My two first loves as a kid were dinos and sci-fi, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have spent most of my professional career creating books on one or the other.
I recently saw Star Trek: Into Darkness, and loved it. It continues the wonderful reboot for the whole Trek universe, although, of course, my sci-fi geek antenna was at full power. So, for instance, I found it surprising to see ships firing at each other while in warp drive. If you are already traveling faster than light speed, how can a projectile (or other weaponry) possibly outpace the ship it came from? I don’t think this was ever done before on Trek, and there’s no pseudo-science to make it work.
I was telling an old colleague and fellow Trek fan, Karen Carr, how much I loved the movie, and she sent me this cartoon, which she had done as a goof with an old friend. I thought it was cute and asked for permission to reproduce it. Karen is a visionary artist and illustrator of all things prehistoric. I had the opportunity of doing two books with her while I was at Byron’s Preiss’s. They are fictionalized accounts of ancient creatures, based on the latest scientific information. The first is called Dinosaur Hunt, and it puts a fascinating story behind two sets of actual footprints found in Texas on what was once an ancient shoreline. One of the sets of prints was left by a large plant-eater, the other by a carnivore, and they seem to show that the meat-eater attacked the giant sauropod.
The other title we worked on together is called Jurassic Shark, and follows the life cycle of a female Hybodus—the alpha shark of its time. Both are wonderful picture books with really neat art and stories. If you have kids or are just fans of paleo-artwork, these are for you.
You can see this and much more of Karen’s art on her newly revamped and just relaunched web site, www.karencar.com. And you will be very happy that you did.
Strip by Mike Minor and Karen Carr, 2013
(click on images to enlarge)
