Remembering the Brontosaurus

STUMPTOWN UNDERGROUND is a zine collective publishing
monthly issues around a given theme. The theme of their fourth
installment? DINOSAURS.

While the thematic territory of Terrible Lizards is perhaps
too close to that of their third issue (“Monsters”), the adorable
dinosaur’s hold on the imagination of the hipster is well documented.
(That chick who does tarot readings with plastic dinosaurs at the
Hawthorne food carts should stock up on a stack of these, and sell them
along with her fortunes.) And really, who could fail to be charmed by
Cathy Camper’s observation—clumsily scrawled in childlike print
on an early page of Terrible Lizards—that “Inside every
bird is a dinosaur!,” as a drawing of an X-rayed bird reveals its
lizard-like interior.

While the digital copy of Terrible Lizards I received for
review was missing a few entries, it was clear that the anthology is
packed with poetry, prose, comics, and jokey little
advertisements—and while all of the comics crouch somewhat
awkwardly in the shadow of Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics (see Fun
Page, pg. 55), they’re nonetheless the highlight of the collection. The
prose suffers from a lack of basic editing—take Jon Hallman’s
essay about Godzilla. “There are only two movies that I have
cried at the end: Bambi and Godzilla 1985. When
they lured him into a volcano at the end using a high-frequency homing
signal and then blow up said volcano I lost it.” Clunky. Wouldn’t pass
in a high-school composition class. It’d only take a quick
fix—adjust some tenses, clarify some pronouns—and the piece
would more effectively make Hallman’s point that Godzilla might not be
so bad, if people would only give him a chance. Far better is Tom
Lechner’s ravaging dino, tearing into the belly of a downed beast only
to stop and ask, “Do I look fat?”

Interestingly, a recurring theme is one of childhood education
betrayed: What happened to the brontosaurus? Remember when dinosaurs
were lizards? The T-Rex isn’t King of the Jungle, he’s just a giant
scavenger with internal elbows—and so on. Terrible
Lizard‘s contributors embrace nostalgia for the dinosaurs of their
childhood, while lamenting, whether consciously or not, the fundamental
limits of their understanding.