Planet Comics has published the first volume of Savage Dragon, written and illustrated by Erik Larsen for Image Comics.

Planet Comics rescues one of the most curious characters in the Ninth Art, the most popular Green Man since Hulk: Savage Dragon, Erik Larson’s decades-long saga in a stunning edition.

Author’s work

Erik Larson was one of the most successful cartoonists at Marvel Comics and co-founded Image Comics with his colleagues (Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Wills Portaccio, Jim Valentino, and Marc Silvestri). As Larson had such a good time with the Bruce Banner series, he decided to start a series starring the Green Monster on the main screen.

Larson can boast decades of writing and drawing stories alongside McFarlane’s Spawn. It may not reach the level of invincible quality (to compare with any other character that the creator Robert Kirkman has put under his command from the beginning to the end, and also in the comics), but all these years the scriptwriter and cartoonist has won the attention of readers for his persistence and ability to keep the story relevant, at least in his homeland. And he won the admiration of his colleagues.

The nineties are considered one of the darkest periods in mainstream American comics in the world… and rightfully so. That’s not to say that there aren’t good (and fantastic) comics being made, which can be attributed to the rise of some fresh auteurs at that stage, preoccupied with form rather than substance. What’s more, it’s impossible to say that there wasn’t much fun to be found among the plethora of works on display featuring women with masses of muscles, clenched teeth, hollow eyes, and impossibly large bodies.

Savage Dragon is an incredibly muscular humanoid with reptilian features, superhuman strength, and a regenerative factor that resides in the Image universe. His total obliviousness to his past and origins may remind us of other popular characters from The House of Ideas, but Savage plays Dragon in a different league than Wolverine. It doesn’t take long for this hypervitaminosis lizard to use his gift to fight crime in Chicago alongside the police, and the rest is history…

Although in this series we can find the typical characteristics of the nineties comics without much effort, after almost ending the industry, the approach given by the author is fresh and different to raise eyebrows (in a good way) when you start reading.

This series of attacks, action pages and scantily clad women aren’t his only weapons. Larsen presents the story with a rich environment full of secondary characters (many of whom are introduced in their own spin-off), he develops plots with a certain depth that distance themselves from the usual and above all in the sleeper comic. , gives the main character a magnetic personality that ropes him into holding readers for nearly three hundred issues to date.

The history of the ninth art

Although born in the shadow of other series like Youngblood, Savage Dragon is undoubtedly the series that poured the most talent into those early years of Image Comics. And it is because of the author’s tireless work and respect for the comic technique that this series has shown in issue after issue that it would be unreasonable to call it a legend of the ninth art.

Published by Planeta Comic, this comic is presented in hardcover with no dust jackets. It contains 440 pages and provides the translation by Ignacio Bentz of the American edition of the five editions of the original Ministries, Dragon and the first eight issues of the regular series, in addition to the included issues and original covers, and a large section with additional material at the end. It has a recommended retail price of €40 and goes on sale in April 2024.

Savage Dragon 1

Historical comedy.

A criminal named Chicago Overlord has taken over the capital city with a terrifying iron fist. The traditional police force was losing in the war against the Overlords and Superspawns. Then a miracle happened. When they found him, he had no memory of his past. Lieutenant Frank Darling helped him find an identity and a life. Now they have a fighting chance. Now… they have a dragon.

Collects issues from the original miniseries #1-5, THE DRAGON and #1-8 of the regular series, SAVAGE DRAGON.

Author: Erik Larsen