Why the Jurassic Park comics are almost impossible to read today

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There are few franchises in the history of the main multimedia franchises which can compete with that of “Jurassic Park”. What started as a brilliant novel by the successful author Michael Crichton gave way to one of the most important successful films ever made. To date, the “Jurassic” films have brought up $ 6 billion at the box office – and count. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, because the franchise also includes animated television shows, themed park attractions, goods and, for a while, comics.

At the height of the “Jurassic Park” fever, after the classic classic theaters of Steven Spielberg in 1993 and became the biggest film at this point, Universal began to unleash a series of market -related products. This included several series of comic strips of comic topps. It all started with an adaptation to four numbers of the film itself, which then gave way to several other series that were going to hit the shelves during most of the 90s. Unfortunately, unless you had the chance to get your hands on these comics during the day and you kept them, they are damn impossible to read today. So why is it exactly?

This is not a question with a simple answer, but the short version is that the publishers who managed all the comics “Jurassic Park” are no longer in business and / or no longer have the license for the franchise. This is also why some video games based on a franchise cannot sometimes be sold via digital markets. These companies benefit from a license by rights holders, but once this license expires or is revoked, things get complicated.

This is why the only (legal) way to read one of the “Jurassic Park” comics is to find physical copies outrageously too expensive on Amazon or Ebay. They are not available for purchase on digital windows. They could as well be extinguished.

Let’s redo the clocks a little. Topps Comics himself was launched in 1992 in response to the comic book boom that the industry lived at the time. Most people know the topps of their cards to exchange like “Mars Attacks!” And many others. But for a while, the company entered the comic strip sector, and they held the license of “Jurassic Park”, publishing various titles in the universe from 1993 to 1997.

Although they had originals, a large part of the Topps company came from license comics. Aside from the adaptation “Jurassic Park”, the company has published several other books, including the series “Raptor”, an unofficial sequence entitled “Return to Jurassic Park”, “Jurassic Park Adventures” and an adaptation of “The Lost World” in 97. However, these books all told a single story.

“Topps was infected with the number one virus, where, since the n ° 1 sells well, you try to have as much as possible,” said writer Steve Englehart on his website. “Thus, after the raptor in two parts, we had an attack on Raptors in four parts, a diversion of raptors in four parts, a return to eight games to Jurassic Park … I made sure that each group had a highlight, but really, it is a continuous story.”

These comics were a way to expand the scope of the franchise, a bit like the way “Star Wars” comics offer hardcore fans something beyond the films. It is a key element of many franchises and, for a while, it was also for “Jurassic Park”. These books are a fascinating capsule of time and one might think that we are talking about a deductible of several billion dollars, they would be available. Unfortunately, this is not the world in which we live.

The 90s were one of the largest decades of comics, giving birth to comics of images and other competitors in Marvel and DC. This is why Topps entered the company. Unfortunately, the bubble finally broke out and the comics of Topps became belly in 1998. Thus, the publisher behind these books no longer existed and they had no house. For a long time, that’s what things remain.

In the 2010s, the “Jurassic Park” license found a new house thanks to the people of IDW Publishing. IDW is known for having published the “Star Trek” comics, among many other licensed books, so it seemed to be a good choice for the future of this special property. It should be noted that it was a strange period, because we were years of “Jurassic Park III” but still in years “Jurassic World”. The franchise was largely dormant.

IDW changed this by publishing several series from 2010 to 2013, including “Jurassic Park: Redemption” in 2010, which focused on Tim and Lex Murphy trying to take where their grandfather John Hammond stopped by opening a dinosaur theme park in Texas. IDW also published “Jurassic Park: Devils in the Desert” and “Jurassic Park: Dangerous Games”. These two were original stories.

Perhaps even more important, IDW has obtained the possibility of republishing all the comics of “Jurassic Park” Topps in new editions collected. The company did precisely this, collecting books in five different volumes with four numbers nicknamed “Classic Jurassic Park”. These are also almost impossible to find today. Each comic strip “JP” from IDW, both the original series and the editions collected Topps, has been exhausted for years. They are also not available to buy digitally.

The latest news from all the comics of “Jurassic Park” of all kinds came in 2016 when IDW announced during a panel of comics from San Diego that the new comic strips “Jurassic World” would arrive in 2017 (via Saiding Cool). It never happened. As far as we know, for the moment, Universal does not intend to publish new comics within the franchise and IDW no longer has the license.

I cannot comment on the quality of several of these stories, nor dive into grainy details even if I wish because, as mentioned, they are no longer available – unless you have the chance to come across a physical copy at a reasonable price in nature, which is unlikely. We can only hope that Universal would finally decide that it is worth making these books available one day. For the moment, they remain relics of the past, a bit like dinosaurs bones in dirt or fossilized mosquitoes in amber.