Erik Larsen on Multi-Part Sagas, Soulmates, and Sex Drives in Savage Dragon #222

Russ Burlingame

03/23/2017 05:16 pm EDT

The Dragon family keeps getting bigger, and this week's Savage Dragon #222 is no exception, as Malcolm meets a young woman struggling to deal with the onset of new super powers, only to discover that she might in fact be his half sister.

(Photo: Image Comics)

This comes just before a major status-quo shake-up planned for issues #223-225, which potentially could see reality-altering consequences for the characters.

Series creator Erik Larsen joined ComicBook.com to talk about the issue and what's next.

Just a reminder that these commentary tracks are spoiler-heavy, so if you haven't yet read Savage Dragon #222, go grab one at your local comic shop or pick up a digital copy and read along with us.

Torment is another returning Malcolm villain, which makes it feel like we're getting a real sense for how his rogues gallery is shaping up. Are we going to be seeing more "solo" villains now that Dart is off the table for the moment?

A bit more, yeah. I also need to establish the new status quo of the Vicious Circle. There's always so much to do. The next few issues will be a multi-part saga though so it'll be a few issues before we're back to one-on-one stuff.

Obviously Malcolm is preparing himself for war with the underground; is that going to pay off during the upcoming crisis with Glum, or is that further down the road?

That's further down the road. The underground stuff is a seething pot getting ready to boil over but there's nothing Malcolm can really do about it beyond dealing with whatever surfaces. He can't very well just go below and start randomly punching or shooting guys. Unless they've committed a crime his options are few.

Does Angel even consider the idea that Dragon might not want jump right back into things with Jennifer? She seems like she's setting her mom up for potential disappointment.

I don't think she does. There's a lot she doesn't know. She was excited to find he was out of jail but she had no idea Alex Wilde was back in the picture. Somebody is going to get hurt, one way or another.

You talked a little bit on Facebook about the casual nudity in this issue. Was that a thing that you thought a lot about before committing to it?

Oh, sure. Really, it was this one panel with Alex in it where it seemed super awkward to cover her up. Placing arbitrary items over nipples can look really silly and frankly — is there anybody on earth who hasn't seen a nipple before? In this day and age where a casual Google search will turn up all kinds of unexpected horrors this seems trivial. Compared with the internet, comics seem pretty tame. It just came to a point where I felt it was time to get over it. If that means this comic needs to be hidden from your parents — so be it.

Have you wanted to pair Dragon off with Alex for a while, or did the idea just come up when you knew you were bringing Jennifer back?

It's something I've wrestled with for years. Readers were always onboard with that idea and couldn't understand the attraction of Jennifer. I came from a place where Jennifer was always Dragon's girl and Alex was introduced when this series came about. Jennifer dated back to when I was a kid, so for me—she was the one. Years later it just seems somewhat natural. For a longterm relationship you really want to be paired with your best friend and that's what Alex is.

We've talked a lot about your reluctance to commit to too many dragon-looking characters to the book, but we haven't really talked about the idea that this is very much becoming a family book.

The generational nature of the book means there is, inevitably, a lot of Dragon-looking characters kicking around. I try as much as I can to give them distinctive enough features that they look different from each other. And in a generational book—inevitably that means family. The challenge is to keep that exciting and not routine.

For a lot of people who don't read the book, the sexual escapades in and around #200 really defined Maxine as a character. What made you want to return to that aspect of her?

It's just fun to play with. It makes her unpredictable which makes the book that much less predictable. It keeps everybody guessing. Plus it's something we haven't seen explored a lot in comics. We've had a few playboys in comics but there really haven't been a lot of women characters with a healthy (or unhealthy) sex drive. In the real world some women are every bit, if not more, hungry than men.

Why didn't Malcolm tell Marsha that he's Rapture's kid too?

He'd want to confirm things before having that conversation.

Dragon, obviously, has a big personal decision to make…but we in the real world know that he's got this big universe-altering story coming up. Will he have made his decision by then or is this something that's going to hang over him while lives are in the balance?

That remains to be seen. Obviously there are a lot of things to consider.

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(Photo: Image Comics)