What issue is that from? Vampires were definitely around in the days of the elder demons. Illyria was familiar with them, for one thing. And then there's the Turok-han.
Are you sure this isn't from the Fallen Angel book with Illyria, by Peter David? It's just I noticed it directly references God and the Devil, something the Buffyverse normally avoids.
The official story is that the first Vampire was created when the Old Ones all left this reality/died. One of them infected a human and turned him/her into a demon/human hybird, the first Vampire. This is definately at odds with that story bit above which shows that Vampires existed long before modern humans.
As I said, vampires were around in the days of the Old Ones because Illyria knew of them, as evidenced when she said to Angel "You glittered at night, and were pretty." But if vampires infected dinosaurs first, how did they survive to infect humans millions of years later? And how do the Turok-han fit into all this? Also, which particular comic is that page from? And didn't Greg Cox once write a story for the Tales of the Slayer prose anthology that featured a vampire giant squid? That was a good story.
When Illyria talked about vampires, I had assumed she was referring to the Turok-Han. I'm not sure how to reconcile that with the Angel comic making a dinosaur the first vampire.
The Buffy and Angel comics are canon continuations of the respective series. The current Buffy comics are even titled "Season Eight," with a two-year "Season Nine" planned for when the season eight run ends, tied with Angel moving from IDW to Dark Horse.
I hate to be the party pooper, but yeah, the "Vampire Dinosaur" bit is from the Angel annual, 100% canon (unless you believe anything Post After the Fall isn't canon).... ...But the entire issue is billed as the "Comic Adaptation" of the movie "Last Angel in Hell" which functions as the "Hollywood Major Motion Picture" based on the 'true story' of the events in After the Fall. Including Betta George, who's a dog, Gunn being a fat guy who likes Guns, Spike's a chick, and Angel is played by Nicholas Cage (or an uncannily similar substitute). So while canon...it's in-canon as ficticious. It's a shout out to the talking T-Rex demon that actually WAS seen in After the Fall, but hey, he was standing next to a giant shark in a business suit, so I didn't give it much mind.
Thanks for that explanation. I'm really behind on the comics (Angel even more so than Buffy, though I'm behind on both series), so I didn't know anything about the annual beyond that page. It's good to know that the comic wasn't trying to retcon the first vampire into a dinosaur. Some demons who look like dinosaurs or possessed the bodies of some dinosaurs, sure, but we already had the Turok-Han as precursor vamps, so I'd rather just stick to that.
Joss would probably have just ignored that anyway or chosen not to reference that in the "season" books. I'm kind of excited for Angel's return to the Dark Horse label.
Has anyone here ever read the BtVS prose novel Paleo by Yvonne Navarro? The plot involved magickally revived dinosaurs being possessed by the spirit of a dragon demon, and it's always been one of my favourite books in the series. In some ways it's kind of a precursor to the T-Rex demon in the Angel comics.
Illyria had armies of Turok-Han, when she arose she didn't immediately realise Vampires still existed saying "I thought the world devoid of your kind." but called all modern Vampires "Half-breeds", that the Demon half now clung to a mortal Human shell instead of taking its full corporeal form.
But the Turok-Han all looked like the Master, didn't they? Doesn't that imply that they were just really powerful "Half-Breeds" too?