Image Comics‘s Savage Dragon returns this week with a 100-page monster of an issue, in which the Dragon family get a new status quo — followed by two major shakeups to fan-favorite supporting characters. Writer/artist Erik Larsen joined us again for “Getting the Fin Right,” our regular commentary track-style interview about Savage Dragon, to break things down.
As is usually the case with these 100-page giants, we didn’t break down the backup features, which are usually a mix of stories featuring supporting Savage Dragon characters, other flights of fancy from Larsen and other creators, and reprints. In the case of Savage Dragon #275, though, one of the backups is actually pretty relevant to the ongoing story, so we plan to include a brief look at that in our next column.
This is a spoiler-filled interview, so if you haven’t read Savage Dragon #275, you can pick it up at your local comic shop or buy a digital copy on ComiXology.
Comic Book Club: You had said before that the election threw your 2025 plans for a loop a little. Was that part of why you started the year with neo-Nazis?
Erik Larsen: Yeah — it was back to that. It’s also something of a throwaway sequence where I wanted to show the group in action but I didn’t want the bad guys to be so visually interesting that readers would be asking, “What’s that guy’s story?” Nazis are easy. We all understand that Nazis are the bad guys. Or at least — we used to.
Is it safe to assume that the SOS shutdown is the big piece that you were talking about in terms of those changes?
That wasn’t what I was thinking, no. I was thinking that the state would step up and that it wouldn’t be that drastic. I just wanted to sidestep what’s going on in the federal government with Trump because he’s such a wildcard. It gets complicated in the real world as I have no way of anticipating what’s going to happen. The idea of the state taking over the funding sounded more reasonable before the fires in LA.
Good to see Captain Tootsie survived his encounter with Glum! Do you have big plans for the guy? I kind of figured the “death” was because you were done with him.
He’s a character we’ll check in on from time to time and I do have thoughts as to where he’s going but I wouldn’t call those BIG plans necessarily. But as the guy who’s overseeing the Dimension-X portal we will check in from time to time.
Angel is a little concerned about this development, but should she be? In the world of Dragon I feel like there’s a lot weirder stuff going on.
I would imagine that she thought she’d seen Captain Tootsie’s dead body and now she’s not so sure. At the very least—that has to be somewhat traumatic. But, yeah, there is weirder stuff going on.
It’s probably academic at this point, what with all the blowing up and all, but is there anybody left who could have cloned Frank’s body for him using Glum’s hardware?
As far as we know that isn’t. Certainly Glum had a lot of equipment scattered all around and not everything was destroyed. It was just the one building that was smashed. But there’s nothing we have seen to indicate that Glum had another Frank body squirreled away somewhere in case he needed a backup.
How did you land on Angelica for mini-Angel’s new name? Just spitballing “Angel-” names until you liked one? Or have you had it in mind for a while?
That’s her actual name. That’s Angel’s full name too.* The name “Angel” has always been short for Angelica.
*See Savage Dragon #62.
With Frank stuck in Glum’s body, was Angelica kind of the only way for them to have a “kid?”
That remains to be seen. I would assume so. It seems unlikely that they would be compatible but then—Dragon was and he’s not human. The Gods were and they’re not human.
And is Angelica going to be part of the main cast, or will she be living with the Darlings for now?
If Angel remains part of the main cast then Frank, Laila and Angelica would be part of the cast as well. They are a family unit.
The “when she’s old and saggy” comment left me wondering: how DOES Mr. Glum age? Is Frank functionally immortal right now, or will we get some kind of sign of change?
Certainly there doesn’t seem to have been any physical change since Glum was introduced back in Savage Dragon #104. Glum stated in #119 that he was 37 years old and that was in 2004, so he’s at least 20 years older than that — but we don’t really know how how long a year is on Glumworld, so that number is somewhat meaningless.
I guess time will tell but I don’t think of him being immortal. Not in the sense that, say, Herakles or Thor are immortal.
Adding in Angelica makes me wonder: how do you balance the number of characters and, especially when it comes to kids who can’t be in the action all the time, who gets face time and who kind of fades into the background until they’re ready?
It’s a real balancing act. It really comes down to what I have to say at any point. If I don’t have a Laila story—she’s not going to play a huge part.
The reality is that there are too many characters to focus on all of them and inevitably some get the short end of the stick. Barbaric and Ricochet have kids who we have barely seen. SuperPatriot had kids who have barely been seen, even though we check in on Freak Force with some regularity.
We also don’t get much of a look at the private lives of many of the villains. There just isn’t enough space to devote to everybody. I tend to pop in on some of these guy on pages where we cut away from the main action. It’s a good way of implying a passage of time.
As an example, in this issue we have Malcolm and the SOS fighting Nazis, and then we cut to Angel and Tootsie, and then it’s back to Malcolm going home to Maxine. If the Nazi scene butted the coming home scene, it’s pretty abrupt and choppy. If I cut away, your brain gets that we missed the transition from one place to another because we were checking in on something else.
Does The Walking Dead exist in this universe, or was Dart’s comment just a descriptor that you had fun with?
The Walking Dead exists as a TV show in this universe. It also exists as a comic book by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. At this point the term “Walking Dead” is in common usage. People know what that is. But those characters from that book aren’t in this universe facing zombies if that’s what you’re asking.
No, I completely meant “does the comic by Kirkman and Adlard exist?” We’re on the same page. In the same vein as Frank’s Glum issue — does the world at large realize how dangerous the previous Dart was? Isn’t this kind of like having a superhero cosplaying as Jeffrey Dahmer?
Don’t forget that there was a good Dart doing good deeds for years prior to Alison Summers assuming the role. So, Jane August taking on the part is a way of reclaiming the name and honoring the memory of her older sister while atoning for the actions of her wicked niece.
There’s one big, obvious result from the mission to Ukraine, but even before we get to that, will the fact that Malcolm and Angel — known government superheroes — inserted themselves into the Russia/Ukraine war be an issue long-term?
There are plenty of actual Americans who voluntarily inserted themselves into the Ukraine war in the real world — our government hasn’t condoned their actions and I think that’s what will happen here. Certainly the new administration isn’t going to say these actions were sanctioned. And at that going, they were no longer government employees.
Did Angel bring any Freak-Out? I feel like without it, that blood would have been pretty useless in helping SuperPatriot or herself.
Angel DID bring Freak-Out just to be safe.
As far as I can tell, the Russian conversation wasn’t actually too important between those guards. Did you outsource the translation or is that just Google?
That was Google and I translated it backward and forward to make sure it wasn’t wandering too far off course. Presumably readers can do the same if they really want to know what’s being said but much of it is pretty mundane stuff. The robots are yelling “Intruder alert” whenever we see them. The rest is pretty perfunctory.
SuperPatriot is arguably the most popular hero you’ve created outside of Dragon. How long have you been planning the end of his story?
Even since SuperPatriot started closing in on 100 years old I thought—he’s overdue. I mean, I guess he could have gotten a jab and become immortal or slowed his aging to a crawl, but it strained credibility to have him out there kicking ass at that age. It just seemed too hard to swallow. So, I started making plans.
Joseph Strange’s son was first mentioned in Savage Dragon #266 and that’s when the seed was planted. I know then that he would eventually assume the mantle.
Is it safe to assume that he could have recovered, but chose to save Theo instead?
I don’t think so. SuperPatriot had a hole in his chest. I would imagine that Joseph played a part in this and that he might have preprogrammed SuperPatriot’s robotic parts to come to the aid of his son if the need arose. I’m sure SuperPatriot would have willingly made that sacrifice, but I don’t think he could have saved himself here. He was too far gone.
Given the culture right now, how intentional/important was the choice to make the new Super-Patriot a Black man?
I wanted it to be visually apparent that these two were not the same guy and this was an easy way of showing that, but it’s not like I had any agenda here. It’s not a political statement of any kind. In retrospect, doing this at the same time as the Falcon assuming the Captain America mantle in the MCU is unfortunate timing. But what can I do?
Angel calls Paul “Dragon” right away, and he makes the “back in the saddle” comment, but he also clearly talks to Malcolm as Paul. Is it safe to assume that this is still Paul? Or did the blood transfusion mess up the math of whose memories are in there?
He’s still Paul but the Merging of Multiple Earths is still in play here. Those memories are tucked in the back of his brain somewhere. The big change is really that others will now see him as being Dragon even if he knows otherwise.
I know you had Dragon’s final, real death planned for years. Paul seemed like a good compromise. What made you want to put him back into the classic look?
There’s just a lot to play with if he looks like Dragon classic. There are the reactions of everybody else to the change. Again, this was the plan from the start. I knew I was headed here since the day I brought Paul into this world.
What is Paul/Dragon’s new power scale? Is he more akin to Dragon — or at least Dragon as he would have been at this age? Or is he still basically as strong as Paul but he looks like Dragon?
He’s the level Dragon would be at as a 62-year-old. Paul didn’t have Dragon’s healing powers, so that’s in the mix, but in terms of lifting weights at the gym, I don’t think there’s a huge power discrepancy.
This mission was kind of a catastrophe. What does recovering from all of this look like?
We’ll see. Their first order of business is getting the hell out of Russia.
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