Lost and Found #1 (One Shot)

(Lost and Found will be available later this month at a comic shop near you. This is an Early Review.)

So what happens when you smush together helicopters, dinosaurs, psychotic Germans, swordplay, machine guns, cavemen, vikings, Civil War-era soldiers, submarines, samurai, and a pirate ship and drop it all on the same time-crossed island?

You get Lost and Found, a wild story that combines the best of DC's Island That Time Forgot stories, some of Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, a touch of Jurassic Park, a sprinkle of Predator and a whole lot of action and adventure.

The story explains away all the mysterious disappearances around the world over the centuries - apparently an ancient experiment opened a doorway to a mysterious island, and people are drawn into it randomly. Those who survived the trip have banded into two factions, and they fight over the scraps of every new arrival.

The story begins at top speed, as pilot Molly Travis lands her AH-Apache helicopter on the island and finds herself in the middle of a huge battle. Things get more complicated when the bad guys manage to steal the chopper's cargo - a scientist and an atomic bomb.

Writer Beau Smith is the master of these kind of bare-knuckled, hard-nosed, guns-blazing, non-stop action tales, and he serves one up that captures the mood and breakneck pace of an Edgar Rice Burroughs story.

And it's great to see Gary Kwapisz handling the art chores here. He's a vastly underrated artist who did excellent work on The Savage Sword of Conan years back, and he's one of those rare artist who can draw darn near everything and do it extremely well. And this is a story that would tax any artist, since it includes such a wide variety of characters, creatures, violence, romance - you name it! He draws sexy women, manly men, and menacing dinosaurs. Hopefully we'll see lots more work from him in the future.

The operative word for this book is "Fun." It's not deep, it's not confusing - it's just straightforward, action-packed and a heck of a blast to read.

The real mystery is: why aren't there more comics like this? It's a badly-needed shot of testosterone for the anemic world of comics.

Grade: A-