So I finished off the Turok reboot that Dynamite did a decade ago. The first story arc was cliche as fuck with the whole "Noble savage" narrative, the second story was far better and actually showed the series had some potential, but then the third story arc just dropped straight into "What bullshit am I reading?" territory.
To explain something first, Turok is a comic book series that started back in the mid-1950's. The premise for the series is that, in pre-Columbian America, a Mandan Indian named "Turok", along with an apprentice named "Andar", stumble upon an extensive cave network that leads them to a world underground brimming with dinosaurs, cavemen, and other "impossible" discoveries. It's an adventure series that details their exploration of the underground world and eventually their attempts to get back home. All the Turok media since then has played on some variation of this, such as later comics having the "dino world" be a "dimension out of time" or even another planet as was the case with the 2008 vidya reboot.
However, in this story, the dinos...just exist without rhyme of reason and brought across the oceans to America by everyone else. The opening for the story is that Turok is an outcast living within the vicinity of another tribe who killed his parents some sixteen years prior because they believed them to be "Witch-doctors" or something along those lines. While Turok is being chased by Andar and his gang who've been bullying him since forever, the tribe is attacked by dinosaurs unleashed by 13th century English crusaders who crossed the Atlantic for the purposes of finding gold. Turok and Andar manage to escape capture, eventually free the rest of their tribe, and retreat into the hills while holding the English general's daughter captive. In response, the English general unleashes a T-Rex for the purposes of hunting down the Indians, not caring about the fate of his daughter due to the fact that she's already been "tainted" for being captured. Turok eventually manages to redivert the T-Rex back to the Crusaders, resulting in them retreating into the hills and hiding in the caves with the Indians. The general attempts to feed the hungry T-Rex by offering up a young boy, but "Here Turok comes to save the day" by knocking the boy out of the generals hands, skewering the general with a sword, and tossing him into the mouth of the T-Rex. After everything is said and done, Turok leaves to return to the land of his family hoping to find peace. Like I said, the first story arc is cliche as fuck about the "evil explorers looking for gold", but it also does it's fair share of making Andar and his tribe out to be realy dicks to Turok for zero reason. Even after he saves their lives. The art is decent, and the action is good. Though, I wish to God that these companies would begin hiring artists who actually draw female-looking characters instead of women who look like buffed-chest men with nigger lips.
The second story arc begins with Turok wondering the world and running into a girl named Altani. She's the daughter of Genghis Khan, and he eventually learns that the Khan is at war with his (Turok's) people. Naturally, the desire to seek peace is proposed, until it's revealed that the Chief of Turok's people is a murderous bastard who killed Turok's extended family to gain unopposed power and is holding the village's populace hostage if Turok doesn't help him. As for the Khan's motivation, it's of course conquering land, but he has the extra motivation the village chief slaughtering the Khan's son the year prior. I'm not exactly going to spoil this because it's actually the best story arc of the 12 issues, but you'll catch my drift if I saw that the story is sex-swapped Pocahontas with dinos and the Mongols replacing the English. The art for this arc is vastly improved, but this because the artists is Japanese (Despite being Canadian born).
After that point, you can drop the series as the last arc is trash and shouldn't exist. To give you an idea, Turok returns to the stranded English now co-existing with the Andar's tribe, but English want to return home. So, they cross the ocean with Turok and Andar, and Turok becomes Robin Hood. This isn't a joke, and I'm not making that shit up. He literally becomes Robin Hood, with King John, and the Men In Tights. Everything. Even the dino's take a back seat to the point that they could be yanked out of the story and you wouldn't notice. In fact, up to the point, the characters carefully referred to the dinos as "dragons" or "birds", but they drop all pretense halfway through the third arc and just start calling them "dinosaurs". The entire comic is based in 1210 A.D. by the way. Ironically, this also has the best art, too, so hats off to Felipe Cunha and Ruairi Coleman.
Overall, I liked it(?), but even that comes with some hesitation. The first arc just starts everything off on the wrong foot, and third arc is just trash and false advertising. I very much liked the second arc, so I'd say only read the first eight issues.