Gavin Higginbotham is living the fanboy dream; after years of curating a Savage Dragon fan/resource site, and communicating back and forth with series creator Erik Larsen, he gradually slid into a role as a trusted assistant to Larsen on the book. When, years ago, my commentary column kept rehashing points of trivia that the hardcore fans would remember, Larsen suggested that Higginbotham was the guy to bring aboard to keep my sieve-like memory from affecting the column.And, recently, he was named editor of the comic officially with his name in the credits and his behind-the-scenes role expanded a bit, mostly to include seeing things that even the best of friends and fans don’t generally get to see.And right now, he’s got a backup feature in the title, centering around sweet-natured hulk Zeek. The second part of the story appears in tomorrow’s Savage Dragon #187. Higginbotham joined ComicBook.com to talk about the transition from super-fan to being an official part of the Dragon team.ComicBook.com: How’d you get hooked up with a backup feature?Gavin Higginbotham: Essentially, I bombarded Erik with backup proposals until he finally caved in. Ha!I’d been wanting to get my name in the story credits for years now. I had come up with various stories over the years but I guess they weren’t right for the series or just plain sucked.I even once wrote a huge 48 page one-shot idea that was to tie up numerous loose ends that were created when Erik started up the “Savage World” storyline in issue 76. It would explain more about what happened to Chicago before we saw it in 76. There’d have been underground freaks, gods, monsters, the Vicious Circle and all kinds of death and destruction.That went nowhere too. So… I just kept plugging away. Then talking to Frank Fosco about my fondness of his rendition of Zeek, an idea came to me in an instant. Frank liked it and offered to draw it. If Frank hadn’t have been involved, it may not have ever happened. I can’t thank Frank enough for his input.
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