Line #21 ComicBook/Turok


1	[[quoteright:335:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/turoktrex.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:335:Dentistry in the Lost Lands is not a popular career choice.]]
3
4	->''"I... am TUROK!"''
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6	''Turok'' is a ComicBook hero, a Pre-Columbian Navajo Warrior, who debuted in late 1954. Turok and his friend Andar accidentally fall into [[LostWorld a valley full of dinosaurs]] and struggle to survive and find their way out. In 1956, Turok got his own title, ''Turok: Son of Stone'', originally published by Creator/DellComics, but later by Creator/GoldKeyComics. Then he had another series in the 1990s after the character was acquired by Creator/JimShooter's Creator/ValiantComics; it was there that the nature of the valley (and Turok's role in it) were expanded.
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8	In the Valiant series, 'Turok' was not a name, but a title: The Turok was the eldest male in the Fireseed family whose job was to close the portal from Earth to the Lost Lands; a strange, dark world where an evil tyrant named Mothergod had created an army of bio-mechanical dinosaurs to do her bidding. Though Tal'Set Fireseed, the first Turok, closed the portal, he and his brother Andar ended up AfterTheEnd in a ScavengerWorld instead of in their own time. Mothergod, unfortunately, had followed them back with a group of bio-mechanical dinosaurs and, enlisting the aid of other tyrannical figures in this post-apocalyptic nightmare world, had vowed to finally hunt down and kill Tal'Set and Andar.
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10	After Creator/{{Acclaim}} bought out Creator/ValiantComics, a popular series of ''VideoGame/{{Turok}}'' video game adaptations began in 1997. Acclaim continued the comics as a subtle ContinuityReboot of the Valiant series, focusing on Joshua Fireseed, a descendant of Tal'Set, as he juggled his life of a OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent on modern-day Earth with his responsibility as Turok. Being that the comics were largely tie-in material for the games, they are mostly forgotten about today. It also didn't help that a mix-up with the distributor kept most of the copies in warehouses. When Acclaim went under due to a number of failed games and marketing blunders, Acclaim's comics, and by extension the Valiant series, died with them.
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12	2008 saw the release of an animated DirectToVideo movie called ''[[WesternAnimation/TurokSonOfStone Turok: Son of Stone]]'' based on the comic series of the same name. The animation was done in TimmStyle (one of the film's 3 directors directed the DTV movie ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyondReturnOfTheJoker''), however unlike the original comic it was considerably darker and gorier with HighPressureBlood and dismembered limbs a-plenty.
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14	A reboot of the comic headed by Creator/DarkHorseComics (responsible for other recent Gold Key/Valiant reboots such as ''[[ComicBook/DoctorSolar Solar, Man of the Atom]]'' and ''ComicBook/MagnusRobotFighter'') started in 2010. In 2014 Dynamite Entertainment acquired the rights and started a series written by Greg Pak. In 2017, yet another reboot was attempted, this time with an african-american Turok for the first time in the character's history, written by Chuck Wendig. In 2019, it was rebooted once again with the series going back to its roots and staring Turok as a Navajo Warrior and LegacyCharacter Andar now being his younger brother, written by Ron Marz. Only the Greg Pak run managed to last into the double digits, with the other two dying after five issues. Yet another version of the character also appeared in Dynamite's crossover miniseries ''Gold Key Alliance'' and its followup ''The Sovereigns''.
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16	!!''Turok'' contains the following tropes:
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18	* AnachronismStew:
19	** Averted, as the dinosaurs, demons and aliens were all inter-dimensional travelers (albeit involuntary ones) and not simply different things from different time periods together for no reason other than that [[RuleOfCool that would be cool]].
20	** Played straight in the Dynamite Entertainment series which mixes Dinosaurs, Crusade-era knights, Mongols, and even Robin Hood.
21	%% * BadassNative: Tal'Set Fireseed.
22	* HistoricalBadassUpgrade: How do you make UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan even more badass? The Dynamite Entertainment series gave him an army of dinosaurs and a pteranodon-riding daughter.
23	* LongRunner: The original Turok comic book ran for 26 years, and was almost entirely written by one man, Paul S. Newman (the Guinness-confirmed most-prolific comics writer).
24	* {{Retcon}}: Turning "Indians Turok and Andar lost in a Dinosaur Valley" into "Tal'Set Fireseed/Josh Fireseed/Danielle Fireseed must become '[=TuRoK=]': The title of a mysterious dimension-hopping [[BadassNative Navajo warrior]] fighting genetically engineered dinosaurs, [[OurDemonsAreDifferent shape-shifting devils]] and [[{{Cyborg}} bio-mechanical aliens]] with [[EnergyWeapons high-tech weapons]] in a [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic]] version of Earth where 'time has no meaning'". And after several retcons, we now have a mixture of both.
25	* TheStraightAndArrowPath: Bows were the only weapons in the ''Turok: the Son of Stone'' comics.

Context ComicBook / Turok