Erik Larsen on Savage Dragon #216, His Spawn Crossover And An Unlikely Stray Bullets Inspiration

As we'd previously reported, Savage Dragon #216 hit the stands tdoay and, among other things, Dragon finally got to meet his grandchildren -- who got their names!

It was also a "playing catch-up" kind of issue, in which Erik Larsen sat down, figured out exactly where in the timeline he was and how far behind he was, and set about trying to catch Malcolm and company up to the current day.

As ever, Larsen joined ComicBook.com to provide some commentary and insight on the individual issue, what's next, and how it all plays into the bigger picture that is Savage Dragon.

This is a spoiler-filled interview.

You can get a copy of Savage Dragon #216 at your local comic shop, or pick up a digital copy and read along with us.

Is it a spoiler to ask whether Dart is on the shelf for a while to make way for this new "big bad" that Ant is bringing in, or if this is just another probably-short-lived confinement?

I guess it's something of a spoiler if you're asking what's happening with the bad guy coming up in the next issue.

As far as Dart goes—plan is to lay off her for a bit. It seems as though she's been in damned near every issue for a while now and I want to give it a rest. Also, because I needed to play catchup with Malcolm and real time so it seemed a good way to ensure that she was somewhat less active.

Just so it's been said: Do we need to have read your Spawn run in order to get what's going on in the next couple of issues with the crossover?

No. No, you don't. I mean—it'd be nice but I'll drop in enough info that you'll be up to speed pretty quick. Ultimately, these stories do get collected and the Spawn issues go with Spawn and the Savage Dragon ones go with Savage Dragon and both collections should seem pretty self-contained for their own sake.

Savage Dragon is a bit cleaner than Spawn in that regard because it's the final chapter in a story but either way—they should be comprehendible. There's an ending of sorts in Spawn and enough information given to easily understand what's going on in Savage Dragon.

Something seems...familiar...about that "new" logo. What motivated you to go back?

In retrospect, I should have reverted to this one after Malcolm became a police officer. I liked the Malcolm letterman logo but didn't think it really worked once Malcolm was out of high school. I tried to come up with one which was reminiscent of both, but it just seemed kind of boring.

Given that, going back to a better logo seemed like the thing to do.

This month, Dragon finally meets the grandkids. I know on Facebook you said that you really just liked the sound of "Amy Dragon." Any big revelations behind Jack and Tyrone's names?

There's not a lot to say. I ran through a million names. I came up with Amy, Jack and Tyrone early on but kept trying to come up with good triplet names. Since both Malcolm and Maxine's names start with a "Ma" I'd gone through a ton of those, and came close to settling on Maximilian, Martin and Madeline but then I thought—as much as I liked those names together—I didn't like them much individually and I wanted each of them to stand on their own.

When it came down to crunch time—actually scripting the issue—I went with my first impulse. Jack Dragon has an almost rhyming quality to it—both having the same "a" sound. Tyrone just sounded strong to me—and I wanted a name that sounded nothing like Jack so there would be no confusing the two boys.

As for Amy—I've just always liked that name and it gave me kind of a Stray Bullets "Amy Racecar" vibe without sounding too much like it. I also wanted names that sounded like their mothers' heritage—so white, black and Asian. Jack is very white sounding, Tyrone is more black sounding and Amy Tan is a prominent Asian writer so that seemed to work

The kids seem to be developing pretty fast. Is there a story reason for that, is it part of the whole Chosen One thing, or is it more just because actual babies are typically not that fun to write?

It's because I fudged time over the last year and I needed to do some catching up.

I sat down with a calendar and realized there was no possible way any of these kids could have been born any earlier than September 2015 and that put me a full year behind reality. That meant playing a bit of catchup and it meant skipping the election cycle this time around as well. If things are happening in 2015 I really couldn't address any of that nonsense.

So I kind of skipped around a bit, touching on a few days, one being clearly around Christmas—of last year. So, by the end we're in 2016 but not necessarily far into it.

At the same time, yes, the kids do develop faster than most do. Tyrone was crawling right out of the womb a few issues back, so these kids are hardly helpless. Newborns typically don't do much so fast forwarding through six months of shitting, barfing and screaming didn't seem a huge loss. There'll likely be a few more instances of catching up over the next few issues.

It's an unfortunate side effect of setting a book in real time: If I have a few issues continue one into the next, at some point I need to skip ahead.

Last time around, we got to the Christmas issue pretty late. This year, it seems like they're decorating really early. Is there a particular reason for making jumps forward right now?

It's Christmas 2015. Unless I'm doing a time travel story—I don't get ahead of real time in Savage Dragon. I've lagged behind a few times (once a full two years) but I don't like jumping ahead.

There's some sitcom hijinks as the kids tear people's clothes away and knock over furniture and the like, but obviously then they break Lorella's finger at the end there. We saw a little of this when Baby Mighty Man first became a thing, but obviously the Dragon triplets don't have an off-switch for their powers. Are you going to be exploring what that means for the rest of the cast a little bit?

As much as I can. Clearly I can't cover every single moment of every day with these guys so much will need to be implied. Readers may have to use their imaginations a bit. That's part of the pitfalls of setting a book in real time. You take the good with the bad. And I can't really spend too much time (or want to) because it could get pretty redundant.

Most often they're trying to work things out so that there is somebody with powers around at all times. The kids are nowhere near as strong as Malcolm, Angel Murphy or Thunder-Head so as long as one of them is nearby things shouldn't get too bad.

How far down the road have you thought, in terms of what you want to do with the kids and what they mean for the book?

Relatively far but a lot of my plotting is "if this, then this" style, where I'll lay out a few possible paths and try to think everything through with each and take the path which leads in the most interesting direction. At any given point I've generally got at least five possible directions and each of those sprouts at least a few more possible paths. It can get complicated but it's better than things becoming predictable.

I like touches like having Dragon realize, months later, that Thunder-Head is on the family's side now. Do you just wait until these things come up naturally or is it more than sometimes you forget "Oh, yeah, he's been in jail and probably hasn't heard?"

I try to make it as naturally as I can. I would think we're missing a lot of Malcolm's visits to his father due to the page limitations. It's weird to think about it but often I don't even mean dialogue to be literal. It's all somewhat truncated. Nobody would ever visit their dad in jail and say that few words and move on. So, by necessity, there's some fudging here and there.

Also, sometimes I'm trying to spooned readers just a bit to keep them up to speed. Dragon reminds us that "Kevin" means "Thunder-Head" so that when he's name checked later the readers can know that's the same guy. Often it means readers need to pay a bit more attention but all the pieces are there in front of them so there should be no confusion.

Kind of a weird question -- but when people with Dragon's blood injections blow up, can THEIR blood be used in the same way Dragon's and Malcolm's can?

I would suppose so—but given what happened—I wouldn't think folks would be so inclined. But you never know.

When the ant people showed up, I kind of wondered whether Malcolm's lightning powers could basically be used like a bug zapper. But they're biologically different from Ant, right?

Ant is an ant in name only. She's no more a real ant than Batman is a real bat.

It may have been a blunder to stick the Ant Menaces into the same issue with Ant but I wanted a quick and dirty reason for Malcolm to pop her one and justify the cover and having her be confused with the others seemed a good way. Also, it kept those creatures in the spotlight a bit.