Over the years, the Justice League has been presented as vibrant heroes and larger-than-life gods, but never before have they been visualized as anthropomorphic dinosaurs.
This gross oversight is finally corrected with Jurassic League, an upcoming DC series by writer Daniel Warren Johnson (Extremity, Wonder Woman: Dead Earth) and artist Juan Gedeon (Pennyworth, Venom) that imagines Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman as an allosaurus, a brachiosaurus and a triceratops, respectively. Revealed by Polygon, a first look at the six-issue series shows the Trinity-turned dinosaurs donning the same costumes as their human counterparts and battling evildoers in a prehistoric world -- including the likes of the Joker, who is a dilophosaurus.
"You know the story: an infant escapes the destruction of its home planet and is deposited on Earth to be raised by human parents," DC's synopsis of the series reads. "A goddess from a lost city defends truth. A theropod dons the visage of a bat to strike fear into evildoers’ hearts. This heroic trinity, alongside a league of other super-powered dinosaurs, join forces to save a prehistoric Earth from the sinister machinations of Darkseid. Wait ... what? Okay, maybe you don't know the story. So join us and bear witness to a brand-new -- yet older than time -- adventure and experience the Justice League as you have never seen them before!"
Johnson and Gedeon said that the off-the-wall concept for the series came from a shared love of classic franchises starring anthropomorphized creatures, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Street Sharks, and the short-lived '90s fighting game franchise Primal Rage, which featured a roster of dinosaurs and giant apes.
"I dig the Justice League," Johnson said, "but I dig them MORE as dinosaurs."
Gedeon added that the process of designing each character's dinosaur form was an intricate one. When choosing dinosaurs for the Trinity, he "tried to pick a dino that captured the essence of their human counterpart to use as base."
"At first I thought of doing Wonder Woman as pterodactyl or something more athletic looking so that's how I landed on the triceratops," Gedeon said. "They're herbivores but they could defeat a T-Rex, so that seems fitting for [Wonder Woman]... Superman is the pinnacle of goodness and strength, and he only fights if there's no other option, so I wanted a herbivore dino that looks harmless but is solid and strong. Brachiosaurus was a perfect fit."
Batman -- or Batsaur, as he is known in the book -- "has no superpowers, but puts fear in the hearts of criminals, so a carnivore dino seemed right," Gedeon said, pointing out that allosaurus was chosen since a larger meat-eater like T-rex would have rendered Batsaur a bit too powerful. "Plus they have those pointy horns on the head, kinda like Batman's ears," Gedeon added.
Jurassic League, with its bizarre dinosaur interpretation of DC's finest heroes, releases on May 10.
Source: Polygon