Angry Ape-Men and an Angry T-Rex: Tragg and the Sky Gods #5

cover art by Jesse Santos

As Tragg and the Sky Gods #6 (May 1976) picks up, the title character and his gal Lorn are still looking for other tribes to help fight the alien invaders. They finally find another tribe, but things don't go well.

This particular tribe is made up of ape people who use tools and have a language, but haven't learned much about abstract notions of friendship and gratitude yet. (By the way, they share a language with Tragg. This seems unlikely, especially since the respective tribes have never met, but perhaps there's still one primitive language in the world that hasn't broken off into different dialects yet. Yeah, that's it!)

I shouldn't make fun of little details like the language, though, because this issue has writer Donald Glut and artist Dan Spiegle add yet another interesting element to the world that Glut has been expertly building. The ape tribe is a great addition to the overall story arc--a sort of wild card element that can be left alone or brought back into the story at any time.

Tragg saves an ape they dub "White Top" from a ceratopsian, but this also causes a landslide that snuffs out flames coming up from a narrow crevasse. This was the tribe's source of fire, since they haven't figured out how to make it themselves yet. They had also worshiped the fire as a god.

Tragg and Lorn figure this is no problem, since they can just teach the apes about this. But the tribal leader decides instead that the strangers must die. The two humans make a break for it, but end up falling into a large crevasse. They end up in a large cavern that is also the home of a T-Rex. There's also a pool of thick, black liquid that tastes terrible.

White Top feels badly about Tragg and Lorn--they had, after all, saved his life. He climbs down after them. Soon after that, the rest of the tribe also climbs down, having decided the humans need to be sacrificed to appease their god and get their fire back.

The T-Rex attacks and, in a short but exciting action scene, Lorn and White Top team up to save Tragg's life. The T-Rex gets a torch stuck in its mouth and makes the mistake of tumbling into that thick black liquid.

The dinosaur is dead. The tribe gets their fire back in a big way. Tragg and Lorn have a friend in the tribe, so there is hope of a future alliance. AND Tragg now knows the black liquid goes boom, which might come in handy later.

While all this is going on, Keera, the alien woman who has the hots for Tragg, finally gets herself tossed in the slammer by Zorek. This isn't a surprise twist in of itself, since Keera really hasn't done a very good job of covering her tracks whenever she has helped Tragg. But we do learn that at least one other among the aliens is unhappy with Zorek's leadership. The dissension in the ranks might be a little more wide-spread than we have seen so far.

So Tragg and the Sky God gives us another issue that is entertaining and reasonably self-contained on its own, but also progresses the overall story arc and adds new details to Tragg's world.

We'll return to Tragg before too long. Next week, though, we'll watch Dick Tracy meet a new enemy and make a new friend.