Erik Larsen Releases Final Cover For Savage Dragon Free Comic Book Day Issue, Dismisses Return to Marvel or DC

Weeks after the initial announcement, issued with a placeholder cover (seen at right), Erik Larsen revealed what will be the final cover for Savage Dragon: Legacy #1, Image Comics' Free Comic Book Day offering in May.

The new cover focuses exclusively on Malcolm Dragon, the son of the title's original protagonist, who officially took over the title in 2014 after nearly fifty issues in which he was, for all intents and purposes, the main character for most of the time.

In the comments beneath the image's Facebook post, Larsen was encouraged by a fan to ply his trade on a Marvel or DC book, to which another fan responded that working at DC would be a waste of Larsen's time.

The artist agreed -- but he didn't single out DC for abuse, but instead noted that work-for-hire isn't really something he's interested in at this point in his career.

"Honestly--DC and Marvel are a waste of time," Larsen told a fan when asked whether he would consider work at the Big Two. "I can't imagine the circumstances that would have me going back."

That's not entirely surprising; while many fans still praise his work on the Spider-Man titles, done more than 20 years ago now, Larsen is open about the fact that he's prouder of his creator-owned work.

"It is what it is," he said in a separate Facebook thread recently, when a fan praised his efforts on those work-for-hire books years ago. "I know people loved it but Spider-Man was never a dream book for me. It was a job and a good job but it was never something I aspired to do."

Rather, he's been doing what he did aspire to -- working on his own characters, mostly in Savage Dragon, for the better part of a quarter century now.

Savage Dragon: Legacy will be available on May 2 for free as part of the Free Comic Book Day promotion, and then an expanded edition in a future comic, which is yet to be scheduled.

Larsen did something similar with Savage Dragon #148, which was printed as an expanded version of a Free Comic Book Day issue. In the case of Legacy #1, Malcolm Dragon's story in the monthly comic needs to catch up with the starting point of this one-shot before it can be fitted into the title.