While series star Malcolm Dragon, his adopted sister Angel Murphy, and an all-new Super-Patriot are trapped in Russia, the Dragon triplets have been enjoying their own adventures back home in San Francisco in Image Comics‘ Savage Dragon #277.
In this month’s issue, Jackson Dragon joins the Bay Guardian to break up a human trafficking operation run by ManEater and Gator, a pair of villains who once threw down with his grandfather, the original Dragon. As you might expect with a non-powered hero and a ten-year-old squaring off with a pair of seasoned superfreaks, things get ugly fast.
Larsen joined Comic Book Club to talk about the issue, what to expect from the next few months, and what happens now that one of Malcolm’s kids is in state custody.
This is a spoiler-filled interview, so if you haven’t read Savage Dragon #277, you can pick it up at your local comic shop or buy a digital copy.
Comic Book Club: These stand-alone issues featuring the kids are useful at giving readers a better sense of their individual personalities. Do you think you’ll continue doing these from time to time now that they’re getting older?
Erik Larsen: I’ll go back and forth a bit. I thought it’d be a nice break to focus on each of the kids individually but I don’t know that’s I’ll do four issues in a row where I focus on an individual kid again. But the plan is to eventually shift the focus entirely to one or more of them down the road. Having Malcolm out of the country and Maxine behind a locked door gave me an opportunity to do something like this. That situation isn’t likely to happen again any time soon.
In your heart of hearts, do you have somebody in mind to take over the book from Malcolm at some point? Or are you still kind of working through that?
I’m leaning one way, for sure, but we’ll see. I don’t need to make any decisions now and it’s kind of nice to be able to sit back and see how things unfold.
Jackson obviously starts this issue in a very different place to where he begins it. Given that Maxine doesn’t work, do the kids feel like superhero work is basically the default job for them?
I think they all have something of a sense that this is a calling—or at responsibility. If you have the power to help others—you do it because you can and because it’s the right thing to do. Jackson is probably the biggest superhero Geel of the group—he was emulating Spider-man early on—so that “with great power” speech is baked in.
The Bay Guardian seems a little…straightforward…with Jackson about sex trafficking. It feels like a lot of people would have stopped after the first “what’s that?” Is this an indication he’s got a little of socially awkward stuff going on, or just a good way to get the message out in a couple of panels?
The Bay Guardian just informed Jackson as succinctly as he could. There’s not much point in beating around the bush. It’s also a good way to drop in some information to anybody else that might not know what that’s all about.
When ManEater showed up, I more or less knew this was the end of the road for her. Are there any characters you feel like you’ve forgotten or neglected out there who might come back for more than just an issue or two?
I’d rather it not feel like I’m cleaning house too much but it does dawn on me at time that all of these characters are getting older. The book has been going for 33 years. Gator and ManEater as at least 30 years older than they were when they first appeared. But I don’t want it to seem like I’ll just be killing off any and all returning villains. That could get monotonous and it’d be nice to actually see how these guys’ lives play out. We might just see a few living semi-normal lives.
An odd question — since her psychic power “waves” are almost the same color as her skin, sometimes it feels a little disorienting to see in action. Is that intentional, or just a byproduct of coloring choices you made 20 years ago?
It’s more the latter. I actually didn’t tell the colorists to do any kind of special effect when she first appeared. But once it had been established I did feel an obligation to keep it consistent.
ManEater also doesn’t seem surprised to see one of the grandkids in the fray. Do you think most villains will just kind of roll with it, since the Dragon kids are so powerful it doesn’t seem as insane?
I would imagine they would just roll with the punches. They know they’re up to shady business. They know there’s a chance that somebody’s going to raid the place, be it the police, the Bay Guardian or ICE and they’re prepared to deal with whatever shows up.
That said…Jackson certainly had a dramatic response to what happened. Do you think this will put him off the family business for a while? Maybe play into how his captivity is depicted?
I don’t think that he could help but be somewhat traumatized by the events. But we’ll have to wait and see how that manifests itself.
It feels self-evident that the Bay Guardian and Jackson were in the right, but did you want to make it clear that Gator was delusional by including a beat where the women stand up for themselves?
Jackson is a child after all. If he was in doubt at all—it was in their best interest to tell Jackson that he’s being lied to. If they were going to get free of these monsters—this was their chance. They had better make sure it happens.
Considering how common nudity and sexuality is in this book, it seems notable that none of the women being trafficked are depicted as graphically as Maxine is in a regular month. I’m assuming that was intentional?
It just didn’t seem natural to have any of the running around in the buff. I would assume most prostitutes wear clothes when they’re sitting around. Not every issue needs to have that going on.
On a similar note, it’s hard to miss the subtext here of ICE charging in and being every bit the brutal abductors that Gator and ManEater were…!
It’s hard to miss the reality of them doing the same thing in the real world, honestly. I felt it needed to be addressed to some degree. The book has always reflected the real world and that’s the world we’re living in.
You had said that Trump’s re-election threw you for a loop in terms of story plans. Is it safe to say that with the ICE abductions at the end here, you’ve landed on where you want that to go?
I’m still figuring that out. Every day is another unspeakable horror. Another scandal. Last time I moved the family to Canada to escape this nonsense. It’s hard to know what to do when the real world is so unpredictable.
Next issue is Tyrone. Is it safe to assume we won’t get back to Jackson (or Maxine’s reaction to what happened at the end of the issue) right away?
The plan at this point is to not show Maxine at all until after these four issues and to not have any crossover with the kids. Amy wasn’t in Jackson’s story and Jackson won’t be in Tyrone’s story. Plans do change, of course, but that’s where my head is at the moment.
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