Saturday night I saw the "Walking With Dinosaurs" show at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. It was maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen. Robot dinosaurs. What more do you need? The show had a lot of the same appeal that Jurrassic Park did when it first came out. Jurrassic Park gave you a chance to see the closest thing to actual dinosaurs walking around. It also had a second draw, maybe as important, that it was an opportunity to see the greatest computer-generated visual effects of the time.
WWD had the same appeal. This really is the closest thing to real dinosaurs, and the technical achievement of these things is equally interesting. I wasn't sure what to expect from the show itself. Walking dinosaurs was enough of a draw for me, but the staging of the show was really good. The level of interaction between the dinosaurs was a lot more than I expected. I assumed they'd be very precious with the handling of these robots, but they were fighting, swinging tails at each other. It was at times a robot dinosaur gladiatorial pit. There were no actual collisions, (except for a velociraptor eating a baby dino) but lots of close calls. I can honestly say that, for now, I've seen the closest thing to live dinosaurs.
Incidentally, the above artwork is a panel from the Freedom Force miniseries I did for Image Comics in 2004.
