Erik Larsen On Bringing the Dragon Family Back to America in Savage Dragon #266

This week saw the release of Savage Dragon #266, which centered primarily on Malcolm and Maxine's decision to up roots and move from Toronto to San Francisco, returning to the United States for the first time since they were effectively driven out of the country by executive order near the beginning of the Trump administration in 2017. The issue gave Larsen a chance to take a bit of a casual walk through the lives of the Dragons in Toronto, ahead of moving not just out of the city and the country, but into a building that's owned and operated by the Special Operations Strikeforce, which Malcolm has joined up with.

That means the book will likely have a bit more superhero universe shenanigans than it has for the last few years, when Malcolm generally worked alone and faced down the Vicious Circle, who were technically supervillains but really operated more like a fairly traditional gang. So don't get too used to this relaxing tone...!

Larsen joined ComicBook.com to break down the issue and look ahead to what's next.

Spoilers ahead. If you haven't read this month's issue yet, check it out at your local comic shop, or buy a digital copy at your favorite online bookstore.

We talked a little bit about this last time, but since it's the premise of the issue -- what went into the decision to relocate Malcolm and Maxine specifically to your neck of the woods?

Eric Stephenson had suggested it a while back and I had it simmering in the back of my brain for a couple years. As a kid I had set some of my early Dragon stories in San Francisco because that was the only big city I was at all familiar with, and that was a contributing factor, to be sure, but mostly I've spend 40 years drawing cities that I'm not that familiar with and I thought it'd be interesting to set the characters in a place I was familiar with. I've lived in the Bay Area since I moved to San Francisco in 1987, so I've had time to explore.

This issue feels a little more "smooth" in some of its inks and colors. Is that just my aging eyes, or were you doing something different this month?

Nikos recolored a bunch of the issues for the next Savage Dragon Ultimate Collection and we've been talking about trying to color the book more like that as an experiment. This issue's not quite there but he's easing into it. Art-wise, this is the first issue that I've drawn entirely digitally. Nothing in this issue, including the cover, was drawn on paper. And part of that was because it was super reference-heavy and part was just to see if I could do it--but there you go. The ink line tends to be a bit slicker and cleaner than ink on paper but overall I thought it looked pretty close to my regular stuff. Not sure if I'll make a habit of that but I do love a challenge.

I love that Walter is coming with them, but I have to ask: are the Dragons flying him, or how's he getting out there?

I don't imagine that they will. I don't think Amy would tell Malcolm about it and I don't think airlines would be inclined to fly a tiger south even if he was inclined to foot the bill. I expect he'll try to ride the rails like a hobo.

You've certainly got a lot of ground to cover in this issue. Did you have to sit down and make a list of all the supporting characters you wanted to revisit?

I kept a mental list of who was around and who needed to be contacted. There were a few friends and neighbours that I didn't touch on-their old agent and various regular people but since none of them would have made the move it didn't seem necessary to touch on them. With the others there was a bit of planting seeds for future stories. Down the road when I bring things back around readers can point to this issue and realize that this was the issue which set this and that in motion.

How did you decide who was going to stay and who was going to go to the US?

I tried to approach is as logically as I could. Obvious the family unit was all going and it just seemed logical that Paul and Alex would follow, given that their only real ties to Toronto were the Dragon family. Kevin and Mei are in the same boat but they seemed more likely to stay behind, especially given rent prices in the Bay Area.

We never did get too many actual humans into Malcolm and Maxine's life in Toronto. Is that part of the plan in San Francisco?

I tried but not many stuck. There'll be some support staff at the complex in San Francisco to begin with and I'll try to build out from there. Once kids are in school and friends are made there, some of these friendships form more naturally. They will be running into an old friend who had previously moved to the area, so there's that to look forward to. I do want to get more regular people in their lives.

So is the neighbour Craig tht Maddie zapped a doppelganger as a result of the Merging of Multiple Earths, or is this just a fun gag you wanted to keep up?

I just thought it was a funny idea to have another guy with a similar name and use the Canadian spelling of Neighbor for him. I've tried to use Canadian spelling whenever Canadian characters speak. It hasn't really been all that apparent because there aren't that many words that are different but it's been there. In any case, I have an actual friend who he's modeled after and I thought it made for a good gag. The book needed some action in it and it's the only action in the issue! Jack Morelli only got to letter a single sound effect this time around. A rare occasion.

Is there something you plan to pursue with Jackson being so insistent on staying in Toronto, or did you just want to have the reality here that, with all these kids, not all of them are going to be cool with a sudden move?

Different people take things differently. Jackson had made a very close friend a few issues earlier and he didn't want that relationship to abruptly end. I moved around a lot as a kid and it was always a bit traumatic. It's not a lot of fun starting a life over from scratch.

Is it safe to assume the montage of "the sights of San Francisco" was your way of tightening up the months of popping in and out of Toronto's recognizable spots that we did after the last move?

It was mostly to establish why Malcolm and Maxine were so taken with the city. There are a lot of famous landmarks in San Francisco, which have made their way into popular culture, from the recent Ant-Man movies to Mrs. Doubtfire, Full House, Monk, That's So Raven and Too Close for Comfort. The purpose of the page was selling why they were so charmed by the place.

With the SOS covering their housing, it seems like Malcolm and Maxine will be comparably pretty comfortable. Is that lifestyle going to create a whole new set of problems?

The problems will stem from having to share space with the other members of the team when it arrives. It's one thing to move to a new city, it's another to suddenly find yourself with new roommates. That's part of why Maxine wanted to find another place to call home. Well, that and wanting to live someplace that wasn't a possible target and couldn't be taken away if relationships soured.

Besides just not wanting to leave, it feels like there's a bit more specificity to Jackson's face in some of these scenes. Is part of the plan for this new chapter to flesh out more of what differentiates the kids from one another?

I've shined the spotlight on Amy quite a bit in the past and I thought it would be a good idea to focus more attention on some of the other kids. Jackson is the kid who most closely resembles the original Dragon and may seem like a natural successor to the title. Given that, I thought it'd be a good idea to focus a bit more on him. But they'll all get their turn.

It feels like a question you can't answer without spoiling something one way or the other, but given how big an "event" it is to move a comic character from one city to another, did you want to at least toy with the idea that this is a bad decision that Malcolm will regret? It seems like the whole thing is kind of overwhelming for them in the last few pages, and nobody but Malcolm was 100% on board to begin with.

Oh, sure. There will inevitably be some regrets. It's a big deal to relocate to another city and another country. There are going to be things they will miss from the only home these kids really remember. Then there's the weather. They caught it on a good day but San Francisco is famously foggy and cold. There also aren't the seasons that they're used to. There's no snow in the winter. There's a lot to adjust to but that makes for interesting stories. It's all fodder for future tales.

You have a big 100-page spectacular coming up next issue. Is that even harder than usual right now, with the remastered hardcovers happening? I feel like you have been putting a ton of care and time into those.

Yeah, it's a bear. Again, I blame Eric Stephenson who pointed out that I'd missed the 30th anniversary of Savage Dragon at Image but that since I started the ongoing Savage Dragon title in 1993, I could celebrate that. I didn't have time enough to get as many cool things as I'd have liked in place. A couple of artists that I'd contacted ghosted me but I've always got a few gems in the drawers. It should be pretty epic.