Stories Of Stone!

Sometime during the late summer of 1969 I got hold of my very first issue of Turok Son of Stone. The issue was the one above, number sixty-seven dated October of that year. I love it. Two Native American braves struggling mightily to bend a giant bow to kill an admittedly somewhat stiff dinosaur. The premise of Turok is one of the purest in all of comics, a recipe for adventure and touching the fantasy buttons of any pre-teen. Turok, a somewhat dour adult and his younger charge Andar are trapped in an impossibly large hidden valley filled with dinosaurs and a multitude of various and sundry cave dwellers. Always looking for a resolution, but like Gilligan and his ensemble, destined never to find it, they hunt relentlessly for an escape. The escape though is for the fans who get the read about their exotic adventures month after month.

Back in 2009 Dark Horse began issuing archive collections of the Turok saga, and I was in from the beginning, though it strained the budget to get what began as bi-monthly installments. Alas as the years passed the frequency dwindled and sadly in 2012 with the tenth and final volume the saga came to an end just as the stories reached the point above where so many decades ago I first discovered the stalwart braves. I despaired ever getting the whole of the saga.

Then the other day I found my local store had a near full run of the series. It took several days of searching, but I at long last found my Turok collection secreted in the most remote corner of a room overcome with volumes and identified the issues I needed. I was able to fill in all the gaps save for several issues at the very end of the run in 1982, and eventually I'll have those too.

But for the very first time I'll be able to read the complete saga of Turok and Andar in its glory. I'm very much looking forward to it. It's been a long time coming.

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