DINOSAURS ON MY STREET

A 30-member dino gallery, with clumsily Photoshopped scenes, founded on the well-worn “if dinosaurs came back” premise.

Said premise does have enduring child appeal—though West manages to dim even that by assembling pictorial elements without using them in any imaginative way or even integrating them. With notable lack of visual logic, for instance, he shoehorns into busy street scenes life-sized, realistically detailed T. Rex and other toothy predators that don’t appear to notice the human prey at their feet. Furthermore, in his sometimes–washed-out pictures, a herd of Protoceratops runs across beach sand without leaving tracks, several figures appear to float slightly above the ground, and a huge Carnotosaurus rams headfirst into a car without denting it. Nor do the people looking on, all of whom have the generic plastic look of figures from midbudget video games, usually show more than mild anxiety. On facing pages, two to four sentences of general notes on each dino’s size, diet and special features include an unproven claim that Altirhinus could blow up its nose like a balloon, repetitious phrasing (three dinos are found in “quieter parts of town”) and a reference to a busker who has been trimmed out of the accompanying illustration.

There’s a fair lot of dinosaurs for one volume, but low production values push this to the back of the herd.