new diseases) and then offer them your pre-prepared solution, a solution that will of course lead to less freedom for the people, and more control for the government slave controllers.

Richard Delgado’s ‘Age of Reptiles- Ancient Egyptians- #1’ has no Egyptians in it, no humans, no governments, and nothing else that holds my interest. Oh, and it doesn’t even have any dialogue either, so it’s a quick read, and that’s probably the best thing about the book, that it’s quick to get through, leaving you plenty of time to read something else.

The book is about lizards doing what lizards do, struggling to eat, to survive, and to dominate territory. Writer Ricardo Delgado attempts to put human characteristics and personalities onto these animals, even though they are incapable of them, so the entire project fails at the first hurdle.

‘DINOSAURS stood on beaches embracing each other moments before a meteor killed them all, it has been claimed.

Nikki Hollis, Professor of Hollywood-style Natural History at Roehampton University, said: “As they realised they were doomed, the dinosaurs stopped eating each other and all became friends.

“A T-Rex stood, put its tiny arm around a stegosaurus and said something profound in a voice like Morgan Freeman’s.

“Probably it was about being part of the great wheel of life, or along those lines.” 
(From ‘The Daily Mash’ 8-2-13)

That was a joke article, but Age of Reptiles is po-faced and serious.

The book attempts to portray one of the lizards as a human character, by having the story follow him as he does what lizards do, alone, like Clint Eastwood, fighting against the odds, tough, stoic and cool. But he’s not Clint, he’s a lizard, so there’s nothing there.

The Daily Mash article was funny and entertaining, but this book is trying to do something serious, and I’m not getting anything out of it at all.

You can’t seriously humanise a lizard, because when all is said and done, it’s just a lizard. It’s not capable of higher human spirituality or empathy, and it doesn’t have the ability to act according to the natural laws of morality and the golden rule. Anything that is there is what you are putting there, not what is actually present and real in anything resembling reality.

A large, meat-eating dinosaur was simply a machine programmed to eat, breed, fight for dominance, or scamper off when in danger. That’s all there is to it. Some humans act like this, but that’s not what being a human is supposed to be about. If you act in this way you are a sociopath, you are an animal, and not a human being at all.

A truly awakened human looks for meaning, the lizard machine simply looks for the next meal, and putting human characteristics onto that machine is fraudulent and deceptive story telling.

I’m not a lizard, and I’m not looking to get into the human rat race that is pushed by capitalism and Darwinian survival of the fittest mainstream programming. I don’t identify with the lizard, and I don’t want to either.

I didn’t like the book, but I didn’t hate it either. To me it falls into that worse of both worlds, the middle pit abyss of indifference. The art wasn’t great, the colours kept changing and it confused me.

Is that the same lizard? I don’t know. I don’t care really. Is that lizard supposed to be a person? What? Is this supposed to be serious? Oh, that’s the end? Good, I won’t be reading that again. Get the book if you want to read something that gets awards, is about lizards, and has no dialogue.

Lizards are lizards, and humans are humans. Reject the reptile, act like a human, reject fight or flight, get higher, not lower. Get hot, not cold. This book was looking to scoop up the low and if it is saying anything, I’m either not getting it, or not wanting to get it.

You can heat up the cold, but it’s cold, that’s it’s nature, like it or not, and it will always revert to what it is supposed to be. Humans are hot-blooded animals that have been given free will in order to question and to act in accordance to universal moral principles. Dinosaurs were cold lizards, running to, or running from, in fear, or creating fear. Let’s not devolve, lets leave the lizards behind and move on with warmth. This book left me feeling cold, and I don’t like to feel cold. I have a reptile hack in my brain, but it doesn’t define me. I’m not a lizard, and a lizard, however warmed up it may be, is certainly not a human being.


Rating: 3/10 (Not much fun I'm afraid. To me it read like experimental student art. Sorry.)



Link to the funny Daily mash article:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-technology/dinosaurs-had-big-emotional-moment-before-meteor-struck-2013020859135