Crytpozoic Man!

It is a comic book!  It has cryptozoology!

It's two great things that go great together.  This series might very well be the chocolate peanut butter cup of comics in 2013.

Dynamite Comics has released issue one of Cryptozoic Man, a horror-tinged miniseries about a blowzy suburban man and his missing daughter.
Alan Ostman is said man.  His daughter goes on a camping trip to the Pacific Northwest.  Given that the region is replete with Bigfoot sightings and that the character's name is a play on Albert Ostman,  a man who claimed to have actually been kidnapped by sasquatches in 1924, it's not hard for the cryptid-savvy comics reader to guess the possible perpetrator.  Alan Ostman sets out to find his missing child.

That's where the plot sickens.  As if life weren't bad enough for poor Alan, he gets abducted by Gray aliens as he exits a roadside bar.  Of course one must ask, if he's so determined to get his daughter back, what made him pull the car over for a mojito?  Then again I have not read it so I'll reserve judgment.  Anyway, Alan finds that if these numerous cryptids whispered about from the shadows and hunted on NatGeo aren't stopped, then the world is going to have quite a time of it.

Oh and there's a pig in leather bondage gear.

The previews mention cryptids such as the chupacabra and of course, Bigfoot.  However, I would hope that we would see others enter into the mix.  Namely, I would hope to see Mothman, The Jersey Devil, and even the Flatwoods Monster.  Then again, that might be a copious amount of cryptids to try to cram into a four issue mini.  And while I really like the concept (I'm especially intrigued by the working in of the Grays), I'm also a bit apprehensive about the amount of gore that seems to pervade the preview pages.  Crytpozoology does not intrigue me due to any potential for violence but rather the mystery of it all.  What unknown but very real creatures lurk in the dark, just beyond our sight?

Again, I will reserve judgement until I actually read the thing.  If nothing else it serves as a refreshing departure from standard superhero fare or the brown-toned, ironic narratives of Vertigo.   

Should be fun.





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