Erik Larsen on Savage Dragon #213 and the Next Generation of the Dragon Legacy
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Savage Dragon #213, on sale today. If you haven't read the issue yet, [...]
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Savage Dragon #213, on sale today. If you haven't read the issue yet, buy it here and read along with us.
As evidenced by its cover, today's issue of Savage Dragon is a game-changer: it introduces the readers to the next generation in the family saga that now spans three generations in the 24 years since Savage Dragon published its first issue.
But the happy occasion isn't without a few unexpected wrinkles, even as Dart and the Vicious Circle are kicking their next plan into high gear.
As always, Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen joined ComicBook.com to talk about the issue.
I feel like we saw some roughs of this cover on social media Was it pretty much always like this or were there a few different ideas you kicked around?
All the same idea but I kept cropping in closer for maximum impact. At a certain point other details become distracting clutter. Part of the job is to focus readers' attention on what's relevant and what's important. By eliminating everything but what's essential you're thrown into the middle of the scene.
We've recently seen Dart trying to get her hands on some of the Krylan children. How much of bringing Barry into the fold is actually about trying to hurt Malcolm versus something bigger?
Oh, it's everything. "Turning Barry to the dark side" would be huge for her and having the potential to "grow her own" Dragon children and arm her side would be devastating. The psychological advantage alone would be gigantic. This is somebody with a twisted mind making some very long-term plans.
It never even occurred to me that the question of whose baby Maxine was having would come up. I know we talked a long while ago about the fact that having another guy in a threesome/foursome just didn't feel like something Malcolm would be down for — but storytelling-wise, did this play into that decision at all?
Malcolm would absolutely not down for that. Angel simply jumped to the conclusion that the baby wasn't his based purely on her initial physical appearance and I don't think that's unreasonable. After seeing the child her mind got racing and she probably imagined all sorts of scenarios where she was doing other things with other people behind Malcolm's back.
If she was up for a threesome or foursome with Malcolm and other girls--who's to say she wouldn't have been up for that with three other guys? It seemed a logical conclusion under the circumstances.
The question of Maxine not being invulnerable to the baby's powers isn't one I'd really considered either; did they just not think of it because they were so focused on keeping her alive through labor and delivery?
The thing to keep in mind during all this is that these people are extremely young. They're jumping into the deep end without taking a lot of things into consideration. Like--how do you childproof your apartment against a kid who could smash through a wall or the floor? Those aren't questions a parent typically has to consider. Maxine didn't go into this thinking she couldn't breastfeed her child, for example--it just never came up. And Lorella here is trying to be a voice of reason.
Just going on a limb: will the baby be able to shift back and forth between a more human form and the Dragon look, or was her original skin color and the like mostly a case of misdirection?
That was not my intent. It's certainly a consideration and a couple of people have picked up on that and even suggested it--but it seems weird to me to have hair and fins appearing and disappearing at will. For some reason it worked for me to have Bruce Banner pluck 850 pounds out of thin air to become the Hulk but having Malcolm and Maxine's baby grow hair out of thin air seems silly.
And do I really want or need her to have a secret identity? That seems like a logical progression and I don't see a lot of potential there. At this point my inclination is to not go that route but--it is there, I suppose, if I want to use it.
Of all the things that you had to juggle from the FCBD issue, I think the two Dragon babies Malcolm recovered being his was SHOULD have been obvious but wasn't. How hard did you want to keep the audience guessing there?
At that point all the pieces weren't there for a readers to piece things together, really. But that was part of the fun there. In a way it was the foreshadowing that I did with Malcolm in #29. Just--without the 16 year wait to pay it off.
Once we found out that all three girls were pregnant--readers could have put those pieces together but by then they were on to other things.
Speaking of which: Barry didn't do a really good job hiding from Donna. Given his looks, will that (non-)secret play a role coming up soon?
Barry was just embarrassed. He's a kid hiding his face. It's no secret that he's there. Dart's assistant would know about it. I don't imagine anybody else in the Vicious Circle would know Barry was in Dart's bed necessarily but that's not something Donna Justice would be blabbing to the others about, knowing the possible consequences.
On that last page: even when Dart's plan itself is somewhat subtle, she can't help herself doing something like chopping guys' heads off, can she?
Not if it gets in her way, no. She's not indiscriminately murdering people, mind you--just people who get in her way and could interfere with her plans.
The issue starts and finishes with a splash page and Dart in the middle of some violence. Was the design to bookend the issue that way, or was that just how it worked out, pacing-wise?
More the latter. At this point I'm just feeling my way through these books. There are no written plots or scripts. I just plow into it with some things in mind and general ideas of directions I want to go in. When a good idea occurs I'm free to pursue it. And that's what this was--me trying to come up with things readers wouldn't expect but which made perfect sense.
I didn't want to follow the last page of the previous issue with Malcolm holding the baby--so that meant cutting away to something--anything--as an opening bit of action. That led to me recalling Barry and how he was mentioned a few issues back but never checked in on--which led to me considering working Dart into the mix.
One thing led to another. The page with Barry in bed was reminiscent of the one of Angel waking up with Daredevil and realizing she'd made a mistake. And that came from me having Dart kiss Barry, which was creepy enough but I thought going full-Michael Jackson would be the icing on the cake. After that--it just made sense to leave on a cliffhanger: Have Malcolm going after one menace while she broke in to steal the babies.
There were a number of 6- and 7-panel pages this issue. Was this one of your experimentation issues, or was there just a lot you needed to get said this month?
No experiment per se. With talking and personal stuff I tend to go that way. Action is splashier and requires more space. This is the sort of thing that doesn't. I try to use the space wisely. I don't like to waste space. There are a limited number of pages and I don't want to piss them away.
