With the release of Savage Dragon #192 coming this week and Malcolm Dragon officially taking over the title that his father has starred in for more than twenty years, Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen is responding to fans frustrated with the move by reminding them that readers are always asking for real, substantive change rather than the merry-go-round of rebooting and recycling superhero stories that happens regularly in most titles.The problem? A lot of the time they don’t actually give it a chance when they get what they asked for.”Dick Grayson was Batman for what seemed like five minutes,” Larsen recently noted on Facebook. “The only successful handoffs were to Hal Jordan and Barry Allen and they could get away with that because the audience at that point turned over every few years and both Green Lantern and the Flash had been off the stands for a decade or so. The more recent handoffs with Kyle Rayner and Wally West were met with the constant drone of ‘when are Hal Jordan and Barry Allen coming back?’ As much as fans demand change–they sure aren’t receptive to it when it appears.”Earlier in that same thread, after a fan had told him that he wouldn’t read Savage Dragon as long as Malcolm was the lead character, Larsen was exasperated.”I feel like Sam I Am sometimes,” he wrote. “Can you at least TRY the godd—ed Green Eggs and Ham before deciding you don’t like it? Sheesh!”Savage Dragon #192, which Larsen has characterized as the end of an era for the character he created back in fourth grade and has written and drawn for decades now, hits comic shops on Wednesday.
