In the latest issue of Savage Dragon, Tyrone takes center stage. The latest one-and-done story featuring one of the Dragon children features the first Image Comics Universe appearance of Popeye the Sailor, who entered the public domain in 2025, as well as a quick cameo by Dagwood Bumstead from Blondie, who entered the public domain earlier this month.
The kids have been featured in the last few issues of the book after the death of Super-Patriot, which left Malcolm Dragon and Angel Murphy stranded in Russia and trying to fight their way home along with Paul Dragon and a new iteration of Super-Patriot.
As always, Erik Larsen joined Comic Book Club to talk about the issue and tease what’s coming next. Spoilers ahead for the issue, as this is basically a “commentary track” interview.
Comic Book Club: What went into the decision to bring Popeye into the book with this issue?
Erik Larsen: Every year I have a general awareness of what’s entering the public domain and I’ve always been something of a Popeye fan, so I jumped right on that.
We have talked about this before with Daredevil and Mickey, but what adjustments do you have to make to Popeye’s model to make him “fit” in the world of Savage Dragon?
The thing with Popeye is that in the comics we really only see him from a ¾ view, and while E. C. Segar could make that work in a comic strip by not playing around with angles and keeping the camera essentially frozen—I tend to vary my shots quite a bit, which meant figuring out how to draw him from a number of different angles.
I ended up fudging a lot of things because I realized that he doesn’t easily rotate. I decided pretty early on not to limit myself and try to ape E. C. Segar as it would be far too restrictive. And once I let that go I could mess around with various textures on him. With a character whose design is so simple — he looked too blank when I zoomed in on him, so I ended up giving him a drunkard’s nose with a lot of rendering just to give it more visual interest.
Limiting myself to ¾ shots would have been a nightmare and I’d already done a Popeye riff in Savage Dragon #252 where I emulated E. C. Segar’s Thimble Theater strip. It was also a case where the character design in the strip gradually changed over the years and I had to just pick one.
Was it you or Jack who decided Popeye would get to keep his custom balloon tails?
I suggested that and sent Jack Morelli a few samples from the Thimble Theater comic strip.
Popeye raises a good point: It feels like the kids are a little young to be wandering a major city alone. Is that an indicator that Malcolm and Maxine are especially permissive, or is it more that they know the kids can handle themselves?
Malcolm is in Russia and Maxine really couldn’t control the kids if she wanted to. I would imagine that the kids are given a much longer leash simply because they have superpowers and are much more capable of taking care of themselves.
We know Mickey is famous as an actor, but it seems like Popeye is famous for his seafaring deeds. Is that an accurate reading?
Yeah. He’s a sailor and an adventurer. Likely he’s been in the news enough that Tyrone would recognize him. I would think he’s found and lost many fortunes over the years. I’m kind of playing him a bit more as he was in the first year of the strip as opposed to jumping ahead when he and Olive were an item.
How much backstory do you give each new “camp” of ugly underground/underwater creatures you introduce for an issue like this?
Whatever you see is largely it and when characters appear again I’ll build on that. There’s really no point in figuring all the details out beforehand. But I figure there is a small enclave that’s not too far off and that’s why they keep showing up in the same location.
Is this notion of just being completely unwilling to walk away from a fight key to your version of Popeye? Or was it just a convenient way to split him and Tyrone up at the end of the issue?
I had actually laid out a longer sequence where Popeye and Tyrone jumped into his boat and gave chase and ultimately ended up getting stranded on an uncharted island somewhere but it just felt too wrong for Tyrone to do that given his personality. He’s far too thoughtful and rational to run off with a stranger no matter how famous. Popeye, on the other hand, might very well do that. So, while it made sense for Popeye — it didn’t make sense for Tyrone, and that’s why they ended up going their separate ways.
Any chance of us seeing a Popeye one-shot by you, telling the story you tee up here?
Probably not. I didn’t actually enjoy drawing him as much as I thought I would. That was another reason I decided to cut bait on that part of the story. He’s hard to draw, he’s hard to write and his use of the English language seemed to constantly evolve as the strip progressed, which made it hard to figure out the rules to write his dialogue.
We get some more Mickey, and a Dagwood cameo, too. I remember when Malcolm and Angel were in high school, Daredevil played a big role in the book for a while. Do you feel like some of these public domain characters from a simpler era are especially suited to the “kid” stories?
I don’t think if it in those terms so much. It’s just an opportunity to do team-ups with established characters without it being a contractual nightmare. If I wanted to use Mickey Mouse, Dagwood Bumstead or Popeye a couple years ago it would have been impossible with all of the hoops I’d have to jump through. Now they’re just there, free and available.
I look forward to the day when Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch and Captain Marvel can drop by without me having to employ a team of lawyers.
Having gone through this period of stories about the kids, I feel like the readers have a better understanding of most of them. Did you “learn” about them as this went on or did you already have an understanding of most of it, and this storyline just gave you a chance to put it on the page?
That was kind of the point for both me and the characters. I wanted to better define them for the readers and myself. The thought is that, eventually, one or more of these kids will be heading this book, and just as I gave Malcolm a few solo adventures when he was young I thought I should do the same with Amy, Jackson, Tyrone and Madeline. At the end, I would hope that we would all have a better idea of what these characters might be like on their own.
The Mickey stuff is running mostly in the background, since Malcolm and Maxine are barely in the book right now. Is that something that you plan to resolve soon, or will it drag on for a while as lawsuits are prone to do?
We’ll just have to see how that plays out. At this point I could go any number of ways with that. Sometimes I just plant seeds and wait to see what sprouts up. I don’t necessarily go in with some grand scheme. But realistically—these things can drag on for years. More often than not they’re settled out of court, but that’s not always the most dramatic way to end things.
Savage Dragon #278 is now available from Image Comics.
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