Martin Powell: The Dinosaur Doctor

This science fiction story,"The Dinosaur Doctor", penciled by Seppo Makinen and inked by the late Alan Larsen, was one of the earliest comic book scripts I ever wrote, and the very first story I ever had published. "The Dinosaur Doctor" appeared in the first issue of Creepy Tales by Pinnacle Comics in 1986.

In those days I was, and still am, keenly fascinated in paleontology and at that time my formal education was focused along those lines. At a visit to a museum I observed a Mesozoic insect fossilized in amber. Although it was over 150 million years old, the insect looked very much like a modern horsefly. I remember being dazzled by the notion that this prehistoric fly had very likely touched and tormented the dinosaurs, much as swarms of similar insects do to animals today. That fly might even have sucked dinosaur blood.

Suddenly, this story popped in my head. What if a scientist was able to extract the dinosaur blood from the stomach of the insect, and reproduce the saurian DNA in order to resurrect a herd of the extinct animals?

Mind you, this was a number of years before Michael Critchton's Jurassic Park was published, and much earlier than Steven Spielberg's massive movie blockbuster rampaged in the theaters.

So, for whatever it's worth, Seppo, Alan, and I were there first.

I still feel great gratitude to Alan Larsen for getting me started in comics during those early days. Just a couple years later Seppo and I teamed-up again with our Sherlock Holmes/Dracula mystery adventure, Scarlet in Gaslight, and our careers finally caught fire. Without Alan Larsen's encouragement, I suspect I might have missed out on a lot of opportunities.

"The Dinosaur Doctor" is dedicated to his memory.

Thanks so much, old friend.