Before The Lost World, Jurassic Park Got These Wild Comic Book Sequels

The Lost World is the indisputable sequel to Jurassic Park, but what if we told you there were several non-canon follow-ups?

After the original film became Tyranosaur-sized hit in the summer of 1993, Universal Pictures wanted to keep the dinosaur momentum going and approved a continuation of the story in comic book form. Trading card company Topps got the license and comics veteran Steve Englehart (creator of Star-Lord, Mantis, Shang-Chi and Doctor Phosphorous) was hired as writer.

Englehart recalled in Jurassic Park: The Ultimate Visual History that he was literally allowed to do whatever he liked.

As he revealed, "They just said, 'Here you go.'"

The wild comic book sequels to Jurassic Park

That carte blanche attitude resulted in Jurassic Park Adventures, where Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler and Ian Malcolm are kidnapped by conniving InGen rival Biosyn, who is seeking to create its own version of Jurassic Park. The comic also involved game warden Robert Muldoon coming back from the dead (it's revealed he survived the raptor attack) and a Colombian drug-lord who wanted to use carnivorous dinosaurs as weapons by fitting them with shock collars. 

"Clearly," Englehart explained, "anybody who decided that he wanted to have a raptor for a friend/pet/protector would be somebody like a Colombian drug lord!"

Come to think of it, we wouldn't be surprised if the narcotics kingpin's ill-advised attempt to make the raptors do his bidding was the kernel idea for the echolocation-using Indoraptor over 20 years later in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

In total, Englehart wrote four different arcs entitled Raptors, Raptors Attack, Raptors Hijack and Return to Jurassic Park. The Return to Jurassic Park storyline saw Grant, Sattler, Muldoon and John Hammond's assistant Edgar Prather (a new character created for the book) uncovering a mysterious U.S. military project code-named "Green Flame" on Isla Nublar.

Cover for Issue #3 of Jurassic Park Raptors Attack comic book.

Photo: Courtesy of Topps

Englehart had to step away after writing four issues (out of eight) due to his commitments to The Night Man series. Tom and Mary Bierbaum (DC's Legion of Super-Heroes) came on board to complete the endeavor. However, they decided to start from scratch with a narrative centered on two researchers clashing with a Doctor Moreau-type mad scientist trying to breed intelligent dinosaurs. As such, the questions surrounding Green Flame were never properly resolved.

In 1995, the same year that Return began its run, Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton published The Lost World novel, which brought back Ian Malcolm as the main character. Similar to what Englehart did with Muldoon, the book retconned Malcolm's death. Two years later, Steven Spielberg released his loose adaptation of the source material, with Jeff Golblum reprising Malcolm.

A one-off annual comic was also published in 1995, containing stories about the pet ferret of an investor's daughter that gets loose in the park ("Sneakers") and a group of Dilophosaurus that wreak havoc on the mainland ("Death Lizards").