Technosaurs: An Introduction
by
Darwin A. Garrison

If you are a parent, then there is a high probability that somewhere in your house there is a dinosaur or dinosaur-themed toy. Now, expanding on that a bit, if you're a parent in Utah with a house full of various-aged children, the probabilities shift significantly. In fact, we don't even worry about the presence of dinosaur toys since that's basically gone to 100%. At this point, the question becomes identifying which one of your offspring is tending towards pursuing a long-term (but correspondingly low-profit) career in paleontology.

Having now set the stage appropriately, allow me to introduce Kevin Wasden - a man of no meager creative talent - who, when faced with a son enthralled with all things dinosaur, decided that doing a comic about dinosaurs would be a cool, fatherly thing to do. So he set out to accomplish that goal doing concept sketches and bits of story here and there. At about that time, I met Kevin virtually through our mutual friend, Dave Freer, a South African author and Art Director for Baen's Universe.

As we got to know each other, Kevin eventually showed me his "Technosaurs" concepts. I immediately recognized that his artistic capability more than overshadowed the majority of what's on the web so far as "webcomics" are concerned. Since the potential was so obvious, I encouraged him as best I could to take the next step and focus on actually putting the whole story together and on-line.

Rumble in action Ah, to be young and naļve again.

Suffice it to say, Kevin did exactly that, and the world got to meet Ian, Emily, Rumble, Sickle, Pron, and an ever-growing cast of other characters that together bring Kevin's initial vision to life. Then, around page 23, I got an e-mail inviting me to help an overwhelmed Kevin by scripting the comic based on his outline.

How cool is that? Needless to say, I immediately accepted being brought into the project.

What is Technosaurs about? Well, it's a coming-of-age story centered around Ian and Emily Watson who, by dint of an accidental interaction with an artifact uncovered by their archeologist father, end up transposed dimensionally into a world where dinosaurs never went extinct. There they meet in short succession a scary looking, velociraptor-derived Sickle, the fast moving Pron, and, most importantly of all, noble Rumble. Plunged into a conflict that they don't understand and inexorably tangled in a web of conflicting intrigues by the fact that the artifact that brought them across dimensions can only be activated by one of them, they have little choice but to run for their lives while trying to sort out friend from foe on the fly.

Kevin's technically advanced, anthropomorphic dinos and the breadth of the world he created for them are truly inspired, but it’s the characters he created that draw us forward in the story. We care and worry for Ian and Emily. Rumble's struggles to set things right conflict directly with the more worldly ambitions of those who have tilted his world. Pron's family worries speak to every parent while Sickle's blind devotion to duty lead her to despise her one-time mentor. The depth of each character speaks to their individuality and gets us to eagerly await what happens next.

We're proud to present the last two pages of Technosaurs volume two here as a part of Evolutions. Volume 1 is currently available for free download from WOWIO, soon to be joined by the complete Volume 2. Volumes 1 and 2 are also both available for online reading via Graphic Smash. You'll want to grab both and get ready for our July issue, because that's when the conclusion of Ian and Emily's first quest kicks off with the beginning of volume three here on Darwin's Evolutions.