Michael Golden — Monstrous Mayhem (Jurassic Park Rerelease)

Jurassic Park Raptor’s Hijack #1, July 1994

Perhaps best known for his work on Micronauts and The Nam, Michael Golden is simply put, a superstar artist.

And perhaps some of his most fascinating art, and possibly least known by anyone other than hardcore Golden fans, are his covers (and portfolios) for Topps’ Jurassic Park series.

Beautifully detailed, wonderful compositions, these covers transcended the JP sequels and side stories that we published at Topps. They are simply stunning. While some are better than others, there’s not a bad one in the bunch.

Michael did 18 different covers, and added two new ones to two separate portfolios. Interestingly, until I looked it up, I didn’t realize that Image actually published the portfolios, which are long out of print and challenging to find on the secondary market place.

(I have no memory of how we were able to swing that with Universal, but I’m glad we did.)

This beautiful piece? Dinosaurs. Gorillas. Mad scientists. It’s like some crazy Republic movie serial. Only with a better budget.