Dinosaurs were huge in 1993 (well, and in prehistoric times too – insert canned laughter here), given how much of a stranglehold Jurassic Park had on the box office and the imagination of movie fans of all ages.

So it was a great time for Tom Mason’s indie satire comic, Dinosaurs For Hire (previously published by Eternity Comics for 9, black and white issues starting in 1988) to return.

Tyrannosaurus Archie, Lorenzo the triceratops, eyepatch-wearing stegosaurus, Reese, and pterodactyl (not strictly a dinosaur, for the ptedantic among you – more canned laughter incoming for that one) Cyrano are the main cast, and they’re all introduced, or re-introduced, in this first issue of the relaunched series from Malibu Comics.

The jokes come thick and fast in this issue, which takes aim at the then-in-vogue violent ‘heroes’ from the biggest comics publishers, as well as plenty of self-referential mentions of the Dinosaurs For Hire video game, and the animated show from Fox (the former of which did make it to market, whereas the latter did not).

Like the dinosaurs themselves in this issue’s opening sequence, not all of the jokes land; quite often, the ‘politically incorrect action on every page, that we’re promised/threatened with on the cover, just ends up meaning lots of poor taste quips that try way too hard.

Yet I still found myself enjoying the raucous, sometimes quite bawdy action in Dinosaurs For Hire #1. It’s quite an interesting time capsule too, with some incredibly dated pop culture references and repeated mentions of the then-exciting developments in digitally assisted comic book colouring techniques.

And, in fairness, the comic does look great, from an artwork point of view; several shots of scantily clad women only partially land successfully as satire of similar material in other comics though. There’s only so many times you can hammer a satirical point into the ground before you just become the target of your satire.

Creator Tom Mason also jokes about not revealing the origin of the titular characters too, ending the issue with a bonus strip that takes a more newspaper funnies style approach to the dinosaurs when they were younger, with ‘L’il Dinosaurs’.

It’s all good fun and very entertaining, even if the humour isn’t always particularly sophisticated or even all that funny. It’s a shame that the Dinosaurs For Hire are all but forgotten these days, because back in ’93, certainly on the evidence of this self-confident relaunch (not to mention the fact that they got their own Sega Genesis game), it seemed like they were on top of the world.